Letters to the editor | Sunday, Aug. 30, 2020: Credibility check for Stanislaus County leaders

Stanislaus leaders manage to waste resources anyway

It’s good to see that the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors did not vote to flout the law by opening schools. Well, most of them didn’t.

And, oh by the way, the board has no authority over schools. They didn’t want to use scarce county resources to enforce rules they don’t like. Well, that resolution used at least some county resources, like the staff that wrote and reviewed the ridiculous thing.

Lou Hampel, Modesto

Schools reopening confusion reigns

The OJUSD survey sent to elementary parents is insufficient and premature. It doesn’t allow for any real feedback. Before any district begins to entertain returning to classrooms, even in a hybrid format, they should give voice to teachers, staff, and students’ families. While not ideal, virtual learning offers continuity and that will be lost if we opt for either of the two options presented. 1) Hybrid model where students will be on campus two days a week, completing school work on their own with no teacher contact two days a week, and distance learning one day a week; or, 2) Independent study where they will lose their regular teacher and I suspect all of their extras, the things my fifth grader is essentially living for right now.

These are not viable options. Kids and parents will be confused and frustrated. The message home at the beginning of August could have been simple and proactive: “First trimester: distance learning. We will reevaluate in November. Thank you for your patience.”

Thank you to educators who are doing an outstanding job. They have shown grace and patience. A perfectly reasonable third option would have been to keep things as they are for now.

Rebekah Remkiewicz, Oakdale

NFL owners late to the game

Four years ago, Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest the treatment of black people by the police in America. Very few listened. Roger Goodell now says he should have listened then.

I still don’t hear any NFL owners saying that. We haven’t heard those words from people like Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft. I don’t see much changing until they do. Like it or not, we still live by the Golden Rule — not the one that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but that other one that says, “He who has the gold makes the rules.” It’s about time we hear them admit that they were wrong, too.

Pat George, Turlock

Column missed the mark

Re “A Republican convention filled with ghoulish clowns” (Page 6A, Aug. 25): The Modesto Bee should have watched the RNC first day convention. This column from The Washington Post is pure fantasy and prejudicial hate speech.

The RNC speakers were people from many walks of life who have been helped by Trump, including Black and Hispanic people, who tell how Trump has changed laws and helped the Blacks and Hispanic economically more than any other president in recent history. The column was basically biased, left-wing slander hate talk.

David Louis Johnson, Waterford

Making bail more fair

“Defund police” is just one way of saying change is needed in our huge and expensive criminal justice system. In the November election we will have an opportunity to address the issue of cash bail in California.

Senate Bill 10 in 2018 gave judges more discretion in deciding who should remain in jail pending trial and eliminated the payment of money as a condition of release (bail), a practice that can trap a person in a cycle of debt even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Cash bail is a billion-dollar industry that extracts money from poor people who have been arrested but not convicted. SB 10 eliminates cash bail and gives judges more discretion in keeping an arrested person in jail. A person who is not a danger to the community does not belong in jail, and one who is should not be released on bail, no matter how large.

Let’s protect indigent criminal defendants from unjust incarceration and fees, protect Senate Bill 10, and defeat the bail bond industry-sponsored referendum in November.

Ed Bearden, Modesto

Prop. 15 won’t hurt small farms

Re “Split roll initiative on November ballot threatens agriculture” (Page 6A, Aug. 10): Ted Gaines’ column deserves a clarification or two. He mistakenly conflates much of the focus and intent of Prop. 15, the Schools and Communities First initiative, with many of the justified fears that brought about Prop. 13 back in 1978. He implies that an adjustment to the present system of tax assessment would be bad public policy and potentially ruinous to agriculture in California.

The text of Prop. 15 tells a different story. First, no residential properties will have their property taxes go up. Grandma will not be taxed out of her house. Agricultural lands will not have property taxes increased, and commercial and business properties worth less than $3 million would likewise be exempt from increases.

Prop. 15 is about fairness. The tax structure brought about by Prop. 13 in 1978 has opened an increasingly large loophole for millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. Prop. 15 seeks to put California on a par with the majority of other states in assessing commercial properties. Rather than create a “tax collector’s playground,” as Gaines disingenuously suggests, Prop. 15 would create a much-needed recalibration of our tax system to assure that the wealthy and powerful corporations start to pay their fair share.

Llewellyn Boyle, Turlock

This story was originally published August 30, 2020 at 4:00 AM.