Special Needs People, Especially, Require Berm-Free Driveway

It does Joy Scherr no good to have her street cleared of snow quickly if it ends up piled in her driveway.

Scherr, a widow in her 70s, lives in Coeur d’Alene but outside the area where city officials will experiment this winter with a new plowing method.

They want to know if rigging plows to leave driveways unblocked will be worth the extra time it takes to get all streets cleared after a snowfall.

Scherr doesn’t need an experiment: “What good is having clear streets if you are a prisoner due to a berm that the snowplow left in your driveway?”

She’d like the city of Coeur d’Alene to issue senior citizens and the disabled special markers that would alert plow operators to leave their driveways clear.

Darlene Townsend of Spokane, where plows already can divert snow from driveways, is a believer.

“Please unblock the driveways, especially for people who have disabilities,” she says. “Once they’re bermed in, it’s very hard to have any mobility because they’re not able to shovel themselves out.”

Doctorers of philosophy

Presidents and Senate Judiciary Committee chairpersons may not realize it but politics have no place in picking Supreme Court justices.

So said a reader when Bagpipes asked if political philosophy figures more than it used to - and more than it should - in Supreme Court appointments and confirmations.

“The political philosophy that’s a consideration is that of the president who appoints the judge in the first place,” says Michael Holmes, Spokane. “And, yes, there are a considerable number of things wrong with that.”

Courting voters

In Washington state, politics have a lot to do with judicial races, since judges are elected, not appointed.

So it’s up to voters to pick judges with qualities that matter - assuming they can get enough information.

The voter’s guide you will find in today’s paper was prepared by the state court administrator’s office because the Secretary of State prepares voters guides only for the general election. This one tells you about judicial candidates in the Sept. 15 primary election.

Knowing that judicial races often are decided in the primary, do you think it would be worth the expense for the Secretary of State to publish pre-primary voters’ guides that would go to every household, not just newspaper subscribers?