Mailbag

Harsh ordinance is overbearing

Regarding the inquiry in the Nov. 26 Community Forum Mailbag by William and Kathryn Jensen (“City’s steep pruning fines are outrageous,” Mailbag, Monday), “What has happened to our great city of Glendale that it would penalize anyone for maintaining their own trees?”: It appears perfectly clear that we have a City Council that is either incompetent or gross predators against its own citizens.

How many other booby traps has this council and the city attorney set for Glendale residents? Given the best of intent, the council members demonstrated pure incompetence by approving an ordinance that permits a city agency to assess such an outrageous fine against a citizen, or they are simply predators out to punish Glendale residents for a minor permit violation.

In either case, the city attorney’s office must bear part of the responsibility for presenting such a harsh ordinance to the council for approval.

It appears time to replace all council members and fire the city attorney and those in his office responsible for this ordinance and maybe other similar traps.

GENE GUSTAVSON

Glendale

Words of trust in God aren’t missing

Doesn’t anyone fact-check the letters the Glendale News-Press prints? In “Take a stand for God on new dollar coin,” (Mailbag, Monday) Margaret Rice writes that “loyal and patriotic” citizens should “refuse the coin” to get the words “In God We Trust” to appear. The new dollar coins do contain these words! They’re printed on the edge of the coin, not on the front or back.

In the future, before forwarding a missive designed to get someone’s dander up (or, for the case of the Mailbag, before you print such a letter), please take 30 seconds to look it up to find out the facts.

VICKERE MURPHY

La Crescenta

Area shouldn’t rely on old equipment

From time to time we read about emergency preparedness in Glendale. I have seen articles in this publication about the communication system built to be used by emergency responders, and doing such is prudent and appreciated (“Frequency speech,” Oct. 11).

The recent wildfires experienced in Southern California set me to thinking about information resources available in emergency situations. When something happens, the residents have a great need to know the impacts and circumstances of a large-scale disaster such as earthquake, fire, landslide or flood.