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Letters to editor: Medical marijuana, relief from heat, water district red flags

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Good news about medical marijuana shops coming

I can’t tell you how pleased I was observing your front page of Aug. 27, 2015, headline: Third applicant eyes potential site for medical pot shop.”

It’s “high time” we all got off of our “high horses” and endorsed the positive therapeutic effects of medical marijuana. It’s time to remove the stigma of marijuana is for “stoners.”

Let’s look at the facts. Medical marijuana is a sage and effective treatment for symptoms of cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, pain, glaucoma, epilepsy and other conditions. Need I say more?

I trust that the community of Ramona will do the right thing and welcome our new neighbors. There are those in our community that will benefit from their presence.

Do I need to point out that medical marijuana is legal in the state of California?

Frederick J. Moschiano Jr.

Ramona

Appreciate Albertsons in sweltering heat

On Thursday (Aug. 27) I went into town to do some errands, despite the broiling heat. My last stop was Albertsons, and since I was so hot I really had to push myself to walk across the hot parking lot to the store.

As I walked into the store I noticed a large picnic-style cooler right inside the door. On it was a sign that said something like this (sorry, I can’t remember exactly): “Dear Customer, please help yourself to a bottle of cold water to drink while you do your shopping.” Inside the cooler was a lot of crushed ice, and bottles of purified drinking water.

I want to thank Albertsons for their thoughtfulness and consideration of the health and comfort of their customers. The bottle of cold water perked me up, and lasted through my brief shopping and all the way home.

Iris Price

Ramona

Citizen raises red flags

Kudos and thank you to Kevin Pack and Gary Hurst for shedding light and adding substance to issues that plague Ramona Municipal Water District. Our water district keeps asking us to cut back and pay more while staff, especially upper management, has been awarded (Pack Commentary, Aug, 27) raise after raise. Is it the board that decides this? Red flag.

Not one, but three lawsuits against the Metropolitan Water District should be won and return many hundreds of thousands of dollars to RMWD (not due to any effort by RMWD). By law that money should be returned to us, or used to improve the system without further increases to our bills. But this is not mentioned by the board. Instead, we hear that a shortfall because of higher costs to Cal Fire should result in our voting for higher fees on our property taxes. (Pack Commentary, Aug. 27) What is wrong with this picture? Red flag.

Mr. Hurst (Aug. 27 Commentary) exposed the absurdity of how the budget was presented not matching costs and revenues which would eliminate the need for an accurate forecast of usage volume. This does not require a high tech computing system. It is basic accounting, but it is not done. And yet, RMWD takes the advice of the Raftelis Consultants (at $12,000 expense, N.M. Dohrer), which recommends that “Capital Replacement Reserves be based on short term out-of–pocket spending projections, not on the value of water-related assets that depreciate economically at a predictable rate. Failure to treat depreciation as a ‘real expense’ results in having to pay all of the tens of millions of dollars in replacement costs at the end of life (with special assessments, borrowing or bankruptcy).” (Hurst) Red flag.

We all remember too well in 2007 when Ramona was left without water for over a week. At the time RMWD did not have a back-up emergency system. It tried to rent backup generators, but they could not be properly connected to our system and so were useless. Other options were to shut down the 10,000 existing meters of residents who evacuated and left systems running. After days only 3,000 meters were shut off and the problem was no closer to being solved. The County’s Dianne Jacob blasted our agency for refusing to ask for help from other agencies. The extra manpower and brain power might have been able to mitigate the ensuing disaster.

Do not ignore all this, Ramona, and be so quick to cover Cal Fire’s shortfall with a PERMANENT vote to raise our property taxes. Red flag.

Do we, as citizens, have the power to change things now? Or, does our only hope for change depend on the directors in the old boy network waking up and doing their fiduciary duty to restore our public trust? Frankly, are we to believe that management has hypnotized these directors into a land of false security, or is it that they don’t have a clue about what is really going on? Or, as a worst case scenario, are they complicit with management decisions? Red flag.

Sharon Lynch

Ramona

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