Dear editor:

I moved to this city from Cass County five years ago now with the expectation of city services, which were largely absent where I lived given the rural setting.

I was familiar with this city, having grown up here, and as a youth found the city quite accommodating, but of course that was many years ago. Some services have become lax if not non-existent, such as the street sweeper. Where is that?

In inquiring I have been told the economy is yada, yada, yada, so the services are not available for the most part.The sidewalks are the homeowners’ responsibility, as I have been told many times when inquiring.

I inquired about a certain stretch of the sidewalk that has been washed away at one point on my block where my son was thrown from his bicycle and hurt very badly, and I was informed that I should approach the home owner about repairing it. This is not my job to approach the homeowner and start problems with my neighbors. It most certainly is the city’s responsibility to inform them that their sidewalk is out of code and has actually caused an accident!

It occurs to me several years ago that a small golf cart-type vehicle was purchased for the police department for citizen patrol of such issues. What happened to that? I am a homeowner in good standing and keep my property to ordinances, yet many surrounding properties are rentals and are not and getting the code enforcement to do inspections and actually follow-through is difficult. Why is that and why should we as homeowners even have to ask that rentals be inspected? It should be done periodically, should it not?

Not to mention the traffic situation in this town is nearly untenable, yet little attention is being paid to updating the antiquated infrastructure to adapt to the onslaught of traffic that passes through our community. It is becoming a very dangerous place to drive and raise children.

I have heard all the arguments the economy — yada, yada, yada — but I expect certain services, period.

First of all, I’d like to say that we do enjoy the leaf pickup in the fall and brush removal and the city employees do a wonderful job and I do apologize for sounding crass, but I am a customer of this city and should not have to continue to suck it up and be given the brush-off when inquiring about things that concern me, especially where clearly there are remedies that could be had.

I did not cause the present situation and as far as I am aware the taxes that I pay – which I might add are vastly higher than that of the township — are still paid every year.

Brett Thomas

Niles