Youth educate public about tobacco dangers
To the Editor,
Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance is wrapping up our second Tobacco Advocacy Summer Service Learning Program. Fourteen youth spent four weeks learning about the effects of tobacco products on our bodies and our environment. They have educated fellow community members during Friday Farmers Markets, and collected 1,834 cigarette butts and other tobacco litter in our Plaza.
This week they educated our City Council with their findings, asking them to consider banning tobacco products with filters, banning flavored and menthol products, which entice youth to start smoking, and increasing enforcement of no smoking in the Plaza, saying, “If there is no smoking at the Plaza, we and our peers will be more likely to hang out and shop downtown.”
Rachel Kibben, of Watsonville Public Works Department, praised these young people, “Thank you for exercising your right to engage in democracy and for the reminder that we can always do better!”
Joaquin Castillo, Paula Toledo, Gina Cole
Tobacco Use Prevention Education Team
Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance
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PVWMA meeting well-attended
To the Editor,
On July 10, the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA) held a well-publicized outreach meeting for local farmers and anyone else interested in the future of water in the District. The meeting was held in the Civic Plaza and had an almost capacity attendance. Brian Lockwood, manager of the PVWMA, gave a comprehensive and informative presentation of water projects completed, underway, and proposed to assure that water will be available locally in the future.
After Lockwood’s report, the meeting was open for comments and questions from the audience. All the directors were present and available for information.
I searched both the Sentinel and the Pajaronian for news of this important public meeting but did not find any coverage. In an earlier edition the Pajaronian had headlined an announcement of the meeting. So why did it not send a reporter?
Amelia Koenig
Watsonville
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Trump blackmailed by Russia
To the Editor,
Ever since I began reading this newspaper in the mid-1970s, many letters from Juanita Lawrence have appeared. All have been interesting, some provocative, but her July 11 take on many aspects of the Trump presidency is plain wrong. She mistakenly supposed that thousands and thousands of (legal and illegal?) potential immigrants/refugees are going to come to the United States without relatives, jobs or housing, at taxpayer expense. And, that these people have taken/are taking/will take away money that should be used to help our shamefully high number of U.S. homeless. There is no direct correlation between immigration and our homeless population problem, no automatic housing of new residents while more and more U.S. citizens lose their homes.
Ms. Lawrence has bought into the Trumpian fraud brand and its “from now on only America first” policy that clearly suggests we have put China, Germany, Qatar and all other nations, except Russia, ahead of our own interests in the Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton administrations and backwards in time — to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln!
Juanita Lawrence mistakenly believes that because Donald Trump is president, that we should forget about Russian interference into our election and continue to give him the “free pass” he keeps demanding. When Leon Panetta looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes he saw only “KGB, KGB, KGB,” a cause for concern. But when our tainted president looked into Putin’s eyes he only saw what he sees in everyone else’s: “DJT, DJT, DJT,” reflecting his own gold-plated grandeur.
All the world’s a stage, and the greatest actor on it is our grandiose con man leader. The only reason that Trump continues to “doubt” Russia hacked into our election is that Putin and the Russian Oligarchs (with whom he has business ties) are blackmailing him because they have audio and video recordings of the Donald cavorting with shady ladies in bugged hotel rooms during the 2013 Miss Universe competition — a Trumpian enterprise — in Moscow.
Richard Lynde
Watsonville
