Pocketing the profits
As a thousand truckloads of logs roll down the highway, I cannot help but wonder if someone isn’t getting very rich from the harvest in the burn areas.
William R. Hillman, Kelseyville
Restroom choice
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about allowing either sex to use the public restroom of their choice. I personally don’t mind allowing women to use the men’s room, so long as they raise the seat when they are done.
John Smith, Kelseyville
Rosenthal Stands Out At Community Forum
I had the privilege of attending a recent candidates’ forum for District 1 Supervisor in Middletown. Although all of the candidates spoke well, Monica Rosenthal stood out as the most dedicated and best prepared person to effectively represent South County residents on the County Board of Supervisors.
Rosenthal impressed me with her positive approach and forward-thinking ideas. She is a “let’s-get-it-done” kind of leader who focuses on achieving real results. That’s the kind of representation our South County communities need to successfully recover and rebuild.
Monica Rosenthal has earned my support and my vote for County Supervisor. I hope she will earn yours as well.
Kathey Crothers, Hidden Valley Lake
Human insanity
As I sat and watched the nightly news, it was giving praise that Gov. Brown was signing a new tobacco law that would do two things: raise the cigarette tax by $2 a pack and make it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase tobacco products.
Wow the boneheads in Sacramento get more money they can waste. Secondly — 21, yeah don’t smoke, but go save our country from the terrorists (being in the military for those of YOU who don’t get it). Oh, lead is bad for you also.
Then in the next segment of news comes gee whiz were all so blankin’ smart we have enough signatures to put recreational smoking of marijuana on the ballot, Heck we really should be proud of that, really, to understand we get stupider and stupider. Oh just what is recreational smoking? I’m really perplexed on that one, do we pick side and see who can smoke the most in a few minutes or do you throw the joints at each other? We could call that one dodge pot.
Oh I’m just too old. But ya know I grew up in the sixties, so I just couldn’t get why it’s needed now.
Dale Minjack. Lakeport
Solutions needed
During the recent Town Hall meeting on Public Safety, Police Chief Rasmussen presented an excellent breakdown of the problems facing Lakeport. Primarily there are three main issues: the inability of the city to pay police officers’ salaries competitive with surrounding counties, the policy of the state that has released many prison inmates into our area, many of whom have psychiatric problems that are untreated, and the reclassification of many drug and theft crimes to misdemeanors which leave criminals on the street who would formerly been incarcerated.
Crime continues to rise as our community struggles to maintain the officers they routinely pay to train only to lose them to higher paying jobs elsewhere. This not only impedes the ability of the police to meet the needs of the town, it is a cycle of throwing money away when Lakeport repeatedly shoulders the costs of training an officer who will leave shortly to a more lucrative position elsewhere. Such a hemorrhage in the budget cannot go on, nor can Lakeport Police keep the community safe with only five officers on the street.
It should also be noted that the pre-existing homeless problem has only been exacerbated by the early release from prison programs resulting from Prop 47. The extremely high unemployment in Lake County, the fires this summer that left renters particularly hard hit since few had insurance and chronically mentally ill have all contributed to this human tragedy. No matter what the cause of homelessness, the end result is the same; human suffering and a societal challenge.
Although the town meeting was presented as an opportunity to discuss what could be done, the April 25th meeting devolved into a lecture with almost no opportunity for attendees to offer solutions. This was particularly problematic since when an audience questioner asked what was the city administrators’ plan to deal with the issues. The response was the admission that there was no plan. Another question asked if the city was willing to review its own budget to see if small reductions in administrative costs could be made to bring police salaries in line with surrounding communities. That was dismissed immediately.
At no time did the meeting ever solicit input from the community members for suggestions for a plan of action.
The budget of $20,923,005.00 is the key to addressing the policing dilemma. It would take only .5% reduction of expenditures in that budget to bring Lakeport Police salaries on a par with surrounding counties. While the city has been trying to cut costs, it defies logic that a mere half of a percent of cost cutting cannot be found in a budget of nearly twenty-one million dollars. A half of one percent! Has anyone worked with any budget where such a percentage could not be trimmed? Taken into consideration with the cost of NOT keeping our trained police and the costs of rising crime to the community, this option must be considered.
Meredith Lahmann, Lakeport
