Letters To The Editor

Wed., April 24, 1996

SPOKANE MATTERS

Make impact fees equitable

Impact fees? Or more taxes? The City Council has been considering impact fees on new development to help improve roads and schools supporting those developments. Can anybody deny that we will need those improvements, once the homes are in?

Builders say impact fees will make housing more expensive. We can’t deny that, either, since the new property owners will pay those fees. But, if we need money for new support structure and don’t get some of it from people the new structure is supporting, where will the money come from? More taxes!

To be fair, current taxpayers probably should share some costs, since some improvements will benefit everyone. And since the new property owners will pay taxes in the future, the fees need not cover the entire cost for improvements. How about impact fees set to pay the costs of planning service improvements? Perhaps the equivalent of one’s year’s property taxes?

Also to be fair, builders with approved construction plans shouldn’t suddenly be charged impact fees. They have already programmed their resources to meet certain market price points. Adding large fees would adversely affect that. How about imposing impact fees only on plans approved after the date of the new ordinance?

Shouldn’t impact fees on new business construction be fair and reasonable, too? Some fees I’ve seen proposed seem disproportionately high.

In the end, we can all pay more taxes to subsidize new development or share the load a little and impose reasonable impact fees. Tom Hargreaves Spokane

Out of touch at the top

It’s about time for Mayor Jack Geraghty and the City Council to wake up to the fact that not all Spokane citizens have two jobs - or one that pays $107,000 a year, for that matter.

Are these people so out of touch they don’t know the average Spokane income $1,800 per month? Many in Spokane live on the amount the city pays in benefits to these high-priced employees. What City Manager Roger Crum makes in one week is what an average citizen makes in one month. I find this thoroughly disgusting.

The city spends more on consultants than what many people live on for a year. Yet taxpayers have to cut corners so the managers can get a hefty raise and the city can pay these extravagant consultants. It doesn’t seem to matter that the city is in the red, they just keep on spending.

What a disgrace that Geraghty and the council would give top city managers a raise at all. But then, I expect they will give themselves a raise soon, too. E.D. Boxer Spokane

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Let WWP prove its claim

In her April 18 guest column, Judy Cole of Washington Water Power Co. argues that WWP’s oil spill will have no affect on property values in the Davenport Hotel neighborhood.

If that’s true, WWP has a perfect way of proving it.

WWP purchased the Rodeway Motel at Lincoln and First about the time the oil was discovered. So why doesn’t the company sell its motel and demonstrate that the market is unaffected by the oil spill? A very big utility has no business operating a very small motel anyway, and Cole assures us that “financing and development for contaminated properties is not uncommon.”

If WWP sells the Rodeway, skeptics would have to admit that buyers are not deterred by the oil pollution. If it’s not willing to do this, suspicion will remain that WWP’s real solution was to simply buy up its problem. Since even WWP can’t buy up the whole neighborhood, it is handling the rest of the spill’s economic affects by announcing unilaterally that there are none. Bill Stimson Spokane

‘Good neighbors’ policy all hype

After reading letters concerning the Washington Water Power Co. oil spill and seeing the responses offered by WWP, I am reminded of the difficulty I encountered trying to have WWP restore my property, which it reconfigured while upgrading power lines.

The creek bed was filled with soil they had removed from the base of one of their towers so it would serve as a bridge to get across to the county road side. For weeks I attempted to have WWP remove the fill, which the company denied having placed there.

I finally contacted the Department of Ecology. WWP was required to remove the fill and replace large boulders that were in the creek bed. The Department of Wildlife, after I contacted it, required WWP to replace native plants lost in the bulldozing.

I went to small claims court, seeking a judgment to pay for restoration and cleanup around the towers. I was not successful.

There had never been leafy spurge in the area that was bulldozed. That area is now filled with it. Again, the company denied this was caused by anything it did.

Before the project began, owners of property that would be affected received a letter from WWP stating it wanted to be “good neighbors” and would leave everything as it had found it. Not true.

WWP should be accountable for its actions and thoroughly clean up its oil spill. Helen Rishel Spokane

THE MEDIA

Let’s not add snags to the Internet

As an Internet user and computer science student at the University of Idaho, I was outraged to read the story of Reed Simpson and his cyberspace mass mailings (“Idaho politician’s faux pas angers subscribers,” Region, April 18). Once again, an Idaho politician has showed his inability to understand the lives of his constituents.

Mass mailing in the world of e-mail goes beyond being annoying and unethical. It can lead to a slowdown in network communication, jamming already crowded lines of communication with useless junk.

It is also impossible for the recipient to block junk e-mail. While a single mass-mailed message every once in a while is no real threat, actions such as Simpson’s lead others to believe that it is acceptable.

If the Internet is ever going to live up to its billing as the information superhighway, the increasingly commercial nature of the network will have to be curtailed.

