LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Why badger tea shop owner?
2/3/2014Elaine Terman, who operates Elaine’s Tea Shoppe, is a sincere and dedicated entrepreneur (“Tea shop’s sign stirs up tempest on a tree lawn; Placement violates Toledo municipal code,” Jan. 20). Her little shop is a gem.
She put out a tasteful, small sign in front of her shop to alert customers who couldn’t find it, because traffic moves quickly on Sylvania Avenue.
Why is it necessary to badger this small-business owner, when her tea shop adds class and interest to the area? Having a cup of tea at a fast-food place just isn’t the same as tea at Elaine’s.
BARBARA BAKER
Metamora, Ohio
Tea shop owner shouldn’t gripe
A tea shop owner is peeved because she’s not supposed to put a commercial sign on the grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of her shop. If the sign law is not enforced, how long will it be before we’re confronted by hundreds of similar signs cluttering our sidewalks, until no business has the advantage she claims is her right?
The argument that her customers can’t find her shop doesn’t say much for her clientele. And the argument that sign regulations make Toledo an anti-business city is nonsense. An anti-blight city is an attractive city — for its residents and its business owners.
FRANK WARD
Goddard Road
SCAT applauds ‘Start Talking’
Sylvania Community Action Team applauds Gov. John Kasich’s administration for launching the drug abuse prevention program, “Start Talking” (“Talking about addiction,” editorial, Jan. 22).
SCAT has been providing parenting tips to Sylvania area parents for five years, as well as a parent handbook. The tips are available on our Web site, sylvaniascat.org.
Parents are the single most influential factor for whether their children make good choices, including not using drugs or alcohol.
Ohio’s Start Talking program will provide even more support for parents to ensure the safety and health of their children.
DEB CHANY
Executive Director Sylvania Community Action Team Sylvania Township
Reading law provides for help
In response to the Jan. 12 Readers’ Forum letter “Law fails to note differences in learning”: The writer who criticizes Ohio’s reading guarantee law claims the law fails to account for students’ learning at different rates. The law recognizes this, because it provides for students to be held back to allow more time to acquire grade-level skills.
This should compel schools to try to provide early intervention measures. The writer may criticize politicians, and the test-publishing industry for making billions of dollars in profits. But it does not follow that moving third-graders forward by social promotion is proper.
DANIEL DLUGAS
Temperance, Mich.