Letters for Aug. 31, 2022

The next homeless group

In Spokane County, our fourth-largest county, the senior/disabled tax exemption threshold is still $40,000 while 12 of our 39 counties have taken action to help seniors stay in their homes by reevaluating and increasing this threshold. A majority of senior/disabled people are on a fixed income, primarily from Social Security and pay the same as everyone else for food, gas and utilities but typically have higher medical costs.

This past year assessed values on homes grew exponentially, yet the incomes of many seniors/disabled people did not see this type of increase in their income. When property assessed values increase resulting in increased property tax bills, the risk of a senior/disabled person on a fixed income not being able to stay in their home also increases. The risk of becoming homeless increases, which adds to our current homeless issues we are experiencing today.

Seniors are seeing increases in their property values not because of improvements made to the home, but simply because our county is growing and those who are working are buying homes at prices that have fueled this valuation increase.

Spokane County citizens can get this changed to enable a significant number of the 90,000 seniors to stay in their homes by telling our county commissioners this threshold must be raised. If not, they will be forced to sell, and with the current housing crisis where will they move? Please contact your county commissioner today.

Mary Routt-Jordan and Michael Routt

Spokane

Who needs Chick-fil-A?

The corner of 29th and Regal doesn’t. That intersection is busy enough without adding them to it. Look at what they went through up north when Chick-fil-A opened there. It was chaos!

Why that corner? Why not farther up Regal where it could handle the increased traffic without closing down another profitable business. Makes no sense to me.

Karen Merritt

Spokane

Choice is on the ballot

“Choice is on the Ballot.” That message carried New York Democrat Pat Ryan to an unexpected victory for a U.S. House seat over his Republican opponent on Aug. 23, galvanizing voters angered by the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, a long-held right of reproductive freedom for American women.

Ryan’s victory is a bellwether for the November election. “People are ready to fight” against the chaotic undermining of women’s rights and for the congressional codification of Roe, Ryan said following his victory. The same fight was also waged this summer in conservative Kansas, where voters (including many Republicans) decisively defeated a proposed state constitutional abortion ban.

Although we are far from New York, choice is also on the ballot this fall in Spokane’s 5th Congressional District. Incumbent Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has joined anti-choice extremists, only 8% of American voters (according to a recent Pew Research Center poll) who would ban abortions in all circumstances, including rape and incest.

You may think that abortion rights are secure on the nation’s liberal “Left Coast” of Washington, Oregon and California. Think again. If Republicans take the House and Senate and the nation elects a Republican president in 2024, Republicans have already vowed to enact a nationwide abortion ban.

It’s time to draw the line this year. Women and men who support a woman’s reproductive autonomy must vote for Democrats in November. Please remember: Choice is on the ballot.

Karen Dorn Steele

Spokane

Silver lining in loan forgiveness

Now that I’ve been proven to be a sucker by saving for my children’s college and for them working so they didn’t have to get loans, they could now have someone else pay, so maybe there is a silver lining. By showing a generation of parents the folly in saving for education and work, we might wind up with a wave of families financially unprepared for college. Instead, their children may go on to apprenticeships and trade schools so someday I may be able to find a bricklayer or carpenter when I need one.

Travis Prewitt

Liberty Lake

Turn yourself in, Republican winners

This letter is to address all Republican office holders – federal, state and local – who won their elections in 2020 yet claim the 2020 elections to be fraudulent. If you are one of them, you yourself have benefited from an election you believe was fraudulent. To insure American voters faith in the integrity of our election system, you should immediately resign and refer yourselves to law enforcement for conspiracy to commit fraud.

Bill Todd

Spokane