Bend can’t handle more growth

After reading the editorial in The Bulletin dated Jan. 21 regarding water rates, I have a question for our city and county elected leaders. It has been known for a long time that water was and is going to continue to be a problem for Central Oregon. And now with the forecast being drier and drier winters and less and less snowfall, why are you not taking this coming threat seriously? Why, knowing what water availability has been in the past and that it will decrease in the future?

Now you want to solve the problem of less water by charging more for it so people may use less. This in my opinion and in the opinion of many others is one of the most idiotic ideas you’ve ever come up with. Why, knowing that water shortage will be increasing do you keep handing out building permits? The more buildings that go up the more people will occupy them and the more water will have to be used.

You have taken our once wonderful, small town and created a massive problem, not to mention the most discontented residency that I have seen in the past 55 years. Our city infrastructure cannot in any way handle the influx of people.

You leaders are the ones that have created this problem. If I were to guess, none of you have the fortitude to propose what is really right for your constituents as opposed to bowing and kissing the ring of the developers. Look at the city of Moraga in the California Bay Area. While we lived there, they put a moratorium on building because things were getting out of hand just like they are here. When we moved into Moraga, there were about 18,000 people. Twenty-five years later when we left Moraga, there were about 18,000 people. The town did exceedingly well. It was a wonderful place to live and so was the late great city of Bend.

When we first moved to Bend, there was a city ordinance, limiting the height of new buildings. Then you allowed the building on the corner of Franklin and Bond Street. Now all over Bend we see high rises. They can be five or six even seven stories tall. None of us want to see this turn into a Los Angeles. But the way we are going it’s headed there. Why don’t you do what is right for the people that are now living here and get your head on straight and quit doing the things that the majority of us do not want.

— Charlie Thomson, Bend

The terrible plan for Gaza

Recently I saw something I thought I would never see in these United States: An American president sitting next to a man, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians and arguing that the 1.7 million remaining civilians be deported “somewhere” so that the man who had murdered their family members can take the land on which they cling to life. Peace in our time indeed.

Today I am ashamed to be an American.

— John Cushing, Bend

Don’t kill humanitarian aid

What is our government doing? Who is in charge?

For more than seven years, my husband worked for U.S. AID in Tanzania and Kenya in East Africa. He was a trained engineer and his job was building roads connecting remote villages to hospitals or medical services. The “roads” were two-lane dirt tracks in the African bush. He also built bridges when seasonal floods isolated small villages. Wells, offering clean water, could also then be dug and maintained in these remote areas.

This work was never and is not now political — it is humanitarian!

Where is the humanity now?

— Marty Hall, Bend

Commissioners attacked decency

On Feb. 5, two Deschutes County Commissioners voted to disband its staff DEI committee. In doing so, they actively rejected the democratic principle that “All people are created equal.” Diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, is simply the concept that all people should be accepted and treated equitably.

My parents were devout Christians. As a child, I came to understand that the very foundation of Christianity is expressed by Jesus’ DEI words, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” that is, act toward the entire diverse universe of people in a respectful manner. As a physician, I was committed to the Hippocratic Oath, “First do no harm,” a command to accept all patients, regardless of their situation, and treat them with as much respect as you would your own child, again, a hard core DEI principle.

By their vote to eliminate DEI, the two Commissioners slapped these essential concepts in the face. I am ashamed for them.

— Craig Miller, Bend

Editor’s Note

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