Letters to the editor: Create Common Good, affordable housing, Forest Service roads, Brett Kavanaugh

Create Common Good

Happy 10th anniversary to Create Common Good. The Boise-based nonprofit offers food-service training and job-placement services to individuals with barriers to employment and has helped 725 people — including refugees, women escaping domestic violence and those overcoming addiction — gain new skills and achieve self-sufficiency.

The Women’s and Children’s Alliance, which provides safety, healing and freedom from domestic abuse and sexual assault, has been involved with CCG since 2013. Our partnership makes a significant difference in this community and in the lives of many of the women the WCA serves.

We’ve referred 45 clients, and CCG’s cocooning, confidence-building effects have empowered 70 percent to uncover their working potential by graduating and finding jobs that pay living wages and often have benefits.

Please join us at CCG’s Grateful (un)Gala this Saturday, Oct. 20, from 6-9 p.m. at Bronco Stadium’s Stueckle Sky Center. It pairs five local celebrity chefs with CCG graduates and trainees preparing small plates while guests enjoy live music, food- and drink-inspired silent auctions, and a brief, one-of-a-kind live auction. An on-site afterparty with Boise Rockeoke follows from 9-10:30 p.m. Tickets are available online at grateful-ungala.com or by phone at (208) 258-6800. The cost is $150, and a portion is even tax deductible.

Affordable housing

The city of Boise, headed by Mayor Bieter, harp on the fact that there is such a shortage of affordable housing downtown. Well, I own one of the apartment buildings downtown, and over the years the property taxes have gone sky high. It is impossible to keep rents low because of it. So please do me a favor and don’t raise my taxes into the stratosphere; I’m merely trying to maintain affordable housing downtown.

Forest Service roads

I live in Star Ranch approximately 4 miles from the top of Harris Creek summit. I frequently used Forest Service Road 374 to travel to Bogus Basin and other recreation areas. I now see DF Development has gated off service road 374 and all roads leading off of 374. I do not understand if all roads leading off of 374 are gated and posted then why would there’d be a need to gate off road 374 in both directions? That road leads to public land and recreational and hunting areas. I do understand that DF Development owns 11,240 acres of land but do not understand why the two gates on a marked Forest Service road that was maintained by the Forest Service for decades and still shows up on current Forest Service maps.

Brett Kavanaugh

To the person, all the senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee commented on how credible both Dr. Ford and Kavanaugh were. The fact of the matter is, it’s not possible for both of them to be telling the truth.

Dr. Ford passed a polygraph test with flying colors and Kavanaugh only stated that polygraph tests are unreliable and therefore wouldn’t volunteer to take one. They are reliable enough that he knows he couldn’t pass one on this matter if he tried a hundred times.

Another thing in this matter, had she gone on a highly partisan tirade like he did, she would have been labeled a hysterical nutcase with no credibility at all. There are terrible double-standards involved, and with the majority of the Senate made up of men, we know how that story goes.