Letters to the editor
Four years too long to refrain from action
I would hate to be a young person growing up it Boulder City, particularly if I just received a BB gun for Christmas. If, as the saying goes, “ignorance of the law is no excuse” and the average person can be held criminally liable for an act committed out of ignorance or innocence, what is to be done when highly paid public employees knowingly misstate the law, or worse, when someone having the duty to review and update local ordinances allows a bad law to stay on the books knowing that someone could be injured in their rights, reputation, person or property through its enforcement?
According to officer Jeffrey Grasso, in his column last week, Boulder City Code 7-1-3 is the final word on BB guns, air-soft guns, etc. The problem is that Boulder City Code 7-1-3 derives from City Ordinance No. 28, and that ordinance has long been known to be in conflict with state law and thus void.
To quote former Police Chief Tom Finn, from an email dated Nov. 10, 2009: “Although the ordinance is still technically in the City Code book, the city attorney two months ago instructed every officer in the PD to not enforce it. He is in the process of rewriting the ordinance to comply with state law, but in the meantime it has been suspended.”
Writing on the same date as Finn, (City Attorney Dave) Olsen attempted to excuse his lack of action on the matter: “Unfortunately there are a number of pressing issues facing the City and there is only one of me.”
That was more than four years ago. I wonder what Olsen’s excuse would be if you asked him about Ordinance No. 28 today? I doubt those “pressing issues” have ever kept Olsen from attending the weekly morning meetings of his service club that occur during the city’s normal business hours.
Joseph Kranyac III
In doing their jobs, responders become heroes
On Dec. 20, 2013, our dog had gotten out of our backyard gate somewhere around 5 in the morning. Jesse is a black lab that has a thyroid problem and so he had gotten pretty big in weight.
Anyway, I had a feeling something was wrong and when I got up to check on the dogs, only one of them was asleep on the floor beneath my bed. I looked all over the house and then outside and noticed the gate was open. So I ran back in the house and grabbed a jacket, my purse and keys and started driving all over town looking for Jesse.
I had been looking for about a half an hour when I spotted a couple walking and I stopped to ask them if they had seen my dog. Their reply was to go check the animal control and see if they had picked him up.
As I was driving up to the animal control, I noticed right away an ambulance and a couple of police cars in the parking lot and I had this horrible feeling that it involved our dog Jesse.
This is what I later was told about the events of that morning:
A gentleman named Mark Lyon of Boulder City came upon Jesse lying in the road on Buchanan Boulevard and Pinata Way. He originally thought Jesse was a bag of trash, but quickly realized that it was an animal. Mr. Lyon stopped his car and blocked the street in order to keep Jesse safe and called 911 for help.
Sgt. Vince Albowicz, officer Todd Huff and officer Anes Buric all responded to the scene. Because Jesse was so large, they wanted to be able to lift him safely out of the street without doing any more damage.
Sgt. Albowicz instructed dispatch to phone Ann Inabnitt, animal control officer, at home to give her a heads up that they had an injured dog. Fire department heroes J.C. Clift and Cody Racine responded to help with the gurney and transported Jesse up to the shelter where Ann met up with them to get Jesse help and then I walked in shortly after.
We truly have never been so touched with all of these outstanding people’s kindness to a dog they didn’t even know. For all of their heroics, they deserve so much more than they get for serving our great city.
We are all guilty of taking them for granted on a daily basis and complaining about tickets we get for speeding, but at the end of the day, folks, they are truly our city’s finest and we are very proud to call Boulder City my home!
We can never repay them for the kindness they showed to Jesse, and for what they do on a daily basis, but we can make sure everyone knows we have Boulder City’s finest working to make our city the very best it can be. To these outstanding people, we say thank you from the bottom of our hearts! You rock!
FYI: They didn’t think Jesse would survive the accident; however, he is home with us and only suffers some nerve damage in his left front leg. He does not have use of it yet but maybe one day it will heal itself.
Thank you for helping us recognize these outstanding people.
Joleen Gross and family
