Letters for Wednesday, June 24

A wonderful candidate

A great opportunity awaits us. When election time comes, and our ballots are due, we don’t always welcome the choices with enthusiasm. But there is good reason to be excited this time about the person we will send to Olympia representing District 3, Position 2. Dr. Pam Kohlmeier offers a great background of skills and education.

She has served as an emergency medical physician affiliated with Sacred Heart and Children’s Hospital. In addition, she has graduated magna cum laude with a law degree from Gonzaga University. She has taught Health Policy and Law and professionalism at EWU. She is constantly active in community service of various types, one being Spokane’s chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

It’s obvious that all the positive ways Dr. Pam has served our city is reflected in her recently being a finalist for the Sister Peter Clever Humanitarian Award. Personal tragedy experience broadens her empathy and understanding of health issues, and she hopes to work in the Legislature for improved mental health services. I know from working with her that Dr. Pam is a totally reliable, energetic and delightful person. We will be blessed to have her represent us in Olympia. Please vote for Dr. Pam Kohlmeier.

Roz Luther

Spokane

Primary elections

Soon, mid-July, voters will receive their voters’ pamphlets and ballots for Aug. 4’s primary. Eight states plus the D.C. area vote by mail, including Washington. However, the Postal Service’s collaboration with the president’s illegal recent executive order “Ensuring Citizenship Verification … in Federal Elections” could make voting harder. (The Constitution says that only states and Congress can regulate voting.) Registering to vote includes declaring that you’re a citizen; if “you knowingly provide false information … you will have committed a class C felony” (votewa.gov). Noncitizens overwhelmingly don’t vote (fairelectionscenter.org, the Brennan Center for Justice and the Heritage Foundation).

USPS has already made voting more difficult. Recommendations during the last week of voting are to return ballots via official ballot drop boxes, not by mail, because postmarks currently occur days later at a distribution hub instead of at your local post office soon after your mail is dropped off. Carriers have had their hours cut, furthering delays in delivering ballots, packages, medicines, payments, etc.

Now USPS proposes costly barcodes on return ballot envelopes to match against a voter list before returning the ballots, adding more chaos to elections offices and making it harder for less affluent small and rural counties to comply. The public can comment through July 2 on federalregister.gov under “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections.” The Postal Service has always been until recently a necessary nonpartisan public service and should remain so.

Judy Silverstein

Spokane

Spokane’s downtown in jeopardy

I am a proponent for downtown and very much want to see it thrive and succeed.

After the “enhanced camping ordinance” passed last fall, I thought that the decline in our urban core was reversed. From November into February, downtown looked great and the addict clusters disappeared. My wife and I enjoyed Christmas Tree Elegance, shopping at River Park Square and dining downtown.

Then as spring arrived, they reappeared and are not only all over downtown, but all over the city of Spokane. I see drug addicts at Shadle Center, at Country Homes and Division, out by the Merkle Sportsplex. We are the only city besides Seattle that offers abundant services to addicts at a high cost to the taxpayers. What we are doing is unsustainable!

Urbanna Salon is closing now. That is the canary in the coal mine. More businesses and restaurants will follow. As businesses close the tax revenue drops for our city. The decline in the downtown core accelerates.

Businesses are hoping for a change for the better. While Mayor Brown and the current council are in office that wait might be for a couple more years.

Till then, call 311 and report addicts and homeless on your streets. Vote for a public safety measure that will help expand and modernize our jail system. Don’t vote for STA funding to continue while offering rides to these people and removing lanes from Division Street to install a transit line and bicycle lanes.

Victor Frazier

Spokane

Say no to data centers

I appreciate The Spokesman-Review’s recent articles about Avista’s collaboration with an AI company wanting a 500 megawatt electrical load in our area (in setting of 1200 MW capacity). I am pleased with the City Council’s one-year moratorium. The issue is far from done and one may still come to the county.

As a community, we must reject this theft of our land, water and power (both electrical and democratic). Such data centers do not provide more than a handful of temporary jobs, then exploit all of us and pollute exponentially. We should not be subsidizing billionaire and trillionaire tech bros. Allowing such data centers here would destroy everything Spokane city and county hold dear – our aquifers, our air, our natural environment, our health, our relative quiet, our private property (eminent domain will take much for required grid), our peace, our way of life living “near nature.” It would wipe out so many great gains we have built as a community. I implore city and county elected officials to find every way possible way to prohibit any large load data center in our area and to work with Kootenai county to do the same (we share an aquifer).

People in our area: Please stand up and reject this assault on our community and let your representatives know that we do not need this, we do not want it or its effects, and we will hold elected officials accountable on their choices. No large load data centers here now or ever!

Elizabeth O’Halloran

Spokane