A housing opportunity
EDITOR: I have procrastinated enough. I must add my voice to the discussion. The Chanate Road land is an amazing and rare opportunity for Santa Rosa to lead in providing affordable home ownership to our teachers, caretakers, social workers and adult sons and daughters returning from college or training schools ready to contribute to this community and start fiscally responsible lives.
Why not set aside 80 percent to 100 percent of the Chanate land for new housing committed to this cause? What could be the down side? The developers would definitely make a profit. Maybe it wouldn’t be a killing, but, really, do they need to make a killing off of our middle-class public servants and newly graduated children?
Build townhouses and condominiums with shared groundskeeping fees for, dare I suggest, $250,000-$300,000. Why not go in this direction? Santa Rosa would become a model destination for the best and brightest, if not the richest. Santa Rosa would shine in an otherwise dreary landscape of greed and what’s-in-it-for-me-ism.
JEAN SMITH
Santa Rosa
Health care costs
EDITOR: I’d like to help Archie Julian (“Single-payer plan,” Letters, June 7) understand the Healthy California Act (Senate Bill 562), currently winding its way through the state Legislature.
To quote his letter, “most working people don’t pay insurance premiums; their employers pay them.” According to Millman Medical Index, the average family of four spent $26,944 for health care in 2016. The employee paid $11,685 ($7,151 in payroll deductions and payroll deduction for premium and $4,534 in out-of-pocket costs), and the employer paid $15,259 (money that the employee doesn’t receive in salary).
An analysis by economists at the University of Massachusetts provides us with a mechanism for covering the $404 billion cost of SB 562: $225 billion could come from money already spent by government in California (Medicare, Medical, etc.), a sales tax of 2.3 percent to raise $14.7 billion and a tax of 2.3 percent ($92.6 billion) on gross receipts after the first $2 million (exempting most small businesses).
A conservative estimate for savings is $73 billion from decreased pharmaceutical and administrative costs and from increased efficiency (due to increased prevention services and reduction of unnecessary services). SB 562 offers comprehensive medical and dental benefits for all, with reduced costs for individuals and employers.
DR. NICHOLAS H. ANTON
Santa Rosa
Traffic fines
EDITOR: Let me see if I get this. Tyler Watson gets popped for drunken driving, then for driving on a suspended license (“Burdened by traffic fines,” Saturday). His fines may be reduced because he is low income, but he has enough money to buy booze. And now with no license, he may be driving with no insurance. Hey, if you can’t pay the fine, don’t do the crime.
MARTHA VILLANUEVA
Rohnert Park
Unconstitutional seizure
EDITOR: Confiscation without compensation. That is exactly what the state and counties are doing in the restricting usage or implementing metering of private wells (“New landscape on groundwater,” Sunday).
The last I looked at my deed, it said I own “all water mineral rights herein.” Now, under eminent domain, the state does have power to confiscate my water rights, but it better get that checkbook out.
