Letters for Jan. 21, 2024

Keep our schools great

Before you vote on Feb. 13, be sure you know one essential fact: Voting YES for Kids will not change your property tax!

The 2024 Levy Replacement has been designed so that homeowners can expect to pay essentially the same tax over the next three years as we did over the last three years. It’s if we vote no for kids that we can expect to see some big changes.

Your kindergarten neighbor with Type 1 diabetes won’t have regular access to her school nurse. The previous levy paid for half of the nursing staff and now her nurse will need to cover more than one school.

Your nephew who played high school football last fall might not have a team to play on next fall. If they do figure out how to pay a coaching staff, he’ll likely have to come up with hundreds of dollars to be on the team. Until now, levies have paid for 100% of extracurricular activities like sports, music, drama and clubs.

Oh, and all those great classes that meet the unique needs of your grandkids, be they AP or highly capable, multilingual language learners, or needing extra support in special education? They won’t look the same anymore, either. Those classes have always been heavily subsidized by levy dollars. Spokane voters have done well by our kids for entire generations now, consistently passing levies and bonds. Let’s not take for granted the phenomenal education our students receive.

Keep our schools great.

Vote yes!

Laura Cook-Crotty

Spokane

Make sure there’s enough energy to go around

Many of us received an email notice from Avista in these past few days that it was having some mechanical issues with one of its natural gas suppliers, TC Energy. Avista encouraged us to reduce our energy consumption.

What was your reaction to this news? Did you quickly do that? Did you take less and/or shorter showers, turn off unused lights, close curtains and blinds, decided not to do laundry and turned down your thermostat and put on a sweater? Did you check on your neighbors and look for opportunities to provide food and shelter to others? I bet that was the first reaction of many of us.

We do care about each other and wanted to do our part to ensure there was enough heat to go around in these cold days!

Let’s carry this neighborliness long into the new year. Our instincts encourage us to work together for the good of all.

Janet Farness

Liberty Lake

Our voices still count

The Idaho Legislature is again in full swing, and many Idahoans want to testify. Remote testimony is available, especially for those of us who reside in the north. Sign up, but beware, if it is an issue coming before the House State Affairs Committee, good luck in having your voice heard. Chairman Brent Crane routinely prioritizes “in-person” individuals to testify first, and then proceeds to call the “remote” testifiers. On a recent morning, testimony on HB 384 was no exception. Although the hearing lasted almost two hours, only 10 minutes at the end were allowed for remote testimony. This is a pattern for Rep. Crane, as his 2023 hearings were conducted the same way. I have testified before several committees. I am very pleased with the process, taking my place in line and hoping my name comes up. I listen to the chairpersons switch back and forth between in-person and remote. I find it to be a fair way of letting all concerned individuals testify. Why does Chairman Crane refuse to do this? Does he believe that only in-person testimony is representative of all Idahoans?

This is not equitable in the least. All Idahoans deserve a right to be heard. Between missing work, trying to access child care or dealing with Idaho’s inclement weather, many of us are unable to get to Boise. Our voices still count.

Heather Stout

Moscow, Idaho

Support our successes

On Feb. 13, voters will have an opportunity to impact the future of the Riverside School District. Our schools have provided students with a quality education and excellent management of taxpayer dollars. Riverside has the lowest tax rate of any school district in Spokane County and has not had a bond election for construction since 1998.

Our early childhood program scored 25 points higher than the state average on the latest assessment, our graduation rate is 93%, we offer 14 dual college credit courses, we have career and technology programs with industry certifications that provide good living wages. We have active sports and extracurricular offerings our students excel in. Our FFA program was selected as the top program in the state and represented Washington in the national competition.

Our facilities are no longer adequate to support these successes. We must provide for safety with single point campus entries and updated security systems. Our heating and cooling systems cannot be maintained because parts are no longer available. We have plumbing and restroom facilities dating back to the 1930s. Classrooms should be inviting and energy efficient. Athletes deserve facilities that support increased participation.

The bond will impact every student and staff member in the Riverside schools. Riverside is the only school district in Spokane county to gain students after COVID. Improved facilities will support growth by attracting businesses to share the cost with local property owners. Be part of this historic moment – vote yes for Riverside.

Tommy Mowles

Deer Park

Winder just wants children born, not cared for

Idaho state Sen. Chuck Winder, R, recently argued that women are doing the nation a disservice by not producing enough kids for the workforce. Blaming women is easier for Winder than taking responsibility for the policy decisions of his own party.

Republicans have been in power in Idaho for decades. Blame must fall squarely on their feet. For example, Winder and his friends refused to accept $38 million in federal grant money to help expand child care because they did not want to “make it easier for women to come out of the home.” They didn’t want women in the workforce. Apparently, they’re only interested in their (male) offspring.

According to Idaho Voices for Children, the lack of affordable child care costs our economy $525 million each year because parents must refuse jobs due to child care issues. The Republican-led Legislature could fix the child care crisis, so more parents could work. They could increase workforce housing, so more workers could afford to live here. Idaho could stop criminalizing doctors for saving women’s lives, so doctors could stay and young people would want to work here.

The policy choices made by Idaho’s Republican-controlled Legislature have created a labor shortage. Their policy choices could fix it. Winder needs to 1) stop blaming women for poor policy outcomes and 2) realize forced pregnancy is not the answer to our problems, economic or otherwise.

Linda Larson

Sandpoint

Protect all children, CMR

Programmed in our genes, as evolution suggests, humans will protect their offspring in order to ensure their survival. If forced to choose which drowning child to save, a mother or grandmother will predictably choose her own.

Recently, Americans have witnessed the killing of children. At the southern border, a mother and two children drowned in the Rio Grande. In Gaza, more than 10,000 Palestinian children have died in the past 100 days, and countless more injured by bombs supplied by the United States and dropped by Israel.

So, what would you do if those children in the river were yours? And what would you do, if one of those 10,000 Palestinians or one of the Israeli children captured by Hamas was yours?

Our representative, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, unabashedly supports Israel. Imagine if one of her children was in Gaza right now. Do you think she would care? As a gun rights advocate, she admitted at a Spokane Valley town hall meeting that she worries about her children when they attend school, in response to my question about gun control. Interestingly, Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian-American Michigan congresswoman, said that the cries of Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to her.

Let’s hope most Americans care about children of others. Let’s save drowning children at the southern border, and support a cease-fire to get food, water and medicine to the Palestinian children. These supplies can be airlifted to Gaza immediately.

Contact our representative, McMorris Rodgers, now.

Nancy Street

Cheney