Letters: An alternative to winner-take-all elections

Continued from A4 on multi-member districts and ranked-choice elections, known as proportional RCV.

It’s not surprising they represent voter perspectives better than legislatures based on singlemember districts and winner-take-all elections.

John Whitmer Bellingham

PTA ‘supports and advocates’ for important issues

Editor, I am writing to address a recent opinion piece in which Christopher Morris asserts that “ e WA state PTA is part of the national PTA, which has become yet another organ of the radical left.”

After reading his piece, I looked into both organizations and found that our state PTA has more than 340,000 members and is the largest volunteer group in Washington state.

As you would expect, these are parents who have found in the PTA a way to support and participate in the public education of their children. e PTA, on a local and state level, supports and advocates for multiple important issues including school funding, safety, nutrition, etc.

It only advises and supports providing resources that may or may not be used. Its podcasts and other resource materials help teachers address issues that ten years ago they never imagined they would face.

I for one have not seen evidence of our local or even state PTA doing anything that could be construed as promoting a radical left agenda, and to suggest otherwise is to damage the reputation and e ectiveness of an organization that has been a force for good in public education since 1897.

Labeling and demonizing, which stops discussion and divides people into warring camps, needlessly politicizes these issues.

Asking “What e ect will our a liation with the PTA have on our schools? What amount of damage has already been done?” only spreads fear about something that has not and is not happening.

Rather, we need to support our neighbors in their goal of helping to provide the best education possible for our children.

Bruce Smith Lynden

Unthinkable

Editor,

We as a family have had to deal with our mother breaking her hip on Friday, April 7. On Sunday, we met with the nurse who said our mom could go to rehab on Monday. ere were several options, but one that was not available was the Christian Health Care Center in Lynden, because our parents have decided not to get vaccinated. is is called a dictatorship. e word Christian should never be used for this kind of facility.

If you are making decisions on who is accepted at your home, because of personal decisions on what you want to do with you own body, is the furthest from Christian. e word care should also not be part of this home. You do not care about the people from your community if you make these sel sh personal rules.

We as a family have done more than our share to help Lynden turn into a place to go to and enjoy all the owers down town.

Many hours are spent helping to keep our town a show place, and we enjoy doing this for our community. But to have our mother not being welcome in Lynden for rehab is unthinkable. en to here they have 60-70 empty beds. No church or community event, nothing should ever be done to raise money for a place like this. Like the nurse at St. Joseph said in Bellingham you are welcome, but not in Lynden. Should we skip doing the owers downtown this year?

Dave van Wingerden Blaine

Require offstreet parking for ADUs

Editor, Just a thought, but when considering permits for ADUs, accessory dwelling units, maybe o -street parking should be a requirement.

Michael Cowles Lynden

Threat of jail a ‘tool’ for making Bellingham safer

Editor, e Bellingham City Council just passed an ordinance that added “the threat of jail” as a “tool” for making the city safer. ey have now criminalized being houseless.

Incarcerating people for addictions and homelessness is not a solution and it will make no one safer.

I also learned that the city is seeking to add another four o cers to the police force.

I cannot say how disappointed I am that the people elected by citizens of our city and county cannot nd resources to nd another way.

Imagine being awakened from your sleep by a person hefting 50 pounds of lethal force and threatened with jail if you don’t get up o your bed.

Incarceration is an easy way to solve a problem without solving it and actually making the problem worse. If there are resources to take these actions, there are resources for other types of interventions.

Hire four new mental health or social workers In- stead of hiring four new police o cers. Consult with the folks running homeless shelters for another way forward. Build more transitional tiny home communities such as Gardenview.

Provide a space for an encampment and sta it with trash bins, toilets, and helpers. Invite the upset business owners to join a conversation about alternatives.

We can do better for those who are in great need because of homelessness or addiction, for our local businesses, and for the folks who shop in and walk the streets of Bellingham.

We certainly do not need to increase the numbers of incarcerated folks because local business wants them out of sight.

Ronna

Loerch Everson

D.C. now permits non-citizen voting

Editor, is now means that anyone at least 18 years old who has lived in D.C. for at least 30 days could vote, regardless of their citizenship status, regardless of to what country they bear allegiance.

Just like New York City and based on F.A.I.R. (Federation of American Immigration Reform), the City Council governing our nation’s capital has approved voting eligibility for resident non-citizens.

Even Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed the bill, declaring the resolution too radical. A 1973 Home Rule does require our Congress’s House of Representatives and Senate to review and approve.

With a strong bipartisan vote (262-160), the U.S. House voted nay on the D.C. City Council’s move while a designed delay by Sen. Chuck Schumer in the U.S. Senate delayed the vote there past the required 30 day deadline. at delay allowed the City Council’s action to pass. ough President Biden opposed the resolution, he did not agree to refuse a sign o , obviously for political reasons.

Are we closer now to having D.C. eligible to obtain two U.S. senators and become our next 51st State? Closer to losing our sovereignty?

It is obvious also that there now is no importance to the constitutional reference to D.C. as having special status as the seat of our federal government. Is our nation’s capital then rapidly becoming just another state?

Will this unprecedented and unconstitutional move now involve Supreme Court intervention?

Will this now set another precedence for the Left’s continued power agenda?

Gerald Hulbert Sumas

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