Have fun with city’s name
Last year, a group I’m a member of held its gathering in Greenville, S.C. Just for fun, as its newsletter editor, I got out my atlas and discovered that 11 other states also have a Greenville — a fact that forced me to use “Greenville, South Carolina,” every time I referred to the locale in the newsletter. I wish I’d thought to suggest to the Greenville, S.C., reporter who interviewed me that his city change its name. Alas, the Vancouver issue had not re-emerged at that time.
How confusing it must be for some folks that we’re the only Vancouver in the USA. I’m always pleased to learn that more people have heard of or been to our city than I would have thought.
When asked where I’m from, I end up saying, “Now listen carefully. I’m from Vancouver, Washington.”
“Oh, what a beautiful city …”
Then I say, “You didn’t listen carefully,” and repeat the response. It’s really a lot of fun.
I’d miss the pleasure of learning how many people know of our historic city and the fun of my little exercise in informing the others. (And we’re beautiful enough, for now).
Bob Moser
Vancouver
Just leave name alone
It’s Vancouver, Washington. Can’t you just leave it alone? Why care about people who know nothing about geography? If you must fuss with it, please consider the following:
- When growing up near the very rural Union Ridge area in the 1960s, we all said that we were going to cruise “the gut.” We all knew where we were going to be. Not a bad designation.
- One anchor of “the gut” was Dairy Queen. The other was Burgerville. We could honor one of our finest citizens by designating our city in his honor: “Burgerville, Washington, USA.”
- Our city has been and probably always will be a bedroom to Portland. The U.S. Census Bureau counts it this way. Be real, and consider “North Portland, Washington.”
Now that Royce Pollard has some time on his hands, he could go down to the current bridge and note the flow of traffic. To completely eliminate any confusion with that other Vancouver, we could designate our city as “Toll Bridge, Washington.”
Gary L. Bryant
Colusa, Calif.
Take another look at staff cut
As chair of the Vancouver Tennis Center Foundation, and much to my dismay, a 17-year-veteran of Vancouver-Clark Parks & Recreation was laid off, the victim of a “budget cut.” Dave Miletich has been a champion of the community — fighting for facilities for Boys and Girls Club, taking the Tennis Center from the brink of disaster in the early 1990s to its current “golden era,” helping put in place the fantastic new Cascade Park Library at Firstenburg Center, just to name a few of his achievements. He is the “people’s person” — listening carefully to the community, then researching the request thoroughly, and finally sitting down with the people again to work out the best solution.
Vancouver needs Miletich. He knows the parks and recreation field, and he cares about the people of this community. A second look needs to be made about the unfortunate decision to cut his position. He is an essential cog in the parks and recreation of Vancouver, USA.
Arlene Clark
Vancouver
Health care bill needs common sense
The longer the health care debate goes on, the more I can relate to those pioneers at the Boston Tea Party who complained about being taxed without representation.
Our Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell seem to have outsourced their correspondence with constituents to a computerized automatic messaging system, which provides a canned answer to each communication depending on the subject. If you contact them by e-mail with “health care,” an answer will come quickly back but it may or may not bear any relationship to what you wrote about. I got the same answer back on my e-mails regardless of content. Additionally, the answer will be full of self-administered pats on the back for our senators.
Now the Senate is continuing to work on a health care bill, which will marginally increase the number of people covered by health insurance at a tremendous cost. I would like a significant application of common sense to this issue and less posturing. Any bill is not better than no bill at all, even though our senators seem to think so.
I am resorting to a letter to the editor because my communications with our senators falls only on automated computer ears.
Robert P. McFarlin
Camas
Solution: Civil service reform
Washington state has been hit and run down by Democrats for decades and now the “chickens are coming home to roost.” Their freewheeling spending spree has been met head-on with the oncoming crash of the economy, which Democrats in the other Washington have created. What is their answer? Lower wages of their crony unionists? Do away with all the personnel Gov. Chris Gregoire hired? Cut unnecessary programs that have leeched funds away? In one word: Nope.
Instead, Gregoire, like most tax-and-spenders, wants to make you, the taxpayer, suffer for their spending and for you not “sacrificing” more of your money for them to spend. And, most of her proposed cuts are designed with this in mind.
We need civil service reform and schools need to be able to raise the funds they need locally. Tax increases on businesses only hurt job opportunities and business growth in a time when we need both desperately. Why are the proposals taking so long to enact (June) when making the tough decisions now could save millions and keep some of the proposed cuts? We should privatize several things the state now does. The state’s collective bargaining agreement needs to be redone as well.
Lee Hemen
Vancouver
That was no real job forum
The recent job summit at the White House by President Obama proves that someone who won a popularity contest based upon charisma and empty promises, with no prior record of accomplishment, has no idea of what it takes to generate real revenues or create real jobs.
The invitees to this summit included union bosses, representing only 12 percent of the working population (per U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics); government bureaucrats from public agencies who measure productivity by head count not production; and other community organizers who think getting out the vote is the same as putting bread on the table. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3 million private sector businesses of all sizes, was kept on the wrong side of the door.
Those who actually create the wealth will have to wait to see how it gets redistributed.
Laurent Estey
Vancouver
