Email letters, June 13, 2012

By Staff
Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Sentinel should zoom in on Tomlinson’s expertise

Kudos to Chris Tomlinson for spotting a “smiley face” in a broken light fixture at the dump.

The Sentinel should do a “Week in the Life” feature on Tomlinson, since few of us have any idea how he finds all of his outstanding photos or what a photographer does with his time, apart from Chris’ obvious fondness for hiking in Utah and Colorado.

KURT NEUSWANGER
Grand Junction

Vet Center deserves gratitude for serving vets with PTSD

Thank God for the Vet Center in Grand Junction. Thanks to them, Viet Nam vets with post-traumatic stress disorder who were thrown under the bus by the V.A. Medical Center will still have a support group and will still be able to get help from the Vet Center.

I thought veterans were the number-one priority at the V.A. Obviously not Viet Nam vets with PTSD.

JAKE FAVERMAN
Grand Junction

Henry’s community service, leadership style make him a strong candidate

Mesa County needs the experienced leadership of Ken Henry. Henry loves this community, and he is committed to keeping Mesa County fiscally viable for current and for future families.

As a citizen, he has left his fingerprints on a myriad of places in Mesa County. He has served on local school-parent accountability committees, church trustee boards, the riverfront commission, the Fruita cemetery board, Ute Water board and many others. As a city councilman and mayor of Fruita, he took his passion for our community to the public arena.

Two unique attributes of his leadership style are transparency and accessibility; he is one of the most accessible and approachable public servants. He supports local businesses and has proven to the citizens of Fruita that he is committed to grow the local economy. His visionary thinking and collaborative work in partnering with the National Guard not only protected the reservoir watershed for Fruita but also saved citizens money.

I urge Mesa County to vote for Ken Henry, my dad, as county commissioner for District 1. The breadth and depth of his volunteering, his public service and his innate leadership skills have led him to this moment and to this position. I believe that makes him not only a good candidate, but also the most experienced and the best choice for county commissioner.

SHANNA E. MILLER
Fruita

Lack of voter privacy remains an important concern

Today’s editorial (“Ballot bill becomes law”) suggests “he who respects the law and loves sausage should observe neither being made.” Newly enacted amendments to the Colorado Open Records Act aptly illustrate that venerable epigram.

HB12-1036 originally dealt only with “access to documents and records related to non-criminal investigations of public officials” (records related to ongoing criminal investigations were already exempt from CORA) and was (as expected) “supported by the heads of a number of state agencies.”

SB12-155 was the “CORA blackout bill” sponsored by the Colorado County Clerks Association -– a nominally taxpayer-funded organization that refuses to disclose its outside funding sources and whose lobbying efforts were bankrolled by electronic voting machine vendors who sought to deny public access to voted ballots.

As the Sentinel chronicled, the latter bill was modified and then grafted onto the former at the last minute – with only abbreviated deliberation – and therefore sparked controversy both as to substance and process.

As to substance, many election law experts and voting rights advocates – and The Denver Post – urged the governor to veto SB12-155 so that it could be duly considered separately.

As to process, because both bills created new exceptions to CORA, the combined bill will likely survive threatened legal challenges based on the Colorado Constitution’s “single subject” mandate. Facing a “both or neither” choice, Gov. Hickenlooper signed the bill(s) into law.

Now that the CCCA has obtained its CORA “blackout” period, the public’s – and the Sentinel’s – attention should return to the underlying issues made less transparent by SB12-1036, to wit: Colorado elections are being run by officials (including Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Sheila Reiner) whose submissions to the federal district court insist that “there is no fundamental constitutional right to a secret ballot” and whose procedures make voted ballots traceable to voters’ identities.

BILL HUGENBERG
Grand Junction

Demand that ICE be empowered to enforce federal immigration laws

Are you kidding me on the Strawberry Days vs. illegal aliens thing? Who is protecting the U.S. citizens from illegal alien gangs?

We should be applauding the limited ICE efforts and demanding that they do more. I’m so tired of illegal aliens complaining about the limited law enforcement we actually perform against those who have violated our federal immigration laws.

I support legal immigration 100%, but we have illegal immigration all wrong in this country and the media are afraid to cover it properly. Liberals label everyone against illegal immigration a racist, so we are afraid to discuss the impacts that illegal aliens have on American citizens.

An example is the tremendous financial burden put on our school districts. Did you know that School District 51 spends $1.81 million per year teaching Spanish speaking students how to speak English? The English Language Learner population in District 51 is up 53% over the past 10 years, and the general student body population is up only 5%.

Wake up, America.

BRANDON SIEGFRIED
Grand Junction

Double assessment of water shares east of Redlands Parkway in drought years would ensure fairness

Briefly, about the Redlands water system: The first lift to Redlands Parkway where it splits into second and third lifts and the “goat” can’t be shut off. The company can shut off the west first lift at the Redlands Parkway.

The Gunnison River is low, and the company is unable to pull adjudicated shares. Since the first lift east of the Redlands Parkway has to remain filled to serve upper lifts, it appears to those users they can water all they want.

However, lift users west of the parkway are supposed to have the water from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 p.m. Thursday, and if users east of the parkway are using it, upper lifts don’t get as much, according to an announcement on Redlands Water’s website June 4.

If east first-lift users don’t want to share, I think an equitable solution would be doubling the assessment on shares east of the parkway in drought years that necessitate rotation.

Effective “checks” in the ditch on the further reaches of all the lifts ensuring less usable water is spilled at lift ends would be beneficial to all.

JUDITH HOPPER
Redlands