Randolph North
plays like a dirt lot
Yesterday, I played a round at Randolph North. It is a sad indication of how the bad decisions on the costs of maintaining the golf course can lead to unplayable conditions.
Most courses in Tucson overseed in the winter. Randolph has not, choosing instead to paint the fairways and greens green. The underlying Bermuda turf is dormant resulting in greens with absolutely no friction except from the bumps of scattered other grasses. The fairways are as thin as the brown rough leading to hardpan shots on every hole.
Chipping off dirt is the norm. Also, the tees on holes No. 6 and 15 are seriously uneven, leaving sidehill stances, an unfair way to make the holes more difficult. The city/county money going into Randolph North has not been applied in such a way for anyone to enjoy their round.
It’s embarrassing as a Tucsonan to explain to a winter visitor how the course plays at other times. My $53 City Card rate doesn’t represent value.
Alfred Oakland
Foothills
More support
for zoo’s expansion
We purchased our first zoo family membership in 2000. The zoo is a great educational tool. Seeing the zoo animals, ambassadors for their species, drives the conservation points home.
The new tiger exhibit is critical. It will serve as a wonderful teaching tool: Three of the nine tiger species are extinct. The zoo participates in national breeding programs to save endangered species, and tigers certainly need our help and protection.
I take exception that Proposition 203 passed by only 633 votes. Proposition 202 passed 52% to 47%. Many people I talked to after the election said they only voted for Proposition 202, not realizing that to support the zoo expansion as they intended, they had to vote yes for both propositions.
The zoo was the only proposition that voters were willing to OK a tax increase for. As a more accurate measure of community support, how many more people would have been in favor of the zoo expansion if their taxes weren’t going to increase?
William Miller
Northwest side
Don’t coddle
insurrectionists
Re: the Feb. 6 article “AZ man who wore horns in Capitol riot moves to new jail.”
I’m a liberal, but gee whiz, you got to be kidding me. Jacob Anthony Chansley, the man who stormed the U.S. Capitol wearing horns, was transferred to another corrections facility since he had gone nine days without eating because organic food wasn’t served at the jail in Washington.
Here is the face of the riot at the Capitol that killed five people including a Capitol policeman. Why are we accommodating him? Won’t eat? So sad, too bad. How is the family of the fallen officer? What accommodations are they receiving?
Jenny Cudd, a Texas florist asked permission to go to Mexico for a four-day retreat. Judge Trevor McFadden granted her request. She was deemed, “not a flight risk.” Are you serious? He let her go out of the country!
So, let me understand: While committing an offense, which was then linked to five fatalities, you are allowed certain privileges, like taking time off for a vacation, out of the country?
Why are we accommodating these people?
Stephen Makielski
Midtown
Pass the old bill
and get people money
President Donald Trump stated that $600 was not adequate. He wanted $2,000. Within a week the Democratically controlled House passed a bill to provide the additional $1,400. It couldn’t get Senate approval which, in my opinion, is the main reason Georgia elected two Democrats to the Senate.
Now President Joe Biden and his party insist on a $1.9 trillion package. It contains billions to bail out overspent state governments. If he or they really cared for the people, all that would be required is for the Senate to approve the previous House bill.
Jack B. Walters
Northeast side
Greene earned
her punishment
Reflect on what recently happened to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose controversial views fueled her election victory to represent Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. Those same views were instrumental in stripping her of two committee seats.
She now states those views were in her past, she doesn’t believe them, and in any event she was misled by “the media.” There was no apology for misleading the people who voted for her because of the views she now rejects.
I recognize her First Amendment rights to present her views to the voters and the entire world, as well as her stupidity in doing so. Remarkably, she was punished even though she broke no laws.
What happened to Ms. Greene can happen to anyone. In these troubled times please reflect on the one law that no one can break with impunity. It is the “law of unintended consequences.”
Michael Burdoo
West side
City is abandoning residents on zoo issue
Some readers have expressed their support for the Reid Park Zoo expansion, which would take away one of the duck ponds and Barnum Hill.
They perceive the public outrage against this project as a direct attack against the zoo, which is not the point at all. Who would be opposed to a zoo? Kids and families love to see those wild animals in reality. The only issue is that the zoo could expand to the north, east, or south but it should not take away a critically important natural space open to and free for all citizens.
