Letters

Raid on public trough

I find it reprehensible that our past elected, paid council members needed to raid the public trough to pay for their inability to schedule their lives to properly represent us. If members who were elected to office cannot schedule their lives around this responsibility, they should not have run for office.

We the people of Spokane Valley have been defrauded by these people, and they should have to pay back these expenses or be charged with fraud. I know of no industry owner that would pay for meals of his staff because the staff could not report for work on time, prepared to work.

Do these members claim these meals as compensation on their income taxes? The bill of $5,900 may not be much for these scofflaws, but it is taxpayer money, not theirs. The good thing is we threw theses scofflaws out.

Don Collings

Spokane Valley

Meetings story unfair

I have just read the article by Nina Culver about the “coffee meetings” (Jan. 7). I have attended three of these meetings in the past four weeks. The first meeting was to meet my senator, Bob McCaslin. I had voted for him for years and wanted to meet him. He is a very witty and down-to-earth person.

As far as these meetings having anything to do with council business, it’s a joke. When I was there, it was talk of the current national health care debate, putting up Christmas lights, joking about retirements, and just good old “shooting the breeze.” Basically, getting to know each other.

For seven years this paper reported that the prior City Council had met every week for dinner before their council meetings. We didn’t hear that ombudsman Mr. Ford had a problem with that. They were a sitting council and meeting every week. This group had not even been seated yet.

Leave it to this newspaper to try and create news while they let Doug Clark blather away about nonsense.

Why not go report some news rather than making it up?

I’m glad that these people have had these so-called “meetings.” It shows that they want to know each other and the public before they are sitting at a council meeting. Spokane Valley has a great bunch of people that will serve us well and we don’t need Nina Culver casting the “Cowles Hex” on our city.

Dan Allison

Spokane Valley