LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Driving up gas tax wise move

5/17/2014

Your May 8 editorial “Raise the gas tax” stated that fewer people are driving, and that they are driving more fuel-efficient cars. This lowers revenue from gasoline taxes, which helps maintain roads and bridges.

Electric vehicles use much less, or no, gas. The number of these vehicles is increasing. This also reduces gas tax revenue. Electric vehicles should have a tax of some sort, probably based on miles driven, to compensate for their lack of generating gas tax funds.

The idea of making highways into toll roads is the wrong way to go. There will be costs in building toll booths, hiring people to staff them, and incurring administrative expenses.

Raising the gas tax by a small amount, with the revenue going to rebuilding roads and bridges, would be wise.

CHUCK MENDELJIAN

Temperance

 

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‘Ode to Joy’ should get an encore

I have been fortunate to have heard Christmas music in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and to have seen Evita in London and the Bolshoi Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. None of these programs came close to the music of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony presented by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and especially the 1,000-plus singers who filled Huntington Center with music too wondrous to describe (“Symphony success,” editorial, April 18).

I was especially proud of the young ladies and gentlemen from our area schools. It’s no wonder the applause was loudest for the choir — it was phenomenal.

I hope if “Ode to Joy” is performed again, Huntington will be filled. Many Toledoans missed something great by not attending.

MARILYN ULRICH

Maumee

 

Return to former execution methods

I was born in 1934 and was taught in my youth that the death penalty was administered to people who had committed crimes too heinous to be paid for only by serving jail time. That still sounds right to me (“Obama to call for execution review; President: Oklahoma situation highlights significant problems,” May 4).

The death penalty was carried out at various times by hanging, firing squad, electrocution, or a gas chamber. Each of those methods was to my knowledge effective, successful, economical, and humane. Let’s go back to the tried and true methods of execution.

THOMAS HAULUND

Maumee

 

Roadside tidiness right thing to do

For years, when I was able to, I walked along roadsides to pick up trash other people threw out of their vehicles. I never found anything of value, but I got exercise and self-satisfaction.

To litterbugs: Shame on you. They should do the environment a favor by taking their trash home and disposing of it properly.

DORIS CULLER

Swanton