Why no CRV center?
EDITOR: For over two years, I’ve been trying to get our city council to provide a CRV recycling center, as the only one we had packed up and moved away. Every day we buy drinks at our local food store and pay the CRV, but now the only way to recover these fees is to drive to Shiloh Road, about a 10-mile round trip, to cash in. The city says they have no money to do this and it’s not their responsibility.
Well, I disagree. Healdsburg residents should have a local CRV recycling to turn in their bottles and cans. I was told stores like Safeway can be fined up to $1,000 a day, if they don’t accept and pay the CRV back to their customers. I’ve tried and they say they don’t have the facility to do that. A real disconnect there. The city spends a ton of money on other things that benefit them, but to set up a recycling center is too much of a hassle and besides, it doesn’t benefit the tourists.
Lenny Siegel
Healdsburg
Children have rights
EDITOR: Contrary to a recent letter suggesting that children not be allowed to express their opinions on gun sales, I present an opposing point of view. I taught primary aged children for 30 years, and have reared a daughter. Choice has always been at the center of my teachings. You don’t ask a child if they want vegetables. You ask which they would prefer, beans or peas? You don’t ask if they want to wear a shirt. You ask if they prefer the blue or the orange. Household rules? Since we all have to live with them, let’s decide how together, within boundaries of safety.
No, children weren’t asked about legal age limits for driving, drinking or military service. Now, however, as they are the major targets for mass murders, I believe it’s time to listen. Since day one in school many of us have taught our students to stand tall, be counted, make well informed decisions. We taught how to make decisions rather than what they should believe.
The young people of Parkland believe they hold the key to preventing more murders, and they do. The adults making decisions for them today have failed miserably. The good news is that 4 million kids, aged 17, will turn 18 before the November elections and will be eligible to vote. Many are already pre-registered. I believe those children, who know what it’s like to be the target of gun violence, have every right to loudly voice their opinions.
Judith Sanderson
Healdsburg
Kudos for ‘Lost’
EDITOR: The Raven Players are doing a splendid job on “Lost in Yonkers,” a Neil Simon play that I had never seen before. The well-played characters in the Kurnitz family are complex and intriguing. Tragedy and humor co-exist, as in most families.
Jane St. Claire
Healdsburg
Community as developer
EDITOR: The premise under consideration recognizes that the current roles of our governing bodies, community members and developers are getting in the way of a future that benefits the whole community in multiple ways and at multiple levels. This premise proposes a system-wide reordering of political, social and business patterns that appear on the surface to be predetermined.
This premise asks: what are the current roles and how are they inhibiting new possibilities, what could those roles become and what is the work we need to do to get there?
The current roles:
Government: Determining and managing compliance to zoning and land use policies.
Developer: Seeking business opportunities that fit the perceived needs and policy criteria, with the overarching necessity to sell their vision to the community.
Community: Residents and small businesses have a marginal voice at the table, and generally experience their participation in the community engagement process to be inconsequential in affecting the final outcomes. The community usually shows up against a project, energetically organizing and protesting.
How can that combined negative energy become positive potential energy? How can we shift from polarizing patterns to collaborative patterns?
New roles:
Investor: The developers shift from the old developer to the new investor. They come to the community (not the governing bodies) with their investment offer, including profit requirements. They bring their knowledge and experience and act as trusted advisors to the community.
Community: The community as developer brings its vision and deeply felt needs into a collaborative and co-creative process with the investor.
Government: Government reaches its real potential in service to the community. Its role shifts from regulating and shepherding outcomes to facilitating a collaborative process.
The gap: Community doesn’t know how to be a developer or how to be developmental. Developers don’t know how to co-create with the community. Governing bodies can shift from enforcement to facilitative roles.
The transforming process: What would it take for the whole community to come together? An initial intensified investment of work and money, perhaps two years, for various facilitated gatherings and workshops, in order to develop capability and capacity in its new role. It will take an equal amount of time to change institutional cultures of the governing bodies, and it will take time for investors to discover new opportunities in Healdsburg.
Julian Cohen, Living Guild
Windsor
More love for Yonkers
EDITOR: Live theater! There’s nothing quite like sitting in a darkened theater and focusing on real, live people portraying real life situations. We were in the audience this past Sunday as the Raven Players presented Neil Simons’ Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Lost In Yonkers.” It was an outstanding performance. The play focuses on a dysfunctional family and displays how they are emotionally affected. At times emotionally brutal, funny, loving and poignant, the cast carried it through with flying colors. “Lost In Yonkers” plays its final weekend April 13-15. We highly recommend it.
Lew and Elaine Sbrana
Healdsburg
Missing Penelope
EDITOR: In the past few weeks we’ve lost Healdsburg’s literary laureate, Penelope LaMontagne, who was 70. I’m remembering her because she wrote wonderful poems about my sister, Suzanna Wellington, and my mother, Yvonne Horton, and that was lovely. Penny had at least two books of her poetry published, and she once wrote a haiku daily for a year. (A haiku is a very short poem written in specific form that originated in Japan.)
Penny’s love of life could be read in many of her poems, her joy of being on the river where she lived, her gardening. Penny loved to entertain and was an excellent cook. Lots of people knew her and lots will miss her.
Robyne Camp
Florida
