Monday's Letters to the Editor

A vet remembered

EDITOR: Roseland resident “Skip” Catelli, a good-hearted and patriotic young man, gave his life for America in Vietnam 40 years ago. I think of him often when I am around his boyhood home in Roseland and neighborhood places we spent time together when we were young.

Around Veterans Day, I also think back to the good-natured demeanor of Skip, who was named Charles Catelli but never went by that name within a group of Roseland kids growing up in the ’60s. The new Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial at Santa Rosa City Hall has his name engraved there, but we always refer to him as Skip. He is buried in Franklin Memorial Park.

I write to ask folks to come to Veterans Day remembrances at Santa Rosa City Hall at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. Local veterans, their families and friends offer tribute to America’s veterans of all races, colors and creeds.

Also, I ask for support for a veterans park in Santa Rosa to honor veterans and give them a place to seek respite. People in Roseland near Skip’s boyhood home are working for a park. It could be “Veterans Park” to honor all veterans in a nice peaceful place.

DUANE De WITT

Santa Rosa

EDITOR: This is in response to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s statement on the health care bill that, in his very own words, will “recklessly pursue” a government takeover of our sterling health care industry (“GOP leader rips demos on health,” Nov. 1).

I guess he’s talking about the private takeover of our health care by millionaire and billionaire CEOs who run their agencies for personal profit while being judge, jury and executioner of those who seek care but are denied. This is the same Boehner who enjoys taxpayer health insurance with a public option and can get anything fixed, cured or treated. This is the same Boehner who presented blank pages to represent his fellow Republican’s health care plan.

I think we’ve heard more than enough from officials like him who give hypocrisy a bad name. We are the government, and I want us to be in charge of health care not rich, cold, uncaring CEOs that care only about profits and not health.

BRUCE MALLON

Sonoma

EDITOR: Map maker, indeed (Editorial, Friday).

This type of initiative, renaming Black Mountain as Alexander Mountain, is exactly what Sonoma County needs. What is being called out as a self-aggrandizing marketing attempt should have started years ago. In reality, we have a chance to put Sonoma County on the map, the world wine map.

The wine business in Sonoma County and its resulting tourism are integral to the current and future economic viability of our county and its residents. It is our sense of place that will sustain our competitive edge.

It’s not interesting in a world-class wine region to drive by Black Mountain up Meyers Grade and over to Smith Ridge. The U.S. board should approve the name change, and the local opponents can tell their grandchildren about it while the hard-working vintners that provide jobs in Sonoma County go about securing their ability to sell wine in an ever-changing world economic environment.

TOM HINDE

Santa Rosa

EDITOR: Thank you for your two excellent editorials (“Bad bets,” Tuesday and “Losing Kolin,” Thursday), the first about the looming financial catastrophe of super-rich public employee pensions and the second about the loss of local city and county managers in possible frustration with anti-development council members and supervisors.

Voters and taxpayers are now getting a grim view of the future, when economic development stops but the cost of government, including those pensions, continues to go through the roof.

Legislators have refused to take action to trim pensions for future hires to more reasonable levels simply because these legislators are beholden to powerful public employee unions.

Meanwhile, the no-development forces seem to be in full control. Never mind that residential and commercial construction has virtually disappeared, along with jobs, taxable income, spendable income, sales taxes, development fees and property taxes.

Next we will get innumerable ballot measures asking voters to approve higher taxes to deal with ever-worsening budget deficits. Voters need to wise up. We already have plenty of taxes on the books. The problem is too much spending and an anti-business climate that threatens to wreck our economy.

BOB ANDREWS

Santa Rosa

EDITOR: I have lived in Santa Rosa since 1978. During that time the people of Santa Rosa have been asked to reduce water usage on a voluntary basis. The good people of Santa Rosa complied each time. After the reduction of water use, the city Rosa raised our water rates because of lost revenue.

I have had enough of these rate increases. The more water we use the more revenue Santa Rosa will get, and then the rate increases will stop. I suggest we replant our lawns and flush our toilets after each use and get off our teenagers backs about how long to use the shower. At least we will be getting our money’s worth of water.

STEPHEN PASION-CAIANI

Santa Rosa

EDITOR: Senate Republicans evidently don’t care who suffers from their battle to block every change proposed by President Barack Obama. GOP members of the Environment and Public Works Committee threaten to boycott legislation that would cap greenhouse gases from power and industrial plants and reduce fossil-fuel consumption. They’re demanding further cost studies — paralysis by analysis.

How would you feel if you were aboard a sinking ship and launching the lifeboats was held up while one faction of the crew quibbled over the cost of lowering the boats? Does that seem outrageous?

It’s closer to reality than many of us would like to think. Climate change is real, its impacts are already being felt, and we’re causing it. Humans are increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide 14,000 times faster than natural forces do. Nature’s regulating processes act over extremely long time spans, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years. Our industrial-age carbon emitters are accelerating noticeably in short time spans, and we’re destroying carbon sinks like rain forests that would have helped absorb greenhouse gases.

If we act quickly, decisively, and sensibly, life may be able to survive the next few decades. What it cannot survive is business as usual. The choice is clear: the status quo or our future; one or the other has to go.

LIONEL GAMBILL

Petaluma