Letters to the Editor
Published 1:30 am Friday, July 31, 2026
ELECTION
Vote YES for EMS Prop 1
As a taxpayer served by Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue, please join me to vote yes on Proposition 1 to renew the .50 cent levy for Emergency Medical Services (EMS). This funding would address the rising costs of equipment and the demands of an increasing population over the past few years. The Firefighters and Paramedics at Snohomish Regional are highly trained, compassionate, and hard-working. To continue doing their best they need replacement of aging ambulances, purchase of innovative new medical equipment for the field, and support to hire and train the best professionals around. It is in our best interest to maximize the safety of our community. You can do that by voting YES for EMS Prop 1 on August 4th!
Phil Griswold
Lake Stevens
NEGLECT
Mason Rutledge’s piece on Grand Park
I concur with his comments. An over arching concept is that neglect breeds more damage. Vandals see it as permission to do more damage. I worked in the public school system. Once a school was slated to close students lost pride in their school and quickly started trashing it. Graffiti left in view leads to more. Over-grown shrubs and unattended landscaping sends the same message.
Let’s do better and send the message to potential vandals that we care, that this is an important place that they, too, should care about.
Marcia Fankhauser
(A proud Everett native)
Edmonds
ENDORSEMENTS
Continue to provide wider information
Please return to endorsing candidates as you and major newspapers have after interviewing the candidates and studying what they have done and said. We readers cannot do all that ourselves. Readers like us don’t take your conclusions as telling us who to vote for. It is helpful information to us to add to our thinking and voting after we have read the Voters’ Pamphlet, some newspaper articles and the campaign material. Please continue to help us out with your wider information and then we will make up our own minds.
John Ihle
Shoreline
TAXES
A stupid waste of our money
I recognize that our paper stopped printing the readers letters to the editor because it was getting personal and mean
This is not one of them. This one is to inform readers of the stupid waste of our state taxes on moving statues around the corner in the same building they are in, and spending thousands of dollars on repairing a rug and fixing up our “Capital” building to look pretty. We need lawmakers that would value every expense like a family on a fixed income would. That money could be used to address some of our states most pressing issues so wealthy tax payers don’t leave in disgust because of ignorant spending. I hope you please print a few of these reasonable letters before the mid term voting so readers can help make good decisions on who to put in office that wants to solve our state’s problems, not just to look good as they walk down to their office for donuts.
Lawrence East
Everett
WAR
Casualties of an unnecessary and pointless war
It is sad to see the coffins of American service men and women coming back on an airplane greeted by the “President” who got them killed in a reckless war unapproved by Congress (and the world). I wonder how the American public would react if they also got to see the hundreds or thousands of Iranian men, women, and children who have been wounded for life or murdered in a war they also did not want.
(Are we really afraid that Iran is going to build a nuclear bomb, undetected, and somehow turn it loose on America or Israel and risk getting their entire country incinerated in about two hours??)
Insanity rules.
Robert Van den Akker
Monroe
TAXES
Freeloaders – something for nothing
Candidates and their supporters are complaining about high taxes; demanding and promising to lower your taxes. Voters seem to agree that they want lower taxes or why else would politicians’ campaign on the issue. Seldom do any of the complainers list programs they want to cut since they don’t want to pay for them anymore. It seems like the main thrust of the campaigns is to get something for nothing. Voters in Washington want a lot of government services. We need to pay for those services. If there are no numbers or no list of specific programs to cut then it is just another episode of Fantasy Island.
BTW: we are not even close to having high taxes, when compared to our economic equals internationally.
Gary McCaig
Lynnwood
VOTE
Renew the EMS levy
As the President of the Greater Lake Stevens Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Directors representing the business community, encourages all residents served by the Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue to vote yes on Proposition 1 on the August 4th ballot. Proposition 1 renews the .50 cent levy for Emergency Medical Services. SRFR has a highly trained, compassionate and hard-working staff of professional firefighters and paramedics. This funding will help replace aging ambulances, purchase innovative new medical equipment for the field, and support hiring and training of the best professionals around.
Please join the Greater Lake Stevens Chamber of Commerce, its Board of Directors and its members in voting YES on Proposition 1 on August 4th.
Gary O’Rielly
President, Greater Lake Stevens Chamber of Commerce
Lake Stevens
COVID
Doctor Anthony Fauci,
I would hope that a day will come when Americans will regain their senses, and come to understand just how unfairly you have been treated. The old saw that a mob is half as smart as the dumbest person in it was superbly demonstrated today as you were ‘questioned’ on Capital Hill. It was a lynching – not an investigation. As an American who has so far avoided Covid, I am embarrassed and non-plussed by your treatment, and would like to apologize for those show-boating politicians.
You are a well-spoken and thoughtful man, whom I believe made every effort to steer the Country through the epidemic in spite of the lunatic in the White House. Thank you for your service!
Tony Smith
Snohomish
GOVERNMENT
We are a representative republic
The writer of a recent letter to the editor (Tuesday, July 28) criticized our current system of government as not being a democracy. The Founders created a system of governance that was explicitly not a democracy as a deterrent to mob rule. Instead, what they created was a representative republic with two legislative bodies — the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The writer of the letter I’ve referenced apparently mourns the fact that the U. S. Is not a true democracy, even after giving the example or two wolves voting to eat the lone lamb for lunch. The Founders reasoned that creating the Senate, a legislative body with two Senators for each state, would allow even the less populated states to have a voice in the government. The Electoral College, with its 538 members, is an extension of this goal of allowing the smaller states to weigh in on who should preside over our country.
The same writer goes on to assail the GOP for “illegal gerrymandering,” ignoring the fact that the deep-blue states of the Northeast and elsewhere have been gerrymandered to the hilt for decades by Democrat-legislatures. Let’s not forget the recent failed attempt by Virginia legislators to rewrite its electoral map to eliminate all but one right-leaning district.
Mark Parker
Snohomish
