Ready to change priorities?

The June 27 Spokesman-Review featured an article in which we were told that University of Washington football coach Steve Sarkisian is being paid $2.5 million. Meanwhile, many teachers are forced to work extra jobs to make ends meet.

What is wrong with this picture? In our pursuit of entertainment, we have left behind more important matters. While firefighters and other public servants are forced to do more with less, billions of dollars are being shelled out so that you can satisfy your various lusts in theaters and elsewhere.

II Timothy 3:4 says that people will be “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” Are you included in this group? Does your life consist of seeking the next thrill? Are you willing to forgo pleasures in order to donate that otherwise wasted money to a worthy cause?

Many of us do an awful lot of complaining about what is going wrong in society. Here is your chance to do something about it.

Douglas R. Benn

Spokane

District makes bad choice

The Intradistrict Transfer Policy 3152 (choice) is being reviewed by the Spokane School Board, and parents should be aware of this. The policy currently gives priority to choice students over neighborhood students at our schools.

A choice student at a given school has priority should a new neighborhood child need that slot, even if that neighborhood child has a sibling attending that school. The neighborhood child is placed in overload status and bused to another school until space becomes available, or the parent may choose to send that neighborhood child to another school.

Choice students are important to Spokane schools because they level classroom sizes, and not having to reapply every year adds stability, but at the cost of our neighborhood children. A group of parents has proposed a lottery system be added to upgrade the policy so that a choice student can be pulled should a neighborhood child need that slot.

I encourage any family affected by Policy 3152 to write a letter to the school board. My family has not been affected, but I would like a more principled policy that places the onus of the choice system on the choice student and not the neighborhood student.

Kirsten Robinson

Spokane

Public safety pay generous

I would like to respond to Len Champion’s June 27 letter. He says it is nobody’s business what firemen get paid. That’s like giving the fox a blank check to guard the henhouse. As a taxpayer who is expected to pay the bill, I have every right to know what firemen are paid.

What Champion doesn’t want you to know is that a fireman can make up to $100,000 a year, with nearly as generous a pension. The best thing that Mayor David Condon can do is publish in the paper the complete wage and retirement packages for the police and fire departments so all can see what they make. While the average worker’s pay has been stagnant for the past 20 years, police and fire have had automatic increases to their pay and retirement packages.

The people of San Diego realized that if they had to keep paying for bloated police and fire pensions, they would have to declare bankruptcy. They were able to restructure the police and fire plans to make them more reasonable. And we need to do the same thing. In the town where I grew up, we had a volunteer fire department.

Rick Johnson

Spokane