Walden made me laugh

I laughed out loud when I heard Greg Walden say he answers every email.

I have sent him multiple emails and left messages with his Bend office and I have never received anything more than a canned electronic response.

We need someone in Washington who represents us. Time for change.

Vote for Jamie McLeod-Skinner.

Sherry Cupp

Redmond

No stopping

I just very happily drove all the way from the Summit High School area to China Hat/Knott Road without one traffic light.

You may not think this amazing, but had I been in Portland or any of its suburbs, my “flow” would have been stopped at least 10 times!

Not only did I enjoy the beauty of all the trees and curves in the road, look at the gasoline I saved!

I’m very thankful for smart engineers who have blessed us with such smooth passages!

Char Kolzow

Bend

Vote Bill Moseley

My husband and I were not born here, but we chose to move here several years ago mostly because of Bend’s “livability.”

In those years, Bend has lost a lot of it’s “livability,” while having its character changed in the process.

It will not be long before our town is inundated with wall to wall traffic, “scenic roundabouts” congested, and ease of moving around and going about our lives will be a thing of the past.

My big issue in this letter is traffic, and you can read about Bill Moseley’s ideas for Bend’s future at his comprehensive website at bendleadership.com where he covers his position on road congestion and several other issues near and dear to us here in Bend.

Just a few of his ideas on road congestion are: make obvious street connections, work on traffic light synchronization, design new roads that actually meet future demands (i.e. not like the Reed Market redo), change the city’s current traffic model for future street planning to include tourists; it currently doesn’t!

Look at the current 50-year-old, fixed route, empty bus model and innovate it.

He proposes planning now for a future east-side parkway to ease congestion, with innovative ideas to increase road safety at the Cooley Road/U.S. Highway 20 intersection.

He has ideas to help Bend avoid a future that we do not want, but can see coming if we do not change city leadership now!

Bill Moseley for Mayor!

Chris Simone

Bend

Thin the forest

The skies are beautiful today, but that is not what we have experienced for too many days this summer.

I am sick and tired of bloodshot eyes, runny nose and a scratchy throat due to smoke.

The smoke will return this year and it will return next summer if nothing is done to help prevent these huge forest fires.

Environmental groups like Oregon Wild(fire) and KS Wild(fire) have been laying low.

Maybe they know what their decades-long campaign to lock up our forests has wrought.

More likely, they are afraid people are catching on to their scheme.

When they do surface they try to spill a line about how these fires are “natural” and the “new normal.”

Balderdash!

The years stopping logging and other work in the forests has created these huge fires that are devastating to our environment — smoke, loss of forests for our children’s lifetimes, loss of jobs.

With sensible forest practices, such as those used on private forestland, we would have great wooded forests, recreational opportunities, good-paying timber industry jobs and little debilitating smoke rather than the seasonal cottage industry of “fire suppression.”

It is sad that our senators seem to be so indebted to these groups that are “saving the ancient forests” that they are unwilling to stand up for us.

Give Oregon more jobs and more responsible use of our public lands. We need to thin our forests. We need our senators to stop the hypocrisy. We need them to stand up and help.

Kate Adams

Crooked River Ranch