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ILLOGICAL SITE McKenzie-Willamette/Triad hospital has made a bad choice in the highly congested, floodplain/wetland Delta site. Initially, McKenzie-Willamette came to town and made a dirt cheap offer to buy the prime riverfront property of EWEB, which was not for sale. Besides its difficult isolated location, and being in a floodplain, it would have cost EWEB utility ratepayers millions of dollars. M-W later demanded the city produce a core downtown location within 30 days. M-W is tarnishing its own reputation by these hostile approaches, and it feels like they owe the city of Eugene an apology. Early arguments for choosing the EWEB site were that they needed to be near where doctors are already located. What then, is the logic, in the Delta site? If you build it near a remote golf course, they will come? Memo to McKenzie-Willamette Hospital: Please listen to the common sense input and majority opinion of Eugene residents and government: We need a hospital in a more centrally located area ( beyond the unavailable downtown core) that is not in a floodplain, on land that is currently available, to the west of the Willamette River. Please include ample parking, which was a serious ongoing problem for Sacred Heart hospital. Of course M-W can ignore public input, but the public can ignore their ill-chosen site — and drive right on by to Sacred Heart's new RiverBend location. McKenzie-Willamette, you can do better than the remote Delta flood plain site. Please! A green pastoral (flood-prone) scenic site is not as important as being able to actually get to the hospital in a timely way in an emergency. Go to the Delta/Beltline area during rush hour on any given day and tell us (without laughing) that this is in fact a good idea for a hospital location. Fran Gillespie, Eugene
FAMILIAR SCENE Let's see, do we call it strong-arm tactics, blackmail, or is it more like the Mafia trying to force the city councilors to back down on their courageous stand against the west Eugene freeway? I've lived in Mafia-controlled areas of our country and it looks very similar. This $200 million freeway boondoggle that would ruin our $20 million investment in our nationally recognized West Eugene Wetlands has been pushed to gain dollars for a small number of developers. It would not solve any traffic problem in west Eugene, but it would add up to a lot of cement and new housing on poor soil. After recent published accounts of the wetland otters, and we already know about the beavers and foxes, how could we want to do away with their habitat? This is in addition to endangered species of plant life and butterflies found only in this wetland. Also, how can we talk of doing away with the flood protection for Eugene provided by the absorption power of our wetlands? Didn't we see what happened to New Orleans? Don't we understand that our wetlands are unique and important for a multitude of reasons? Thank you, Kitty Piercy, Bonny Bettman, David Kelly, Betty Taylor and Andrea Ortiz. Ruth Duemler, Eugene
NO POLICE RESOURCES At what point do the Eugene police have the resources to pursue a crime? We had two bicycles stolen from our garage Nov. 8, one worth $800, the other worth $600. Although the police responded in person, I was told they don't dust for prints in bicycle theft cases, and don't have the resources to pursue the thieves. Last night, Nov. 16, our car was ransacked. Some items were stolen, everything else was tossed throughout the car. When I called to report the incident, I was told the police don't have the resources to dust for prints in car vandalism cases. No one would be sent out, but someone would call back in 24 to 48 hours. This evening I received a phone call from a neighbor who also had her car ransacked. The thief not only ransacked her car, but bled all over its interior. I saw the blood spattered over the car door and pooled onto the contents of the car. When she called the police, she too was told they would not come out, would not take fingerprints, or test the blood left behind. But they would call back in 24 to 48 hours. Thanks to Eugene's "lack of resources," the drug addicts and thieves are having a wonderful time. Law enforcement looks the other way, and the law-abiding citizen is left to replace their stolen cars, electronics, bicycles, kayaks, fishing equipment, etc. Oh yes, and to wipe down the blood left behind in their vehicles. Colette Jonopulos, Eugene
