October 9, 2010 in Opinion, Letters

Children need more help

 

Saturday’s (Oct. 2) editorial recommended that city voters not support the Children’s Investment Fund because it is not well planned.

Actually, the initiative is carefully targeted to four areas, all substantiated by careful research: child abuse prevention, early-childhood mentoring and before- and after-school care.

The strongest science argues for investments at the earliest possible moment in the life of the developing child. In the nursery, we can already identify the one out of three at risk of bad outcomes: school dropout, crime, family violence, addictions (see James J. Heckman, Nobel laureate economist; Grunewald and Solnik, Federal Reserve Bank; Jack Shonkoff, M.D., Harvard; Anda and Felliti, Centers for Disease Control). For the past five years, Our Kids: Our Business has brought speakers of this stature to make the case for prevention and early intervention. Gary Livingston has long argued that we must take a generation and invest at both ends – in remediation and in prevention. With the Children’s Investment Fund, at last we take up the task of prevention.

But my heart broke Sunday upon reading the obituary for Santiago Moreno-Two Hearts, first casualty of the Class of 2026. Ample demonstration that we need to do more. Loss to the community: priceless.

Mary Ann Murphy

Spokane

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One comment on this story so far. Add yours!

  • mmspowaus on October 09 at 9:41 a.m.

    To: MAM,

    CC: The voters in the City of Spokane:

    Misspending money in the name of helping the children damages children. If the good people behind the Children’s Investment Fund were 100% dedicated to truly helping children, they would have built-in safe guards to protect the millions of precious tax dollars they are requesting from the good people of the city of Spokane from being misspent.

    By not building into the legislation strong and stick safeguards to make sure the money is truly spent in the best interest of the children, the folks behind the Children’s Investment Fund have failed us all.

    It is not wrong to demand accountability for tax dollars. After reading Prop1, there is little if any mechanism of accountability. This Children’s Investment Fund has the structure of a slush fund; lot’s of money with little accountability from unspecified, unelected managers…

    The voters can revoke the fund however, in six years…not nearly enough accountability for millions of tax dollars being requested…

    Even District 81 is not supporting Prop 1…

    The City of Spokane has already been burned this year via the unelected Park Board and the downtown YMCA fiasco. This was an expensive 5 million dollar plus lesson we hopefully will NEVER need to repeat. It is all the more reason to not support Prop 1 which has even less accountability…

    Some folks behind Prop 1 I’m sure are well intentioned…but so is the content of the road to financial hell..

    If they truly wish to help the children, bring back another version of Prop 1 with proper safeguards next year, and I will help champion the campaign if District 81 supports it….

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