I urge everyone in the city of Albert Lea who has a computer to please pull up the recording of the City Council meeting that was held on Sept. 14. You can pull this up by going to the city of Albert Lea website and then clicking on the window that says to follow their YouTube channel for the City Council meetings. You will see exactly what happens in these meetings and how your City Council members and mayor are NOT listening to the wishes of the citizens in this city. YOU need to start letting these individuals know that their spending is getting out of hand. My councilman is a yes man. He never says anything about any of the spending that they’re doing; he agrees with 99 percent of it. How is your councilman doing?

Ryan Nolander, executive director of the Albert Lea Economic Development Agency wants us to stop talking about the negative things in Albert Lea. Well, in order to speak positively about this community, you need leaders of the community who don’t use their position to spend money they don’t have.

The city is now a landlord for a home they have purchased on the corner of Bridge and Hawthorne for a possible plan that the county may have for Bridge Avenue that may not even come up until the year 2023. They have asked the county to move the date up, but the city is buying more property because of something that “may” happen in the future.

Personally, I’m disgusted by this continual spending and the fact that the council members and mayor don’t care what the citizens have to say. Perhaps this would have been a good purchase if they had not just spent money on a building downtown that they “hope” someone will purchase and develop.

At this point, all I can do is ask the citizens of this community to please listen to these council meetings if you’re not watching them on the government channel or listening to them on the radio. They are offering you the opportunity to listen to these meetings after the meeting is held if you have a computer. If you don’t have a computer, find someone who does and ask to use it or go to the library and use their computers. We need to watch what’s going on and let our representatives know how we feel. Questions were asked at the beginning of this meeting that were totally ignored by the council and need to be answered. Do yourself a favor and watch this particular meeting and any others you might want to watch.

 

Kathy Diaz

Albert Lea