Mailbag: City needs safer biking areas

Recently Richard Tafilaw, our new star writer, wrote a column about the negative aspects of bicycle paths.

Where is he coming from? One of the best forms of exercise is riding a bicycle. More people should do it, including myself. Safety is a problem, and that should be looked at very closely. We don’t want accidents with autos or people walking. Tafilaw should work on decreasing traffic in this city with its cesspool of automobiles, especially the driver-only types.

Autos create smog, accidents, heavy traffic, etc. Vast sums of money are spent on solving these problems, but it looks like they’ll get worse because of people moving out there.

I know the solution. Let’s get some snow machines working in California. When Easterners and others hear about snow reports, they’ll turn around and go back to their own snow pile and environs.

WESLEY GREENE

Burbank

Money woes outweigh water concerns

The City Council needs to take a step back and see how well its water usage programs are doing before initiating a retrofit upon resale ordinance in Burbank.

Burbank is well on its way to meeting state-mandated water savings, so what is the hurry? We are not in a water crisis. We are in the worst economy since the Depression, with many families struggling to make ends meet. People are making choices between food on the table or filling medical prescriptions.

But who cares? Certainly not our City Council. The council is out of touch with the financial realities of its citizens. They have already mandated apartment owners to spend thousands of dollars on water retrofits for our non-water crisis. Clearly, water conservation is important, and managing our water usage is critical to the city’s long-term survival; and we are doing a very good job.

Some council members point to Los Angeles and its retrofit program. But we are not L.A., nor do we have much in common. Perhaps we should create a skid row like in Los Angeles as well.

We have much more in common with Glendale, even Pasadena, neither of which have a retrofit program.

DARIN CHASE

Burbank

Editor’s note: Chase is a past president of the Burbank Assn. of Realtors.

Griem forgets his Bible passages

Regarding the Feb. 13 In Theory “Weighing in on the Uganda bill,” after reading several of the columns in the past, it does not surprise me that of your entire panel, only the Rev. Bryan Griem defends the Ugandan policy of criminalizing gays.