Letters To The Editor

Washington state

Help can be more easily obtained

I read with interest the Sept. 12 article by Charlene Abrahamson about her trek to obtain health care coverage for her nephew. Everyone should know that in many situations, the children’s health care program is more accessible and easier to access than the route Abrahamson took.

If no other services from DSHS are needed, the Medical Assistance Administration, the agency within DSHS that coordinates these programs, has an application process for obtaining children’s coverage quickly and easily, rather than going through a DSHS office.

If there is no active file on the child or their immediate family at DSHS, an application can be mailed or faxed directly to the Medical Eligibility Determination Unit in Olympia. There is also a toll-free number, if there is an urgent need for coverage for the child.

The Health for All project, sponsored the coordinated efforts of the Health Improvement Partnership and Spokane County Community Services, works to educate people about possible eligibility for these programs and assist with applications. There are similar projects in almost every Washington county.

Also, we have gained many professionals and volunteers throughout the community in this process and have distributed applications for ease of access throughout the county.

For further information in Spokane County, call us at 444-3066 or check at your local community center, clinic or school. From Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties, call Mona at the New Hope Project in Colville at 684-5167 or 1-888-311-7394 Ralph DeCristoforo Health Improvement Partnership, Spokane

Mismanagement spurs demand for 695

Staff writers Dan Hansen and Zaz Hollander revealed to the public Sept. 15 an example of how our exorbitant license fees are used to favor programs that should be paying for themselves.

Then, to add insult to injury, Spokane Councilwoman Roberta Greene said in the article, “This action is necessary because the voters don’t understand I-695.” That is because politicians like Greene don’t have the nerve to tell the voters how and where their hard-earned tax dollars are being used. We are not ignorant!

We have been heavily subsidizing public spa permits, land use zone change reviews, private sewer inspections, food demonstration inspections and well water testing, to mention only a few things. These are all areas that should be paying for themselves but for years, they have been buried in our license fees. These are reasons we have to start weeding out overzealous politicians like Greene.

High license fees dictate when someone can trade off their vehicle. I paid $597 on one of my vehicles in September. Without transfer privileges, it would cost me over $750 for a 2000 model. I will have to wait or waste.

If the $1,256 I paid for my tabs over the past year went to build and maintain our streets, highways and support the Washington State Patrol, I would vote against Initiative 695. But I can’t wait to do my part in approving it. Bert A. Overland Spokane

Spokane matters

Billboards topic of hearing

Spokane County commissioners will hold a public hearing on the billboard ban recommended by the county’s planning commission. It will be Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. in the Public Works Building, 1026 West Broadway.

Please help support the ban in person at the hearing, or in writing to: Commissioners Phil Harris, Kate McCaslin and John Roskelley, 1116 West Broadway, Spokane, WA 99260, or by e-mail to:

roskelley@spokanecounty.org,

kmccaslinspokanecounty.org and

pharris@spokanecounty.org.

Billboard control is the perfect example of the adage “less is more.” When billboards are removed from a business district, the consumer actually sees more! As a result, small businesses do a more effective job of selling.

In our rural settings, the sight of giant billboards blocking views of trees, meadows and mountains is a travesty that speaks for itself.

Billboards make our community uglier yet provide no significant benefits. They encourage other forms of visual clutter, endanger motorist safety, degrade the environment and destroy trees to clear views, discourage tourism and new industry relocation and lower property values.

Hundreds of communities all across America have instituted billboard bans. Olympia, Lacy, Seattle and Bellingham in Washington and Kootenai County and Coeur d’Alene have all put a halt to billboards. The entire states of Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have no billboards at all!

This is the people of Spokane’s chance to take a stand against this overpowering form of visual pollution. As a community, we have the legal right to protect and reclaim our scenic visual heritage. Suzanne D. Markham, president Citizens for a Scenic Spokane

Detour de farce

I have been maneuvering the one-lane detour on Argonne south of Sprague for several weeks, not exactly sure what benefits the obviously expensive project will bring.

I couldn’t believe my eyes recently when I saw a worker diligently jackhammering away in the middle of the virgin concrete which is still guarded from use by cones and barricades.

Sure enough, on my way home there was a good-sized pile of concrete rubble alongside a newly cut hole smack dab in the middle of the new road.

