Perhaps ...

... we should have children write any complaint letters we ever need to write.

"Dear Mr. Claudet," the letter from the 7-year-old girl began. She described in four sentences problems at Southdown West Park, the small greenspace by her home. The plastic slide needed to be more slippery, she wrote, and an electrical panel near the tennis court was "dangerus."

When she mailed the letter, little did she know that she would set the parish's bureaucratic wheels in motion.

All her requests for improvements were met during the holidays after the letter landed on Parish President Michel Claudet's desk. He opened it himself, he said, and took the young girl's input seriously.