Toledo needs new leaders
12/24/2010The latest city fiasco shows what is wrong with government (“City dismisses intern involved in streetlight report,” Dec. 23).
No one wants to address the problems of street lighting. If administrators hide reports about this from City Council, what other reports are they hiding?
The knee-jerk reaction to fire the intern shows the shoot-the-messenger attitude of city government. It is time for a new mayor.
Gary Buck
Scottwood Avenue
Shining light on officials works
Your article says a lot about Toledo's government. Please continue to report this sort of activity.
James McWilliams
Sylvania
Leggett, thanks for speaking up
Toledo needs more gadflies like Stephen Leggett. Everyone connected with the city — including the mayor's office, City Council, Toledo Edison, and the Department of Public Utilities — seem to have its head buried in the sand.
Why is the city just telling us now that the water treatment plant is falling apart? Why didn't city leaders address this problem years ago? Now, everyone is in a panic.
The only solution city leaders can come up with is to raise water and sewer rates. This hastily put-together plan is absurd.
Mr. Leggett should continue to be a gadfly, to speak up, and to do what he thinks is right. The people who live and work in Toledo will be proud of you. Much more than that, you will be very proud of yourself.
George W. Weidner
Barrows Street
Mayor is not exactly honest
When Toledo Mayor Mike Bell announced he was balancing the 2010 budget while pursuing a significant tax increase for residents who work outside the city, he was less than honest.
When Mayor Bell balanced the budget by doing things such as deferring overtime pay for the city's fire and police employees until 2011, with no reason to believe that 2011 would be any better than 2010, he was less than fiscally responsible.
Addressing the problems with the city's water and sewer system, Deputy Mayor of Operations Steve Herwat said: “The administration proposed these rate increases to deal with years of neglect.”
The administration inherited these problems. “Neglect” is the perfect word to describe the situation.
Mayor Bell's agenda may be better served by someone who is more honest and fiscally responsible, and whose staff doesn't think neglect is a normal state of affairs.
Jeff Griffis
Copland Boulevard
Quit silly gripes and get serious
The Dec. 17 Readers' Forum letter “America needs a new leader” faults President Obama for turning over a press conference to former President Bill Clinton.
Some people find fault with Mr. Obama because they have no solutions to our problems, except to give tax breaks to the wealthy and top it off with changes to inheritance taxes to benefit multimillionaires' estates.
These are the kind of actions that should be questioned, not silly gripes about a press conference.
James Perine
Lima, Ohio
City proud of young athlete
When I attended Woodward High School, our rival was Central Catholic High School. More recently, a senior athlete led the Central football team to a state championship. His outstanding play resulted in a scholarship to Ohio State University.
In his freshman year, his first pass reception resulted in a touchdown. He has had nothing but success since. He has four Big Ten championships, four victories over that team up north, and four major bowl games.
This year, he was voted first-team All-Big Ten, and was voted most valuable player and most inspirational player by his teammates. No other player in OSU history was ever given both of these awards.
Unlike many other college athletes, he has never been arrested or suspended. He has shown nothing but class. For a supposedly short, undersized player, he has been outstanding.
Thanks, Dane Sanzenbacher. We are proud of you.
James Wojciechowski
East Lake Street
What watchdog of democracy?
You tout the role of journalism as the watchdog of democracy in your 175th anniversary commemorative edition (Dec. 19). If only that were so.
The Blade, that intrepid promoter of liberalism, is more the hairless Chihuahua guarding freedom than the sturdy Rottweiler our founding fathers envisioned.
Your editors may blush with embarrassment as they embrace liberal-progressive stratagem to increase the size and power of government, local or national.
Many northwest Ohioans are antagonized by your relentless endeavors to minimize and mutilate our Bill of Rights, such as your hysteria over our right to bear arms.
You ridicule the originalist majority of our Supreme Court as stodgy regressives.
Your selective placement of news based on political content is ironic, while you print the seepage from the also-troubled New York Times, Associated Press, and other leftist media.
You denigrate conservative ideals such as control of spending and reduction of oppressive taxes as Scrooge-like upper-class stinginess. You hope to dilute and repudiate our culture of merit and achievement by endorsing irresponsible, unbridled, and unqualified immigration.
You seek to confuse people by assailing the rich while pretending to safeguard the middle class. You continue to undermine the middle class while cheering the redistribution of its income to the lower class.
You have promoted the emasculation of our military and national defense, literally and figuratively, by endorsing the repeal of restraints on homosexuals and the lowering of our nuclear verification abilities.
What a watchdog. Soon, there may be little to protect.
Edward S. Popkoski
Cloister Road
Not what the founders wanted
Our nation's founding fathers would groan at the perversion that has overtaken the freedoms they laid.
When they secured a right to bear arms, they were thinking of a single-shot, cumbersome muzzle-loader, not an Uzi submachine gun.
Would they weep to learn that their concepts of freedom of speech and the press have given birth to a land where hate and pornography originate, circling the globe at the speed of light, protected by law?
Not long ago, health care was barbaric. Now, with miraculous life-saving techniques the norm, the only question that remains is how to pay for it. Employer-based health care has hobbled our economy. Whatever possessed employers to pay for employees' health care? No one pays for my auto insurance. Why should employers pay my health-insurance premiums?
Just pay a living wage. Be as generous as you can. Then let the free-market system take care of itself.
Don Gozdowski
Franklin Avenue
Santa's in cahoots with high court
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and if you do what he asks, he will buy you an election, and it's legal. Santa's elves at the Supreme Court said so, and his reindeer have put so much manure in the way that Congress will not change it soon.
No reporter will want to find out who financed your election. It's not personal, Virginia. It's business. Do as Santa tells you, and remember that nobody gets to know who Santa is.
Harold R. Pflager
Brandon Road