Readers write: Letters to the editor, October 24, 2017

Agrees with Mallott on budget

Please read the opinion of Lt. Gov. Mallott in Sunday's ADN. He is right on. We have a serious problem, with only a year to go, then our only option is to look at the principal of the Permanent Fund, which none of us wants. It would go against everything we have all worked for, which is to preserve our future for the next generations.

Do not listen to the nebulous promises of the Republican Senate Majority, and the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, and their pie-in-the-sky talk of increasing revenue through business expansion, resource development, and "other" economic opportunities.

My question to Sen. Pete Kelly, and Chairman Curtis Thayer, et al., is this: What specific economic opportunities do you have in mind for the coming year, and specifically how much money is that going to generate?

The budget has already been cut to the point that if it is expanded more, then we, the resident/owners of this state are going to continue to lose the benefits that we all enjoy and are entitled to. We need to raise more revenue, and we only have a year to do it. Again, I ask the proponents of more budget cuts, where, specifically, should we cut?

One logical way to help fill the gap is the income tax, but not the last solution proposed by the governor. That was a last gasp effort to try and get anything through, but the flat tax is very regressive, where the low income public will provide most of the income while the higher wage-earners contribute only minimally. Plus that only generates about 300 million, while the progressive tax as proposed by the House coalition will get us 700 million.

For the record, I am not a politician or beholden to anyone. I am a retired 68 year resident who started as a kid out of high school with one airplane, and built the largest family-owned airline in the state.

As such I just tell it as I see it, and only have to answer to my conscience as to what is best for all of us. We all need to pitch in and have pride in our ownership of this state.

— Orin Seybert
Anchorage

You can't honor dishonorable

Mr. Don Neal seems to be gathering a bit of a following with his contention that people should just ignore the fact that Civil War monuments are seen by a significant portion of U.S. citizens as honoring those who fought to uphold slavery in this country.

Liz Forsman, like Mr. Neal and so many others, seem to fail to recognize the difference between what they see as an "assault on the history of the past" and those of us who see statues of those Confederate leaders that honor it when much of it is not honorable at all.

This is truly sad.

— Jim O'Toole

Anchorage

Road through Izembek refuge

Erica Martinson's recent story on the Interior Department's backroom negotiations to arrange a land swap for construction of a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge overlooked the key fact that the road proposal is really an economic development project.

While visiting King Cove in 2011, Sen. Lisa Murkowski said: "The decades-old push to get the road built between King Cove and the Cold Bay Airport so that we can have greater access for transportation is going to be a critical ingredient in that thriving economic future going out for the next 100 years."

In a letter to President Trump last May, Gov. Walker clarified that the Izembek road would enable "access to health services and movement of goods and people between King Cove and Cold Bay."

Perhaps we should be talking about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' study of non-road alternatives to meet King Cove's needs, which found options — such as an ice-capable ferry—with dependability estimated at 99.9 percent.

We can meet King Cove's transportation needs without destroying the Izembek refuge's wilderness and vital wildlife habitat.

— Nicole Whittington-Evans
Alaska regional director
The Wilderness Society
Anchorage

City gets bigger, paper smaller

Hmmm. Let me think about this:

I have subscribed to the ADN continuously since 1974, preferring it's radical reporting over the more conservative and long defunct Anchorage Times. When I moved here in 1974 there was a small inset map with the cities main roads that I used so I would learn my way around. Back then Tudor was a small dirt road outside of town. My how the city has grown and how the paper has shrunk. It has always been a smaller paper than what I was used to but I enjoyed it until recently.

First you raise the rates and then stop Saturday service (one of my favorite days).

Then you cut out a lot of the columns and features that interested me.

Then you gave us color funnies for a little while, only to take that away shortly after.

After that we lost a lot of our favorite columnists.

As you can see, the theme of this letter is loss. Every day it seems that we give more for less with this paper, while the sports page is huge.

And NOW you have stopped even having two sections, which makes it impossible to share the paper over coffee as we have done for years. This is because you ridiculously have us jumping from the back page to the middle, and bouncing all over the little one-section paper it is now.

I know you are in tough times, but to continue to minimize the paper and send people to the online articles you are surely alienating some of your older readers who don't use computers or smart phones. And they can't even complain about it in a letter to the editor as I am doing.

Please restore the two sections in the paper at the bare minimum. I wonder daily how much longer I will subscribe to this paper. Thank you for your consideration.

— Vicki Williams
Anchorage

The views expressed here are the writers' own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a letter under 200 words for consideration, email letters@alaskadispatch.com, or click here to submit via any web browser. Submitting a letter to the editor constitutes granting permission for it to be edited for clarity, accuracy and brevity. Send longer works of opinion to commentary@alaskadispatch.com.