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We must stand up
for our libraries

Across the country — and here in our own community — public libraries are facing potentially debilitating funding challenges. For example, in California, the state Legislature is poised to enact a 50% cut in California Library Services Act funding, from $3.6 million to $1.8 million, even as the cost of running libraries continues to increase. And nationally, an executive order targeting the Institute for Museum and Library Services threatens nearly $4 million in federal funding for California libraries.

Libraries are our communities’ “living rooms,” providing vital services, including access to information and technology, job resources, literacy programs and safe spaces for people of all ages.

On behalf of the Walnut Creek Library Foundation, I urge you to please let your elected representatives in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., know that our libraries deserve more support, not less.

Lorie Tinfow
President, Walnut Creek Library Foundation
Walnut Creek

Voters must stop
misleading Measure T

Re: “Voters should stop Acalanes’ latest tax hike” (Page A6, March 25).

Acalanes Union High School District’s Measure T ballot summary misleads voters:

It implies that $130 is the total parcel tax, omitting AUHSD’s existing $301 parcel tax and $1,010, $804 or $538 existing parcel taxes for Lamorinda feeder TK-8 districts or $82 for Walnut Creek’s.

Senior exemption? Fair-minded seniors will not support tax increases for others.

Meanwhile, Measure T would inflate AUHSD’s spendthrift take annually, while community voters can only hope for such regular increases. If passed, Measure T would itself become a local inflationary factor.

“Independent oversight” inevitably becomes insider rationalization of new taxes. Even were “oversight” genuinely independent, there’s no authority for ending new taxes, once passed, if announced purposes are not implemented or fulfilled.

“Funding the State cannot take away”? Dollars raised locally by deceptive schemes like Measure T reduce pressure on state-level politicians, leaving them more able to spend money elsewhere.

David Berti
Moraga

Lee should reach out
to Taylor for unity

When I thought that Loren Taylor was ahead in the recent mayoral race, I was hoping, after seeing the breakdown by ZIP code of the votes cast, that he would bring Barbara Lee into his tent, somehow, to unify the city.

Now, I hope Barbara brings him in.

Congratulations, Barbara. I’m so sorry, Loren.

Margaret Kennedy
San Leandro

Trump has continued
his failed first term

Over the last eight years, Donald Trump inherited a booming economy and wrecked it, added $7.8 trillion in debt, mishandled a pandemic that eventually killed 1.2 million people, incited an attack on the Capitol over election lies and stole classified documents — some of the most sensitive, never recovered.

The U.S. Supreme Court, packed by the Federalist Society, shields him. Another judge stalls the documents case. Meanwhile, Fox and Newsmax paid large settlements for pushing lies, but everyone else is “fake news.”

This is a guy who has essentially served Putin’s interests in plain sight, and now he’s back — claiming migrants eat pets, that he won in 2020, and Ukraine started the war. He walks back into a strong economy. If I hear one more distraction about trans kids, I’m going to lose it.

James Wilson
San Francisco

HHS autism effort
must be without bias

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Re: “HHS will launch an effort to determine the cause of autism” (Page A2, April 11).

The Times reported that the underfunded and understaffed Health and Human Services Department under Robert Kennedy Jr. is initiating a research project to discover the causes of autism.

While I applaud this important effort, I hope they employ the principles of good research — i.e., not to begin to prove assumed results, and to be free of all biases.

James Erickson
Brentwood