Protecting kids, not passing buck

A recent editorial cartoon published in the Skagit Valley Herald represented gang members at Mount Vernon High School as ravening bulldogs that are being expelled from Mount Vernon High School and forced onto the community.

The implication is that MVHS is somehow passing its responsibility for these gang members to the community by expelling any and all at a whim. The further implication is that this issue is somehow our fault.

The fact of the matter is that we retain all children in our system if it is at all possible. The number of gang members that we have on campus, and our relentless efforts to guide them to more productive paths should be evident to anyone who visits MVHS.

However, when we are presented with a student who creates a threat to other students, we must act on it. If you think about it, it would be irresponsible to keep these threats within our schools, as it is our responsibility to keep the children of Mount Vernon safe. When I first looked at that cartoon, I imagined that rabid bulldog in the classroom attacking children. This is exactly what we seek to avoid.

The implication that Mount Vernon schools are passing their problem off onto the community is exactly backward. Gang violence is a societal problem, created by poverty and social conditions that don’t support our children’s healthy development. Schools didn’t create this problem. We do our best to deal with the issues these problems create, and to educate the children of Mount Vernon under sometimes difficult circumstances.

Rather than casting stones at those who are trying to save children from gang violence through providing them with opportunities for something better, we should accept our mutual, community responsibility to end the conditions that lead to gang violence.

Paul Hope
Education Association president
Mount Vernon

Even mayor misunderstands taxes

I am often reminded how misunderstood the property tax system in Washington is by our elected officials. Sedro-Woolley Mayor Mike Anderson displayed his lack of knowledge in his saber-rattling Nov. 17 letter regarding property assessments.

Mayor Anderson appears to have the illusion that assessments are increased to raise additional revenue for the county. This is simply untrue. Assessments change only to provide equity for the taxpayers in our county by representing market value to the highest degree possible. Mayor Anderson is much more responsible for the amount of tax paid by his constituents when he submits his budget to the City Council for approval. That amount does not change when assessments increase or decrease.

As an employee of the assessor, I take offense with Anderson’s implication that assessments are arbitrary. The assessor’s staff has spent the past year inspecting and analyzing each property and area sales data to provide the most accurate reflection of value resources allow. The result of these efforts is measured primarily by the assessment ratio, which is the average level of assessments to selling prices.

The ratio for the Sedro-Woolley and Concrete districts this year is 91.73 percent compared to the county low of 88.46 percent last year. Through the hard work of his staff, the assessor has achieved an all-county ratio between 90 percent and 92 percent for more than 10 consecutive years.

This is just one of the eight statistical measures of assessment accuracy and equity that is judged each year by the state Legislature, and Skagit County is the second best office in the state over that period.

Dave Thomas
Burlington

Real estate boom and bust

The free market did not fail, because we do not have a free market, and none has existed since FDR. This is the shortened history lesson on the real estate boom and bust.

• In 1938, FDR creates Fannie Mae, with a Democratic House and Senate.

• In 1968, LBJ says we need more home ownership for poor people.

• In 1970, Richard Nixon creates Freddie Mac, with a Democratic House and Senate.

• In 1977, Jimmy Carter passes the Community Redevelopment Act (CRA), with a Democratic House and Senate, to expand government involvement with banks to have more ownership of houses by poor people. After the CRA, the term “sub-prime mortgage” first appeared.

• From 1980 to 1992, it was mostly ignored by Reagan and Bush.

• In 1992, Clinton starts pushing the CRA and has the federal regulators lean hard on banks to write sub-prime loans. Banks are reluctant, since they have to hold most of the paper (as only nongovernment investors will buy them).

• In 1997, Clinton orders Fannie and Freddie to start buying sub-prime mortgages, with a Republican Senate and House, the boom starts.

• In 2002, the five major investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns, et al) convince regulators to allow 40 percent reserves instead of the commercial bank limit of 12 percent reserves, with a Republican Senate and House.

• In 2003, Bush tries to put limits on Fannie and Freddie but fails (largely due to pressure from Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd) with a Republican Senate and House.

