As a lifelong Toledo area resident and a 20-year Jeep owner, I don't understand why Toledo officials use vehicles of makes other than Jeep as their official modes of transportation ("Bell's office discloses luxury SUV purchase," Aug. 31).
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Doesn't it make sense to transport dignitaries and investors around Toledo in a Toledo-built Jeep? A highly optioned Jeep Grand Cherokee (built elsewhere but still associated with Toledo) should be used, because it compares favorably with other luxury sport utility vehicles.
I find it insulting that Deputy Mayor Steve Herwat, commenting on the city's purchase of other vehicles (one built in Texas, the other in Canada), said: "We don't want to take them [dignitaries and investors] around in a 2002 Jeep Liberty."
I am not a Jeep employee, but I am proud that the Liberty has been built here. High-ranking, well-paid Toledo employees should be touting the high quality of Toledo-built Jeeps, not berating them.
Brian Munding
Maumee
City's snub of Jeep a bad decision
Were I a taxpaying citizen of Toledo, I would find it offensive that Mayor Mike Bell's office bought luxury sport utility vehicles costing nearly $70,000 to take dignitaries around town.
How about buying a 2012 Liberty to show support of a successful local product at the end of its run?
Mayor Bell made boneheaded decisions. I'm glad my tax money isn't going to his administration.
Matthew Haase
Wauseon
What happened to fund shortage?
One Government Center has a short memory about proper disclosure of major purchases and about shortages of funds within city departments.
This spring, agencies that serve the homeless were pleading for funds. Earlier, the city said it did not have funds to maintain its streets or flower beds, even at points where visitors get a first look at downtown.
What good does it do for the mayor to drive visitors around in a new vehicle, so they can look at rundown buildings and other properties that need basic care? Such a landscape speaks volumes about careless management and misplaced goals, not about a city that knows where it is headed.
Donna Kirk
Monroe Street
Instead, let fingers do the walking
Why didn't the mayor's staff look in the Yellow Pages under "limousine service" before it purchased two special vehicles to romance visiting dignitaries?
Tom Garcher
Barbara Drive
Public needs to act against gangs
I take issue with the writer of the Sept. 2 Readers' Forum letter "Police, not public, need to stop gangs." This is a social issue. It is fanciful to think that the police can do much about it.
Gangs will exist as long as friends, neighbors, mothers, and fathers tolerate them.
As long as children are allowed to roam the streets at 2 a.m. instead of being home in bed where they belong, there will be trouble.
Richard Reder
Foxcroft Road