Letters for Feb. 2

Let them eat lunch

There is nothing else I’d rather have my tax dollars pay for than school lunch. Free school lunch for all Washington students pays for itself (though technically it has not expanded to all schools). Free lunch for all is the gold standard, and we should not sacrifice it, nor need we. Free lunch for all ensures every student is fed. It reduces paperwork for schools and parents. It reduces the “free lunch” stigma. And (my favorite) it creates a shared interest in the food our children eat, which means better, healthier meals for all.

But let’s say we don’t care about any of that. Removing this benefit for the super-rich still doesn’t solve our budget shortfall. A Jan. 15 letter says we have 1,400 Washington households with more than $100 million in assets. Let’s say they all have a child that eats a free lunch all 180 school days of the year, at $2.75 per lunch (SPS rate). This saves us $693,000 per year. That’s 0.02% of the (contested) $12 billion shortfall. That’s like running up a large debt in your household, and rather than making more money, reducing the rent, or selling the boat, you look around and decide to feed the children one less meal per day. Give me a break. Let them eat lunch. Look elsewhere for savings. Our children deserve the best school lunch program, and we should proudly defend it.

Hannah Vehrs Harris

Spokane

City’s new landlord/tenant laws backfire

With the narrative of “to help create more affordable housing” by our liberal City Council, putting more restrictions/rules on landlords is backfiring. As usual, our government is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. Six months’ notice to raise rents and with a maximum of 7% a year, having to license each home as well as pay for a state business license (both with annual renewal fees), a property with three or more units requires yearly fire as well as code enforcement inspections all at cost to the owners.

Over the past year I’ve spent $11,000 and $21,000 for two new roofs, $11,500 for a new sewer line, two new furnaces at $4,500 each and more than $2,000 in miscellaneous other expenses. Taxes keep going up, insurances have more than doubled the past two to three years, and you’re telling me the parameters of what I can charge for rents?

I’ve talked with multiple fellow landlords who are selling their rentals due to all of these regulations and expenses, one with 20-plus units because they’ve had enough with these new requirements and fees/costs. I will be selling five single family rentals over the next two years. All of these single-family rentals will now be pulled from the rental pool and sold to new homeowners.

You are about to reap the rewards of your restraints, rules and actions. Backfire is an understatement. Nicely done.

Rick Richard

Spokane

Fox Franz guards our henhouse

I wonder if I’m the only one who choked on coffee while reading Hilary Franz’s column in the Spokesman on Jan. 26 (“We need all the tools in the tool box to solve our wildfire crisis”). She begins by describing the L.A. fires as “heartbreaking,” and lists likely causes, among them, “expansion of the wildland-urban interface.” Then, in a long, windy sales pitch, she tells us that AI will solve our wildfire problems through early detection.

Here’s the irony – and the source of my choking. Franz, as head of the Department of Natural Resources, just traded 192 acres of public land at our own wildland-urban interface – the Thorpe Property – for a strip mall on the West Side. The beneficiary of this deal is a developer who plans to build a thousand houses. The proposed development is a prime example of urban/nature conflict, and, besides being fire-prone, it’s inaccessible to fire equipment.

Although there was a public cry for conservation, and City Council asked for a postponement of the transfer until objections could be addressed, Franz fast-tracked the deal. So, the DNR is selling a miracle AI drug to cure us from the very disease it has created.

If this isn’t Franz as fox guarding poor little Spokane’s henhouse, I don’t know what is. To quote my wise grandmother, “What chutzpah!”

Heidi Gann

Spokane

City attempts money grab

The city of Spokane is attempting another money grab from Spokane County taxpayers through a specific and narrowly written HB1258 that will only benefit the city of Spokane.

The city continually dragged its feet in fully joining the county emergency dispatching model through Spokane Regional Emergency Communications, which led SREC to make the difficult decision to remove the city of Spokane from further negotiations. Now the city is trying to fleece the county into subsidizing its current police dispatching center and soon to be new fire dispatching center, that they will have to implement by Jan. 1, 2026. Twenty out of 22 Spokane County fire departments and law enforcement agencies are using SREC for emergency dispatching needs. While Spokane Fire Department is currently being dispatched by SREC, that will end by Jan. 1. Now, Reps. Timm Ormsby and Natasha Hill are trying to bail them out with the introduction of this bill.

Scott Tschirgi

Spokane