The people on the bus get on and off, on and off ...

The people on the bus get on and off, on and off ...

EDITOR:

I am responding to the lady who was at the meeting for the sales tax levy from North Lima. The tax didn’t pass because of the wording of the ballot and the fact of one word, continuous.

As for the WRTA bus she sees, it is a loop bus that moves people from one end of 224 to the other end of 224 and loops back around Western Reserve Road and back to 224. It is new and riders are learning how to use it efficiently.

As for the man in Poland who wrote about WRTA, as passengers pay fares, the bus driver hits a button that records that rider. There is a record of the amount of riders.

This man makes it sound like WRTA riders are stupid by saying he wonders how many of these people voted for the WRTA passage and then voted down the half-percent sales tax levy. That tax levy got voted down because it was a permanent levy and no one wants a permanent levy with things so bad right now. And a majority of riders are not on welfare. They have jobs.

We are all aware that HUD funding didn’t come because the grant writer didn’t write what HUD thought was specific enough grant proposal, not because someone voted for the WRTA levy, as this man says.

This Poland writer says we should get rid of big buses because all he sees are empty buses as the bus is headed up and down 224. Did this man ever pause and consider that since the expansion of 224 to 3 lanes, with all the turning lanes to each business, that the bus cannot pull over now and drop people off or pick people up from South Avenue until it gets inside of the Target Plaza and vice versa on the way back?

Exactly how many mini-vans would it take to do the same thing as one large bus, that travels several areas of the community and picks up several people at different points and drops them off at or near their destinations every hour and brings people back on its round trip safely? The big bus also protects riders in case of a car accident and thus protects this county. I dare say it would take 5 to 10 mini-vans to cover the areas one bus covers, so that would be just as much or more gas when it all works out — and more with the cost of drivers.

Years ago, everybody came downtown on the bus for everything from clothes to food to furniture to jewelry, to doctors and banks and hospitals. Now everything is sprawled out all over this county and it is not ever going to change. If you actually follow a bus from its start to its destination and count the stops, it is a lot of people getting on and getting off the bus. That is why no one likes being stuck behind a bus.

LISA BETH MOORE

Youngstown

Money rules; Abe rolls

EDITOR:

It has been bad enough with Washington lobbyists throwing money at members of Congress. Now, the Supreme Court says corporations and labor unions can spend as much as they want to influence the outcomes of elections.

We are now, truly, a government of the dollar, by the dollar and for the dollar. Did you hear that rumble? It was Lincoln rolling over in his grave.

DAVID P. RIEL

Poland