Airport ownership?
Should Nez Perce County own the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport in total? Perhaps those on the airport board and the county commission that supported the conversion of the city of Lewiston to a “strong mayor” government from a city manager government were wrong.
A county resident was the one to start the compaign to change the city government and those who agreed with him voted in a “strong” mayor, yet the city council supported by the same people is “weak.”
The city taxpayers might be right to pressure the “strong” mayor and his “weak” council to sell their share of the airport to Nez Perce County. It would relieve them of paying city taxes for the airport. They then would only be paying the county taxes for the airport, unless the financial wizards of the county could find other ways to finance the airport and not involve local taxpayers perpetually. Good luck.
PS: The city taxpayers make up about 77% of the county tax base.
Ged W. Randall
Lewiston
Sharing their values
I want to thank Bob Hassoldt for his illuminating letter about how wind turbines dry out soils. I wasn’t aware of this, so thank you, Bob.
It does confirm my bias. I have long believed the laws of thermodynamics should be considered for our decisions. If we want a system to provide us energy in a different form, we have to accept that some of the energy in the current system will be lost. Our values guide these decisions. There is no free energy.
It seems some of us have accepted the energy tradeoff with hydroelectric, transportation and irrigation of the four lower Snake River dams. We get our lights on and cheap wheat to market and center pivots in western Washington. But we lose our native Idaho salmon. This tradeoff does not reflect my values.
So I gather from his writing that Bob wants soils to have 4% more moisture and he wants no wind farms. But he’s fine with cheap wheat shipping and electricity and industrial agriculture for megafarms. I guess that reflects his values.
I appreciate when writers are willing to share their values with us readers.
Dan Schmidt
Moscow
Front page disappoints
I enjoy reading the newspaper in the morning, especially the Sunday edition. What a disappointment Dec. 1 to see pictures of Moscow’s Small Businesses on the front page.
Our Lewiston Center Mall had a Christmas Market with 60-some vendors the weekend of Nov. 29, 30 and Dec. 1. How sad there were no pictures of this in the paper but there were of Moscow’s.
Sally Hedrick
Clarkston