This starts with convincing those who use this resource for personal gain to use a little tact. Increased advertising only leads to increased waste of both resource and time. At the rate we are going now, the Internet can only become the solicitation superhighway of the future. Dan Vishnesky Moscow, Idaho

Tinsley part of the problem

What syndicated cartoonist Bruce Tinsley and his alter ego, Mallard Fillmore, fail to grasp is that the men, women and children of Oklahoma City were not evading arrest. They were not given a warning, were not offered an opportunity to leave and did not set off the explosives that killed them so they could prove some madman’s prophecy was true.

I do not deny the tragedy of Waco. I just find it impossible to equate it with the Oklahoma City tragedy. One group charted its own destiny. Those in the other group became targets simply as a result of career choices, chance of birth or by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The world is too full of hate. Do we really need Bruce Tinsley to stoke the fire? Deborah Lawrence Hale Greenacres

Coe story ‘tasteless’

I was appalled to read the recent article by Staff Writer Bonnie Harris, reporting the passing of Ruth Coe. Never have I read or heard of such an insensitive job of reporting the demise of an individual. To headline the article, “South Hill rapist’s mother,” was particularly crude and tasteless. Degrading.

It was unnecessary to rehash the entire ordeal of the Kevin Coe incident and his mother’s unfortunate difficulties. The whole article smacked of sensationalism, and very poor taste.

Ruth’s passing could have been handled as a simple and proper obituary, not as a matter to engender public readership. This is not reporting news, it is degrading a person. I am surprised that your managing editor approved this article to go to press.

I doubt if Bonnie Harris had ever before heard of Gordon Coe, who gave many faithful years of service to the then Spokane Chronicle as managing editor. Gordon does not deserve this kind of yellow journalism! William F. Greene Spokane

Violence talk just not funny

“Boot to the head.” That is the image that the radio deejays of 96.1 FM believe is the way to make their listeners laugh.

In this day and age, when the reality of violence is all around us, it is sad that 96.1 has to resort to using an image of a violent act to be humorous. Come on, Frog, be creative and use some originality. Make your listeners laugh without the violence. Michelle Caird Spokane

HUNTING REGULATION

This tradition too hard on prey

I am touched that M.L. Zema’s soul soars with the song of the hounds and the sound of the chase (“Think of the lore, tradition,” Letters, April 16). Unlike the joy of a child’s first step, his soaring comes at the expense of a terrified animal, cornered, treed and often killed when there is no chance of escape.

These days we all agree about the importance of the environment and the animals. Tearing the sport of hunting into a canine-aided, high tech, search and destroy mission does nothing for either.

Tradition is nice, but it cannot be an excuse for continuing an unfair and inhumane practice. I urge you to vote yes on I-655. Gail Stewart Spokane

Foolish goal is to ban hunting

Regarding the April 9 Our view editorial: It is unfortunate D.F. Oliveria finds it necessary to espouse the emotional rhetoric of the anti-hunting community. The following are some items he also should have mentioned:

Idaho Coalition United for Bear (I-CUB), the organization gathering bear initiative signatures, in 1995 was 94 percent funded by Humane Society of the United States, whose publicly stated goal is to “stop all hunting.”

The original petition was filed by the Palouse Voice for Animals, an animal rights activist group from Moscow, Idaho.

The Palouse Voice for Animals established I-CUB as its political action committee.

I-CUB, with emotional rhetoric, wants to stop some forms of bear hunting (a small segment of hunters).

Friends of the West (Dave and Kathy Richmond), are now gathering signatures for I-CUB and want to stop all lion hunting.

This group understands it can’t stop all hunting “today.” It wants a small piece now, the rest later.

If all citizens will become educated on the motives of the animal rights activists, they will understand this initiative is a direct attack on all hunting and the ability of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to professionally manage all wildlife.

I suggest that Oliveria contact former Gov. Cecil Andrus, who opposes the bear hunting initiative because it interferes with professional wildlife management. Ed Lehman, chairman Idaho Wildlife Council, Region 1

Restriction measure well supported

I am a black bear initiative petitioner and find myself often surprised by hunters, male and female, who gladly sign and express their disgust at the practice of hounding, baiting and spring hunting.

In response to the April 16 letter “Consider the lore, tradition,” by M. L. Zema: Do I have to get any education to understand that the thrill of the sport is not the killing but the torture?

The joy of the sport is similar to watching bullfighting, where the bull is forced into the arena and the bullfighter spears the bull time and again. When the defenseless and exhausted animal has lost enough blood and is unable to fight anyone, it gets the final blow on the spinal cord below the neck, to the spectators’ cheers.

I don’t see the connection he tries to make between hounding and caring for both the animals and the environment. This is not a matter of scientific fact, it is an issue of emotions. “The sound of the chase and the excitement of your favorite dogs.”

I would not like to see my children or grandchildren grow up in a society that adopts such primitive practices and calls it sport.

“There isn’t a system to serve the moral convictions of a tiny religious minority,” states Jon M. Akers in his letter of the same day.

There are thousands of Idaho voters would put this initiative on the ballot and make the practices of hounding, baiting and spring hunting illegal for a minority of Idaho hunters. Cecilia Nolthenius Coeur d’Alene