Dear Editor,
Gilroy is a great place to live! For two days, the Tuesday and
Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a team held a food drive in front of
Nob Hill Foods. Once again Store Manager Vito Mercado and staff
welcomed our effort and made valuable space available to us. People
were very generous and we collected over 500 pounds of food.
All donations are distributed in South County! Thanks to all who
participated, and remember that we are still accepting donations at
Coldwell Banker offices.
Nob Hill and Coldwell Banker team up to help feed needy
Dear Editor,
Gilroy is a great place to live! For two days, the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, a team held a food drive in front of Nob Hill Foods. Once again Store Manager Vito Mercado and staff welcomed our effort and made valuable space available to us. People were very generous and we collected over 500 pounds of food.
All donations are distributed in South County! Thanks to all who participated, and remember that we are still accepting donations at Coldwell Banker offices.
Lisa Cassara, Gilroy
Plea to conserve water in the wake of multiple dry seasons
Dear Editor,
When it comes to saving water, there is no time to waste. This past summer, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed a statewide drought. The decision followed two of the driest winters in our state’s history and a court-ordered restriction on pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which delivers Sierra Nevada snowmelt to about 23 million Californians.
Like many other Bay Area counties, Santa Clara County, which receives almost half of its water supply from the Sierra Nevada and the other half from local rainfall, has been seeing its annual water demand exceed its water supply. We have been fortunate to have a diverse portfolio of water supply resources, including our groundwater reserves, which has helped us avoid mandatory conservation. However, there is a limit to those reserves and unless we conserve more, we will need to resort to mandatory conservation if there is another dry year.
As a result, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which is the county’s water wholesaler, is asking the public to voluntarily cut back their water use by 10 percent. The good news is that saving water is easy.
Installing low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators can save 16 gallons a day. Watering before 6 a.m. can save 20 to 25 gallons a day. To help you save water, energy and money, Valley Water offers a FREE water-wise house call. We will come to your home and assess your water use, check for leaks, optimize your irrigation schedule and even install water-efficient shower heads.
A typical water-wise house call takes about an hour and is available at your convenience Monday to Saturday.
A similar free service is also available to businesses. In addition, Valley Water also has several rebate programs to assist you in saving water at home or at your place of business. You can receive money-saving rebate if you buy a new water-saving clothes washer or irrigation hardware. To find out more about the Water-Wise House Call, the rebate programs or get simple and effective water-saving tips, go to our Web site www.valleywater.org or call our conservation hotline at (408) 265-2607.
Besides the fact that California is in a drought, there are other important reasons to conserve water. Water conservation also saves you money, energy and helps reduce air pollution. Besides receiving a combined water/energy rebate of $125 to $200 when you purchase a high-efficiency clothes washer, a typical household can save 6,450 gallons of water, between $80 to $100 in electricity, and $54 in detergent costs on a yearly basis. Each time you turn off the tap it’s like turning off a light switch.
The cumulative energy savings that can be attributed to Valley Water’s water-use efficiency programs from July 1992 through July 2007 is estimated to be more than 1.52 billion kWh. This is equivalent to electricity required for more than 236,000 households for one year. It also cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than 381 million kg, equivalent to removing 82,000 passenger cars from the roads for one year.
In order to help avoid mandatory restrictions on water use and protect our environment, we need to immediately reduce our water usage by 10 percent. Because when it comes to saving water, there is no time to waste.
Rosemary Kamei, board chair,
Santa Clara Valley Water District
A slew of presidential pardons would be a horrible disgrace
Dear Editor,
For President George Bush to pardon himself and others in his administration as he leaves office would be the greatest injury yet to the rule of law in this country.
Crimes against the people and against the constitution are just that – crimes – and no one, not even the president of the United States, is above the law.
Jan Saxton, Aromas
Rant slams city’s blue-collar workers, not high-paid brass
Dear Editor,
Cynthia Walker’s rant against city workers was bouncing so many places it was hard to follow the logic, if you dare.
