Letters to the Editor 8-27-15

Kiwanis steps up
Editor:  The Healdsburg Kiwanis Club is encouraged by and highly supportive of the desire on the part of local businesses, citizens, the city council and the school administration to improve the playing fields at Recreation Park, Healdsburg Elementary School and Healdsburg High School. We believe that a healthy body and healthy mind are strongly linked and that the youth and citizens of Healdsburg deserve the very best athletic fields we can provide.
With this strong belief, the Healdsburg Kiwanis Club is pledging $10,000 to continue the playing field upgrades at Recreation Park, and to begin upgrades at Healdsburg High School. We want to join with our local businesses, citizens, service groups, the city council and the school board to make these field upgrades a reality. The improvements will save significant amounts of water, will create safer, more inclusive playing surfaces and will benefit all members of our community. We are Healdsburg and we can make this happen.
Dick Bugarske, Healdsburg Kiwanis
There must be a solution
Editor: I was sad and disappointed when I read about the closing of the 4Cs Child Development Center in Healdsburg. It seemed like we were headed in the right direction after The Portrait of Sonoma County was commissioned by the Board of Supervisors and published. I was struck with the emphasis the report put on the necessity of early education and child care. Now that 4Cs is no longer providing quality affordable child care here, the entire community of Healdsburg will suffer. Not only does the center help children learn tools to support them academically and socially when they enter kindergarten, but full-day child care enables low-income parents to hold jobs and not have to rely on welfare.
According to the Trib article, the Boy Scouts wanted the child development center removed. It was indicated that the governing board, the Rosenberg Committee, had no problem with the child development center. I understand that scouting is dedicated to being good citizens. It seems that part of being a good citizen is learning to share when it is for the greater good. Just like the little engine in the story, Healdsburg has always seemed to me to be “The Little Town That Could.” With a little thought, I’m sure that there is a solution to this problem that would enable the Scouts and the 4Cs to continue doing their good works. In this way the entire community wins.
Judy Edmonds
Healdsburg
Misplaced concern
Editor: As an expression of personal concern, Gabriel A. Fraire’s column of July 23 is clear. If it was meant as a rationale for general concern, it is inadequate, requiring considerable research to render his views credible. Money has influenced elections since the founding of the country. Fraire’s assertion makes the impression that progressives are poor and super wealth is the exclusive domain of right wing business leaders. Even a quick review of revealed contributions demonstrates huge gifts from all points on the political spectrum. Liberal: Steyer and Conway. Conservative: Koch and Adelson. The President and Hillary Clinton have been spending time in California raising money but certainly not in the homes of Republicans.
Even more damaging to Fraire’s thesis is the fact that Adelson’s $100 million did not produce a winner. It turns out many super rich are far more skilled at making money than they are at picking candidates. Look at a map of the country and note that red and blue states are pretty even by population, tilted toward Democrats. The chances of some right wing grand plan changing that mix is extremely slim.
The firing of the chancellor of the University of North Carolina, allegedly for his political views, is likely an exception. Close review of the vulnerability of South East Conference University presidents shows that a losing football or basketball program will get you fired. When it comes to power on those campuses, it resides with the athletic community (this should scare you more than anything at UNC).
As far as big gifts or grants are concerned, faculty still control the curriculum and use most of that money for productive research (unless specifically directed to projects or teams); UNC could not have become one of the nation’s top research universities by being a puppet for right wing donors.
When Fraire observes that California may fall prey to big money from right wing interests, he obviously has not reviewed any data about the state’s policies or incumbents. One party has had a majority in the legislature and the Congressional delegation for decades. Among their achievements are larger class sizes in public schools, inadequate funding for one of the country’s greatest public universities and a $6.5 billion bridge (originally estimated at $1.2 billion) that took 23 years to complete while endangering the public the entire time. Now there is concern about the bridge’s safety.
Fraire and the rest of us should be frightened, not by the influence of conservative donors but by our collective failure across the political spectrum to demand competence, transparency and an honest effort at dealing with our many systemic issues.
Bob Freelen and Tom Colbert
Healdsburg
Time for rent control
Editor: For a long time local rent increases have not reflected local wages. Wages have stagnated, while rents have now increased to unsustainable levels. Healdsburg rents are pushed up by the tourist and wine industries on the one hand, while on the other wages are kept down for a huge number of low-wage earners who serve these industries and increasingly cannot afford to live in our town.  
Having been pressured to take action by large numbers of renters and their supporters, the city council has made an effort to ease the problem. Together with some of the landlords, the city decided to request that owners voluntarily not raise rents more than 10 percent a year.
At this point, this is a toothless effort to prevent the rental crisis from continuing, and indeed escalating. The allowed 10 percent rent increase per year, indefinitely, is devoid of any attempt to realistically relate rental rates to income levels. To suggest that rents can be permitted to increase 10 percent a year is to engage, at best, in illusionary thinking.
Renters can simply not absorb a 10 percent increase each year. Yet, there are no laws in place they can look to for help. The laissez-faire market preachers and their adherents among us are blinded by an ideology devoid of any moral attributes. That’s why we need to create a legal basis for some form of rent control. Then we will stop wasting our time, the city council can turn to its other work and our community will remain the diverse community most of us want to live in.
Heidi Marino
Healdsburg
Ban it now
Editor: Tell me it ain’t so – but I guess it is, according to Ray Holley’s coverage of the City Council meeting last week. Thank you to Mayor McCaffery and Ms. Mansell for their common sense (based on science) concerning Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. We should “consider” banning it? Folks, Google “scientific research re: Roundup” and then you tell me. We can neither afford to talk about it later nor hope for it to go away. That won’t happen.
I pulled up four articles: Natural Society, World Health Organization’s publication The Lancet, Scientific American and the Institute of Science in Society. These are all known and reputable scientific sources of research. What do they say about Roundup? The main ingredient is glyphosate which, along with diazinon and malathion, are category 2A – “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
All of my research studies agree with this finding. Moving right along, The Institute of Science in Society continues, “Widespread and massive application of glyphosate herbicides (Roundup) has resulted in almost ubiquitous contamination of the environment.” In 2010 the publication reported a dramatic increase in: birth defects, spontaneous abortion, infertility, cancers, Down Syndrome and a host of other diseases. Read the research for yourself and then tell me we shouldn’t ban it now. We can talk later, but it’s not going away unless we act now; the sooner the better.
Judith Sanderson
Healdsburg
Thanks to community
Editor: ret.ro.fit HOME is closing our brick and mortar shop on Center Street on August 30. I feel privileged and grateful to have been a part of the Center Street community for the past two-and-a-half years. I genuinely feel that the store has been a place in our community for folks to congregate and discuss issues or to stop in for a visit or shopping. Look for the business to continue on Etsy and with pop-up shops from time to time. Many thanks to a great landlord, Clara Schieffer, and for the community that made us feel welcomed and valuable. Remember to continue supporting independent retailers in Healdsburg.
Michelle Schultz, owner ret.ro.fitHOME, Healdsburg