Letters to the editor June 26

Time out

It’s time for everyone (especially county commissioners, the city council and the city planners) to call time out.

We are watching our home evaporate in front of our eyes. Kalispell is one of a kind and rapidly we are being turned into a fast food, runaway building, rude traffic hell.

Progress is to be expected, but you have to do it with common sense. Just because folks present a building plan doesn’t mean you have to give them a green light. Use your heads, and understand that many people don’t give a darn about any of us, nor our community. They don’t know our history, or the beautiful place that many of our families have called home for generations. Many of them have no connection to us at all, and it is down to one thing — money.

Our Main Street and surrounding blocks are being turned into a hideous joke. Obviously someone has big plans for our home (8 story building). Yes, we need better parking, but not a huge sore thumb. It will mean light pollution, a place that the police will have to constantly be patrolling and a place that is suited for any large city, and not for Kalispell.

You hold our future and the future of generations to come in your hands, and we have to trust that you will not sell us out to the highest bidder.

If people want flashing lights, endless traffic, and nothing special that represents home, then you need to sell your high rolling ideas somewhere else. Our home represents opportunities for a lot of people to come and respect our way of life, and become part of our community. There are people that will change our home, make big money, and leave.

You do not have that right.

— Val Sollars, Kalispell

Do we value our children?

Twenty-one people are murdered by a shooter using an assault rifle. Our entire nation mourns at the loss of nineteen children and two teachers in an elementary school in Texas as the NRA holds their National Conference in the same state celebrating guns in America.

Political leaders and trendsetters offer thoughts and prayers while they assure the public that it was not about too many guns, it was about mental illness, broken homes, single parenting, lack of faith, and declining moral values.

These same policymakers have reduced funding for mental health, opposed easy access to quality health care, and voted against child tax credits that support struggling families. They piously expound about the sanctity of life and their commitment to the most vulnerable while 10 million children in our country live in poverty.

In Montana, the youth suicide rate is among the highest in the country as our superintendent of public instruction questions requirements for counselors in schools. Do we value our children or not? If they are truly our most valuable natural resource, it is time we demand changes.

No child should have to worry about going to bed hungry or getting shot in school while living in one of the richest countries on the planet. We need stop the “us against them” stalemate to redefine our priorities and focus on building a society that treasures our children and empowers them to reach their highest capabilities.

Today’s children are our best hope for a brighter future. They are the future.

— Connie Gates, Helena

Church and state

How would you like it if your children were no longer welcome in our schools because their eyes are blue? Or their skin is white? Or the open-minded Americans of mixed heritage refused to have their children taught the truth about the horrible discrimination Irish and German immigrants endured? Ignoring the rights of others and imposing your religious based beliefs on everyone is unacceptable and against the principles of the foundation of the United States.

Across our country, we live in divided prejudiced environments being further damaged by actions impairing the education of all our children. Banning books and removing them from schools and libraries is unconscionable. Not teaching age-appropriate sex education is wrong. What is the difference between these attitudes and 1930s Germany?

Our educators must be allowed to teach accurate history, practice equality and teach young Americans how to discern fact from fallacy. We cannot allow public education to be contaminated and reduced to narrow religious conservative views. Furthermore, no public funds should ever be spent on non-public religiously biased schools.

The United States was founded on the principle of separation of church and state. Unfortunately, this line has been crossed in every aspect of American life. Vote for change.

— Betty Kuffel, Whitefish

Election idea

After Montana’s recent close elections that had three or more candidates, some voters are thinking, “Since my first-choice candidate did not win, I wish I could have voted for my second and third choices.”

Montana legislators can solve this problem by putting a grid on the ballots where there are 3 or more candidates. Each row would list the candidates as the ballots do today. Each column would be for your choices one, two, three, etc.

Any math teacher can explain how to count these grid votes and program the counting into the machines that read the votes. For example, the voters for the candidate who finished last would have their second, third, etc., choices added to the remaining totals. Repeat until the true top candidate wins.

The result would be the same as having multiple elections. The winning candidate would have the true support of most voters. Third-party candidates would not distort final elections. There might be fewer requests for recounts.

The ballot could include “Donald Duck” for those who don’t like any candidate but still want to register their second choice. More people might vote.

— Ed Berry, Bigfork