GARDEN CITY GREENBELT

Support initiatives

We would like to ask all Garden City voters to support the initiatives removing the bicycle ban from the Greenbelt in Garden City. We have ridden the “Greenbelt Bypass” several times a week all summer. There has not been a single day that we have not had to negotiate cars, trucks, trailers or other equipment parked in the bike lanes on Riverside Drive.

We have spoken to the mayor’s office, police and one council member about the lack of safety on this road, without any results. There are still cars parking on the bike lanes every day. Also, on Thursday afternoons and Fridays, the garbage containers are parked in the bike lanes.

The Greenbelt is such a huge positive for all the residents of the Treasure Valley. It should not be restricted to walkers only or subdivision residents only. I have heard the safety concerns about mixing bikes and walkers. This does not make sense to us. Cars and bikes mix a lot more dangerously than bikes and walkers.

Please vote to open this area to everyone as was originally intended. Thank you.

DOUG AND JERINE SMITH, Eagle

Oppose initiatives

Conspiracy theorists are hard at work trying to convince us that for over 30 years Garden City leaders have been scheming and paper-shuffling to keep bikes off the Garden City Nature Path. I find it hard to believe that over those 30 years, five different mayors and more than 20 different council members from different parts of the city with different opinions on many city issues actually hid in little rooms and conspired against bicyclists.

Is it possible that they all had a clear understanding that this is a unique asset for the community? That it is a path to nowhere, connecting nothing? That it would be expensive for Garden City taxpayers to make it into a shared-use path? Are those reasons that not one single mayor or council member over those 30 years advocated a change of use on the path? I believe so and I believe they were and are right! I urge you to vote “no” on Garden City Initiatives A and B on Nov. 6.

BETTE WOOD, Garden City

Bicycle ban is greedy

I own a home in Garden City and I pay my taxes; also I am an Eagle resident who cannot enjoy a Greenbelt bike ride with my family to Downtown Boise. A few greedy residents of Garden City have pushed through an ordinance that bans bicycles for just over a mile of the Greenbelt.

What is this city thinking?

What happened to community enjoyment, exercising with your family, taking bike rides instead of our cars?

Why would a few people restrict bikes on this stretch of the Greenbelt that impacts all of us? This means everyone — Star, Caldwell, Eagle and Boise, riders going in both directions, for work, exercise and fun. It doesn’t make any sense.

How did homeowners who live along the Riverside Village Greenbelt ever become so arrogant to believe that our Greenbelt area should be redefined for the benefit of so few and have such a huge impact on the entire Treasure Valley?

This needs to change and I ask every resident of Garden City to get out and vote on this issue. The only correct vote is to give all of us the same enjoyment of an open Greenbelt.

DAVID CLEMONS AND FAMILY, Eagle

Agreements did not require bicycle access

It’s time to set the record straight on the legal issues surrounding the Garden City Nature Path. In her dismissal of Citizens for an Open Greenbelt’s lawsuit against Garden City earlier this year, 4th District Court Judge Cheri Copsey wrote:

Relative to the 1980 agreement, “The state only agreed that the state land, together with the developer’s parcel dedicated to the park and Greenbelt amenities, would be perpetually maintained for the ‘use and benefit of the public.’ The state did not agree to specifically maintain the parcels for particular recreational uses.

“Garden City was not a party to the 1980 agreement, and, in the 1996 settlement agreement, Garden City only agreed to maintain the pathway as a public amenity for a Greenbelt and park. Neither agreement required Garden City or the state to keep the Riverside Village pathway open to bicycles or open to any other particular public use. There is no dispute that Garden City has maintained the pathway as a public amenity for Greenbelt and park uses.”

This is the legal status and any statements to the contrary are incorrect.

STEVE BROWN, Garden City

IDAHO POWER

Shut down coal plants

You report that Idaho Power objects to backing down its coal-fired power plants when renewable energy production is high (Statesman Sept. 21).

Those of us interested in reducing carbon dioxide emissions for the sake of global climate health want Idaho Power to back down its coal-fired power plants to the point of shutting them down permanently. If not, Idaho Power is part of the air pollution problem and not part of the solution.

We want more wind, more solar and more efficiency programs. Up with renewables. Down with fossil fuels.

REED BURKHOLDER, Boise

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Research skills lacking

I read the letters to the editor for some morning entertainment and chuckles. If writers spent as much time on researching their statements as they do searching thin air to support their statements, we might get a few more facts and less suppositions. Case in point: Martha Wendt’s letter of Sept. 26. What is her basis for saying people will have to pay $2,000 more to take care of those who don’t have any insurance? Does she think the deficit started the day Obama took office?

Congress is another story. Partisanship has destroyed any hope for any solution to anything. The majority of people in Congress are just taking up space. They all just recently boogied out of town leaving many critical issues dead. Where’s Wendt’s source for saying Obama has virtually cut off all U.S. oil production? He did this all by himself? We’re trying to get out of Afghanistan, or didn’t she notice.

I believe everyone should have his say, but please, have some facts.

PAT CARLIN, Meridian

47 PERCENT

Some taxpayers will support Obama

In answer to “The truth hurts” (letters, Sept. 30): I am included in the “47 percent not paying income taxes” group, according to Romney, because I plan to vote for Obama.

I have paid income taxes every year of my life, I have never applied for food stamps or welfare, I have insurance and pay my own doctor bills, and I have had a full-time job my whole life, excluding the five years I stayed home to care for my two children.

Excuse me if I am offended by Romney’s statement. I recall hearing of a busload of elementary students chanting “assassinate Obama!” shortly after his election, in eastern Idaho, a predominately Mormon area. You say your church is teaching love, unlike what Obama’s children have learned. What a strange way to show love!

SHAWNA CHADEZ, Marsing