Maybe they are practicing for the millennium, when they will be doing things differently - getting all the digging out of their systems before they turn the roads over to us. Dona M. Van Gelder Spokane

Firearms

Australian experiment a disaster

It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed - a program costing the government more than $500 million.

And now the results are in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent; Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent). In the state of Victoria, homicides with firearms are up 300 percent.

Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in armed robberies with firearms (changed drastically in the past 12 months). There has been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly.

Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in “safety” has been observed after such monumental effort and expense was successfully expended in “ridding society of guns.”

Bet you won’t see this data on the evening news or hear your governor or members of the state assembly disseminating this information. It’s time to state it plainly: Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property. And yes, gun-control laws only affect the law abiding citizens. R.P. Grunwald, M.D. Valleyford, Wash.

Wildlife

Reverse hawkweed encroachment

Several articles recently have discussed the dwindling elk population. The main thrust by wildlife specialists has been the effect of predators on the herds. A significant factor has largely been ignored.

Early-century forest fires and years of timber harvest opened the land for grasses and other forage, supporting many elk, deer and their predators. They are all significant environmental and economic assets.

Foreign noxious weeds now more often invade burns and clearcuts. Yellow starthistle has made several million Idaho acres totally unfit for the elk, deer and mountain sheep that formerly thrived there. Hawkweed has destroyed cattle pastureland. It has supplanted the wildlife forage in the many mountain meadows. Elk and deer there become weak or starve and bunch in remaining forage areas, easy prey for predators.

Restoration of devastated areas now depends on importing the insects and/or pathogens that evolved with and limit the plants in their native lands. Some such biocontrols are now being introduced for yellow starthistle. New Zealand sheep growers have a hawkweed closely related to ours that has devastated their grazing lands. They have spent eight years and more than $700,000 to come up with biocontrol agents. Building on the New Zealand research for two years and for an additional $100,000, we can attain specific hawkweed biocontrols.

Only when hawkweeds are occasional pretty flowers will we restore the environment for elk, deer, their predators - and us. Harry Eder Fernwood

Let’s not overemphasize killing

We turn loose onto our streets child molesters and murderers who rape and kill our children every single day. Yet when an animal strikes, whether out of confusion or sickness, our first response is to kill it and judge the rest of its genre as guilty by association so that they, too, must be hunted and killed to keep them in “control.”

To Michael Grace’s question, “Have you had to teach your children how to react if confronted with a cougar?”

(Letters, Sept. 16), I ask why you would not teach them this if you live in our area? I certainly don’t have the answers to keeping our children completely safe (just took at what goes on in our nation every day!) and I am truly sorry for those who experience this sort of attack. I also do not argue that the cats that make these attacks in most cases need to be put down. But I do not agree that filling the forest with baying hounds and gun hunters will solve the problem. And frankly, I’ll take my chances with the wildlife over a gun hunter any day.

Respecting our environment and the wildlife we share it with does not mean killing every animal that we are afraid of. Tina Matney Barstow, Wash.

The environment

Land exchange benefits the people

Re: Staff writer Ken Olsen’s story, “Details of land swap emerge,” Aug. 29.

I am an independent forest consultant who was involved in the Priest Lake land exchange from its conception. I have worked in the forest consulting business for over 20 years and I would like to clarify some issues regarding this land exchange.

In my forestry career I have yet to witness any property that compares to this magnificent ancient cedar grove. This property is a one-of-a-kind public asset and is totally irreplaceable. If you question this public acquisition, I encourage you to visit this pristine wonder located in the upper Priest Lake drainage. How does one put a value on something so priceless?

Plum Creek Timber Co. put a price on its property and sold it to Marc Brinkmeyer. Clearwater Realty had the expertise to facilitate this land exchange between Brinkmeyer and the Forest Service. The Forest Service had been unsuccessful in trying to acquire this property for over a decade.

This exchange took five years to complete and during that time, cedar values skyrocketed. Two appraisals were performed that supported similar values. So, Brinkmeyer made a good investment. After all, isn’t that the only way one becomes a successful businessman?

