Letters for March 20

Nobody wants empty streets

I understand Sheldon Jackson’s frustration with the vagrancy, the narcotics trafficking and individuals coping with mental crisis who roam through downtown.

My question is, what is the conservative plan? If city officials followed Jackson’s advice completely and swept downtown clean, then what? Convert empty offices and retail space to housing? For whom?

The very people Jackson et al vilify are the ones most likely to consider residing downtown. Progressives are also most likely to open a business there. They are the very locals who own the businesses that draw visitors into downtown from Riverfront Park and the adjacent event complexes.

Spokane needs a progress-focused plan to keep and potentially invigorate downtown business.

How about permanently closing a street, replacing an asphalt lot with garden residences or a seasonal free trolley running between Riverfront, Corbin and Manito parks? Spokane must undertake bold transformative solutions (Expo ’74/Riverfront Park) because decline is the alternative. City politicians and business leaders must work together for the common good and not for the extractive benefit of individual investors.

Yes, we all want safe streets, but nobody wants forebodingly empty streets.

Ken Yates

Spokane

Town hall lacked class

I attended Monday’s town hall with (freshman) Congressman Michael Baumgartner, presented by the Democracy and Discourse Committee. Technically, it was supposed to be a “conversation” with the congressman.

It wasn’t. It was taken over, by a large percentage of radical, screaming, booing, disrespectful, angry, but sadly, mostly senior citizens who embarrassed the entire Spokane County with their behavior.

I am a senior myself. Who’s paying these people, or who’s recruiting them and taking all the tickets to get these events inundated with such angry, hateful people? This was not generic.

I’ve also studied the news, for many years, and watched my tax dollars be spent way beyond this country’s means, to many NGOs, countries, agencies other than here in America. We didn’t know where that money was going. Now, we’re finding out. I hope people see and understand that.

Crime is on the rise. Laws of this country should be followed, prosecuted. All laws. That includes those relating to immigration, as well as women’s rights. Is it too much to ask that girls have the right to privacy in their locker rooms and bathrooms? Or that criminal aliens be removed from our country?

There’s a lot that needs changing in D.C., and Washington – 55% of Spokane County voted for that change; more than 60% voted for Congressman Baumgartner. The “party” that evening did not reflect that, and that was sad. It was not a conversation. It was a progressive, liberal, hateful rumble.

John Scherling

Spokane

Baumgartner offered no hope

Our community is not unlike most communities in America. Due to the current dismantling of our government, most American’s are scared, anxious and concerned about our future and the future of our kids and our grandkids. I attended Michael Baumgartner’s town hall meeting held at Whitworth on Monday hoping that he could provide some hope. He did the exact opposite.

Baumgartner disrespected everyone in the room when he announced that those in attendance did not represent Eastern Washington. When asked about Social Security, his response was, “We aren’t going to talk about it here.” A concerned constituent explained she had never experienced anything like the current POTUS announcing invading the Panama Canal, taking Greenland and making Canada the 51st state. Baumgartner’s response was, “If Canada was the 51st state, Republicans would never be voted in office again.” Suddenly, I was all for making Canada the 51st state.

Eastern Washington farmers are in financial trouble. Medicaid and SNAP losses will bring real harm to our communities. Public education is in peril, jobs are being lost, passenger planes are crashing due to the loss of air traffic controllers, and immigrants are being violently adducted.

But yet Baumgartner thinks those who attended the town hall do not represent Eastern Washington. It’s clear Baumgartner doesn’t represent Eastern Washington, or our values.

Sami Perry

Spokane