Publication Date: Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Letters
Letters
(August 24, 2005)
Senior speaks out
Editor,
Nancy McGaraghan's and Bern Becharm's recent remarks about Prop. 13 -- implying we senior citizens grandfathered under Prop. 13 are not paying our way -- are shortsighted.
Seniors have made contributions to this community well above the annual property taxes we have paid over the years. Many of us in the older generation are used to volunteering and doing more than our fair share because that is how we were raised.
Prop. 13 can be made fairer. The most glaring correction needed is the free ride many owners of commercial properties get when businesses change hands. Since the ownership of the property does not change hands, the owner enjoys ever-increasing rents each time a new lease is signed or a new business takes the place of a departing business, but does not experience a corresponding change in property taxes.
Prop. 13 has made it possible for many seniors to remain in the homes they worked hard for all their lives, so that they can spend their senior years among their friends and in the community to which they have contributed.
Here's another point: While we pre-1975 property owners may be experiencing a tax break now, when we sell these highly inflated houses, as most of us end up doing as we get really old, we will pay an enormous capital-gains tax. I calculate that my tax alone after considering the maximum basis and the $500,000 exemption will exceed $100,000.
I am really a little bit tired of hearing disparaging remarks about senior citizens. In other, perhaps more civilized countries, we seniors are treated with the respect our advancing years merit.
Dick Placone
Chimalus Drive
Palo Alto
Where's the reason?
Editor,
Five Town & Country merchants have written a letter to the Palo Alto Weekly supporting the management of Town & Country. They are correct in everything they say.
Tenants have leases and exist to serve customers. The management has a right to evict tenants when leases expire, or for other reasons.
But the Town & Country merchants who authored the letter omitted one crucial fact: Why was the Cookbook Restaurant thrown out?
Of course the management acted within its rights, but why? No explanation ever has been forthcoming. There is considerable vacant space in Town & Country. Owners of the kids' clothing store, to go in the Cookbook space, said they didn't care where they were put.
Here was a restaurant that provided excellent food at reasonable prices. It was a place where everyone knew your name. It was always crowded. People of all ages came, from parents with kids to groups having power breakfasts.
We have lost a treasure. Town & Country's management has lost tremendous goodwill -- which it may never get back.
Harry Press
Escobita Avenue
Palo Alto
Landlord vs. landlord
Editor,
Nowhere in his recent whitewash piece (Weekly, July 27) does Jim Ellis, owner of Town & Country Village, give an adequate response to the questions that have been raised about his totally legal and totally despicable conduct in closing down a long-term establishment with only a 30-day notice.
Nowhere does he explain why it was impossible to enhance the property while keeping some of it's most long-term and integral clients who probably care more for the location than he does. (He has other properties in other locations -- they don't.) Nowhere does he show any concern for the sense of community, continuity and belonging offered by such businesses -- a sense expressed so eloquently in Karen Robinson's letter in the same edition.
And nowhere does he explain why he gave only a 30-day notice to a business with a 15-year history in his property. (Only now does he add they are "coming to agreement on an extended timeframe." This should have been done from the very beginning.)
As a landlord myself, I would never do that.
In short, Mr. Ellis may have a talent for turning a healthy profit on a piece of property. But he seems to have no awareness for the deeper community and business values that underlie a piece of property and give it its real value. As a human being, I have contempt for him and his center.
Larry Smith
McKellar Lane
Palo Alto
'Scars' leaves mark
Editor,
I take an engineer's issue with the classification of those photos of industry in the Aug. 19 Weekly as "scars."
The red waste flow in "Nickel tailings #44" represents, to me, non-rusting surgical instruments and food processing equipment around the world that can be readily sterilized to protect our health.
The open pit copper mine on the cover represents millions of homes with clean water and with electrical power.
"Oil refinery #27" reminds me of the skills of engineers, designers, millwright and contractors who harness the fury within the molecules and train it to serve mankind, and the investors who dared. That jungle of piping, pumps and processing units had to grow in someone's mind before it grew in reality. With $3-per-gallon gas, we might wish this "scar" were repeated a few more places.
Even the ship breaking, admittedly dirty, is little more dangerous and dirty than when I toiled to build those ships 40 years ago up at Bethlehem Shipyard in San Francisco. The third-world men have an income where they had none before and material is recycled that otherwise would go to waste.
The earth does not yield up her bounty easily, or often cleanly, but without that bounty most of us would be dead. There is no grain without threshing, or wine without crushing, so have a care with your darts.
I recommend Kipling's "The Sons of Martha" to Burtynsky and others offended by the "scars" of the machinery of civilization that gives them the ease to criticize.
Walter E. Wallis
Waverley Street
Palo Alto
Appreciation for Sheehan
Editor,
Cindy Sheehan should be recognized as a national hero who is among the few to have finally taken a stand against the effects this war has had on our country.
My brother is currently serving in Iraq, and the thought of what Cindy Sheehan has been going through since her son's death is incomprehensible. She has protested in a peaceful manner and all she wants is for our president to simply take one hour out of his five-week vacation and explain to her why her son has died.
Right-wing activists who see Cindy Sheehan as a traitor to her own country do not truly understand the grief she is going through with her son having been killed in a war she herself does not believe in.
And a woman who has the integrity, tenacity and perseverance to sit in front of that ranch at a time of war? Well, one can do nothing but commend her incredible patience and forthrightness on the action she has taken. Maybe at some point this woman will reverse this horrific situation we have buried ourselves so deeply in.
Molly Kawahata
Calcaterra Place
Palo Alto
National plundering?
Editor,
While local, county and state governments are attempting to make painful cutbacks to balance their budgets, our federal lawmakers raid the national treasury with enough pork to ensure their reelection.
A small group of senators and members of the Congressional appropriation committees don on their black cloaks and hoodsâ and perform the annual ritual of divvying up our tax dollars, all well hidden from the public lest a public outrage might ensue. Last year, a staggering $32.7 billion was absconded from the national treasury.
Insertions into the appropriations bill for lawmakers pet pork project, known as "earmarksâ" were hastily made after a two-day bout of fierce negotiations and mutual back scratchingâ agreements to ensure no hard feelingsâ which might spill over into embarrassing public disclosures. Last year 15,584 separate earmarks were made. A few examples of the appalling waste: $100,000 for research in goat meat in Texas, $549,000 for "Future-Foods" in Illinois and $569,000 for "Cool Season Legume Research."
It is appalling that our lawmakers continue this shameful behavior when the federal deficit soars to such dizzying heights. Sadly, such abuse has become the norm, not the exception.
The government of the people by the people for the people has now morphed into the government of special interests for special interests. Nothing will change until we, the American people, demand change.
Let your voice be heard.
Jagjit Singh
Louisa Court
Palo Alto
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