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Dear Editor,

The population in the city of Suffolk has dramatically increased with the amount of residential buildings and development. The first issue we are seeing is a difference in traffic since the neighborhoods and apartment complexes have been developed. The widening of roads to handle such traffic should’ve been done in preparation, not after the traffic has become a mess. If the building permits are slowed down to give the city enough time to prepare for future traffic, this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

With the increase of people in the city, there is an increase in calls for first responders. The issue with this is that there aren’t enough first responders to respond. The call volume is too much at times. Officers are leaving along with fire and rescue because of the work overload, work environments, and shortage of employees. This can be solved if the Police and Fire departments would raise the wages to retain who they have already hired and trained for the job. By raising the pay, other already certified officers from other jurisdictions will want to come to Suffolk.

The Suffolk Public School System is seeing the increase as well. Schools are extremely overcrowded. This makes them not only unsafe, but it is overworking their teachers. Teachers are leaving the profession left and right, adding on too many students and unsafe learning environments is just going to push teachers out. This also negatively impacts the learning environments and how the public views the school system. Building schools in preparation for the increase would keep this issue from occurring. Suffolk needs to build new schools now because of the increase.

These issues the city could have [been] easily avoided. The city cannot keep up with the amount of homes being built. There needs to be expansion in these areas to combat the growing population numbers. The city is incredibly behind and needs to be proactive when it comes to issues like these because it affects the current citizens.

 

Alayna Carr

Suffolk