The Tucson City Council blindly defers to the voters’ decision in 2017, but now 25,000 voters have signed a petition to block this development. The ballot had passed with just a few hundred votes in favor when virtually no one had known at that time that the zoo intended to take away the pond and the hill. Such a move would be hypocrisy in supreme and create bitterness between the public and the zoo.
Albrecht Classen
Midtown
America the beautiful is worth preserving
What’s the best thing about America?
For an Air Force “brat” and former military pilot’s wife like me, that is an easy question. I’ve lived and traveled all over the world and, with the possible exception of New Zealand, no other country rivals our vast system of national parks and monuments, state parks and other public lands. Particularly now, during this pandemic, many folks are rediscovering our greatest national treasure. Let’s unite in protecting it.
Do you value biodiversity? Concerned about climate change? Enjoy hiking and stunning places? Into outdoor sports? For a heart, like mine, healing from profound grief, the spectacular wild places of this country, especially in Arizona, are healing.
The Wilderness Society is behind a movement called “30 x 30” that aims to safeguard 30% of U.S. land and water by 2030. Tell Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema and your federal and state representatives to defend our natural lands.
Carol Fiore
Northwest side
We are becoming Balkanized by Biden
Our city has changed and not for the better. The anger and vitriol I see in our citizens concerns me. We are on track to turn our country into another Yugoslavia where friends, neighbors and even family members turned on one another over religious, ethnic and racial lines. They slaughtered one another, and if we’re not careful their past could be our prologue.
Joe Biden promised to take office as a unifying president, but his first two weeks in power have shown a complete opposite intention. His myriad executive orders have killed thousands of jobs, risked a deluge of undocumented immigration, pushed an extreme far-left agenda and now a commission to study packing the Supreme Court.
Politicians need to back off on the rhetoric. The Daily Star could help in this regard by not printing any more anti-Trump articles. He’s gone. Focus on what the current holders of power are up to. You might be surprised!
Kirk Stek
Southeast side
Hypocrisy, revenge inflame US politics
If you live or vote your beliefs in today’s society, you will undoubtedly be punished. Look at Liz Cheney in Wyoming. Look at Adam Kinzinger in Illinois. Look at Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake in Arizona. Look at Gavin Newsom in California.
If you are Donald Trump, however, you won’t be punished. He lived and exhorted his beliefs on Jan. 6, a day to remember in infamy. He will be acquitted.
If you are Marjorie Taylor Greene, you’ll be excused as well. You’ll continue to spread your conspiracy theories from a soapbox in Congress. Whatever happened to integrity and freedom of thought? Seem to have been replaced by hypocrisy and revenge.
James P. O’Brien
SaddleBrooke
On schools, CDC director
doesn’t succumb to fear
Re: the Feb. 7 article “Want teachers vaccinated? Schools have the tools.”
The author of this article suggests that CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s statement that “safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely needs ‘a more liberal word choice.’” He states that we would all have been better served had she said, “We need to reopen schools, ‘but’ we need to vaccinate teachers and staff to keep us all safe.”
She is the director of the CDC; he’s a retired science teacher. In a moment of clarity and honesty, apparently unbridled by Big Pharma pressure and the suffocating narrative of fear, she made a statement of truth, backed up by mountains of data: that children are overwhelmingly safe from this virus and are poor spreaders, both to each other and to adults.
No doubt she’ll be compelled to change her words in the coming days, but I for one appreciate the rare statement from experts that defy the tide of fear.
Richard Peddy
East side
Educational staffing matters, too
The University of Arizona is limited to 125 football players on its team. According to last Sunday’s Daily Star, the new coach has assembled a staff of 24 with plans for two more. Do the math, one staff person per five players. This apparently is the financial investment needed to make those players winners.
Meantime, our teachers and young children are struggling to achieve basic education online. When they return to the classroom, there will an immediate need for in-depth diagnosis and individualized instruction. For decades, educators have had compelling research on how to ensure all but the most severely disabled children can learn. Given appropriate instruction, one-on-one or in small groups, children can achieve.
What if the governor and state legislators were to invest the state’s billion-dollar rainy-day fund to provide one staff person per five young children to compensate for the opportunity lost during COVID? Could giving these children the chance to be lifelong winners be as important as developing winning football players?
Ruth Beeker, UA education professor emerita
Midtown
