Letters

Keith Snow had worked for North West Surfacing and North West Recyclers. We were first introduced to Keith Snow when he was about 12-years old, a Sacramento Bee paper delivery boy. While delivering the paper, he was soliciting mowing lawns. The soliciting of mowing lawns evolved into detailing all of our company vehicles. When Keith Snow was old enough to work, we hired him as an employee and he was one of the best. Keith Snow has an immense loyalty and a compelling drive to do what is right even in adverse situations. Keith is driven by honesty. He later became a foreman and directed construction activities. He always had a unique disposition to put the customer first. Keith later would direct the North West Recycling daily activities.

Everyone seems so caught up by Romney’s “47%” comments. With a secret hidden camera the twisted press sensationalized it by taking Romney’s comments out of context to generate “breaking news” and “serious investigative journalism” which gave the talking heads weeks of fodder.

Measure E will callously squeeze a large percentage of income from the poor, seniors, the disabled and families who have lost jobs, health insurance, even their homes, than of the affluent.

I cannot believe the San Benito Public Works Department gave permission to a company to do seismic testing all along our county roads and then allowed them to begin pounding the ground with huge trucks. The pounding was so powerful that windows rattled and almost shattered. Someone was hiking along the road and they said it was so powerful that it could have knocked them down, but they saw her and stopped pounding until she went past the truck. The road bed was destroyed in some places. They told us they were testing for earthquake activity. The public works department gave permission without even investigating who this company was and what they were really doing. Perhaps they did know and just didn’t care! Big money talks. Shame on them for deceiving the taxpayers of this county who pay their salaries. They were really testing to see if they could extract oil and gas with a method called fracking. If this company is allowed to do this it will affect all of San Benito County.

I recall attending city budget hearings back in June of 2003 when former City Manager Dale Shaddox had to find a way to scale back department requests that exceeded $1.8 million dollars above projected revenues.

As a current student who majors in Health Information Management or “medical records”, I am compelled to respond to the Guest View by John and Tess Ucovich in the Friday issue of the Hollister Free Lance. In my current class, Principles of Healthcare Reimbursement, it is mandatory that students do copious weekly research in order to fully participate in weekly discussions of the healthcare industry.

The November election is just six weeks away. Hopefully voters will keep in mind the liberties our founding fathers intended when they drafted the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. One ever important liberty was to ensure and preserve the freedom of religion.

Almost everyone recognizes that improving our local economy is one of the most important things we have to do to secure Hollister’s future. The question is what is the best way to reach that goal? While I support big, long-range projects, such as airport improvements and the Westside plan, which both have enormous potential, they often take a very long time to produce results and when only a few projects are on the table any problem can ruin years of planning or add decades to completion.

My name is Keith Snow I am 47 years old. I feel I still have a mind and ability to be a good mayor for the city of Hollister to serve you to the fullest extent. I will not let you down! I am very knowledgeable; I will make sure there will be a plat form of all areas for the city. I want to work with the county. I feel as a customer and citizen of the city that the water bill we pay every month is way too high. I think we should change the ordinance for the water bill rate. Another area to focus is our kids. There is a lack of communication between the city and the school district and communication is key! We need to all get on the same page.  Our children’s future is a must. We need to make sure they are safe and they are getting all they need in our school systems even working with parents. I want kids to know the true value of a dollar. Also a big issue is we are losing our children to obesity and bullying and that is definitely a concern of mine, which needs to be fixed in and out of schools. I want to be able to reach my goal and show you the people that we can do this; I have the confidence and dedication. I want to show the kids and all people that if you set your mind to do something you can achieve it.  I hope people can see I am a real person and I want to get our voice heard. I am working with Bret and Robert in the financial department at the city on the budget for about 2weeks now, and I think we are coming close to solving the problems, they like my ideas and we are working as a team and with just a little change and positive-ness we can fix things. I’ve always been good at contracts, projects and coordinating.  We need to think of the future, think ahead of what’s to come and resolve the problems.

I have heard complaints from parents that school homework is excessive. The research agrees with them. Respected education scholars, such as Alfie Kohn and Robert J. Marzano, have weighed in on the side of students and parents.  Researchers explain that excessive homework does not benefit children, often forces children to stay up too late at night, frustrates their learning, interferes with quality family time and there is no evidence that children’s education improves significantly with homework. Furthermore, if homework is supposed to close the “achievement gap” it does not, because students who have better resources at home benefit the most from homework.