Letters

De Cinzo cartoon was in bad taste ...as usual

I was stunned to see DeCinzo's cartoon in the April 26 issue of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times. You should be ashamed to print this blasphemous characterization of a fine Los Gatos family.

First of all, the cartoon makes no sense. Dan Jinks did not write the script! He "produced" the film. Why on earth would you allow the magic moment of Dan's Oscar winning success to be immortalized in such a way?

One thing is certain, DeCinzo's mean spirit and poor taste is evident in most of his political cartoons, and you share tremendous poor taste in printing them.

We all deserve better!

M.D.Swanson
Los Gatos

Where are our local seniors going to live?

The theme for the May observance of Older Americans Month this year is "Stars Among Us: A Celebration of Age." But unless they own their own homes and are able to afford the taxes and the upkeep, there is not much to celebrate here in Silicon Valley where houses are being sold at auction for as much or more than 30 percent over the asking price to the Yuppies employed in the high-tech industries.

Except for the lifeline for fixed-income elders who are fortunate enough to be accepted for residence in places like The Corinthian House in Campbell.

Everyone of the all too few senior group housing residences has a waiting list of three years or more. One high rise, Wesley Manor, has a waiting period of five to six years. And when I inquired there three years ago, not only was the waiting period that long, but I was told, "We are taking no more applications for five or six months."

Ours is a rapidly aging society where elders are living longer than before; and as long as we are experiencing the biggest demographic trend in history with the aging of 76 million baby boomers--a "new" baby boomer reaching the age of 50 every seven seconds--we are long overdue for constructing senior group housing residences such as The Corinthian House, and others like it in "The Valley of Heart's Delight."

Available land for such constructions is scarce. With waist-high, weed-filled unimproved lots selling for as much as $600,000 in Los Gatos, we are approaching rapidly a time when the state may activate the law of eminent domain, taking over warehouses and other buildings for such constructions.

We are not living in Alaska. So we cannot simply put our elders on ice floes and push them out to sea as the Eskimo once did.

A few months ago the San Jose Mercury News published an article stating that there are 22 billionaires in Silicon Valley. So the money is here. It is a matter of will.

According to that article, poor little Los Gatos doesn't have a single billionaire (or any married ones, for that matter). The nearest it has to a billionaire is one resident whose worth is a mere $749 million.

So there are no senior group housing residences, such as The Corinthian House, in Los Gatos. There are places like the Meadows and The Terraces there for elder Americans, but only the well off can afford to buy in and pay upwards of $2,000 a month in addition to live there.

Vern Hansen
Los Gatos

Council's vote ignored town's General Plan

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you about what I believe to be a total miscarriage of the public process by three members of the Los Gatos Town Council, namely Jan Hutchins, mayor Steve Blanton and vice mayor Joe Pirzynski. These three have voted to allow the permitting of a Montessori School operation in the Ferris/Englewood area of our town.

Their majority vote ignored the laws of the town, such as the General Plan, zoning ordinances and traffic policies. which all prohibit such a land use.

What a travesty! They have substituted their personal whims and desires for all the town's land-use criteria which we all relied on when we purchased homes or came to live in Los Gatos for its quality of life and its high regard for the maintenance of property values. These three should be ashamed of themselves for turning their backs on their sworn duty.

How could we have elected such irresponsible, politically immature individuals to public office?

To add insult to injury, some 63 percent of the preschool's enrollment doesn't even live in Los Gatos! A precious, quiet, tranquil Los Gatos neighborhood is to be ravaged with the introduced, overwhelming traffic of hundreds of daily car trips with their accompanying safety, air and noise pollution! With friends on the council like Hutchins, Blanton and Pirzynski, we sure don't need enemies!

Ray Davis
Los Gatos

Bill in state legislature offers hope

As you have previously reported, demands for decent, quality facility care for our aging parents and grandparents will become increasingly important and increasingly difficult to come by. Sadly, many of our fellow Bay Area residents are struggling with placement as Alzheimer's cases explode.

However, AB 1753, The Alzheimer's Training Act of 2000, is a small, but promising bill making its way through the state legislature. It deserves not to be lost among the bigger ticket items.

It would require staff working in facilities which specialize in Alzheimer's care to complete minimum training on how to care for these residents' unique needs.

I know from first-hand personal and professional experiences the challenges in running a good Alzheimer's facility. As family services manager for the Bay Area Alzheimer's Association, I speak to hundreds of families through our website (www.alzsf.org), respite program, and Helpline (800.660.1993).

More than half of these are from family members seeking information on housing and care for their loved one with dementia.

Few families are able to choose a facility in advance and are very vulnerable to marketing terms that may be a poor substitute for truly specialized care needed for people with Alzheimer's. In the Bay Area, the cost of care for these types of facilities averages $3,500 per month but can approach $5,000. Neither Medicare nor Medi-Cal pay this. Families pay for this care themselves. They also pay with the emotional stress that surrounds all such placement decisions.

AB 1753 is the first step in ensuring facilities entrusted with care of their loved ones are equipped to truly do just that.

Alexandra Aranda
Family Services Manager Alzheimer's Association of the Greater Bay Area

Gap between rich and poor is a serious concern

Recently, I have been introduced to one of the most serious problems in the United States today, that if not remedied soon, can become the downfall of the U.S. economy and modern society as we know it.

Approximately two million Americans under the age of 30 last year became millionaires. The number of billionaires increased twelve-fold since 1995. The stock market reached new highs and luxury car sales have soared. The price of housing in Los Gatos has doubled in just two years.

The number of homeless people in the Bay Area alone is surpassing 50,000. That is the equivalent of the population of the entire town of Los Gatos being homeless, robbed of even the simplest of necessities food and shelter. Adequate food and shelter is not even a consideration.

It is ridiculous--we no longer take just the necessities for granted-- we take money and commodities for granted. A preposterous percentage of Americans spend more money than they have, but not for necessities, but unnecessary commodities.

The gap between the rich and the poor has widened to an outrageous margin. There no longer is a middle class. All I hear about recently are company owners working at desk jobs, earning $50 million in stock alone. Mind you, these people work hard, but so do many others, some of whom must work 15 hours in uncomfortable and dangerous work-areas just to make ends meet.

We all know of the social gap that caused economic collapse in Britain and France several centuries earlier, sparking near wars between the rich and the poor and bringing forth the deaths of thousands. Absolutely nothing is stopping this from occurring here, today.

Obviously, there are social programs such as soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless and social security for everyone else. But these facilities are inadequate and almost always understaffed, unsanitary, and poor in themselves. Social security ensures money for the future, but robs people of money they may need today.

Everyone should have the advantages that we all sometimes take completely for granted. Increasing taxes of the rich doesn't seem unreasonable in a worldly basis, but it certainly does to those people who the money belongs to. Decreasing taxes for lower-income citizens doesn't really help that much either, who comparably may not earn very much anyway.

By taking the course we are on, our future looks bleak and frightening. We must solve this social problem as soon as possible to create a future where every single human is ensured the bare necessities.

Kevin Cho
Los Gatos

Police Report

DeCinzo: Dueling parking consultants

Photo: Debbi Ricks to perform on harp

Picture From the Past: Old-timer remembers familiar quotations

Photo: Senior Arbor Day

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