May I express to Mayor Suzette Cooke and the City Council my sincere and heartfelt gratitude for the recent proclamation reaffirming Kent as a Welcoming City?<\/p>\n
I have enjoyed being a part of our city for almost 50 years and have watched it grow from a small suburb of 15,000 to its present size.<\/p>\n
I could not agree more that the present success of our community relies in part to the marvelous diversity of its citizens. I am particularly pleased with the unusual quality of our Hispanic neighbors. As one who has many friends within that community I have observed this group as a hardworking, law abiding and wonderfully family-oriented asset to our city.<\/p>\n
The truth is that many of our local businesses would be hard pressed to survive without their contribution to the labor force. It is also true that a significant segment of the entire local economy is enhanced by their presence. Indeed the very wellbeing of our community is improved.<\/p>\n
May I add my endorsement of the proclamation with the hope that many others will do likewise. I would hope that in so doing we may help allay the fear which hangs over the heads of many of these good people and their children.<\/p>\n
– Phil Coleman<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" May I express to Mayor Suzette Cooke and the City Council my sincere and heartfelt gratitude for the recent proclamation reaffirming Kent as a Welcoming City?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-27126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27126"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}