I read the report by Carrie Rodriguez in the April 19th edition of your paper, regarding the legal dispute between Mr.O’Brien and the city of Kenmore, with a mixture of frustration and sympathy.

Sympathy because, once again, a citizen is involved with trying to deal with the semantics of – obviously confusing and conflicting – municipal codes.

Frustration, because Byzantium looms ever larger over our daily lives. With respect to my many good friends who are employed by several of our nearby cities, I get the distinct impression that we citizens are but mere fodder to feed the ever increasing maw of intrusive government that seeks, it seems to me, ever increasing control and power over our daily lives.

Cicero, for those of you who remember your Roman history, was reputed to have remarked, ‘We hire these people to be our servants, but very soon, they think themselves our masters.” He said it in Latin, of course and how history repeats itself.

We need some common sense in our myriad codes and regulations. What is encouraged and subsidized by one branch of government should not be made illegal by an other branch.

Michael P. Challenger, Bothell