Mailbag

The City Council Was Right to Can Mike Hein

It amazes me how the Tucson Weekly has joined other
newspapers in conferring sainthood on Mike Hein while vilifying some
members of the City Council (“Bloodbath at City Hall,” April 16). Our
experience indicates those council members got it right.

Several neighbors and I once met with Mr. Hein and one of his
assistant city managers. We had grown increasingly concerned over the
level of anger and disaffection many of our neighbors were expressing
toward our city government, and we proposed a way for the city to
partner with neighbors to help foster better relations.

From the moment we sat down with Mr. Hein, he was angry and
confrontational. He tried to pit us against each other, and when he was
unsuccessful, he sat sullenly, doodling on a piece of paper as we
explained our proposal. At one point, I explained that we were
concerned that this level of anger would blow up. Mr. Hein’s response?
Maybe the city should blow up; that way, we could rebuild it. I told
Mr. Hein that we did not believe in destroying the village in order to
save it. Needless to say, our meeting did not end well, and we were
abruptly shown the door. The following day, Mr. Hein called one of the
neighbors and launched into a yelling tirade.

I find it difficult to believe that this display of unprofessional
behavior was an isolated incident, and I thank the council members who
had the courage to make the difficult decision to terminate Mr. Hein’s
contract.

Colette Altaffer

Banks Needs to Ignore Critics and Should Be Appreciated for His
Tenacity

A million thanks from those of us fighting the good fight against
illegals’ trash on the Arizona border (“Trashing Arizona,” April
2).

No one ever seems to want to hear that the “myth of the saintly
immigrant” is just that: a myth. Whatever one’s personal views on
immigration may be, there is no escaping the fact that drug-smuggling
and people-smuggling are destroying our unique and irreplaceable
habitat. On our ranch, we routinely clean up not only discarded food
and clothing, but diapers, bloody sanitary napkins and human feces.
Trails cut through the grasslands turn into washes and tear through
formerly pristine country. Cattle, horses and wild creatures die in
agony after ingesting plastic bags and spoiled food.

It is encouraging to know that there are funds to help with cleanup
projects, but the illegal traffic must be stopped; only then can our
country make progress toward a more sensible immigration policy.

Every U.S. citizen should be forced to look at Leo W. Banks’
photographs and face the reality of what is happening to one of the
most unique and fragile environments in the world. My gratitude goes
out to you for your tenacity in pursuing this subject.

Melissa Owen

A Response to O’Sullivan’s Views on Pot, With Lots of Exclamation
Marks

Wow. After Catherine O’Sullivan’s diatribe against legalizing pot
(April 2), she “got lots of letters” (April 16), and being the
close-minded tunnel-visionary who lives in Fairyland that she is, she
learned absolutely nothing.

Maybe she really is a “chemical bigot,” which is not like a
“political coffee table.” Being, by her own admission, “a parent
advocate for a local drug-treatment facility” and having “loads of
friends who smoke the stuff” makes her a BIG FAT HYPOCRITE!

Taking the responsibility of parenting off the shoulders of the
people who signed up for the job and putting it on the shoulders of the
state/federal criminal-justice system is idiotic. Creating a “nanny”
state is her idea of “something better.” Really?

The criminal-justice system is like clown college for criminals. Has
she never looked at the statistics on recidivism for drug-related
crimes? And why do the crimes committed by someone who went into the
system on a minor charge, like possession, escalate into more violent
acts over time? Because while incarcerated, there is nothing
constructive to do other than listen and learn from more hardened and
violent criminals.

Parents need to raise their own kids, not put them in jail.
Catherine O’Sullivan needs to decide if she’s a “parent advocate for a
drug-treatment facility” or if she wants to continue to hang out with
her pothead friends and stop being a friggin’ HYPOCRITE!!!!!!!!!!

Milli Harding

When It Comes to Downtown, It’s the Same Ol’, Same Ol’

“East Side Story” (April 9) is the same old story, a rerun of the
cycles of greed, growth and decay that started in the 1940s when the
Mexican poor were driven out of downtown, and in the ’90s when the old
Y was turned into an international arts center that foundered on one
promise and betrayal after another by big money, and in the ’00s when
the UA Rainbow Bridge proposal was rejected as being too expensive.

For 30 years, we were told our jobs depended on development. Now the
housing bubble has burst, and construction jobs have sunk, along with
the water table, to new lows. For the same length of time, artists have
put their own money into their lofts and been screwed out of them by
landlords, some of whom were also artists or arts groups.

The moral of story: Give big money everything it asks for, and it
kills itself with its own greed. As for artists, there is no substitute
for equity, and your last, best chance of getting that or rent that
won’t kill you is in poor neighborhoods. And let the city of Tucson
have downtown and become an honest whore by commissioning a statue of
John Dillinger to stand alongside Pancho Villa in the Plaza of
Unprincipled Promotion on Congress Street.

Business and its real heroes united at last! And we all love a happy
ending.

Dennis Williams

This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2009.