Libraries Deserved Better Support

* Ventura’s voters (the pathetic minority they may be) have spoken, and that should provide no comfort to this city’s elected officials. Voters want to make the tough and important decisions affecting this community, like implementing fair campaign funding limits (Measure H) and maintaining the integrity of the Comprehensive Plan and farmland zoning, (Measure I), rather than trusting politicians to protect our interests. No council candidate registered anywhere close to the voters’ interest in these ballot measures.

Unfortunately, an even smaller, sulking, anti-social minority of malcontents (aided and abetted by those sluggards who don’t vote) prevented the majority from providing additional funding to support our libraries. No thanks to the limp and lacking leadership of our city’s public officials on this ballot measure.

Think what you may of the initiative to have the voters decide whether the city should use our tax revenues to pay back Buenaventura Mall’s developers for improvements needed due to their mall’s impacts on the rest of the community; our city officials, including those newly elected, better not give away $19.8 million of our taxes for any reason without a plebiscite.

Finally, a small suggestion to our city’s officials: Stop wasting our taxes paying for poorly supported off-year municipal elections! Shift our elections to the years when other state or national elections are being held and give the savings to our libraries.

NEIL A. MOYER

Ventura

* Shame, shame on us for not supporting our schools and libraries! Our teachers are doing their utmost to educate our children, and librarians give their all for us. If we don’t value our children’s education, who will?

Let’s get another initiative on the ballot right away and erase our shame by passing it overwhelmingly!

HERMAN and FLORENCE GILLMAN

Camarillo