• In 2007, the bust — and the rest is now known.

Bush did not cause this mess but was complicit in that he fiddled while Rome burned.

One last tidbit: It has been reported on CNN and a couple of other “news” channels that of the 11 million or so foreclosures during the past four years, 5 million were from illegal immigrants. They added enormously to the boom and the bust.

Dean Brittain
Mount Vernon

Help stop forced fluoridation

Does fluoride in your drinking water sound like a bad idea? It should! And you should speak up and let your county commissioners (the county Board of Health) and your PUD commissioners know that you refuse to be forced to ingest this toxic substance.

The fluoride that will be going into our water is a toxic, commonly contaminated industrial waste very often laced with arsenic, lead, mercury and more. We will all be forced to drink this toxic cocktail, bathe in it, cook with it, feed it to our pets and pollute our environment with it.

Water fluoridation has been found to increase risk of disease and disorders, such as bone cancer, brain impairment, ADHD, brittle teeth and bones, hypothyroidism, infertility, kidney disease, toxic shock, and a host of others. People especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of fluoride are the very ones targeted by this fluoride mandate — children and the elderly. The potential harmful effects of fluoride on these populations are chilling.

Fluoridated water is not the answer. It’s not healthy! Are we going to sit by, do nothing while we are slowly poisoned and pray that we never get sick from it? Speak up!

Write, call and meet with your county commissioners, who ordered the PUD to fluoridate the water. Tell them that you do not want to risk the health of your children just because some people with deep pockets think that fluoride is the only answer. Have your voice be heard. It’s not too late to stop forced fluoridation.

Brenna Sterling-Borgognoni
Mount Vernon

Election’s over; time to be positive

Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States of America. For those who voted for him and those who did not, this is a fact now.

I urge all readers to please read the Nov. 16 letter in Skagit Valley Herald written by David Bates (who did not vote for Mr. Obama). I commend him for having the courage to write this letter. We must heed his advice and go forward with a positive attitude.

Nitin Vasavada
Mount Vernon

Ferry service best use of money?

Skagit County is cutting costs in the current economic crisis — but, curiously, not everywhere.  For some unexplained reason, the county wants to dump more money into expanding Guemes Island ferry service when other needs are being stripped to the bone.  Check out its proposed priorities:

• All departments: 10 percent cut.

• Food for poor mothers and children: cut.

• Park services: cut.

• County staff positions: cut.

• Health department personnel: cut.

• Repair failed roadway on Guemes Island: cut.

• Pay raises for county officials: cut.

• Sheriff department vacancies: cut.

• Extra security at the courthouse: cut.

• County inmates jailed in Okanogan: released.

• New Guemes Island ferry terminal building: fund it.

• Permanently expand weeknight ferry service: fund it.

What is the pressing need for this costly expansion of ferry runs? Expanding ferry service so that Guemes Islanders can dine out on a weekday evening seems to be a higher priority for Skagit County than food for children, keeping inmates in jail and fixing failed roads.

Perhaps, the county believes expanding the Guemes ferry system is the solution to flood control. It is especially crazy when you consider that the majority of Guemes Islanders don’t want the added service.

Is more Guemes Island ferry service your priority? Tell the commissioners now.

Joseph Miller
Anacortes

Adoption picture was inspiring

The greatest and most inspiring picture I’ve ever seen on your front page was the picture of Dave and Kimberly Sitton holding their adopted grandson in their arms. It’s a good world!

Tom Wynn
Anacortes

Crying foul to property tax hikes

In regard to the enormous property tax hike this year, I have to say foul! The county assessor is saying that my property value has increased $60,000 in the past year. I don’t quite understand that mentality when the bottom has dropped out of the housing market nationwide.

Raising taxes in a recession is ridiculous.The federal government needs to cut back, along with automakers, states and counties.Are we — voters and blue-collar workers — the only ones who need to cut back so government can continue its shoddy ways of doing business?

I think not! Speak up, Americans.

Willis Moore
Concrete