Livability affected by bridge project
We live in the manufactured home community on Hayden Island. We are very concerned that the Columbia River Crossing I-5 Bridge project will have an adverse impact on our community and our personal livability.
We feel that the CRC officials have not looked at all the options for crossing the Columbia River. Their 10-lane bridge refined Local Approved Alternative is simply to much for Hayden Island to handle. The interchanges are too closely spaced, from Delta Park to Vancouver. A third bridge or some other alternative needs to be looked at.
The possible loss of our only full-service grocery and pharmacy along with five or more years of construction will be harmful for our older residents, residents with limited mobility, children and their families.
Herman and Carroll Kachold
Portland
Levy will restore services
The Fort Vancouver Regional Library District will ask voters Aug. 17 to restore the library levy to 50 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation in 2011.
The last time the district asked voters for an increase in their tax levy rate was 1993 — 17 years ago. Back then, gas was $1.06 per gallon, unemployment was 6.9 percent, a dozen eggs cost 87 cents and a first-class stamp was 29 cents. Today, rising costs and reduced revenues threaten the basic library services our community needs more than ever.
The district will be asking voters to increase their tax levy from 42 cents to 50 cents. This modest increase will allow them to restore lost hours at seven libraries across the district and to operate our new main branch seven days a week when it opens next year, and add needed books.
We all shared in the pride when Vancouver voters overwhelmingly approved bonds to build new libraries a couple of years ago.
It seems a shame to now not support their proper operation.
Please vote “yes” for your community and “yes” for your libraries.
John D. White
Vancouver
Photos produce many fond memories
While rummaging around my basement files, two historic pictures appeared. Each one was of my seventh-grade students — one of our Fruit Valley school baseball team and the other the girls’ drill team. Both were from 62 years ago — June 1948.
The school was closed a week early because of the Vanport flood, and water was flooding many of the homes. The school board closed the school to assist the flooding problem. The Red Cross opened a soup kitchen and the gym for families to store their private belongings. Instead of using final school days testing and preparing for the next year, I helped in the food line and safeguarded the stored things in the gym.
These two pictures brought back so many warm memories of my first year as a teacher — 62 years ago. I wondered as I looked into these faces if they recalled some of our activities. Did they marry, as I had five months earlier? Where do they live? It would be neat to know. Here I am, two miles from where I started.
Fruit Valley school has always had a soft, warm place in my heart. My rummaging around brought many more memories, but unless The Columbian, Clark County Historical Society or Fruit Valley school has a special event, these questions will not receive answers.
Ray Jongeward
Vancouver
Overpopulation will be our ruin
Rod Steckler’s July 6 letter — “Have we learned anything?” — outlining the reasons behind the BP oil disaster, was good but neglected to mention the most obvious cause of gluttonous oil consumption: overpopulation. Too religiously incorrect, no doubt.
We give much jawing to “living green,” but none to the root cause of the environmental degradation which will doubtless eventually destroy us.
Desertification is creeping through Africa and Asia; wildfires are increasing in North America; oceans are being fished empty.
And we, the alleged smartest animal on the planet, obsess over non-issues such as gay marriage, abortion and recreational drug use.
I’m not sure if we’re too unintelligent, too religious or too lost in denial to survive. I am sure that one hundred years from now civilization as we know it will be kaput.
Ellen Putman
Vancouver
Journalism died with Obama election
Newsies huff and puff about racism. Very worried about traffic stops in Arizona, right?
But hardly any coverage from big print media or alphabet TV “news” shows regarding Department of Justice’s favorite, specially-protected specie, the New Black Panther Party’s Philadelphia leader Minister King Samir Shabazz, (also known as Maurice Heath), who swings billy clubs at voting places and who shouts through a bullhorn, “You going to have to kill the crackers! You going to have to kill they babies!” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x0dM7fR1WQ&). Everyone with a computer can watch this hater spread his murderous program.
The media and their buddies are very worried about “racism” that insists that “illegal” means just that, and that non-citizens should not be allowed to come across our borders. But here’s a guy advocating murder of a race of people … and “the news” is silent.
More evidence that journalism died when Barack Hussein Obama (whose administration is behind the DOJ dropping the Black Panther election intimidation criminal case) ran for the presidency.
Robert R. Larimer Jr
Vancouver
Violators deserve no warnings
I gave a “Hooray” when I read the July 5 Columbian story “Cell phone law spurs 6-fold increase in tickets.”
I am sure that other Columbian readers noticed that, despite the new law effective June 10, you continue to see cell phones being used by drivers every single day you get onto a street or freeway.
That is because using a cell phone (and texting) is apparently as addictive as smoking and drinking for many people.
My big disappointment, in reading this story, was that officers wrote warnings to more than a third of the violators rather than issuing tickets. Virtually every driver (minus anyone living in a cave) knows about the new law. And that law was absolutely the right decision since talking on a cell phone (or texting) is just as careless as drinking and driving. Would a police officer issue a warning to a driver who had the smell of alcohol on the breath or a beer in the hand? Of course not.
These offenders should all receive tickets, with no exception.
Those drivers are a hazard on the road, and none of us should be endangered by them.
Carl H. Tuttle
Vancouver
