Mailbag

Alternative fuel worth the time and energy

I think plans to construct an alternative-fueling station in Burbank would be wonderful (“Council looks to alternative fueling,” Jan. 19).

I drive a Mercedes-Benz diesel that runs on straight vegetable oil (the cleanest car on the road at this moment).

If Councilwoman Anja Reinke thinks “it’s a waste of time at this point,” she’s not well informed. There are hundreds of recycled Mercedes diesels in Los Angeles that have been converted to run on straight vegetable oil, waste vegetable oil or bio diesel. In addition to ethanol, why not sell waste vegetable oil to these drivers?

The city can collect it free from restaurants, filter it and sell it.

GARY PENNNINGTON

Burbank

Punishment doesn’t fit crime in man’s death

Regarding “Woman is sentenced in parking attendant’s death,” Saturday: What is the value of life? About 120 days house arrest, thinks Judge John P. Doyle, even after the victim’s children’s plea for justice was read to him.

He felt a killing wasn’t worth jail time. Hilda Voskanian, without whom Pedro Dorado would still be alive, was asked to stay home — a place where she would have likely spent most of her time anyway, in her comfortable surroundings, sitting on her sofa, surrounded by her loved ones, eating the food she wishes, watching the tube at her leisure and enjoying the familiar, warm surroundings — while Dorado is in his grave.

She showed little sympathy when she arrogantly pushed the 75-year-old over the disputed $5 in parking fees.

She did not seem to think of those who lost a friend when Dorado died, not his children who lost a father.

Pregnancy should not be a facilitator for injustice; others are pregnant in jail. She has a husband to take care of her children.

She played the judge with her exhibition of remorse. Remorse she felt not over taking a life, but how she inconvenienced her own.

MICHAEL E. WHITE

Burbank

Burbank should join anti-plastic group

Seems everyone is doing something to try and control the environmental problem of waste. IKEA in Burbank now charges for bags. San Francisco and Oakland have banned plastic bags. So why can’t Burbank ban them as well?