She criticizes all you voters who supported the library and other community bonds, then got her civics lesson topsy-turvy when she targeted the road crews and office assistants and all the other city workers being laid off. She believes readers are uniformed, and can be taken advantage of by saying “government employees favor overspending” – apparently the guy that’s reaming out her clogged sewer line is to blame.
The truth is the City Council overspent the city’s money. It was the City Council that approved double-digit raises for the top brass at City Hall. It was the City Council that decided to bail out millionaire Michael Bonfante, who cashed his check on the sale of Bonfante Gardens and got the hell out of Gilroy.
The police needed a modern, efficient police station. But it was the City Council that decided to ignore fiscal restraint and rubber stamp the building of a lavish police station. Both boondoggles are still costing us money.
I would expect a bitter neocon like Walker to attack anything that stood up for blue-collar workers; she’s elitist that way. But for her to confess her ignorance of AFSCME as though it was the capital of a tiny island deep in the South Pacific lends no credit to her as a journalist.
Any newspaper person who professes to know what’s going on in government, yet is utterly unfamiliar with a union of 1.6 million municipal workers, should be kept away from a keyboard. AFSCME is one of the top five largest unions in the United States, representing nurses, corrections officers, child care providers, EMTs and sanitation workers, to name a few of the “government workers” Walker attacks.
Dennis Taylor, Gilroy
‘Relentless thieves’ continue to violate law, steal recycling on curb
Dear Editor,
Could the Dispatch do a follow up story with the Gilroy Police Department and the City Council regarding the roaming gangs of recycle thieves combing the streets of Gilroy late at night and in the early morning?
We continue to “catch” and scold or scare away people on our street whose sole purpose is to steal recycle items out of our blue bins each and every week in violation of Sec. 12.57 of the municipal code under the title “Collection of recyclable materials by unauthorized persons prohibited.” It reads: It is unlawful for any person, business, or entity, other than the City of Gilroy’s official authorized recycling agent to collect recyclable materials in the City of Gilroy unless excepted by the provisions of this article, or state or federal law. (Ord. No. 90-3, § 1, 2-20-90)
Short of everyone on the block having some number of people stay home and place the bins out just as the South Valley Disposal trucks come by, we are at a loss as to how to keep this bizarre and relentless group of vagabonds off of our street.
Short of discontinuing all recycle efforts (at which point they would likely comb through the gray trash bins instead) we’re at a loss. How long until they come up to our homes and start steeling from the outside anything that is not bolted down, or worse, inviting themselves in?
Christine Taylor, Gilroy
Health and safety issues with regards to new bridge to centers
Dear Editor,
As lifelong Gilroy resident, I am concerned with the influx of traffic that the new bridge will be adding to Camino Arroyo, mainly regarding going to the medical facilities, such as Kaiser Permanente, South Valley Clinic and South County Dialysis.
I drive this route three times per week and I am concerned about the increased driving on this street due to the shopping centers on both sides. Frequently, many emergencies occur at these facilities and I think traffic is a problem.
As a concerned citizen, I am curious if the City of Gilroy has anything planned for this route, such as adding stop signs at the entrance of South County Dialysis and Kaiser? As an alternate route from the bridge, the traffic could be divided by creating a new route connecting the bridge to Arroyo Circle.
Helen Trujillo, Gilroy
Police officers at restaurant for more than an hour? Highly unlikely
Dear Editor,
President-elect Obama promises to tax only the “rich” 5 percent therefore leaving 95 percent of the population with no increase. Whether you believe the numbers or not, they are false.
Forty percent of the population already pays no income tax.”Rich” people do not have their money in the cellar; they have it invested in business. When you tax a business, they include the tax in the price of the product.
If it is McDonald’s, the price of hamburgers goes up. The business gets a tax write-off. The customer pays more and cannot declare a tax deduction. The consumer is the only taxpayer.
Why does a hamburger that only cost 25 cents a few years ago now cost $5? Taxing the “rich” is a lie.
Keith C. De Filippis, San Jose
