I’m not particularly uptight and righteous, but I do believe we should strive to build a community that is a wholesome place to raise our families.
Lately, casinos are popping up in the Everett area. The first one, on Evergreen Way, is just a block away from Evergreen Middle School and is so close to Cascade High School that they share the school fence. Just a few miles down the road, a Chinese family restaurant has been replaced by a casino – and now we’re told another casino is opening soon in Silver Lake. What are our city fathers thinking?
Along with the casinos are larger and more in-your-face stores that sell sex supplies and porn – which they’d like us to view as packages of love. Right. Recently, I passed one of these stores on Broadway that had a huge inflated pink gorilla on the roof – just the thing to attract the attention of young children and teens. Isn’t the sleazy strip joint we’ve endured for years on Evergreen Way enough of a test of our broadmindedness?
A third type of enterprise that I question in our area are the abundant payday-check-cashing places. According to a media expos, these businesses are nothing less than storefront loan sharks that hook the poorest people in a community into loans with impossible payments and interest rates.
Surprisingly, all these enterprises are legal – but are they the kinds of businesses that families want in our community?
If our city fathers can’t do a better job, perhaps we should replace all of them with city mothers.
Everett
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