Letters to the Editor 9/4/2024

Developers having a heyday

To the Editor:

Just received a full page glossy magazine in the mail entitled Haven. It featured million-dollar-plus homes for sale all over Oregon. Including our very own Sisters Woodlands.

These developers are having a heyday at our expense, sucking our water and resources dry and destroying small communities and pricing out ordinary Oregonians. Let alone bulldozing our trees and devastating the land.

If this makes you angry, please contact Governor Kotek and/or your state representative. I did.

Jeanne Brooks

Trails and wildlife

To the Editor:

I have points of disagreement with Bill Bartlett’s article on August 14, “Trail plan raises wildlife concerns,” particularly with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife comments “the realignment and construction of some trails, especially Brush Creek Trail and Trail A, transects important summer ungulate habitat that is currently intact and functionally uninterrupted by roads or trails.”

I certainly appreciate the balance between recreational access and undisturbed habitat but, it is important to have the correct information. Per the Forest Service 2021 Motor Vehicle Use Map, the Brush Creek trailhead is accessed from FS road 1230-900, a two mile road that branches from the main FS road 1230. These roads are flanked by roads 1230-940 and 1230-800 on each side.

Furthermore, FS road 1230 continues to the Cabot Lake Trailhead, a very popular hiking and equestrian trail located about 1-1/2 miles to the north of the Brush Creek Trail. Clearly, this is not an area uninterrupted by roads or trails! Another point missing is that the area was heavily impacted by the B&B Fire of 2003. It is now covered in a continuous field of ceanothus (aka snowbrush), that is basically impassable by humans or deer and elk. Roads and trails actually enhance wildlife’s ability to travel and/or migrate through such thick brush. This is a rare case where Brush Creek and Trail A could provide an enhancement for ungulate habitat.

Mark Scott

The importance of a door

To the Editor:

My children are grown with children of their own, so I personally do not have any children in school here. However, being a resident here in Sisters, I was curious about our new elementary school, and thought I’d check it out, so I went to the new school this last week just to see what the new building looked like.

My firsts thoughts were “it is all new and shiny and I am sure everyone is excited to be part of a new school.” However, as I wandered around checking out classrooms, I came across something that was very disturbing to me: There are no doors on the boys’ or girls’ bathrooms, as well as none on the staff bathrooms, either. There are stall doors, but these bathrooms are pretty much a box, wide open with two stalls per bathroom and a sink, with no door going in. Hence my displeasure with no door. All public facilities that I have ever gone to have a door or at least a wall, like at an airport that has a wall so you do not stare right into the room.

What has our society become when childrens’ privacies are neglected? You may say, “Oh, but there are stall doors.” Yes, but this room is wide open to each grade’s quad of classrooms, and anyone walking by, standing by, or sitting close by can hear everything that goes on in them.

I have compassion for kids, and when I was a child, I was on the shy side, so this would have bothered me. I would not have felt comfortable, in fact, quite the opposite. Children — boys and girls — both need their privacy and to feel comfortable. As a society, are we trying to desensitize our children, with no regard for human dignity, worth and values like common privacy, which is being taken away from them with this no-door box of a bathroom?

Where is a child to go if they need privacy, above just using the facilities? They might need to go wash themselves up, or may need to take a moment for emotional reasons. Kids go through a lot of different scenarios, and a bathroom should be that safe space for them to take a few moments to themselves, not to worry about when they are doing their business, and who might be hearing them do so. Why are we depriving children of this basic right to privacy?

Children need advocates to speak out on their behalf, so I encourage all parents and residents of our Sisters community to visit the elementary school and check out the bathrooms for yourself, and if you are as outraged as I am, I hope you will voice your opinion and force the schools to put up a door!

Kathryn Leavitt