Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.
Seeno, Concord won’t
make happy marriage
The presentation by the Seeno group at Saturday’s hearing proudly portrayed the development of the Naval Weapons Station not so much as a housing project but as an attempt to create a wonderful “City on the Hill.”
That being so, thinking of it as a contract with terms capable of enforcement, while partially true, misconceives the relationship between Concord and Albert Seeno III. Many important issues — both known and unknown — will present themselves in the years to come. Think of a marriage contract and a successful marriage. The first doesn’t have all that much to do with the second.
So I ask you, do you want your city to marry the Seenos? Knowing what we know, there would be a lot of quarrels about money, and little happiness.
Jim and Barbara Wolpman
Walnut Creek
Restoration project
threatens road, hillside
EBMUD’s plan to restore the quarry on Lake Chabot Road would require 60 to 100 dump trucks a day to transport soil for the next 40 to 80 years up Lake Chabot Road, dump the dirt at the quarry, travel to Fairmount Avenue in Castro Valley and down to 580.
Recent heavy rains have again created rockslides and undercuts to Lake Chabot Road, leading to its current closure. The quarry is located next to the Hayward Fault. There are new open fissures and mudslides on the quarry hillside itself. The foundation of this road is fragile, and even spending millions of dollars to fix it, will still not support 60-100 full dump trucks a day, nor will the hillsides above be a safe location to dump this dirt.
Anne Cawood
San Leandro
Prop. 13 is vital
to senior community
Re. “California’s Proposition 13 battle enters a new phase,” Page A6, Jan 6:
Few today remember how dire the property tax situation was in California. Tax assessments were running on average 2.65% of current market value. If we were to return to pre-Proposition 13 standards: A house that was bought for $200,000 years ago (and now worth $1,000,000) might now be paying $2,400 a year. Ending Proposition 13 would have the tax explode to $26,500. No one could possibly have prepared for that.
Proposition 13 limits taxes to 1% of the purchase price plus 2% tax increases per year. Ending Proposition 13 would result in vast, uncontrolled increases that would force many to dump their homes, in unison, forcing prices to plummet. The first to sell would be lucky; the rest would find themselves underwater and unable to sell, likely facing foreclosure.
Inflation causes the price of everything to rise, including homes. Inflation then generates a giant tax windfall for the government.
Mark Fernwood
Danville
Finding the good
in Republican circus
One wonders if the value of those self-righteous Republicans, who proved to be the worst of allies, lay in forcing the others into seeking common ground from among the best of their enemies.
Perhaps the first House rule could be: “Every member must sit next to a representative from the other side whom they’ve never sat next to before.”
I know, it sounds crazy, but not as crazy as what we just witnessed on the House floor.
Linda Thorlakson
Castro Valley
Make Liz Cheney
our attorney general
Liz Cheney received her Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996. Merrick Garland should be reconfirmed as a federal judge, and he should be replaced as the U.S. Attorney General by Liz Cheney.
This would make the Biden Administration more bipartisan and install a most knowledgeable person to oversee the criminal/civil violations of former federal officeholders.
Ronald Greene
Los Altos
Source: www.mercurynews.com