Boundaries Difficult To Define Where Censorship Is Involved

Thu., April 2, 1998

Doug Floyd Interactive Editor

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” once wrote: “There’s more than one way to burn a book and the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”

Some would say taking a controversial book off of a school’s shelves is an incendiary strategy. Spokane School District 81, which has rejected several complaints about specific books used in classes or libraries, decided this week to jerk “Rainbow Jordan” from the district’s middle schools as too mature for that age level.

District officials reviewed the book - including profanity and sexually explicit passages - and upheld the complaint from a student’s grandfather.

Assuming that some judgment is necessary in selecting reading material for students, and assuming further that some inappropriate books will occasionally slip through the screening process, merely taking a book out of the program doesn’t necessarily constitute book-burning. But how and where should the boundary line be drawn between censorship and license?

Leave police work to police

What kind of person should the city of Spokane hire to replace Police Chief Terry Mangan?

Here’s what Peter Dolina of Veradale suggests: “I think that person should make the force efficient by standing firmly behind them and not letting those hysterical ‘citizens review committees’ interfere with police work and intimidate and harass our law enforcement.”

Sewer hookup’s impact exaggerated

The owner of the Valley Breeze Mobile Home Park challenges the idea that hooking such a facility up to sewer service is prohibitively costly.

Year before last, Abe Miller recalls, Valley Breeze got the directive to connect to the sewer.

“We had to tear up the streets, we put the sewer in and blacktopped it,” he said.

The impact? Tenants’ rent went up $10 a month, plus they assumed the monthly sewer bill.

“Our rates aren’t any higher than anyone else’s,” said Miller. “In fact they’re cheaper than most.”

According to him, it’s “ridiculous” to say, as at least one mobile home park owner did, that sewer hookup would force a park operator to raise the rent to burdensome levels.

“There are people out there who would be glad to go in and take over his park if he were willing to sell it,” Miller said.

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