This is in response to Carl Sherline (letter, May 4). Simply asking the question “what possibly could the Joint Charter Commission members gain?” does not legitimize their cause. Old men with big egos who have a need to establish their legacy by imposing their half-baked ideas on an uninterested population could be one possible explanation for their motivation.

So far, two towns without much money to spare have wasted $150,000 building a charter that literally has thousands of templates in city charters around the country. Why should Lewiston-Auburn be reinventing the wheel?

Why does everyone I know feel that the whole merger exercise is just another smoke-and-mirrors game that won’t reduce residents’ taxes or save taxpayers of the two cities one single penny?

Alan Whitman, Auburn