METH DISASTER To reply to Chris Pender's letter (11/12): We do not have an epidemic of methamphetamine. What we have is incredibly wide-ranging, long-lasting devastation caused by people who sell meth and the people who use meth. I am a lawyer in the Juvenile Court and meth families are pretty much all we see these days. Meth and sex abuse, meth and domestic violence, meth and burglary, and so forth. For babies born addicted to meth, of whom there are hundreds and hundreds in this county alone, it is not uncommon to be unable to bear the touch of another person, noise, even parental love songs to the child. Their nervous systems are scrambled. Many of my older meth children do not seem to put together cause and effect, which often continues them in delinquent or criminal behavior. On my caseload, most of the meth-using adults cannot ever completely escape from it. While the effects of meth use on babies are not well documented at this point, the effect on parents of these children is very simple. If they keep using meth, they die, or if they are unlucky, they keep using until everything around them is destroyed. I think calling methamphamine an epidemic does a disservice to the truth. I use the term methamphetamine disaster. William A. Furtick, Eugene
LOOK TO PAKISTAN President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has recently suspended a major purchase of U.S. fighter planes, with a cost of $5-10 billion, stating that funds are needed first and foremost for earthquake recovery. He has previously been criticized for refusing to cut his nation's military budget in light of the disaster. Here in the U.S., President George Bush and the Republican Congress are in the process of suspending social spending and Medicare payments, with a cost of $35-plus billion, to pay for Hurricane Katrina recovery. There has been scant criticism of our country's $500 billion annual defense budget, which exceeds the spending of all the militaries of all other nations of the world combined. Perhaps we should look to the priorities set by the democratic government of Pakistan for guidance in our own fiscal dilemma. And maybe we should begin to speak out. Benton Elliott, Eugene
A NARROW READ This is a response to the "open letter" sent by Deb Huntley (11/17). In that letter Ms. Huntley seems to have a problem understanding the difference between "like" and "interest." Just because I choose to read a column, in this case Sally Sheklow's, doesn't mean that I agree with or "like" the contents of the column. If all one does is consume that which one agrees with, then that individual will be certain to have an extremely narrow perspective indeed. Which would seem to suit Ms. Huntley just fine. In fairness, I should concede that Ms. Huntley did allow that one is free to read or not to read EW, and I am thankful for her largess. And for what it's worth, Sally Sheklow invited me to submit my letter for publication, which to me shows a broader sense of perspective than I had previously given her credit for. Bill Fredericks, Eugene
PROTEST VOTE Vip Short (11-17) is appalled at readers' choice of Jeffrey "Free" Luers for "Best Activist." I didn't vote for Jeff because I actually believe that he is the best activist. I did it because EW's Best of Eugene presents another opportunity to draw attention to his case. It's a form of protest against his outrageous sentence. As for the effectiveness of Jeff's actions, I agree with a previous commentator that the irony of Jeff's case is that his actions have only been effective because of his harsh treatment. Now he has a voice and influence on an international level that he never had before. One gets the feeling reading Vip's letter that he has no remorse or respect for Jeff. It's sad that some peace activists think anyone who uses tactics they don't agree with deserves what they get from the state. What's non-violent about that? I think it's questionable that anyone "with a genuine résumé would tell you that honesty, harmlessness and willingness for self-sacrifice are the cornerstones of any lasting and fundamental shift in human affairs." Religious pacifism is like any other dogma — it doesn't hold up in the real world. Many pacifists celebrate s/heroes that really aren't part of the "non-violent" protest tradition at all (Nelson Mandela, the Sandinistas, Zapatistas, etc). Are we to believe that these groups and individuals broke the "non-violence" code because they're lying cowards unwilling to make a sacrifice? I didn't think so. Eric Blair, Eugene
MISERY RELIEF I am a retired RN and have seen suffering you would not believe! Who knows, someday you may be in agonizing pain and wish you could have something that would make you a living human, not a ball of pain. Perhaps you could visit a hospital and see the suffering. Also picture someone you love in terrible pain. Would you not want to put them out of their misery? Just close your eyes and visualize the above! The marijuana initiative offers a sensible solution to our failed policy of prohibition. Rather than allowing marijuana to be sold by violent gangs and criminals, we could tax and strictly regulate it — producing an estimated $28 million a year in revenue for the state. Half of this additional revenue would be earmarked toward funding drug and alcohol treatment. The other half could fund law enforcement, education, and transportation infrastructure. Lu Weiss, RN., Florence
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