Letters to the Editor 12/15/2010

To the Editor:

This fall I have had the pleasure of teaching the Ford Family Foundation Leadership Institute classes in Wheeler County, in the small communities of Spray, Mitchell, and Fossil. They are so rural they are classified as a "Frontier Rural" county. All of the communities combined have a population less than the Sisters city limits.

Spray and Mitchell have the unique school opportunity by having boarding schools. Mitchell is home to 20 live-in high schoolers, many from foreign countries. Spray has seven foreign students, each from a different country. Both school districts K-12 have less than 50 students.

Neither town has a population over 160 people, probably less when the 2010 census is complete.

The only libraries in Spray and Mitchell are those found in the schools and function as community libraries. They are in need of new reading material, both adult and children's books. Since our Sisters Library Friends group has stopped taking donations until the new year, I want to invite the community to support Wheeler County by donating books to them. I will be returning for our last leadership class on January 7 and would love to take them a gift from the community of Sisters.

Please bring any books you want to donate to A Joyful Noise Learning Center at the corner of Adams Avenue and Elm Street: 104 E. Adams Ave. There will be a box on the front walk to put the books in. Sisters' residents are such avid readers that I am really hoping we can help them out.

Thank you.

Evelyn Brush

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To the Editor:

There has been a lot of discussion of who should pay for street maintenance and water with a local Sisters gas tax in effect and recent raises in water rates to commercial users.

Instead of City residents worrying about a few dollars one way or the other about how much their water costs a month, consider how much savings every resident has when businesses use more.

If it were not for restaurants paying for larger water usage for example, residents would have to pay the difference, and residential rates overall would go up significantly.

It is called the marginal cost of production. In other words, it does not cost the same for each gallon of water produced. The first gallon costs the most and each gallon thereafter costs less and less because of all the fixed costs in place.

The argument can be made, then, that it behooves city residents to sell water cheaper to large commercial users at a lower rate in order to subsidize their costs of water production, reducing costs over all.

This attracts more businesses and the more water sold, the less per gallon it costs, lowering residential rates even more.

With higher water rates, meaning higher prices on goods and services, and higher gas taxes you can be sure there will be fewer tourists and less gas sold. This will likely result in even more empty commercial space of which an abundance exists already.

In addition, when rates are raised so that people can't afford to irrigate their landscaping in the summer, keep in mind Sisters won't look as nice to the tourists who visit.

The attractiveness of Sisters will continue to decline and this will certainly have a deleterious effect on tourism, the number-one thing that keeps Sisters prosperous.

If the general attitude is "stick it to businesses and tourists" (and it seems that way to me, by both residents and city officials) then the city will continue on it's downward spiral with fewer of both.

In case you haven't noticed, many businesses in Sisters are in trouble and the recent closure of two restaurants, El Caporal and Scoots, and the failure of the newest business attempt, Divine Earth Natural Foods, proves my point.

Of course, someone could write in and say that raising the cost of water to a business by a few hundred dollars a year will not cause it to fail.

Maybe not, but every cost increase must be passed on to customers.

Raising water rates substantially is not the answer to a more attractive business environment in Sisters, and in fact may cause higher rates on residents in the long run if more businesses simply lock their doors because of overall lack of sales plus higher costs.

Kenneth E. Ehlers

Retired CPA

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To the Editor:

Most Americans are adamant about our $1.3 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, since the total debt is about $14 trillion, equal to America's gross national

product.

To cure the deficit and debt, government must do what households do, increase revenue, reduce spending or both. Generally, voters want the debt reduced but not at the expense of their pet projects such as Medicare, Social Security or education etc., but sacrifices must be made to balance the annual

budget.

The only real value-added budget expenditure is education because the better educated a society the greater personal income and taxes to reduce debt. According to the United Nations study on global education, America ranks 22 out of 26 industrialized nations; that's right, 22, and Finland

ranks 1.

America pays more per student and has a better teacher/student ration than Finland, so where is the leakage? Maybe it is because America hires teachers from the bottom 30 percent of their graduating class and Finland hires from the top 10 percent. Additionally while American teachers, unions, federal/state governments, students and parents have different and conflicting education objectives, these stakeholders are united in Finland, where education is highly valued and central to the society.

Therefore, it is no wonder Finland has one of the most solid economies in the world. We should take a lesson.

William MacPhee, PHD

Professor of Finance, University of Illinois, Ret.

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To the Editor:

Today I had the privilege of attending an assembly at the high school. Led by President Connor of the Key Club, they were kicking off the 2010 canned-food drive for the Kiwanis Food Bank. What an inspiration these young adults were.

So please, when they come to your door, if you are able, load them up with whatever you are able to help with for those in need. The Key Club is the coolest.

Sheryl McLaughlin, a proud Kiwanian