Getting in the weeds to eliminate a nuisance
Jeff Jarnecke, executive director of Visit South Bend Mishawaka, frequently talks about the thousands of visitors coming to South Bend/Mishawaka for numerous events. Recently, America's Youth on Parade drew cars from more than 20 different states. Each Notre Dame home football game draws more than 80,000 visitors. What do visitors think when they see endless weeds?
I am certain there are many high school or college students looking for a summer job who would be more than willing to whack weeds. Where would the revenue come from to pay them? How about assessing fines on drivers who run red lights? The technology is clearly available to identify these reckless drivers. In fact, the revenue from such fines would more than cover the cost of weed control. That means the city would even have funds to plant flowers (not to mention the lives that would be saved)!
Jim Wittenbach
South Bend
Horror show
The Democrats fought honorably to prevent the horror show that's playing out before our eyes. The Democrats lost. They lost bad. It was brutal and ugly.
Losing hurts. But better to lose with honor than win by lying and appealing to ignorance and bigotry.
The moral principle here has been valid for at least two millennia. In the Bible, Jesus asked how it profits a man to gain the whole world if it costs him his soul. He said it twice. He meant it.
Now, Trump and his Republican toadies have seized the levers of power and set in motion this toxic, flaming, runaway freight train to hell.
And they have no one left to blame now except each other.
Dave Coyne
Goshen
Indiana roads
In 2006, Indiana's only toll road was leased to a foreign, private entity to raise money because, apparently, the Toll Road itself was not doing that well enough. The company that rented it went bankrupt, and tolls have about quadrupled — outpacing inflation. In 2017, with House Enrolled Act 1002, we were told, "Indiana now has a sustainable plan to fund roads and bridges for at least … 20 years …Indiana has a fully funded asset management plan for every state-maintained road and bridge ..."
It isn't 2037, but now the Indiana government can't afford our roads. It passed the responsibility of creating new toll roads (which don't earn enough money) to unelected officials instead of revoking the broken House Enrolled Act 1002. Gas taxes and toll roads alone don't fairly fund roads because law enforcement and emergency service personnel need good roads to serve everyone — not just drivers. Supplementing road costs with income and property taxes will fill the gaps created and recreated by our modern government, which has a record of doing a horrible job dabbling in distant future financial predictions.
Jennifer Reinoehl
Granger
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Let's get in the weeds and solve a problem | Letters
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