If, in fact, our members of Congress encouraged the Forest Service to make this land exchange take place, then they, too, served the public well. The Priest Lake land exchange was a good exchange for the people. This unique, ancient cedar grove will be forever preserved for future generations! Chris J. Hansen Bayview, Idaho

Back to the future, ruinously

The Coeur d’Alene Mines Co. bought a gold mining claim up in Alaska in 1987, when gold was running over $400 an ounce. At that time, it had filed for certain operating permits.

The company proposed not to use cyanide and agreed to store the tailings up on land much the way it’s done down here in the south 48. The original plan was hailed by some fisheries groups as a model for the state. The mine, called the Kensington, is located in an incredibly beautiful area known as Lynn Canal, between Juneau and Haines.

Now, the price of gold hovers around $250 an ounce and Dennis Wheeler, CEO of Coeur d’Alene Mines, wants to renege on the original plan. What Wheeler wants to do is incredible. He wants to dump 3,000 tons of mine tailings daily into Lynn Canal - enough to cover over 900 square miles. That works out to about 10 million to 13 million tons of toxic mine waste over the projected life of the mine.

In other words, Wheeler is asking the citizens of Alaska to OK cheap mining practices that were abandoned in Idaho many years ago. He is willing to trash a part of the Alaskan fishing environment in order to cover his gamble to deliver a profitable mine to his investors.

Dennis Wheeler states, “I’m very confident that we’ll achieve our goal, based on our good environmental record and the trust we have built.”

Say what? John E. Bentley Post Falls

Health and safety

Keep depot danger at a distance

Here’s another slant on editor Chris Peck’s analogy of a kid cleaning up his room and Burlington Northern Sante Fe’s planned fuel storage depot over the Rathdrum Prairie-Spokane Valley aquifer, as expressed in his Sept. 12 column.

Mom checks Johnny’s room; it looks unusually neat, like he’s trying to impress her so she’ll let him go out and play. She notices a box in the corner and asks what it’s for. Johnny explains the new wooden box holds the wax and oil rags he uses to keep his skis tip-top for cross-country skiing.

Mom expresses concern over possibility of the rags spontaneously combusting and starting a fire that would endanger the lives of many people living in the apartment complex. Johnny assures her the new box is nearly air tight with little chance a fire could occur. Although he assures mom it’s safe, he can’t guarantee it. Realizing she has a responsibility to many others, mom gently but firmly informs Johnny he can go out and play after he gets the box of rags out of the building. And Johnny, being a bright, creative kid, finds a safer place to store the rags. Buell Hollister Post Falls

In the paper

Clark’s column is what’s foul here

Re: “Postal worker cries foul when officials turn tables,” (Sept. 12). In his personal attack on me, columnist Doug Clark seems to have lost sight of the facts, and lost sight of ethics in an attempt to side with his idea of an underdog.

The facts given him were that every postal employee is required by law to report any instance where they believe waste, fraud or mismanagement has occurred.

I obtained a copy of a postal supervisor’s military discharge papers (which Clark infers are honorable) showing a General Discharge for a pattern of misconduct with authorities.

I also have a copy of the written criteria for veterans preference within the U.S. Postal Service. . Clark insists that this supervisor still should have preference over an honorably discharged veteran.

Further, he insists that even though this supervisor scored low in aptitude tests and had less experience, he should have advanced to supervisor ahead of better-qualified disabled veterans, in violation of the Veterans Rehabilitation Act.

Clark also was aware postal inspectors routinely turn complaints of supervisors over to the same supervisor - as in this case - so they might investigate themselves. This means that in order for workers to get information to higher authorities, methods to hide their identities are attempted, because they know that supervisors would rather kill the messenger than investigate the message.

Clark’s sources were this supervisor and another crony. He had other sources of information made available but chose to ignore them.

As to Clark’s description of me as a chronic complainer, I’m an elected union official (and have an appointed office), and my job is to champion the rights of employees. The fact that the Spokane district has the worst labor relations record in the Western area would indicate a lot of failures on management’s part.

The allegations that I lied during an investigation have yet to be adjudicated, as does the reason for my being investigated.

Although employees have written directives telling them they can be disciplined for talking to the press, some were willing to take that chance, hoping for truths to be printed. They now see that this risk is too great to take.

Clark has championed a supervisor who openly boasts that he has fired more people in six months than all of the others have in the past nine years. These are people trying to feed their families, and the employees deserve better leadership. Ray L. Fink Hauser Lake