Readers
Feel the Burns: She’ll whip TUSD into shape
As a new member of the TUSD board, who watched this train wreck evolve from the sidelines, I agree with your entire Wednesday editorial (“Latest TUSD scandal a sign big shakeup’s needed there”).
Judy Burns is, however, the board member whom you should have interviewed. The attorney general has not implicated anyone on the old board, but she alone fought consistently to stop the corruption as it unfolded.
She has now been elected board president, and I expect the new board to be resolute in insisting on higher standards of professional conduct. The community will see the difference quickly.
Mark Stegeman
If not the world, we can change our votes
Your Feb. 2 editorial (“Brewer signs shameful, unimaginative fix”) rightly points out that our thoughtless Legislature and neophyte governor relied only on GOP ideology to try to fix the state’s budget woes.
They seem bent on blaming a Democratic governor for problems in our state, despite the fact that the entire world is in a financial bind.
The good news in all of this is that Arizona voters are waking up to tired old GOP shenanigans.
People from all over the state have weighed in with their displeasure about the budget fix. Some have even suggested temporary tax increases in order to stem losses to education and social services.
Keep up the good work, Arizona, and let’s remember these folks – especially John Kavanagh, Russell Pearce, Kirk Adams and Bob Burns – when they ask us to return them to office in their re-election bids. Just say “no.”
Amy Carlie
Phoenix
We all pay the price when hard times hit
For Gov. Jan Brewer to get a full-blown budget together after being on the job for days is expecting a bit too much.
When a state, city or household uses good times to start new programs and enlarge old ones without regard to the predictable cycles in economic life is a big culprit here.
Gov. Janet Napolitano knew this. The Legislature knew it as well and often tried to slow or moderate some of the programs.
To sell future revenue streams (Napolitano’s solution) is part and parcel of the same kind of thinking. When hard times hit, we all pay the price.
Locally, where we all live, perhaps it is time to make an annual contribution to the local schools now, not in December.
Contributions to charities can also be made early. Next year of course a January contribution will become the norm. One can slow withholding taxes making it fairly easy to jump ahead a year.
This is a one-time fix but, in a pinch, it will help. We are all in it. Schools do need the money and no one really wants them to slow the education process.
Nationally, we are about to do a big borrowing and spending spree. Pray it works, since one- time solutions can’t be repeated often.
Monty Brown
retired
One captive audience outweighs another
Mark Kimble wrote that we should withhold money from our prisons so we could put them into a school system that continues to fail no matter how much money we pour into their poorly run money pit (Jan. 29 column, “There has to be a better way”).
Rather than try to go into all of the problems associated with our present education system or our present system of justice and our prisons, I would like to ask Mr. Kimble a question.
When you are walking toward your car in a dark parking lot, who is a greater threat to you? Someone who has done poorly in school, or a career criminal with a violent nature who is only out there because our system didn’t have the resources to safely keep him off the street?
Eugene Cole
retired
Stop the stopping of the Citizen presses
I am going to really miss this paper. I hope someone comes forward to purchase it.
We take five papers a day, and this one is the only one I read from cover to cover.
You have the best comics. The articles are well written, and I love the different opinions expressed by the writers.
I read parts of the other papers, but yours is a good fit with what I want and need to know both locally and internationally.
Please tell us that you will not cease publication!
We have been in Green Valley for nine years and have subscribed to your paper from Day One.
Vonda Singleton
retired
Green Valley