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Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Letters
Why Won't Mayor Protect Citizens?
What do you do as a citizen when you see a health disaster already present in the city Santa Fe and which is looming to be a gargantuan calamity, while those who have the power to prevent it, refuse to do so and actually seem perturbed by the reminders by the citizens asking them to do the right thing?
Which happens to be, to protect the public health of the people of Santa Fe. Upholding the city public health code being an obligation (for) the mayor and city councilors. The mayor, when given the choice to protect the health of Santa Fe citizens or of supporting an unjust federal law, the 1996 Telecom Act, chose knowingly to support the telecom industry, saying that federal law prevents him from taking any possible health consequences into his voting consideration. He therefore voted, along with four city councilors, to allow AT&T to construct a new cell tower on the roof of St. John's United Methodist Church.
For the mayor to say to the people of Santa Fe that he is following state and federal laws by voting to allow the people of Santa Fe to be victims of this radiation and that because of those laws he is unable to enforce city health codes to protect the citizens, is completely amoral and does violate city health codes, which he was elected to enforce.
Instead of protecting the public health of the people of Santa Fe, his insistence to use the mantle of federal law to mask what has become, an actual victimization of the people, has created an adversarial atmosphere between city government and the people they are supposed to serve.
Why is it that other city councils in the USA have taken the stand to protect the health of their citizens by voting against cell tower construction in their cities until the time when the low-dose, nonthermal radiation can be proven to be safe and our city government has taken the stance which exposes the entire city of Santa Fe to what has turned out to be, deadly radiation?
Why is doing the right, sensible, moral thing not a priority with the mayor and the city councilors?
What does the Santa Fe citizenry do when he/she sees their city government, who can defuse this peril, refuse to do so?
HOWARD H. BLEICHER
Santa Fe
SF Adverse To Separate Checks
We recently returned from a wonderful trip with friends to the American Southeast. We stopped in Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, with a brief foray into Tennessee. We ate out frequently and most times there were at least four of us dining. At every restaurant, with no exceptions, our request for "separate checks" was met with an immediate "of course" and often we were pre-emptively asked if we wanted this service even before we had time to request it.
When I mentioned that so few restaurants in Santa Fe seemed to be able or even want to handle such a simple request, these "Southern" servers were astonished and somewhat bemused by a refusal to what they regarded as an extremely simple process. They even, in some cases, showed us just how simple it is.
Then sadly, on our first meal out in our beloved Santa Fe upon our return, at a highly popular local eatery, there were eight of us and our polite request for separate checks was as usual, peremptorily refused. I know we Santa Feans pride ourselves on being the "City Different." Is this really a difference we can be proud of?
DAVID KING
Santa Fe
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