By Conflicting demands over Rosita project

My wife and I are perplexed by the conflicting demands our city council has placed on the proposed swimming pool complex on Rosita Ave. On one hand, the council wants this to be be a community-based pool with time for recreational swimming for the community. On the other hand they are expecting the facility to be self-funding. We contend that meeting both of these objectives will be difficult, maybe impossible.

For the pool complex to be self-funding, SPLASH and the Los Altos Masters will have to design many activities to generate revenue, such as kayaking, scuba diving, private parties, etc. To fill those classes and events, they will draw many participants from Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and beyond. This, however, means that the new pool complex will be in competition with several pools in nearby communities, such as the new pool at Fremont High in Sunnyvale. Each of them will compete for customers to stay solvent. What happens if they cannot meet their revenue goals? Two simple choices: give up the already meager recreational swimming times for more classes or have the city pay for the shortfall. Maybe both. Neither of these choices are good for Los Altos residents. Los Altos tax dollars could end up subsidizing a regional pool complex! Are we ready for this?

To generate enough revenue, recreational swimming has already taken a back seat in the proposed schedule. We are left with rec swim times around noon and the evening meal. Hmmm. They haven’t even started construction and it is already clear that revenue is so tight they have to limit recreational swimming. It makes us wonder what happens when the forecasted revenue stream meets with the reality of competition from other pools in the region

If the city council wants a pool to serve the residents of Los Altos, they should build a single pool. It should be partially supported with tax dollars and provide the majority of time for users that meet the needs of Los Altos residents. That is a good use of my tax dollars. Being liable to support a regional three-pool complex for the surrounding communities is not

Carl and JoAnne SwirsdingLos Altos

Truthful, but also intimidating

After reading Toni Casey’s May 23 letter to all residents of the town, I congratulate her for being as truthful as I’ve ever heard her be in the six years I’ve lived in Los Altos Hills.

She was almost completely truthful in the part of her letter referencing an open letter from Ginger Summit when Casey said:

“The intimidation that Ms. Summit mentions is not from me or from the council. It is from the majority voice of our residents that is finally being heard!”

Casey truthfully admits that the “majority” IS intimidating the rest of the town who disagree. While I dispute whether this intimidation really represents a majority of our residents, that is not the untruthful part of her statement.

Anyone who has ever been to a council meeting and has attempted to disagree with Casey knows she is not truthful when she says, “The intimidation … is not from me.”

Bob LefkowitsLos Altos Hills

School district woes rooted in state disaster

The hand wringing over the failure to pass the Measure A parcel tax, which its supporters claimed was only a temporary solution to the looming financial crisis facing the Los Altos School District, only blurs public recognition of the root cause of the problem.

Beginning in the 1970s, unelected state and federal judges, with bias toward their particular notion of “equality” and against the traditional position of “local control,” ruled in favor of the concept of equal distribution of local property tax revenues to all school districts in the state.

This process created a top-heavy centrally planned education bureaucracy. In California, with full support from teachers unions who believed they would gain increased benefits, politicians seeking votes from low-income urban population centers and a compliant public conditioned to be “politically correct” in such matters, the philosophy of redistributionist economics took hold in public education. But over time, it is often the nature of such giant government bureaucracies to fail.

The current reaction of such groups as SOS (Save Our Staff) in asking each family in the Los Altos School District for an additional $1,000 to cover a $4.5 million shortfall for 2002-03 seems akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But since they’re sitting in the first-class section, they have not yet fully comprehended the true extent of the disaster.

To add further irony, as our school district heroically struggles with its limited resources to perform at the top of the state, it will be punished for its success by receiving less and less state financial support, forcing ever more fund drives just to keep our local schools afloat. As a community that is proud of its public schools, we should expend our efforts to recapture greater local control of our property tax revenues by voting for a new state government in November.

Louis WindsorLos Altos

Thanks for view on city lawsuit

I would like to give a special thanks to Tom Anderson for his “Other Voices” article in the May 22 Town Crier.

He has a right-on argument for any lawsuit St. Vincent de Paul may initiate against the city of Los Altos on behalf of the illegals. In my opinion, there is no basis for a lawsuit. It is a frivolous waste of taxpayer money.

Carol Lucas

Los Altos