The community newspaper is one of the few places a resident can chime in on a local matter and have their voice heard, which is why The Times has always had such an open letters page. Compared to other publications, our guidelines are fairly unrestrictive and we don’t typically limit the number of letters that make it onto the page. Rather than hand-pick a few letters to run each week, we try to let everyone who follows our policy (see the bottom of this page for reference) have their say.

If you need further proof of that, simply flip through the Opinion section of the past several issues. We had to draw the line at a whopping 50 letters due to space restrictions a couple of times, but that certainly isn’t the norm.

In the mix, you’ll see letters for and against the property tax, for and against both mayoral candidates, as well as comments on a smattering of other current issues such as the proposed senior living facility off of Saguaro.

As you might imagine with topics such as these, things got pretty heated in recent weeks. So heated, in fact, we had many discussions around the office concerning our policy, potential revisions and how many letters we’re willing to run each week.

While we may still fine-tune things in the future, we eventually came to the decision that our system has worked well in the past and times being “tough” is no reason to create additional restrictions.

If you submit a letter we do not feel meets with our policy, we want to work with you to get it ready for print rather than simply offer a cold “no.” And you have a right to disagree with our decision, just as we have a right to not run something we are uncomfortable with. The preference, obviously, is that we’ll be able to find some sort of middle ground.

We feel this procedure helps ensure as many voices as possible have an opportunity to be heard, so feel free to keep those letters coming.