Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Remember who treated you unfairly

Right now in Spokane we are suffering. Nothing major, though. We have some people with no electricity and all the discomforts that come with that. A lot of trees and branches are down and a lot of folks need a helping hand for a few days. We can’t watch our favorite shows for awhile or make phone calls.

We’re down but not out.

The wonderful part about all this is how the people of the community are bearing up and helping each other out through it. Even many businesses are pitching in, if they can. They deserve our thanks and our future business.

Unfortunately, many businesses are doing quite the opposite. Not being satisfied with the volume in sales of various products the current situation has gifted them, there are unscrupulous retailers out there jacking-up prices on everything from fuels to chicken legs. Grocery stores, hardware stores, you name it. Anything to do with current demands created by difficult and possibly desperate circumstances. These are the true parasites of our community.

They prosper off the hardships of others. Remember them after we clean this mess up and take your business elsewhere. Nobody deserves a kick when they’re already down. David Bray Spokane

A plea to the ultimate power source

I have just devised a new prayer for Spokanites: Dear Lord, for what we are about to receive, may we be truly prepared. Terry Griner Spokane

Don’t drive teens to the streets

A note in support of young people - teenagers - on the outside of normal society. Let’s be supportive of their choices when possible. If they cannot bring themselves to attend mainstream school, why not encourage a GED and help them with some kind of career training.

I’m saddened by parents who turn their young ones away with a my-way-or-no-way attitude. We all know the K-12 years are the only free years of school but it just isn’t for everyone.

Some youngsters are too violent or disruptive for parents to let them remain in their homes. But for the rest, and there are plenty, these are your flesh and blood. Encourage, understand and think of alternative ways to help them. A teenager on the street is a sad, too-common situation in our community.

Don’t let your child be a throwaway child. Work with him or her when their young and be patient. It all works out when they get older. Take it from a mother of five and grandmother of four. Susan Simonds Spokane

Get this cleaner air act together

Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority’s Drive for Clean Air media campaign baffles me.

Paid for with taxpayers’ dollars, it’s supposed to convince us to seek and use alternative methods of transportation, to reduce vehicle traffic in the county and thereby reduce carbon monoxide pollution.

At the same time, more tax dollars are being spent relocating the Department of Licensing satellite office from the Valley to the Geiger exit on I-90, several miles west of Spokane. This will force more than 60,000 people per year to travel by motor vehicle from the Valley to this new office or to the Department of Licensing office in north Spokane. Driving from the valley to either destination will add further to the vehicle emissions problem.

Meanwhile, the county traffic engineer is spending our tax dollars installing more traffic lights and stop signs to ensure that vehicles come to a complete stop, idle several seconds and then accelerate. This, too, compounds the vehicle emissions problem.

If all these traffic signals are necessary, could they at least be timed to facilitate traffic flow, rather than hinder it? Are so many stop signs really necessary within residential areas, such as the 40-plus stop signs in the Valley’s Midilome neighborhood?

Before any more of our tax money is spent on a media campaign asking us to Drive for Clean Air, these agencies should work together so expensive, conflicting projects are no longer initiated. Perhaps then we can all make driving for clean air a reality, and save taxpayer money for more prudent projects. Ron Eaton Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Help, sure, but without government

Russ Moritz’s commentary, “Idahoans can be proud of rejecting that 1 Percent Initiative” (Street Level) on Nov. 17 is the type of article that makes me very angry. It’s anecdotal, an appeal to emotion and not to logic, and typical of liberal arguments.

The argument, which he very well knows, is not about whether we should help persons like Robyn.

I’m a conservative and I believe that it’s my duty and in my own self-interest to help persons who need it. I also believe that straining that help through a bureaucratic strainer is not the way. Mike Anstine Spokane