Letters To The Editor

Fri., April 4, 1997

MEAN STREETS

Wrest repair money from waste

Must we have a tax increase to provide normal services and maintenance, such as street repair? Absolutely not.

State and federal revenues are at all-time highs. The problem is that the city doesn’t receive a fair share. It gets only 10 percent of gas and sales taxes collected in the city.

This is unnecessary and totally unfair. This tax would impact middle- and lower-income people, many of whom must drive longer distances with older, cars far more than others.

Here are a few suggestions for our lawmakers at all levels to consider in order to reallocate a few million dollars to repair our streets:

The several hundred million annual budget for the Hanford cleanup that has yielded near-zero results.

Review and audit the state Department of Social and Health Services’ $500 million annual budget for 45,000 active vendor contracts with only 55 audits in 1996 (Spokesman-Review, March 10). The potential for massive waste and fraud is obvious.

Use all taxes and fees now collected for transportation for our roads, instead of for other state programs.

Use Spokane Transit Authority overfunding and surplus to help repair the roads its vehicles use. If STA were to be managed properly or privatized, there would be enough additional money annually to always maintain our roads.

This list could be expanded to include hundreds of wasteful and/or unnecessary government agencies and programs. Our politicians should reallocate our money to what is necessary, just as we must do in business and with our personal budgets. Dave Hamer Spokane

STA reserve is a working tool

As transit employee representatives and in the best interest of Spokane Transit Authority customers, it’s time to dispel some misconceptions about the reserve funds.

State legislators created the public transit benefit area framework in 1975. In 1980, local taxpayers voted to take advantage of the PTBA, taxing themselves three-tenths of 1 percent of the area sales tax. These were to be dedicated transit funds.

The popular perception is that transit sits on this “huge pile of reserves” and doesn’t do anything with it. Current law provides for use of these funds in transit-related road projects. In fact, Spokane Transit has spent millions of dollars on such projects.

The Transit Development Plan of 1997-2002 states, “Net operating losses (before capital expenditures) are projected to occur in 2003, without additional funding.” Also, “Unrestricted reserves (after capital expenditures) are projected to be in a deficit position after 1997. “

These projected deficits will be funded with periodic release of restricted cash designations by the board, if additional funding isn’t obtained. The “reserves” are part of a long-range planning process that enables transit to purchase new equipment and to grow with Spokane.

As a self-insured company, both in liability and employee injury, additional reserves are needed to cover potential expenditures. Also, unfunded state and federal mandates continue to escalate, i.e. the federal requirement of random drug testing costs about $90,000 per year.

Transit is an integral part of the transportation puzzle, which is incomplete if any part is missing. Dale Nusbaum and Jim Fitzgerald Amalgamated Transit Union, Spokane

Put street workers on pay-per-fill

It never fails to amaze me how the locations of the myriad craters on our city’s major arterials remain a mystery to our street maintenance department and that it requires our assistance in determining where to find them.

I have a very creative solution, even though it will be an affront to the prevailing deskbound, paper-shuffling mentality of the city bureaucracy.

Why don’t we base the wages of the street maintenance department on potholes repaired instead of hours worked?

I’m sure that this would provide sufficient incentive to get out from behind desks and aggressively search out and fill potholes, thereby yielding dramatically improved streets in our city. Maybe we wouldn’t even need a street repair bond issue.

Public employees are our servants, not vice versa. Don’t we have the right as taxpayers to demand that those whose salaries we pay demonstrate initiative and work intelligently, industriously and creatively? Bill Voogd Spokane

THE ENVIRONMENT

Goal: virtual end of public lands

It’s hard to imagine Sen. Larry Craig and the sawmill owners being any less concerned about so-called frivolous appeals of U.S. Forest Service timber sales. What they are really concerned about is that the Forest Service is legally required to consider issues on federal land that limit the amount of timber that can be extracted.

These laws allow “substantial” appeals that allow we, the public, to have a say in what happens on our lands. If Craig can get the substantial parts eliminated from the laws protecting the public’s land, then all appeals will be frivolous, by definition, and Craig and his supporters will be happy as clams.

Craig’s desire to have the timber industry determine what happens on public lands shows his basic contempt for the concept of public ownership itself. Craig would never consider trying to tell private landowners what to do on their lands. Why shouldn’t the public have the same rights? (Answer: We do, as long as we defend them.)

If the reader considers him or herself a supporter of the timber industry, you should consider carefully support for this radical proposal. Where do you go when you hunt, fish, swim, boat, hike, horseback ride or just drive up into the woods and pull out the lawnchair and do nothing? Would you like to see these lands end up looking like the square-mile clearcuts that Plum Creek Timber Co. littered around the Northwest in the last 15 years? John P. Stuart Newport, Wash.

