Re “Washington Football playing again at Richmond camp in July,” Free Press June 10-12 edition:

It was announced that the Washington Football Team will open training camp from July 27 through 31 here in Richmond.

Supposedly the team will be leasing the facility for that time instead of being paid an astronomical fee to come here, which is great news.

Even so, I wonder will there be more diversity among the vendors inside the training camp this year?

When a city official was asked about this in 2019, he stated the city had no control over that. My statement to him would be that we have control over whether the team comes here or not for practice and that the vendors should reflect the population and diverse culture we have here in our beautiful city.

I know we have had time in the past few years to talk with various minority-owned food businesses about offering their services at the stadium. It is also good exposure for their businesses. Is anyone fighting for this to occur? Hopefully so, but we will soon find out.

You can count on a certain large pizza chain to be at the practice facility along with a few other large companies. That is all well and good. But I believe the smaller businesses should have a chance to cash in on this event as well. Rest assured, they could do equally as well. We need fair and equal representation.

ERNEST PARKER JR.

Richmond