Letters To The Editor

Sat., Dec. 13, 1997

WASHINGTON STATE

Don’t spend surplus, invest it

As a retired businessman, I am getting sick and tired of cities, counties, states and the federal government always wondering how to spend their surplus cash on hand.

This time, I am concerned about Washington’s $860 million surplus and how to use it. Sure, it can go to employee raises, purchasing a space ship or maybe burning it. A businessman must budget and put any surplus away for the lean and down times. The majority of this money should be invested, i.e. high-interest bearing certificates of deposit.

This makes sense. I urge Gov. Gary Locke to please think about it seriously. Let’s run the state of Washington like a profitable business should be run. Don’t follow the federal government’s policy of spending its money long before it is due. Federal income taxes are a prime example.

Wesley C. “Bud” Gaston Spokane

SPOKANE MATTERS

Contract with county for police service

Throughout the City Council campaign, whenever asked what qualities I wanted to see in a new police chief, I had a simple response: Why have a police chief?

Why should we support duplication? Why couldn’t we simply contract law enforcement out to the county sheriff’s office? After all, taxpayers in the city are already paying for county services, so why not use them? I’m growing increasingly tired of hearing politicians whining about not having enough resources to pay for basic services like street repair or voter education. The same whiners are always pointing their fingers at law enforcement cost as the biggest expense in their budgets. So, logic (if they have any) would dictate that we need to trim our expenses.

Do we have a consolidated city-county jail? Yes.

Do we have a consolidated city-county dispatch? Yes.

When the voters of Spokane County rejected the city-county charter, I believe they were saying no to a part-time uni-government modeled after our dysfunctional City Council. I do not believe the citizens were saying no to wasting our tax money by supporting duplicate departments and the expensive staff to run them.

Since July, I’ve requested that our elected leadership open this issue for constructive public debate. The have done absolutely nothing. Should I, or you, expect anything different? Steve E. Thompson Spokane

You say these people deserve a raise?

I thought the local leaders had gone adrift over this Lincoln Street Bridge fiasco until I read the headlines exclaiming that City Manager Bill Pupo wanted to raise the salaries of the city’s highest-paid executives. Maybe the word “raise” should be defined as “the elevation attained after a blow with a boot to the posterior, resulting in passage out the door of City Hall.”

This process may begin now, starting with Pupo for even dreaming about giving a boost in salary to this group.

I noticed on the list of recipients was Parks and Recreation Manager Taylor Bressler. Before his check is beefed up, maybe he should explain the over $250,000 drop in revenue this year from Riverfront Park. This is the parks department’s main revenue source and that is a chunk of dough to leave on the table.

Next is our city attorney. He blew the Marks case, has made unjust attempts to run the Ronalds off of their property by the library and has made up legal gibberish to keep the citizens from voting on public projects, even after sufficient signatures were gathered.

I ask Pupo to please explain to us 200,000 residents how he justifies borrowing money to patch streets and then give these raises? He must be praying for El Nino to save his budget and his rear end. Jonathan Swanstrom Sr. Spokane

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Worker exploitation must end

The current policy of many employers of hiring persons on a part-time basis so as to avoid having to pay overtime, pay for sick leave and vacations, health and life insurance, and most other employee fringe benefits of full-time workers must be examined and resolved.

This situation has reached the point of a major threat to our economic and social status.

Part of the solution may be reducing the “normal” work day or work week with no reduction in pay. My father looked forward to a four-day week of eight hours per day, or a six-hour, five-day week. He never lived to see it. Will I? Bruce C. Harding Pullman

FORESTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Ignorance of USFS purpose made clear

Re: “Feds admit timber sales lose money” by Scott Sonner of the Associated Press.

Sonner makes it sound like it’s a sin for the federal government to lose money. It does lose money. That’s why we have such a huge deficit. Everything the government does costs too much.

The national forests were not established to make a profit. They were established to manage and protect certain isolated forests and rangelands. In the late 1800s, the entire nation’s land base was rapidly becoming private property. Congress wisely reserved some of it as national parks and national forests. In doing so, part of this dedication was designed to economically assist the rural communities that were developing adjacent to these remote forest and range areas. Even the national park designation didn’t preclude logging. Our congressional leaders realized that trees die and become a fire threat.

We’re now attempting to manage our public lands using only emotions. We need to go back to a purely scientific approach that includes economics.

In reality, the $15 million U.S. Forest Service timber sale loss undoubtedly generated 10 times that much as base dollars. Wouldn’t it be nice if the billions of tax dollars we spend on various forms of welfare generated some base dollars?

Sonner said,”The 1996 report will mark the first time the Forest Service has concluded … that logging is a money loser.” Statements such as this from the Associated Press stem from a complete lack of knowledge as to what the national forest system was intended to be, and of the laws enacted to manage them. Art B. Johnson Orofino, Idaho

Here’s hoping Senate rejects treaty

According to the latest poll by the New York Times (Spokesman-Review, Dec. 1), “public supports action on global warming.”

On the surface, it appears that Americans are giving carte blanche to President Clinton’s bureaucrats as they negotiate in Kyoto. Pollsters would have you believe that the public will endorse whatever binding restrictions in carbon dioxide emissions are agreed to in Japan.

Of course, the same poll “also shows that many Americans know little about the issue.” That ignorance is a help to negotiators in Kyoto. They are working on the assumption that the American public responds to the term “global warming” with frightening visions ingrained in them by years of media hype.

America’s Kyoto contingent is also confident that most people have made no connection between a national commitment to reduced CO2 emissions and their own lifestyles. The average citizen wants global warming to go away - like AIDS or cancer - but doesn’t realize the personal economic effects, should a federal bureaucracy begin to run America’s energy economy. Fortunately, 67 U.S. senators must support the treaty that comes out of Kyoto.

If we’re lucky, the Senate debate will cause a rapid rise in peoples’ learning curve about global warming. I hope a majority will see that it’s far too early for politicians to be dabbling in an area where climate scientists have strong disagreements. The greater problem is federal intrusion into the energy marketplace. Edwin A. Olson Spokane

Warming might bring ice age

Debaters of global warming might consider another scenario.

Rising ocean levels are the main concern. They are caused primarily by melting glaciers. These glaciers are the accumulation of thousands of years of snowfall coming from ocean evaporation. The great ice ages were not periods of great global frigidity, but the consequence of great arctic and Antarctic snowfall that accumulated to great depth. This snowfall in the arctic came from arctic oceans now mostly frozen over. The result is that very little snow actually falls in the polar regions at this time.

As ocean levels rise because of melting ice, access to these waters will increase. An influx of warmer water, primarily via the North Atlantic, will thaw the ice on the Arctic Ocean, once again allowing the production of snow.

Can we look forward to another ice age, courtesy of global warming? P. Gene Oakley Moses Lake

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