Letters for Friday, June 12

Klitzke is right

I actually agree with City Councilwoman Klitzke on shifting property tax burden to vacant land. How about all the vacant houses too? It shouldn’t take 10 or 20 years to repair a house. Vacant properties of any stripe are magnets for crime, dumping and camping.

Mike Reno

Newman Lake

Downtown parking

I wrote once before about the absurd parking situation in downtown Spokane. The City Council wants to raise parking fees in order to “add more security to the downtown area.” They feel that this will attract more people to visit and shop downtown. There is already a glut of unused office and business space downtown. There is even a push to eliminate some of the parking lots for building more buildings or businesses.

On Saturday, my wife and I attended a retirement party for a friend at the Looff Carrousel. Since parking on the street was not available, we chose a parking lot across the street. We were there for two hours. Guess how much the parking lot charged … $35! The sign said it was due to a “special event.” Apparently there was a comicon at the Convention Center which had ended by the time the party started. I submit that $35 to park the car to go to Riverfront Park is downright offensive. The city and the private parking lots might as well raise the parking price to $50 or even $100. Then they would have lots of money to add police and increase security. The trouble is, at the prices they are charging now and might charge in the future, no additional security will be needed as the crowds will disappear, leaving even more empty businesses and offices.

Downtown Spokane is a special place but it’s not Manhattan or even Seattle. The affordable “bargain” of Spokane apparently has ended.

Barry Bauchwitz

Spokane Valley

Epstein files

Michael Baumgartner wants to have the Epstein files both ways. As for so many topics, he says what he knows his constituents want to hear, but his actions contradict his words.

He voted to release the files in November only after he was told he could vote yes. Before that, he liked to say he believed the files should be released but he did nothing to make it happen. He did not support the discharge position; he voted against all attempts to force the DOJ to release the files. In February he complimented Attorney General Pam Bondi on the “good job” she was doing even though she was very deliberately in violation of the law, the Epstein Transparency Act, he voted to pass.

The women exploited by Epstein, as girls, deserve the transparency promised by the law, not the duplicity of faux pious Michael Baumgartner. We all deserve the transparency promised to us in the Epstein Transparency Act, not the cover-up perpetrated by Republicans.

Vote him out.

Lisa Wolfe

Kettle Falls