Paying for an elected official to participate in something officials are asked to do doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for the taxpayer to foot the bill.

The issue raised was “precedent,” an interesting word we usually use when we want to prove a point. It reminds me of church committees getting together to create budgets: “Well, we have always done it that way.”Just because we did it doesn’t mean we should continue to do it. Re-evaluating our values is not a bad thing.

An elected official’s job is time-consuming and can be financially costly. Allow our newly elected mayor some space, give her support to represent our great city. Let’s change the precedent and then dig deeper into why this is such an issue.

— Kim Porter

Salisbury