Letters for June 29, 2006

Redevelopment
Re: “City taking frugal course” (Newslines, CN&R, June 15):

Thanks for your recent coverage of the Chico Redevelopment Agency (RDA). I hope you will continue to research and report on redevelopment activities. It is a billion-dollar story that affects all Chico residents.

Redevelopment funds are an important financial tool for upgrading deteriorating infrastructure and for increasing affordable housing availability. Since 1980, the Chico RDA has spent approximately $120 million on various projects. The RDA has also approved five bond sales with a current debt of approximately $240 million, all without voter approval.

The debt is paid by diverting property tax revenues from other government agencies. Next year $25 million will be diverted, including $3.5 million from the city general fund. These diversions will increase every year for the life of the debt. The total loss to the city will approach $150 million, funds that could be used for public safety, potholes and parks.

The RDA has overspent the recent bond sale ($65 million), and the city is faced with millions in substandard infrastructure. Obviously, some decisions must be made and voters must be informed. The answer is continued coverage by the media, and involvement with the Citizens Redevelopment Oversight Committee.

The oversight committee was established by the City Council in January. It has been meeting since March to establish a forum to provide information to the community and to ensure that the council will hear the public’s voice. To learn more about Chico’s RDA, and express your opinion, visit the committee’s Web site at www.chicorda.com.

Bob Best
Chico

Café chat
Re: “Go with the Flo” (Chow, CN&R, June 15):

We appreciated the article praising the gastronomic virtues and comfortable ambience of Café Flo. “Flo” tops our list of great local eateries that exemplify the “Chico experience"—artful, comforting and tasty.

However, it was apparent that the writer was not familiar with the Gardner family and/or was so concerned about gaining weight that he unintentionally misled the reader with his description of the Gardner sisters as “quirky” and “blunt.” More appropriate adjectives to describe the female side of the Gardner family—Mama Flo included—are: hard-working, resourceful, empathetic and talented.

These warm and friendly women have created a spot where you can feel simultaneously connected, entertained and full. Kudos to the Gardner women!

Pam Figge and Steve Scarborough
Paradise

In a roundabout way
At traditional intersections, severe high-speed crashes are common—right angle, left turn, and head-on. Roundabouts eliminate these kinds of crashes because vehicles approach roundabouts more slowly and are all traveling in the same direction.

Surveys of actual roundabouts show that converting intersections to roundabouts reduces injury crashes by 80 percent and all crashes by 40 percent. Vehicle delay is reduced by up to 89 percent and stops by 56 percent. Roundabouts are safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

A recent study of missed opportunities on 10 urban interchanges shows roundabouts would have reduced vehicle delays by 62 percent to 72 percent, cutting gas usage and pollution.

Roundabouts are cheaper to build and maintain, look better, improve traffic flow and save many the pain and suffering from unnecessary injuries.

Readers who wants to check these facts can go to www.roundaboutsusa.com for the details of research and the study of real installations. Government, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and traffic management experts everywhere have produced reports and statistics that verify these statements.

Chico needs to improve its traffic congestion. Don’t let those who do not know but feel free to “mouth off” discourage the enlightened planners and local politicians who are trying to do the right thing for most of us who use the roads.

Alan G. Gair
Chico

‘Patriots of protest’
On my annual Memorial Day walk through Chico Cemetery, it struck me that there are more ways than one to demonstrate our patriotism. One way is to attend ceremonies where speeches extolling our national virtues serve up the same self-congratulatory assurance that we are the greatest, most powerful nation on Earth, a beacon to light the way for others, a nation beloved of God whose brave soldiers have laid down their lives in defense of our freedom. And when the dull warmth of complacent satisfaction has settled in, we can comfortably retreat to the annual family barbecue and put the whole matter out of mind.

An alternate demonstration of patriotism forgoes the comfort of denial and admits the obvious harm done by our national pursuit of self-interest. Actively protesting our nation’s foreign policy is hard work, unpopular, and even dangerous. I hope that the patriots of protest will sustain the courage to speak out though others remain silent and disapproving. I hope they continue to keep watch on local, national and international issues, writing letters of protest to editors and elected officials, never surrendering the right to dissent, resisting the current government’s arrogant assault on the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of free speech and privacy.

Karen Laslo
Chico

‘Stop digging’
Of course we are not going to pull out of Iraq at any time in the foreseeable future. We aren’t going to “surrender,” “retreat,” “wobble,” “wave a white flag” or “cut and run.”

These bumper sticker slogans are leading our unreasoning, pseudo-patriotic Republican legislators and red-state Americans to oppose any rational discussion of disengagement from the catastrophic mess created by King George and his cohorts. They have no plan but to enrich defense (war) contractors and “stay the course” to disaster—i.e. civil war, more casualties and bankruptcy of the American economy.

When a person or country has dug itself into a hole, it’s time to stop digging. This might be a good bumper sticker slogan for the Democrats to use in upcoming elections: “STOP DIGGING!”

Victor M. Corbett
Chico

Enloe’s big day
Like a sometime surfer who found a bottle on the beach, curiosity caused me to pop the cork (the Internet vote of no confidence in Enloe’s hospital administration). The genie that poured forth surprised me, but grew greater as I watched. I had no scores to settle nor grudges to grate, but I felt the helplessness and hopelessness of those who I once worked with and cared so well for me as a patient. The board of trustees was complacent and completely confident in the administration, and painfully slow to accept what should have been clear long before.

The resignation Tuesday of the leadership of the Enloe board of trustees and administration is completely appropriate. I wish them all well. For those wonderful health care professionals, physicians, nurses and others who left Enloe and our community because this came too late, I am so sorry.

Enloe is an institution of excellence because of those who work within. Its recovery will be rapid.

Doug Benson, M.D.
Chico