Letters to the Editor for May 30

Last week our son Alexander graduated from UNLV with a degree in physics. A few days before that, he had his one-year checkup and was told that he was still cancer free. Neither would have happened without the outpouring of support from Boulder City that occurred when he got his diagnosis. Alexander is a private person, but when we told our friends, the news seemed to reach into the very corners of our community.

Friends didn’t just cry with us — which they did — they took action, organizing a Healing Alexander Walk-a-thon and what must have been the largest garage sale in Boulder City history. We were also the beneficiaries of spontaneous fundraisers from local businesses and — this is true — strangers who stopped us on the street or came to our door with $20, saying, “This is for Alexander.”

As I write this, I am torn over whether to extend such a public thank you. But I can’t think of how else to reach all those who gave us such amazing and unexpected emotional and financial support. When something like this hits, one’s instinct is to curl up and hide in a dark corner until it goes away. Instead, Boulder City friends and people whose names I still don’t know pulled us back into the light. I cannot express what that meant to us.

We are celebrating Alexander’s graduation from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Sunday at our house. If you would like to, please stop by. If you need directions, please call me at 281-8686.

Lynn Goya & Family

For whom the bell tolls

I realize that many people in Boulder City enjoy living in the past, however time does march. Daylight saving time began several months ago but the bell tower in the village still continues to strike the hour on standard time, which is one hour behind the correct time. The charming ritual of announcing the time of day so it can be heard by many not only provides a delightful ambience to a town but also serves a useful purpose. Throwing people off by one hour is confusing to residents and tourists alike.

In addition, it has been my experience, and that of others I’ve spoken to, that any village, town or city fortunate to have a bell tower sounds out a preamble before the strike of the hour, not after. The preamble sound give an advance notice to listen closely so we can hear the correct time. It would benefit the public if those in charge of the bell tower would make the necessary adjustments to both of these issues. Living in the past may bring back memories but, as the old saying goes, “Time waits for no one.”

Linda Monilaws

Two wrongs do
not make a right

Two wrongs do not make a right, but three wrongs can establish a Boulder City tradition. I am referring to the third annual “See Spot Poker Run,” set to take place Saturday. Come on down, to the cramped downtown, so you can toddle between the bars and collect playing cards to build a poker hand.

Mayor Roger Tobler and the other members of our “historically aberrant” City Council (his words, not mine) continue to oppose legalized gaming in BC. If gambling is bad I do not see how it can be allowed, even if it is alleged to be for a good cause, in this instance to provide customers for a select group of downtown businesses with some portion of the take going to benefit Spot.

This is at best a weak excuse for maintaining a double standard.

Could the double dealing on the part of our mayor and council have anything to do with the campaign donations they accepted from the out-of-town gaming interests?

If you can get beyond the Chamber of Commerce/service club hype it becomes clear that the historic purpose behind the creation of Boulder City was to provide a bedroom community for the workers employed in the building and maintenance of Boulder Dam. The town was never designed or intended to function as a tourist trap, which is one of the reasons that the “historic downtown” historically seems to be struggling; same story with that damned hotel.

Just because you hang the words “historic,” or “dam” in front of something does not mean you can charge in excess of value or overcome physical constraints such as a lack of downtown parking. The reality is that you cannot call a place the home of a thing that was never there to begin with. The dam was built, the workers were all paid, and their kids need to get over it. Historic fiction is best left to best-selling authors.

Personally, I would love to see the Red Mountain Music Company come out of the woodwork for the poker run to perform selections from the hymnal of the Christian Women’s Temperance League. Milo of Milo’s and Fun Pub fame is on the board of directors of the RMMC, so perhaps he can give them some space in front of one of his fine establishments.

I am also hoping that some of the folks from See Spot Run will bring their four-legged friends to the event. Were Spot to squat and piddle on one of the downtown statues, such as the city-owned “Puddlers Lunch Break,” (which stands as a monument to the waste of $50,000 in tax dollars,) I might just make a donation to Spot on the spot. This I would do soberly, and on principal, as a canine is far less likely than an elected official to bite the hand that feeds it.

If the pack running this town made the same effort to deal with economic reality, as they do trying to mark the downtown as their territory, we would have far less hypocrisy, and probably fewer scandals. How is allowing slot machines in town any less moral than allowing a brewery?

Instead of skimming the taxpayers to cover its operating expenses, what is wrong with the historically failing hotel offering table games to cover the float and meet its mortgage payments? Rather than seeking a taxpayer handout to finance yet another bar, why should Milo not install a few video poker machines to get a financial leg up?

With the golf craze having gone the way of Tiger Woods’ marriage it is high time to get other “players” onto the two city-owned golf courses and gaming could do this. If the taxpayers can be tapped to pay for the cigars at Boulder Creek, what is the harm in allowing a more profitable (and arguably less harmful) vice if it will reduce the burden upon the taxpayer to subsidize vice? Should any of the city’s solar leases fold (remember Sol Bio, Tehan Techran) its finances will come up snake eyes.

Before the next crisis, and another knee jerk solution from the mayor and council, it is high time we improve the odds in favor of the residents of Boulder City by using the greenest of Nevada’s renewable revenue sources.

Dick Farmer

Happy Memorial Day
to Mr. Reid

We should all remember the self-proclaimed patriot and gun owner advocate Harry Reid who voted to send America’s sons and daughters to war in Iraq. Reid then voted to restrict their funding. Reid then voted to send more of them to war and the battlefield in the troop surge, then 19 days later told them the war was lost. Reid then deserted them and abandoned them on the field of battle. Reid then attends memorial services for these veterans.

Who is responsible for many veterans wearing the Purple Heart? Who is the gun owner advocate trying to deprive American citizens of their Constitutional right to own and possess weapons? Harry Reid.

Ah yes, Memorial Day. A day to remember. We should all remember Reid and never forget his patriotism (self proclaimed), not only this day but every day.

Harry Reid deserves to be remembered for what he is, a self-proclaimed patriot.

Al Wengert