Parking questions

My first question to the city council is, why did you eliminate the “meter maid” position? Budget cuts or did she quit, and you decided not to replace her?

It does not matter if she did not match her revenue to her salary. That position came about when the city formed the GID District decades ago, and the city got rid of the parking meters. It has never been a favorite of the downtown businesses to have the meters. People would move their cars during the day to avoid tickets, but if you install meters they will only go down and feed the meter. I would rather see people move their cars around than have the car stay in the same place all day.

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What will the meters take, your smart phone, credit card or coin? You will still have to hire someone to police the meters. I for one thought the parking enforcer was an asset to the city by answering questions from the tourist and letting the city staff know of anything that needs attention in the downtown area.

No need to spend your time or money on a consultant, when you have all the consultants you need in the downtown business owners, employees and patrons.

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When asked in the past, the biggest negative about the meters is that the citizens did not feel they should have to pay for parking to shop or dine downtown.

Don “Hooner” Gillespie

Glenwood Springs

(Editor’s note: City parking enforcement continues, and the city is looking to fill the enforcement officer position while working on a comprehensive parking plan, per staff discussions with City Council.)

Affiliate for Coram

How many people know that a Democrat can vote for a Republican in the primary election by first changing their party affiliation registration.

Re-register as a Republican, or better yet as Unaffiliated.

Be sure to do this no later than 30 days (or ASAP) before the election. It is easy to do online at Vote.gov or Vote.gov/register/co.

This way we can vote against Lauren Boebert by voting for her opponent, Don Coram. He’s a good guy. Let’s all do it!

Judith Elzinga

Glenwood Springs

Choices matter in killing virus

Understand what we are dealing with. Viruses are not made of cells. Viruses are small bundles of genetic material wrapped in a protein case. The only thing viruses can do is invade cells. Once inside a cell, they hijack the cellular structures and direct them to make more copies of the virus.

Viruses mutate often. When more people host the virus, more copies of the virus are produced and more mutations occur. Mutated viruses (variants) are not always recognized by our immune systems so the number of infections and re-infections goes up. Immunizations are crafted to teach our immune system to recognize specific viral structures. Mutations in those structures lead to reduced effectiveness of immunizations.

On Jan. 5, 2022, USA Today reported that the United States is averaging 550,000 reported infections per day. That’s a lot of cells in a lot of people acting as hosts to a lot of mutating viruses.

Understand the consequences of your choices. Understand that each of us contributes in some way to battling the coronavirus. Be a part of the solution:

Get vaccinated, wear a mask, scrub your hands, maintain appropriate distance from others.

Do not allow your cells to host the virus. Do not allow the virus to use your cells to churn out more mutated viruses.

Joyce E. Wizer

Rifle

Don’t censor letter-writers

In today’s polarized world, where tribalism reigns and questioning any authority/narrative is viewed as conspiracy or domestic terrorism, I think we need to amplify, not restrict free speech. Friction and debate are much healthier than letting people live in their own echo chamber. We need to let people like Patrick Hunter reveal their thoughts so we can debate the merits out in the open.

While we have spent the past two years in masks to protect us from a virus with a 99%+ survival rate, it has also been the great metaphorical unmasking of the demagogues in our presence who would forcibly remove many of us from society in the name of the “greater good.”

We see lots of letters to our local papers about the unclean, unvaxxed walking among us as if they are subhuman creatures to dehumanize them, because once a group is dehumanized, moral behavior becomes more relative rather than absolute toward that group. Minimal effort is done to understand individual situations, but rather painting with broad strokes is now the norm to label all unvaxxed as selfish conspiracy theorists.

Again, please do not censor people like Patrick Hunter. Let them share their deepest thoughts and desires so we can debate the merits out in the open. If we don’t, these people will continue to operate in everyday life with a dangerous mix of self-righteousness and confirmation bias justifying their thoughts under the “greater good” banner while reducing “others” to nothing more than cattle to be herded and eventually slaughtered if necessary.

Chase McWhorter

Carbondale