Letters to the Editor 2-20-14

Car friendly Sebastopol
Editor: Robert Beauchamp writes about how Sebastopol is a disgraceful pedestrian plight (“Pedestrian plight,” Feb. 13). He says that our city perpetually flounders with cheap talk in the black hole of inaction.
We need to look at the positive side of Sebastopol. It could be worse for us regular walkers. The City of Sebastopol has spent millions of dollars during the last few years making Sebastopol safer for pedestrians. Street Smart Sebastopol has made walking in Sebastopol much safer and more relaxing than when we raised our children here in the 1990s. The plaza, which is at the hub of two California state highways, provides a place for people to meet and rest and connects the businesses of the Whole Foods complex and the movie theatres to main street businesses. People love our noisy plaza and appreciate summer concerts and Christmas tree lighting, let alone our farmer’s market. Just check out the plaza any nice day and you will see all ages hanging out or tending children. The Barlow, the raw sheet metal shopping center, has none of the messy problems that residents and schools bring. It also doesn’t have the idiosyncrasies and wear of a gradually evolved neighborhood. We hope that the Barlow succeeds beyond its current focus of businesses that sell mainly alcohol and coffee.
Our city is inextricably bound to being a major highway intersection. This causes our heavy traffic but it brings cultural diversity and improves commerce. Our city businesses could not survive on city resident patronage alone, they depend on the people who drive into town. Of course we would like to reroute the highways out of town and pedestrianize the center, but who will pay for this and who will invite the newly relocated highway into their back yard?
The Sebastopol Library serves over 40,000 West County citizens. The people of West County use our library disproportionately more than the rest of our county. Our library is a place to download free books, keep up on magazines, newspapers, music and movies, use the Internet or borrow a book .The library is a meeting place for families, students, clubs and the many dedicated volunteers. Programs at the library bring in new ideas to our community and showcase local arts and music.
The Lantern organization is beginning the planning process and the fund raising to build a new Sebastopol Library to meet the information and social needs of the 21st century.
If you are interested in helping with the planning or giving a tax deductible donation to a new library fund, then ask your Sebastopol librarian.  All the people who make our library work want the library to be open more hours. This will happen when county funding increases.
We need to keep our town car friendly to help our neighbors in West County who support our local businesses and use our library.
Clark Mitchel
Sebastopol Library Advisory Board
Sebastopol
Blighted crossroads
Editor: As tenants of the area’s new crown jewel of commerce, The Barlow, strive to succeed in attracting visitors and badly needed revenues to sustain their new businesses, it strikes me as unfortunate that the long abandoned Pellini Chevrolet site remains an enormous eyesore.
As locals, we’ve perhaps grown so used to seeing it, that perhaps we no longer even notice.
But put yourself in the place of a tourist or prospective new resident pulling into our city and this blight being your first impression. Would you stop? Not a particularly favorable impression to say the least.
I have seen or heard very little regarding the status of negotiations between the developer of the proposed CVS-Chase Bank complex and the brilliant city planners who have sadly created this mess.
Do they not realize the financial damage that this is inflicting on our area? Do they not understand the logic that a drive thru at a pharmacy is not for people looking to order burgers, but is there for those in need of picking up prescriptions and that this convenience affords an ill person the means to not have to get out of their car?
Six years and counting.
John Drady
Sebastopol
Poison at the park?
Editor: Ragle dog park is my favorite park when I return to visit Sebastopol, which was my hometown for 23 years. Morrie, my 16 lb. Jack Russell Terrier, loves the small dog hour and I love being back where I coached WESCO soccer for many years. My youngest daughter, Ali, had cancer when she was eight and soccer was her best medicine. She told me she would visualise the soccer ball as her cancer when she kicked it. If you saw her tenacious playing and her relentless spirit on the field it was so fun to watch. Now  that she is 26, healthy and happy, I know she did kick more than a soccer ball.
This letter is twofold. Being the mother of a cancer survivor made me acutely aware of what is in food as well as the environment. I was aware of all the pesticides used on many soccer fields over the years, and I thought Ragle was pesticide/herbicide free. Morrie and I visited the dog park two Saturdays ago in torrential rain (yeah) and I noticed a large area to the side of the shade tent was all brown grass as well as a small area on the uphill side. It looked like it had been sprayed with glysophate, commonly known as Roundup. I found this very disturbing but as a “tourist” am passing the torch to the local dog park lovers to follow up to make sure we are not exposing our loved pets to this toxic chemical. Dogs feet secrete pheromones as well as absorb through their paws. Glysophate is everywhere these days, in our food from genetically engineered foods, used as a ripening agent on crops, sprayed on roadways, byways, used extensively in household and commercial landscaping practices, as well as now found in the urine of most people. Our dogs don’t mind weeds, Morrie loves to munch on a few, and I am perfectly willing to bring my garden gloves to pull a few out on our next visit if there is some cosmetic or other reason they were sprayed. If somehow I am wrong, and in the middle of winter with green grasses and weeds all around these large brown areas were from some other natural cause, then forgive me. In either case please be an advocates for all small creatures, dogs and children alike, and keep their play areas full of joy and frolicking fun without the addition of poison sprays.
Cheryl Levie
Ashland, Ore.