Forever, I have heard our town is “not business friendly.” I disagree. But are we “resident friendly?” Our bowing to business brings “unfriendly” consequences to residents.

For example, we strolled the chamber’s art fair and were shocked to see that the chamber has still not made a responsible recycling commitment at its very profitable fairs. Along our stroll I found 24 trash containers and only eight recycle containers. If you are a visitor to the fair, would you wait to find out if there is a recycle container somewhere?

I have been gone from town employment for five years and I argued this point over five years ago. The chamber collects about $250,000 from the vendors for fees. The town gets about $100-$200 from the chamber for the permit. Should not the town be looking at how we may get additional revenue from this chamber money-making machine?

They use our streets and median. They utilize town resources of other kinds! The chamber typically claims attendance of over 200,000.

While walking along the sidewalk in one stretch, I banged my head on [a local business’] umbrellas. Why are they allowed to have those hang over our sidewalk?

Finally, residents pay more to rent a park ramada for a few hours than the chamber pays to use the entire downtown for their fairs? Residents pay as much to get a pet license as the businesses pay to have several fire department officials inspect their facilities? Ask your Mayor and council to explain all this.