Your letters

Speak out on gas prices

A meeting regarding gasoline pricing, with Sen. Al White is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, at the West Garfield Campus of CMC. This is an opportunity to make your voice heard. If you don’t attend, you’ve relinquished the right to be heard.

It is my understanding the Attorney General of Colorado has previously inquired into business practices of local gasoline distributors, but evidence did not support further investigation.

A common business practice is to charge all the market will bear, i.e. raise prices until people stop buying, then reduce prices until they resume. Theoretically, competition regulates prices. It works as long as there is competition.

Isn’t the price at the pump set by the distributor? With few local distributors and a geographically captive market, there’s not much competition to drive prices down.

Is there collusion among distributors to keep prices high? Probably not. But when driving past a station supplied or owned by a competitor, they see a price higher than their own, opportunity knocks. Legal? Probably. Ethically and/or morally questionable, especially in the present state of the economy? Each of us has our own moral compass.

We have heard prices are high due to shipping costs and the cost of doing business locally. Neither argument is acceptable. Surely some fuel sold in Grand Junction is transported through here and the high cost of doing business locally is self-inflating. The more I have to pay for gasoline (or groceries, services, etc.), the more I must raise prices on products or services I sell, in order to keep my business afloat and feed my family. Means justify the end?

By all appearances, we will continue to pay all the local captive market will bear. I believe in supporting local businesses. It is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, many people are forced by local prices and limited resources to purchase everything possible elsewhere. Local business owners surely aren’t surprised at this. I suspect they do the same.

For now, all we can do is make our voices heard. Go to the meeting!

Howard Williams

New Castle

Leaving out rural roads

The good news is Colorado state highways are getting a shot in the arm from the stimulus package.

The bad news is rural state highways in the region are once again getting the shaft. Out of a $317 million pot, our region is getting a paltry $25 million for rural state highway improvements. About $12 million is slated for improvements to State Highway 92 between Austin and Hotchkiss, estimated to modernize five miles out of many miles not improved since the 1930s or 40s. The $13 million allotted to State Highway 13 between Rifle and Meeker will modernize five miles of that highway, leaving 40-50 miles of a dangerous obsolete road built to the standards of the 1940s.

Why put $11 million into roundabouts at Edwards? Roundabouts do not save lives! Their main function is to make it a little easier for drivers to clear an intersection. Why not put that money into improving the safety of one of our obsolete rural roads? Eleven million would build about 20 miles of passing lanes along crowded rural roads where impatience can lead to a multi-fatality crash. Six mile-long passing lanes (three in each direction) would add greatly to the safety of travel between Rifle and Rio Blanco, where heavy truck traffic is clogging the road. Four would be useful along State Highway 64 (two in each direction) between Meeker and the Piceance Creek Road where the same situation exists.

Safety should be the primary consideration when doling out limited funds for highway improvements.

Dick Prosence

Meeker