While you and I were busy dodging potholes in the Lakeport roads and praying that our homes and schools don’t burn down due to the city council’s abandonment of the city’s weed abatement program, the city council is now working on the latest chapter of its playbook entitled, “Insensitivity.”

The same city that carried out the early morning shotgun slaughter of the park geese five years ago, with no public input or apparent remorse for killing and wounding the geese that historically call Library Park home, has now set its sights on the downtown business district and its merchants.

During the height of Lakeport’s business and tourist season, the city council has launched a construction project that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, closing Main Street, creating dust, disrupting traffic, parking and foot traffic. The Record-Bee reports a 50-percent reduction in business due to the city’s poorly timed project.

This questionable project, which will narrow the street to the detriment of the traveling public, obviously should have been carried out, if at all, in spring or fall, not in the middle of the busiest season of the year.

When they rely on out-of-county consultants to tell them what to do, the city council has again lost track of their purpose to help Lakeport’s businesses and citizens.

While the city government goes about its four-day workweek with a generous paycheck, city businesses struggle to keep their doors open due to the city’s improvident and poorly timed spending that ignores impacts to its citizens.

The insensitivity of the city council and its staff to the businesses and lives of the citizens of Lakeport needs to end.

A city council election is coming up with nomination papers becoming available on July 18 and a deadline for filing on Aug. 12.

Rumor on the street is that city hall is quietly recruiting candidates with pliable minds that will continue to follow the city staff’s “Insensitivity Playbook” and frustrate the voters’ attempts for a more sensitive government. 

We need three new candidates that will be responsive to the feelings and needs of the city’s businesses and citizens, curtail spending on unnecessary projects and cut excessive utility rates.

Bob Bridges lives in Lakeport, Calif.