Letters - Tuesday

TAKE A HIKE?

Utilities should leave wastewater rates alone

So, the brains at Colorado Springs Utilities think the citizens of Colorado Springs are cheating on their wastewater bills (“Springs may adjust wastewater bills,” Metro, June 25). I would like to know how they accomplish this. Maybe they don’t flush during December, January and February, the time when Utilities sets rates? Maybe they don’t wash their clothes or maybe they skip showers?

Perhaps we will soon see wastewater police who go around sniffing people to see if they smell bad and then slap higher fees on them. The proposal to measure water use during November to March and then average it is sure to measure some outdoor water use, so CSU can charge wastewater fees on it.

The current system seems to be the fairest way, because not much outdoor water use occurs December to February.

Diana Barlow

Colorado Springs

DEAD AGAIN

Latest immigration bill was fatally flawed

Last week, 53 senators chose to defend the laws of this country and voted down the illegal alien amnesty bill. The winning argument was that this bill provided incredible rewards for those who break immigration laws without guaranteeing any significant reduction in future illegal immigration.

Secondarily, the bill was rejected because it increased total legal immigration by more than half and was put together completely outside normal legislative channels without any consideration of how local, state and federal governments would pay for it.

I must also point out that Sen. Ken Salazar remained one of the 40 supporters of this bill, deeming himself and his cohorts wiser than the tens of millions of Americans who opposed the bill.

Robert Johnson

Colorado Springs

TAKING CHARGE

People, not government, responsible for health

Marcy Morrison, the sole El Paso County representative on Colorado’s 2008 Commission for Health Care Reform, claims that her goal is to insure as many people as possible (“Morrison works to insure more Coloradans,” Metro, June 25). That’s morally wrong. The government should not attempt to enforce universal medical coverage, nor universal healthy diets, nor universal fashionable haircuts. The only proper function of government is to protect our rights.

In medicine, that means protecting the rights of health care providers, insurers and patients to contract for the services they deem in their best interest, free from government regulations, mandates and entitlements.

Only then can people act as responsible adults, rather than as wards of the nanny state.

Diana Hsieh

Sedalia

MAKING THE GRADE?

Outgoing D-20 chief was vastly overrated

In a comparison of school report cards and the average of District 20’s elementary, middle and high school CSAP scores with those of The Classical Academy, the district’s charter school, one can find no significant difference. TCA — operating one of its three campuses in an old facility abandoned by the district because it was judged unfit for learning, and another in a gaggle of metal buildings — generates a comparable or superior level of student achievement.

For that reason, my assessment of former D-20 superintendent Kenneth Vedra’s tenure at the district is somewhat different than his (“Outgoing D-20 chief takes a hard look at past and future,” Metro, June 24).

I find that while the district spent historic amounts of the taxpayers’ money, it delivered little in the way of improved student achievement. In real terms, then, Vedra’s success can’t be measured by good school report cards, high CSAP scores or lofty graduation rates, but by the proliferation of elegant, pricey campuses, and an astounding growth in a dizzying array of competing educational models, school choice schemes and nonacademic programs.

Ivo Fronzaglia

Colorado Springs