Letters to the editor May 5

Whitefish rural fire

If you own property in the Whitefish Fire Service Area, this moment matters.

Many in our community sit in a wildfire-prone wildland urban interface — yet our fire protection services are dramatically underfunded and overextended. The Whitefish Fire Service Area covers 48,000 acres and 3,200 homes, but it’s one of the last remaining fire service areas in Montana still operating on a flat annual fee. This outdated model leaves us vulnerable, drives up homeowner insurance rates, and puts firefighter safety at risk.

There’s a smarter, fairer solution: Convert the Whitefish Fire Service Area into a fire district. This would shift funding to a mill rate system — just like most rural districts in Montana — ensuring property owners contribute equitably based on property value. Many homeowners will see no change or even lower fees, while we collectively generate the resources needed for better staffing, equipment and faster emergency response.

But we can’t do it without your help. Forming a fire district requires in-person signatures from property owners. Signing the petition is the first step toward securing the safety and resilience our community deserves.

Learn more and find a petition-signing location by visiting the Whitefish Fire Service Area website at www.whitefishservicearea.org. Not sure if you’re in the Service Area? Visit the Flathead County GIS site to check.

Let’s invest in our fire protection before it’s too late.

— Julie Rommel, Whitefish

Don’t fall for propaganda

President Trump promised to deport migrants who entered the country illegally, and to start by deporting those who had committed violent crimes. That is not what he is doing.

Instead, he is deporting people because they are from countries he doesn’t like, or have expressed opinions he doesn’t like, even though many were here legally. For example, he tried to revoke valid academic visas for over 1,200 students and faculty members.

He is starting with people he argues he has the power to remove without granting them deportation hearings. In hundreds of cases, he is not deporting them to return to normal lives in their home countries, but instead locking them up indefinitely in a notoriously brutal prison complex in El Salvador. He has spoken openly about his desire to do the same thing to American citizens.

Now that many judges in many states and at all levels of federal courts have ordered him to stop and allow people hearings, Trump and his accomplices are attacking the courts and threatening to arrest and prosecute the judges.

Don’t buy the administration’s lies and propaganda. They are not doing this in the name of safety, or fighting crime. Judges are not ruling against them because the judges are “deranged,” or “socialists,” or it’s a “judicial coup.” Judges keep ruling against Trump because he keeps breaking the law and violating the Constitution.

Trump, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi don’t care about the evidence against any of their victims, which is flimsy at best. They don’t care whether the deportees are dangerous, or what their immigration status is. Their goal is simple: to ethnically cleanse the United States.

This is racism. This is illegal. This is a moral atrocity. We must all speak out against it until it stops.

— Edward Salmon, Columbia Falls