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Secret Harbor kids need our help

I attended the public hearing regarding Secret Harbor and am completely embarrassed by this community. All I heard from the community were questions and concerns about the safety of our town. Secret Harbor is wanting to move in six children.

In case people have forgotten to look around, this town is not sheltered from violence. I encourage you all to walk through town and not just see but look at what is around you. There are gang tags. There are sex offenders. A man was shot in the face in Burlington recently. We are not sheltered; our community is not above violence.

I cannot believe that these children would disrupt the lives of this entire town. I am a single mom whose home would be right next door to Secret Harbor. My only concern was that these kids have the proper supervision. We have been assured that they will be supervised and also that they are not sex offenders.

I heard comments asking who is going to pay for these kids to go to school. I was under the impression that all children had the right to an education. Personally, I will be happy to have my tax money spent on an education and rehabilitation program for these kids, one that would give them a shot at a descent life. I’d rather that than pay for them to either be on the streets or in prison when they turn 18 and are kicked out of the system to fend for themselves with no life skills.

It is well-known that children heal faster than adults. So why not help them when they are more apt to respond? Also, let’s not forget that they are children. These kids did not ask for the life they were dealt. If we turn our backs on children, I’m afraid to see what’s next.

Serena Dills
Sedro-Woolley


Swinomish efforts deserve praise

Anyone interested in preserving and restoring salmon and steelhead in the Skagit River system should rush into the street, doff his or her cap and huzzah the Swinomish Tribe’s continuing and lonely fight to guarantee water for fish in our valley.

The tribe’s lawsuit against the state of Washington alleging the illegality of a 2006 water deal Skagit County commissioners cut on behalf of land developers with the timorous state Department of Ecology has, of course, provoked sobs of hurt from state and county officials weeping tears crocodilian.

Though the deal allowing the sinking of new wells that will suck water away from salmon-bearing streams is bad policy favoring land speculators, the suit goes after how the county brass and the DOE faint-hearted arrived at their pact in the first place.

Either the deal is legal or it’s not, and it’s right for an independent judge to settle the question.

Win or lose, the Swinomish Tribe deserves great public respect. It alone in the valley acts on behalf of salmonids, at great financial and public-relations cost. Environmentalists don’t. (Their silence is telling.) Anglers don’t. (They’re content to complain.) Commercial fishers don’t. (They moan a lot.) Other tribes are notable by their absence in such legal matters lately. The public’s ignorance about water and salmonids remains keen and constant.

As for officials, that’s what the suit’s about: Whether their rush to rub noses in the name of sprawl matches what the laws require.

Jack de Yonge
Concrete


Gregoire, tribes deal unethical

Such a deal!

In the latest of many examples whereby Chris Gregoire has been accused of using her position as governor of Washington to benefit her own interests, we now learn from an unlikely source (the Seattle P.I.) that she handed a few Indian tribes a gift worth between $40 million and $140 million.

In return, she received a nice little “Thank You” of $650,000 in hard cash contributions to her campaign for re-election and to the state Democratic Party.

If even the Post Intelligencer concludes that Gregoire has stepped over the boundary of propriety, how badly does this deal really stink?

On the surface that might seem like a dumb move by Gov. Gregoire. But of course the cost of the gift to the tribes isn’t real money that has to be paid out; it’s just a saving that the tribes get to keep in revenue from their casinos, which should have gone to the state treasury.

Well, yes, the money will have to be made up somehow because there were no corresponding cuts in the state budget, and that means taxpayers will have to dig a little deeper to foot the bills of our “great society.”

Maybe we should grant the governor a yearly opportunity to just reach in and take a million or so dollars from the treasury if she will quit making such deals with the tribes and other special-interest friends. It would certainly be to our benefit to do so.

Oh well. This isn’t really news; it is just further proof of the absence of ethics in politics and of the stupidity of the electorate.

Jack Arrington
Anacortes


Selfish to bring dump into town

Regarding the proposed garbage dump within Sedro-Woolley city limits:

Is it possible that we have in our midst people who are secretly using their elected seats to grease their own pockets by pushing for a garbage dump in the middle of Sedro-Woolley? Is it possible that the nationwide cancer of corruption also has spread into the council of our local decision-makers? Even the slightest suspicion should be enough to require these people to resign and have their businesses shunned.

There are proper places for everything, even transfer stations. There are locations where they may reward their communities with their fullest potential but the least negative impact. Perhaps such a location is in these people’s backyards? Our town is too nice of a place for this kind of arrogant, greedy and selfish behavior.

To be elected means to serve your community unselfishly — not to stuff your own pockets full!

Helge Andersson
Sedro-Woolley