Residents cross over undue influence
We agree with your editorial in last week’s paper regarding the city council’s decision to deny a cell-tower permit at St. William Church. We attended the council meeting and agree that the council was influenced by the inflammatory statements of Covington school parents who spoke at the meeting. It seems that anything goes if you can claim that it is “for the good of the children.”
We actually heard a woman say that she thinks “a cross is aesthetically repulsive,” and someone else said, “If we let them have this cross, pretty soon all the churches in town will want a cross.” These are the kind of arguments made that influenced the council to deny the permit.
We hope the city council will use more reasoned thinking in their future decisions.
Cathy and Norbert Kordsmeier
Los Altos
Redirect funds to LAH community center
When I was a child, my three best friends went to three different parochial schools. However, we became close from hours swimming in the city pool, playing in the local park and taking classes through the recreation department.
The primary charter of schools is to educate children - creating a sense of community falls within the realm of local government. I would think that if all the time and money available for changing public education by the Los Altos Hills town council were redirected toward a community center in LAH, everyone who lives in LAH, from young parents to toddlers, school-age children, the childless and senior citizens, would benefit.
Can you imagine what a nice community center $5 million would buy? Then the local school districts can go back to doing what they are supposed to do: educating children.
Anne Westbrook
Los Altos
In support of Measure A
One of the main reasons why each board member of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District has endorsed Measure A on the Nov. 7 ballot is because the initiative will help keep Santa Clara County farmlands in agricultural production.
Because of a similar initiative passed by the voters of San Mateo County in 1986, coastal farmers have been able to maintain their land in active cultivation. Peninsula residents benefit from their fresh produce at many farmers’ markets.
We need to vote for Measure A so that Silicon Valley can have the same opportunity for keeping its farmlands.
Mary Davey, board member
Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District
Don’t forget the nurses
Regarding your Sept. 27 cover story interviewing the new CEO Ken Graham of El Camino Hospital: It was both revealing and disturbing to me as to what was not said.
I feel very uncomfortable with the focus on science and medicine, and “health products.” There is no mention of a nursing staff. Challenged by “unfunded mandates”? Does that have anything to do with the nurse/patient ratio?
El Camino Hospital had earned the reputation of being the best hospital in the Bay Area because of the nursing care. We welcomed the first computers to “free the nurses from record keeping to giving them hands-on care to the patients,” not to be replaced by them. This hands-on care meant the human touch of a registered nurse taking a pulse and respiration rate while observing the patient’s countenance, skin condition, voice tone and color. Nurses were taught pharmacology in their curriculum to learn the actions of a medication, and, more importantly, the physiological response.
To list professional nurses under employees decries their critical role caring for patients 24/7. What is most disturbing (not heard in this article) is the doctor who ignores the nurse’s observation of a pending crisis, passing it off as “anxiety,” and the patient dies.
I am heartened by the one statement by the CEO, “We are all here to serve the patient”… (I hope that is true) and “we are forthright and straightforward.” Those who are, are not afraid of transparency.
As a Los Altos resident, I would want reinstatement of registered nurses as professional colleagues with the physicians. Doctors do medicine. Nurses do nursing.
Both are needed for whole health care.
Valeria Dumitru, RN
Los Altos
Downtown cleanup is on the way
Your Sept. 27 article should have been titled “Downtown cleanup is on the way,” rather than “Downtown parking fees to increase threefold.”
Whatever the title, we are thrilled to see something being done to clean up the streets and sidewalks. It’s reached a point we no longer show off the downtown to our visitors. People like to visit and shop in a clean town.
Assuming that the parking fee increase is truly used to clean up the downtown, we want to thank those who developed this much-needed plan to restore Los Altos.
Bob and Nancy Moore
Los Altos
