Letters to the Editor: July 19, 2024

Noise and fumes

I have a few comments ahead of this year’s Cruising McMinnville, coming up next month. We live in downtown McMinnville, and the noise and fumes make this fairly intrusive.

The event website mentions a prohibition on excessive revving as a means of limiting noise. But excessive can mean different things to different people.

It’s always seemed pretty excessive to us. And given the issues McMinnville is experiencing with street racing, maybe a little more encouragement to participants to keep the revving to a minimum would help.

The pollution is an entirely different matter. Many of these vehicles are old so they are not equipped with anything to reduce fumes and other pollution, and I’m sure many have been modified to remove equipment that may have reduced emissions.

Whatever the reason, the result of this is a cloud of smelly and toxic fumes spreading across town, particularly on windless nights. This may be quaint for some, but its intrusive for others and unhealthy for all.

I guess there’s money to be made by some parties to this event. I thought it had gone the way of the proverbial dinosaur a few years ago, only to see it resurrected.

Maybe the time has come to consider whether it’s worth celebrating this kind of culture anymore. Maybe a survey of those of us who live downtown would inform that decision.

Thanks.

Chuck Hottle

McMinnville

One too many

The city council of Lafayette currently has a problem with nepotism.

Two of the council members, Lee Gilgan and Kayla Paulsen, are married to each other. They have been approached about one of them not running for re-election this year, but they refused.

It’s not illegal for both of them to be on the council, as Gilgan was quick to point out. However, sometimes things that are legal are still not right.

The situation is unethical. It is a clear conflict of interest.

The optics of how this looks to the residents is terrible. And being lawyers, they both know this to be true from the ethics classes they took while obtaining their law degrees.

It is situations like this that cause people to vote on issues without fully examining them and perhaps vigorously debating issues with other council members.

They were on the council together when the big water billing error occurred last year. Perhaps a more independent and diverse council might have caught the error.

Please join me in not voting for these two individuals in the November election. We need to fix this situation.

Tom Reed

Lafayette

Time to move on

I am so tired of turning on the news and hearing all of the crybabies and naysayers complaining about Biden not going to win. How can he when everyone is using news time to be negative and express doubt?

Instead of helping the situation they are making the situation worse. That’s not the way to win.

Biden has done more for the country than a lot of presidents.

So he had a bad day. Big deal. Have you never had a bad day?

And age? He is a seasoned senior who knows more about economics and world affairs than most of the whiners. And he’s had tougher issues to deal with than most.

Can you who are complaining do what he has had to do? Man up and battle on!

I don’t want to hear what can’t be done. I want to hear what can be done.

Look at the alternative.

If Biden loses, guess who we are going to blame when we have lost our democracy and freedom to a king.

I say, get back on your horse and ride on. We have a race to win.

Alice Vinton

McMinnville