Yahoo 'a city under siege, everyone on heroin'

 Our mayor appears on slide 19 of the slide show in Yahoo’s expose. He is in denial! The caption to the picture is: “Lawrence Mulligan Jr, Mayor of Middletown, doesn’t think the opioid problem is worse here than in the surrounding area: It’s just more openly discussed.”

Refusing to acknowledge the seriousness of our problems seems to be theme of our city government. And revealing underlying reasons for the severity of our problems is carefully avoided. For instance, when the city pursued Section 8 housing. they invited the low income and indigent demographic that is notoriously susceptible to socio-economic problems. The free money associated with government programs proved too tempting. In consequence, the severity of our opioid problem IS MUCH MORE SERIOUS than the surrounding area. Therefore, it is discussed and scrutinized on a national level.

The housing problem that our city manager is “explaining” in meetings (that the Journal News has been reporting on) is another prime example of treating the symptoms of our problems but ignoring the cause. City hall has done away with our amenities, allowed the academic quality in our schools to bottom out, invited in the Section 8 low income demographic, ceased to provide basic up keep of infrastructure, torn down or sold for $1 (then bought some back for thousands of $’s) much of the downtown commercial properties and then Mr Adkins leads the complaints that we can’t attract home buyers!!! Council has allowed all this to happen under the direction of their chosen successive administrations and continues to make the same mistakes over and over, then expects a different outcome. (Remember the definition of insanity?)