Dear Editor,

I sent the below letter to the mayor of Chelsea and would like to see it published:

Dear Mayor, 
I am writing this letter to you on behalf of myself and the residents of Greenbriar Place subdivision. I am writing a letter to you because our request to be seen and heard at your city council meeting was never approved.
Greenbriar Place, like other subdivisions built in Chelsea, was built during the housing boom but stalled during the nation’s economic turndown and has fallen into disrepair.

Our developer, Bobby Hulsey, has gone under and has been for some time. We believe at one point Compass Bank owned most of the lots in our neighborhood and sold them for dirt cheap at auction.

In the meantime our main road was never fully paved. Back in 2008, shortly after we moved here and shortly before your re-election as mayor, you came out to our neighborhood and viewed our streets and told us that you would have them patched. Here we are, five years later, and we are still waiting for that work to be done. 
The residents of Greenbriar Place know that the city of Chelsea held the bond and/or line of credit for paving the roads in our subdivision, but city officials failed to keep up with the bond, which would have ensured that the infrastructure in our subdivision was completed.

Because of this, we residents of Greenbriar Place and citizens of the city of Chelsea feel like it is the city of Chelsea’s responsibility to approve a plan to have our neighborhood streets paved and the necessary work in our subdivision completed. We are not seeking aesthetic repairs; the street is considered a safety hazard in our neighborhood.

We all feel that we moved to Chelsea from other cities because we believed the “up and coming’” city of Chelsea would provide a better environment to raise our children and/or retire.

We all made a substantial investment in Chelsea by buying our homes here. Combine that with the lapsing of the bond being the full fault of Chelsea City Council and not the fault of the citizens of this neighborhood, we feel that the least the city owes us is a paved street.

Tracie Marcum

Chelsea