It's open forum week. What's on your mind?

• There are two states I know of — Oklahoma and Texas — that have a tax relief weekend for back-to-school shoppers. They call it a tax holiday weekend, and there’s no tax on anything they buy that weekend. So why can’t Kansas have one of these?

• To the motorcyclist who doesn’t want to wear a helmet: You don’t have to wear a helmet. Just make sure you have hospital coverage for a hospital or rehab if needed so I don’t have to subsidize your bill.

• Now that they are renovating in front of the train depot, can they please replace the red awning out there in the front of the building? Hopefully, that can be replaced, also, to make it look better for everybody.

• Tearing down buildings downtown doesn’t make sense. We don’t need more parking lots. We need more friendly businesses.

• If people would do their homework they would know Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to a father from Kenya and a mother from El Dorado while his parents were going to college in Hawaii. His father left the family when he was 2 and was later killed in a car accident, and his mother died in her early 50s of cancer.

• About the problem of irresponsible dog owners who don't carry a plastic bag to pick up their dog poop, which doesn't dissolve, simply find out who this owner is and where he lives. Then, when the incident happens again, pick up the dog poop and put it in a plastic bag and calmly deliver it to his home and say, "Your dog left this in my yard, so I am returning it to you!”