No front license plate generates Capitola ticket

As residents of Soquel for over 30 years, we visit Capitola Village a couple times a month for dinner. We were excited to get a parking space in the Village on the Sunday night of a three-day weekend and paid $3.30 for the privilege of parking and eating there.

After dinner we returned to the car to find a ticket, not for a parking violation but for not having a front license plate. There were other cars near us without a front license plate and a ticket, so we weren’t alone. Yes, I know California requires a front license plate, but seriously Capitola, is this the best you can do to generate new revenue?

— Marla Henry, Soquel

Nobody cares about how SC spends utility funds

You pay your Santa Cruz municipal utility bills for water, trash, sewer expecting that those charges are the actual cost of providing water, or trash and sewer disposal. As a monopoly utility you would think the highest standards of accounting would prevent the use of those funds for other purposes since (hopefully) rates are raised based on fund balances vs. actual costs.

It seems to me you would be wrong since occasionally we see the curtain pulled back and water funds have been used for art projects, sewer funds for rail trail cost overruns, and now some feasibility study for PLAs (special discriminatory contracts favoring unions in contracting), not for delivering utility service.

It must be very “nice” to have slush funds like that. Nobody complains, nobody cares.

— Garrett Philipp, Santa Cruz

Column: Not all change needs to be accepted

The message of Mark Primack’s Aug. 31 Commentary, “We live in the path of progress,” is you can’t fight city hall. He would have us believe the proliferation of high rise, utilitarian, industrial inspired, homogeneous building blighting Santa Cruz somehow represents progress. It does not. It is the manifestation of developers’ ambition to maximize profits with the full support of city government.

With the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Americans began to understand the extent of the damage being done to the environment. Big business and the government explained that while regrettable it was the price of progress. This axiom was not accepted by all however. The Bodega Bay nuclear power plant proposed by PG&E was stopped by local activism. More locally, the Abbotts and others were able to stymie the vision of developers and politicians to turn Santa Cruz into LA of the north.

Primack ends by encouraging us to simply accept change. Not all change is progress and not all change needs to be accepted.

— Michael Funari, Santa Cruz

Proposed ugly buildings seem to be proliferating

Ever drive through a town and you see an ugly building and you think to yourself, what were the city planners, builders and architects thinking?

Well the renderings of just such a building being proposed at 1024 Soquel Ave. — it looks like a parking garage from the 1950s and the buildings at the corner of Thurber Lane and Soquel Drive, they look like buildings from a Soviet housing project in East Berlin — fit that look.

What will people think five, 10, 20 years from now when people look at these proposed buildings?

— Leonard Foreman, Santa Cruz

Here’s why Trump is ‘the guy’ to his supporters

The Sept. 4 “As You See It” section of the Sentinel had two writers wondering how Trump supporters could vote for such a terrible person. One states we should be aware of the “moral stance of our vote” and the other lists “Christian Values” as a necessity.

Trump’s accusations of which he’s been wrongly challenged or convicted of (falsifying business records, and a decades old assault charge that wasn’t brought to light until he entered politics) had zero effect on our lives, yours and mine.

What did have a profound effect on every taxpaying citizen are: Student loan forgiveness; open borders allowing millions to enter the country freely and unvetted; forcing the “Green New Deal” with no consideration for the 90% of vehicles on the road that still rely on oil and gas; free health care and social services for undocumented immigrants, including food, housing, etc.; and out of control inflation brought on by very poor policies.

I could go on and you know it. That’s why we support the guy!

— Elwin Haddix, Ben Lomond