Workshop good despite shenanigans

I was shocked and angry at the news coverage of Sen. Larry Craig’s workshop in Coeur d’Alene on March 25. The sign-carrying, chanting protesters outside got all the coverage.

Channel 4 made it look like these people were at the workshop and were angry at what was said there, but they were not at the meeting.

Craig’s panel was made up of experts from both sides of the issues. Questions were asked and answers and comments were given from both sides. There were things in the proposal both sides liked and there were some they disliked, but not necessarily the same things.

The audience was asked to read the draft and submit written comments. People inside from both sides were not carrying signs and chanting. They were listening to what was really going on.

The workshop was scheduled from 8 to 11 a.m. People who cared about what was really going on were there at that time. But the ones who got all the coverage met at the park at 10 a.m., to get their signs and chants all worked out.

Where is the honor in this kind of reporting? When are the people from both sides, who really care, going to be heard? Sue Nicholson Addy, Wash.

Is Sen. Craig an industry agent?

First and foremost, I am not against timber harvesting as my dad owned a sawmill during World War II. He hired 12 to 15 workers and had a contract with Burlington Northern Railroad (then Northern Pacific) to supply railroad crossties.

Now is a different time. Human population is larger and there is less timber. No more can logging be done in the same proportion to population as in yesteryear.

As for the proposed $10,000 fine for a “frivolous appeal,” according to the U.S. Forest Service, all appeals are frivolous. For example, it considered one in 1987 objecting to a timber cutting proposal on a mountain goat habitat near Farragut State Park. Yet the Forest Service backed down due to the overwhelming public response.

One would wonder, with this kind of proposed legislation, if Sen. Larry Craig receives any monetary reward from the timber lobbyists.

Craig should be reminded or informed that public land belongs to all the people, not just to those of the timber industry, in addition to wildlife habitat. The world is not made for man alone. I hope, for the sake of the environment, that President Clinton will use his veto pen. Don Hesselgesser Coeur d’Alene

Groups content to act as spoilers

Five environmental groups - Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, Friends of the Loomis Forest, Washington Environmental Council, the Mountaineers and the Kettle Range Conservation Group - filed suit to halt implementation of the Loomis Landscape Plan.

This comes as no surprise to those of us following this issue in Okanogan County. Friends has been actively involved in a campaign to halt timber harvest on the Loomis since 1988. Friends and Northwest Ecosystem were involved in the nearly four-year planning process. When it became apparent a plan would finally be approved, they dropped out. They reverted to “appeal mode,” culminating with this lawsuit claiming violation of Endangered Species Act protections for grizzly bears.

Fact: 10 percent - 4.3 million acres - of Washington is already federally designated wilderness and will never be developed, logged or roaded.

Fact: the North Cascades Grizzly Recovery Zone already includes 2.5 million acres in 10 recreation/ wilderness areas.

Loomis State Forest is 134,000 acres of common school trust land, constitutionally and legislatively mandated to be managed for production of income for K-12 construction funding. You can’t save dead trees. You can salvage them for the economic benefit of our schools.

We’re not talking about wholesale clearcutting. Most of the infestation areas within the Loomis are mixed species forests and can be thinned and select-cut.

Recently, U.S. Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled that the government is liable for underprotection or overprotection under the ESA. Washington taxpayers and their children are being robbed by this attack on school trust management.

When is enough enough? Bonnie Lawrence, chairwoman Okanogan Resource Council, Omak, Wash.

NUCLEAR WASTE

Dawn plan safe, economically sound

Inaccuracies surrounding Dawn Mining Co.’s reclamation project seem intended to create a state of fear about the project.

Citizens do need to get involved. They need to understand the history of the material taken from this area in the mining operation, the amount, method and use. They need to understand the economics of the mining operation during its tenure, not only to Stevens, Lincoln and Spokane counties but the nation. They need to understand the operation’s safety record and the research that went into safe operation of this mine.

By being involved they would readily see the proposed reclamation project is entirely in everyone’s best interests, that the reclamation project is almost an exact reversal of what the mining process was. Perhaps they would understand the economics of this reclamation project in the long-term return to our counties.

There are always risks with any project of this magnitude. The amount can be mitigated by proper planning, engineering and management. The company’s track record shows its commitment to safety.

Get involved, people. Get your information from the source. Be a part of the most practical plan for reclamation of this mine. Stop being fed and promulgating what you hear from some of these fearmongering groups that have their own special interests. Frank Strasser Spokane