The letter to the editor, “No rush needed for jail vote,” Nov. 13, tried to explain the benefits of waiting until the next regular election to vote where we should put a new jail instead of paying for a special election. I agree that the best decision is to wait until the next ballot.
The article forced me to ask if we had already waited long enough to take a vote. The answer is yes, since there was already a completed petition demanding the issue to be put on the ballot prior to the Nov. 6 election. It is a disgrace to democracy if this petition was overlooked in the hope of an easy push in favor of issue 10, the jail levy.
Either way, the issue stands that a vote must now be made sooner or later since Issue 10 was shot down. But is the cost of $240,000 or more really worth hosting a special election when we could simply wait for the next election to come up? It is not economical for us to encourage such spending when the jail itself will already be more than we can really afford, hence the need to sanction the sale of $185 million in bonds as proposed by issue 10.
On top of the economics, consider the practicality behind the idea of holding a special election that won’t have more than a few proposals. As hard as it is to get people to the polls already, how many will really show up? The people who will be there are the ones who will be directly affected, such as lawyers who want to keep the jail near their offices, and the residents who want to keep it out of their neighborhoods. This means that we now must use public tax money to the benefit of a handful of people who, whether or not we hold a special election, will have their vote on the matter sooner or later.
COREY NICHOLS
West Toledo
Read more letters to the editor
Migrants welcome
Last year, the U.S. granted permanent residency, also known as green card status, to over 1.1 million people. That’s a big number. Some 168,000 of these folk came from Mexico; 58,000 came from the Dominican Republic; 64,000 from Cuba. Also, over 700,000 folk became naturalized citizens. Other immigrants are here on over 80 kinds of visas, from work visas to tourist visas, and more.
This shows that there is a system in place, crafted over many decades, that does work, for those wishing to enter the United States. The U.S. is indeed a welcoming, hospitable country!
CHUCK CHILDERS
West Toledo
Carma: A Haiku
Dems bail out GM
Auto workers vote for Trump
HARRY FRANK
Ann Arbor, Mich.
First Published November 29, 2018, 11:15 a.m.
