Excessive campaign spending has the effect of discouraging candidates who might be more representative of average people, as your Dec. 1 editorial pointed out. Another serious problem with the current system is the effect it has on elected office holders. Having been elected with campaign funds from large contributors, they are too obligated to those special interests. The officeholder will be tempted to give more weight to the concerns of those contributors than to the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Large contributors to statewide elections include gambling interests, unions, energy companies, developers, insurance companies, medical organizations and others who want favors such as salary increases, relaxed safety and environmental regulations and tax breaks. Recall the insurance commissioner who took campaign contributions from insurance companies and then made rulings favorable to them.

I would rather have elected officials accountable only to the taxpayers, and that can be done with the "Clean Money" system of publicly financed campaigns described by a previous letter writer, Herb Engstrom (Dec. 29). As he pointed out, the Clean Money system has been used for statewide elections in Maine and Arizona since 2000 with impressive results. Efforts to bring this system to California are described on the website http://www.caclean.org.

Dale Leuthold

Ravenwood Drive

Negative campaigning
after a lost election

Regarding Ernie Konnyu's letter of Dec. 29: Honestly, Konnyu, you're the only politician I have heard of who does negative campaigning after he has lost. Put a sock in it and enjoy retirement!

Terry Zaccone

Anza Drive

Traffic island seems
to serve no purpose

I have attended Saratoga High School for two years now, so I am familiar with the area around the school. I commute every day from my home off of Saratoga Avenue to school. Usually, the commute would take all of two minutes to go there and back. However, sometime this fall an "island" was installed at the junction of Herriman and Saratoga avenues. This thing prevents people from being able to turn right quickly onto Saratoga Avenue. The result is a very congested traffic pattern at busy times during the day, particularly before and after school.

This island that has been installed appears to be useless, unless it was designed to disrupt the traffic flow. It now takes me an additional five (eight or 10 on bad days) minutes to get home from school each day. The island appears to have a very poor design. In fact, I don't even know what its use is. There appears to be no benefit to pedestrian safety; I have seen no impact on the student pedestrian traffic from Redwood or Saratoga High. All I see is something that gets in the way and disrupts the schedules of many commuters to Saratoga High School.

Can someone please enlighten me to the benefits of this traffic island? I would propose that the city of Saratoga would return the corner of Herriman and Saratoga avenues to its former state.

Adam Sato

Juniper Lane

Farmers market could
end up at West Valley

I am responding to Paul Krug's letter (Dec. 22) regarding the city council discussion about moving the Saturday farmers market from the Saratoga High School parking lot. I agree with Mr. Krug that the market has been a wonderful asset to this community, often drawing thousands of residents per week. On the other hand, I think Mr. Krug is wrong when he blames the neighbors on Herriman for objecting to the farmers market.

I have shopped at the market frequently and the traffic and parking on Herriman are an obvious and serious problem. Those neighbors already have the regular high school traffic during the week, the large construction project noise and traffic, football games, band practice and other weekend and evening events. It is easy to suggest that others should put up with noise and traffic but the quiet enjoyment of one's house and yard is one of our most precious commodities.

The good news is there may be a "win-win" in this situation. The farmers market and the city of Saratoga have been talking to Dr. Phil Hartley, the new West Valley College president, about the possibility of using the main college parking lot on Allendale for the market. There has been no decision yet and the matter has not even reached the college governing board, but I believe the preliminary analysis looks very promising.

There would be almost unlimited parking and room for more vendors than at the current site, and the location would be a substantial distance from any residences. Dr. Hartley has already sent letters explaining the situation and inviting comments and questions to everyone in our surrounding neighborhoods. We will listen carefully to the reactions of our neighbors and continue to talk to the city about this, but it may well be that the farmers market can transition seamlessly from the high school location to a better and even more central location for most of Saratoga. I personally hope no major problems appear and that we can host the market as an important community service.

Jeffrey A. Schwartz, Trustee

West Valley­Mission Community College District

Questioning Boxer's
efforts for the state

Just prior to the election, I asked what [Sen. Barbara Boxer's] bona fides are running for office. She claims to work so hard for us. Again, I ask, "Doing what?" I hope her last little episode to disrupt the election process isn't an example of her future endeavors on our behalf. She'll make us all cry.

W.E. Sirvatka

Glasgow Drive