Editor’s note

How about a referendum on what issues the city council should focus their attention on? Tanning beds and a residency requirement? Maybe next they’ll try to figure out singlepayer health insurance. As our neighborhoods suffer from a stinking garbage system and a slow demolition process, as jobs and offices leave downtown and the neglected infrastructure crumbles and the Hy-Vee project stalls under a mountain of paperwork, the council may decide to offer advice on Syria or Iran. It is time for the mayor to provide an agenda for progress that will keep aldermen focused on problems they can actually fix. –Fletcher Farrar, editor