Apr 3, 2008

Letters

Children's theater

Dear Editor: The Palo Alto Children's Theatre should be totally privately run. However, I am for the city helping fund worthy causes like it, assuming it can afford to do so. If audits show financial mismanagement, cut the funding.

I do not understand the city giving the school district money, though. The city is already donating parks and recreation activity personnel for students.

I read the school district plans on issuing $772 million in 30-year bonds; $378 million will be on the ballot in June. I anticipate the city will soon ask us to vote for $500 million in 30-year building/infrastructure bonds. A city of about 60,000 residents will soon have about $1.3 billion in long-term debt without considering the enormous interest to be paid.

I recently attended an Association of Government Accountants luncheon where Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone suggested that anyone who votes against a school district bond would be foolish. He said he could demonstrate that two identical houses on opposite sides of a street dividing a school district have dramatically different assessed values based on passage of a school bond, resulting in good schools and therefore higher home values on that side. I believe the Palo Alto Unified School District is pushing this logic to the maximum.

Bob Schulte,

Palo Alto



The war on drugs

Dear Editor: The war on drugs has been a highly successful campaign, targeting mostly minority men by creating an entirely new class of felons. As felons, they cannot vote or support their families, thereby creating an endless cycle of poverty and shame. In some states, even after serving their time, former felons are still denied the right to vote.

Funds that might otherwise go to public education, poverty programs and health care are diverted to maintain this vast prison/industrial complex.

Like the war in Iraq, the only ones who benefit from this "war" are the contractors and others who make lots of money in some part of the chain that has created this modern American nightmare.

Surely there are better ways to both treat our drug users and spend our tax dollars.

Elizabeth Lasensky,

Menlo Park



Government aid

Dear Editor: Regarding the efforts of the county of San Mateo to expand its own health care programs for the uninsured, I would like to point out a case that shows how vulnerable to abuse such programs are. I personally know of a case that shows that San Francisco cannot figure out the fact that a person is married and has three rental properties registered with the San Francisco Rental Board and yet she claims all the possible benefits for being a "poor single mother," including free attendance to community college, free child care, free health care and food stamps.

Programs like those proposed at city and county levels do not have the simplest means of cross correlating data from various government agencies and banks needed in order to weed out widespread fraud. San Francisco, for example, cannot automatically detect the case in which a multimillionaire who obtained permanent residency in the U.S. based on this very fortune and yet ships the money overseas, applies for all the benefits reserved for the poor at city level.

Cities and counties are too small to be able to close such blatant loopholes by themselves and without massive logistical support from the state and federal governments. Until such support is forthcoming and these loopholes are reliably closed, counties and cities should stop wasting our tax money.

Virgil Stevens,

San Carlos



Assembly race

Dear Editor: Last December, San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill attempted to extort approximately $7 million in taxpayer dollars from the Sequoia Healthcare District.

Hill wanted these dollars to fund a countywide health coverage initiative that he is pushing. Hill, in a not-so-veiled threat, suggested that the Sequoia Healthcare District's joint venture with Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) to construct a new south county hospital may be in violation of the separation of church and state, having had county counsel release an opinion supporting such a ridiculous notion.

He is now suggesting that every city in the county pass local ordinances to compel local businesses to pay for health care for all uninsured residents of the county who make too much to be eligible for Medi-Cal but cannot afford private insurance.

This second ill-advised adventure is absurd. With an economy quickly slipping into recession, Hill now wants local businesses, many of which are struggling to survive, to take on an enormous new obligation.

Hill's self-serving efforts to claim victory in crafting a local health care plan are not only irresponsible but they are dangerous. If this pattern is any indication of what Hill would do as a member of the state Assembly there is no end to the damage he could do.

San Mateo County voters, small businesses and local government agencies should be terrified at the prospect of Hill being elected to the Assembly.

Catherine Brinkman,

Assembly District 19 candidate,

Foster City



Cars, the environment

Dear Editor: I was distressed to read that Anna Murveit, hailed as an environmentalist ["Green at school, green at home," March 27], drives a car to school, with no mention in the article of carpooling. With public transportation available and the option of a bike, I don't understand why a car is necessary to one so ecologically minded. Certainly, the Prius is a step in the right direction as far as the search for renewable energies goes, but practically it doesn't receive a statistically significant improvement in mileage compared to its model, the Echo. Rather, the Prius is an assertion of wealth, albeit of the ecologically friendly type. A car is a car and it's still private transportation, no matter how ecologically friendly.

Christina Robinson,

Menlo Park