|
Kids
on littering
Please do not litter. I do not like it. Please stop littering. It
stinks and it is destroying the earth.
Katie Koenig, 5
Peter Koenig, 7
Pay or release
Measure 20 would restrict how farmers use their land.
If this new restriction reduces the
crop value and thus land value wouldn’t this become subject to Measure
37?
If so, wouldn’t taxpayers have to pay
the farmer for this economic loss or release the farmer from this new
restriction?
Jon Krutsch
Hood River
Ignoring the few
It seems unconscionable that the Port of Hood River should close the
bridge so much thus forcing night workers to go 40 miles out of their
way. Gas is expensive and so is car maintenance: Even at only two days
a week the detour amounts to 80 miles a week or 320 a month and most
people work more than two days a week. Other places where roads have
no good alternates manage to do most of their maintenance work without
constant closures; it seems the bridge could be the same.
There are but a few late night or 24-hour concerns in this area:
there cannot be a huge number of workers who would need to cross.
Emergency personnel are allowed to cross so those few late workers
could, too. If the port wished to have an ID system so only those who
needed to cross for work were allowed to do so there should be no
problem with such. But they should be allowed to cross. And there is
collateral damage as well: lost time with families and if the worker
cannot go the distance the schedules of others must be disarrayed to
accommodate this.
There is another disadvantage as well: pollution. One is constantly
admonished to minimize the emissions of greenhouse gases. Something
that seems to have escaped those at the port.
However, the fact that there must only be a small number affected
makes it easy to ignore. Injustice on a small scale often receives
little attention, especially when those involved are not piteous,
sad-eyed children or the special interest group of the week but simply
working stiffs being forced to spend time and money they likely don’t
have. Yet their very fewness of numbers may condemn them to just that.
Carol Oberlitner
Hood River
Laws inadequate
On the front page of the Hood River News April 14 was the picture and
report of "Every 15 minutes." Congratulations to the Hood River Valley
High School’s OSSOM members. A life every 15 minutes is lost to a
drunk driver.
Do you calculate? Over 35,000 in a year die because of those who
decide to drink and drive, not counting those with life-long injuries.
I see many letters about other deaths, but this is the first I see
about this terrible plague. Are our laws adequate? I think not.
Rachel Shields
Hood River |
