Letters 08-08-2016

Aug. 5, 2016

Downtown Parking An Embarassment 

In his recent column "The Parking Windfall," Thomas Kachadurian hit the proverbial nail squarely on the head. The only thing he missed was the process of using the new parking pay stations. I cannot imagine someone standing in the rain or in a blinding snowstorm waiting for their credit card to be authorized so they can input the meter number, a number probably forgotten by the time the card is approved, waiting for acceptance, and deciding if they wish to have a receipt, or not.

I am not proud of the fact that I avoid shopping in downtown Traverse City but I refuse to have a meter determine how I spend my time shopping or dining. I have heard, ad nauseam, the excuses: employees will occupy all the spaces, all cities the size of TC have parking meters. Well, I need better reasons and none seem forthcoming. It seems that all city streets, including downtown, have been supported in part, by our city taxes each year, so I ask myself, why do we have to pay to use spaces we are already supporting?

J. David Lather, Traverse City

Threats To Education System

In a few weeks, school will start. Another year of the P-20 (prenatal to age 20) system, and another year of Common Core. I am wondering how long it will take before parents do homework of their own and see how damaging this system is. Nobody voted on it. Nobody even knew it was coming. Written by test company employees and not state-led, many states signed on to the program before these "standards" were written, just to get the "Race To The Top" funding promised if they signed on. Included in the rules for this cash was for schools to create a state longitudinal data base, allowing third parties to access kids’ personal info. The Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA) has been gutted to the point of being not useful anymore. Now clinics are going into schools as well. Health info will be stored in the education records as well, because Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) doesn’t apply to schools.

I remember in the middle to late 90s, core math came into play and parents had something to say about it, and their cries put the option for "traditional math" back in the curriculum. It’s time teachers speak their minds about this as well. They fear for their jobs if they do. Does that sound like America?

Kelley Vilenski, Interlochen

More To Be Done On Gender

A recent Detroit News editorial praised the recent advances of women in politics and business. Hillary Clinton’s victory "shattered the glass ceiling" of male domination of candidates for president, said the editorial, and constituted "an accomplishment American women in the 20th century could only dream of." So far, so good.

But then the editors turned to women elected to state legislatures. Their number "has skyrocketed since the 1980s," they said, "growing from just a couple of hundred nationwide to 1,812 in 2016." That in itself is true, but before we suffer a shoulder separation patting ourselves on the back, we should note that this year there are 7,383 seats in state legislatures and that the 1,812 filled by women amount to only 24.6 percent of the total. Moreover, women occupy only 20.9 percent of the seats in the Michigan legislature (31 of 148), our state thus ranking a puny 34th among the 50 states.

As far as I know, women comprise somewhere around 50 percent of the total population of both the United States and the State of Michigan.

There’s more to be done.

Steve Morse, Suttons Bay

Avoiding The Parking Empire

Thomas Kachadurian deserves a standing ovation for shedding light on the monopoly the Traverse City Downtown Development Authority has over parking.

In his column "The Parking Windfall," he states, "The other 90 percent of the money collected for parking goes to fund the parking empire itself." The "empire" you so perfectly describe sums up the entire parking situation and the DDA. It is indeed an empire, a money making empire.

I agree with Thomas Kachadurian: I avoid downtown as I too refuse to feed your meters.

Cindy Thomas Bennett, Traverse City