No excuse for unsafe cyclist
One of the gems of Anacortes is the Tommy Thompson Trail. It is shared by walkers, runners, Rollerbladers, and cyclists young and old.
Recently, I was mistaken for someone who was involved in an incident where a family walking the trail in early November was verbally assaulted and passed in a high-speed, unsafe manner by a very tall male cyclist with a mustache, wearing electric blue tights. I was not that cyclist.
There is no excuse for this type of cycling behavior. It puts people at risk of injury, scares the children involved and upsets the parents. It also gives a bad reputation to the cycling community.
Cyclists on the trail should be considerate of others and use common safety sense: Ride on the right-hand side of the trail at reduced speed; politely announce intentions to overtake slower trail users; and pass on the left giving wide berth. If necessary, dismount and walk your bicycle around small children who might stray into your path.
This incident has not been the first time that this bicyclist has verbally assaulted people using the trail. In an effort to bring it to an end, I suggest that those in our community who have experienced his rude behavior file complaints with the Anacortes Police Department.
Charlie Schultz
President, Skagit Bicycle Club
Anacortes
SVH, don’t make endorsements
Your recent editorial postmortem on the PUD proposition prompts me to write. I have long opposed the practice of media endorsements during elections. It is for the people to decide who should represent them and what outcome they want on ballot measures, not for the media.
The Skagit Valley Herald serves the public when it reports thoroughly on candidates’ qualifications and positions, and on the differing viewpoints for ballot issues. It is inappropriate, and in some cases a conflict of interest, for the newspaper to use its power to influence the outcome of an election by making editorial endorsements.
The PUD proposition is a case in point. The phantom “citizens group” operated by the consulting firm PSE hired to run its opposition campaign spent $23,666.42 on advertising in the Skagit Valley Herald during the campaign. This figure does not even include the dozens of full page “image ads” PSE paid for directly, sometimes as many as three in one issue.
It is difficult to look at those figures and not question how the Skagit Valley Herald’s endorsement of a no vote on the proposition could be remotely unbiased. In fact, the appearance that the endorsement was bought is unavoidable.
I urge your editorial staff to prevent such appearances by abandoning the practice of making political endorsements and instead serve the community by fully informing us on all sides of political contests.
Christie Stewart Stein
Mount Vernon
Republican side lost; get over it
In a Nov. 18 letter to the editor, Carl Loeb complains that the opinion article by Norah Vincent printed by the Skagit Valley Herald on Nov. 12 is dripping with bile and unfair to Gov. Palin. Mr. Loeb calls it drivel.
If Mr. Loeb thinks Norah Vincent’s piece is drivel, then he should check out this. Below is a quote from Sarah Palin (aka the Word Wizard of Wasilla) gleaned from another opinion article by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.
“My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.”
Say what?
Does any reader here understand that? Can anyone diagram that sentence like we used to do in the dark ages when we were in fifth grade? And this woman wanted to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? Well, at least now we have a president-elect who can actually speak the English language.
As Dick Cavet wrote recently, “A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.”
My advice to disgruntled Republicans: Your side lost; now get over it.
Keith Fisher
Mount Vernon
Property assessment shocking
I’m a Sedro-Woolley resident, and recently we received our new property value assessment from the county. What a shock! I have lived in the same house for more than 30 years and always kept the place in good condition. But I didn’t realize the county would come along and value it higher than the market sale value.
It seems that when the economy is struggling, jobs are being lost at an alarming rate, banks are foreclosing on many homes and the prices of real estate is dropping — not only in our area but across the country — that our county government would have taken this into consideration.
I must have missed the part in the last election about raising taxes for the middle class! Oh yeah, that was just the federal income tax, not the property tax, sales tax, vehicle tax, gas tax — and the list goes on.
I’m sure the county needs the revenue much more than the struggling citizens. It only increased my value by $64,100. How about yours?
Robert Gustafson
Sedro-Woolley
