I'm a grandparent of one of the team members in a softball team that played against a Sunnyvale team in the Girls Little League Junior Softball State Championship in Manteca the last week of July. I found the attitude of the coaches and parents of the Sunnyvale team disgusting.

The regulations for the entire tournament are set forth by the National Little League in Williamsport, Pa., and the Sunnyvale coaches challenged these rules. Teams must follow these regulations in order to be eligible to play, and the team from Sunnyvale did not follow the requirements that state each player must have a birth certificate and three forms of proof of residency. This regulation came about this year because last year one player who was actually 14 played as a 12-year-old.

The day of the tournament, the Sunnyvale coaches said that the administration from their league claimed no knowledge of these rules, which were set forth at the very beginning of the season.

When the Manteca tournament director called Williamsport for direction, he was directed by them to declare a forfeit, but, in fact, the director decided that the primary reason for the tournament was to allow the girls to play. So he gave the Sunnyvale team 30 minutes to come up with the proper identification for each player.

The Sunnyvale team members could not provide the proper documentation and did forfeit their first game in the tournament. But they used foul language and threatened one of the tournament officials.

Then later, after the final game, which Sunnyvale played and lost, one of the Sunnyvale coaches said to the tournament directors, "You got just what you wanted. Sunnyvale lost."

This sets a very poor example for the young ladies who worked hard to get to the state level.

We want our young people to grow up respecting authority, but this is an example of what your coaches and parents exhibited for our children.

Robert Scharmann

Manteca

Water features drain on
resources and goodwill

I was disappointed to read that the water features were going to be turned on again in three of Sunnyvale's parks. It's not that I don't like the water features, because I like them as much as anybody else.

In today's tight budget environment, the money to pay for the operation and maintenance of these features is coming out of Sunnyvale's rainy day fund, not current tax income. When I couple that with the fact that the Western United States is facing the worst drought in over a hundred years, can we even afford to lose the water through evaporation?

Granted, Northern California has not been hit as hard as the other western states yet, but it may be our turn next. On top of that, with the recent West Nile virus outbreak, it begs the question: Are we creating a breeding ground for mosquitoes?

Finally, these parks are located in the most affluent parts of Sunnyvale. Is it fair to the residents in less-affluent neighborhoods to take money out of the rainy day funds to pay for this?

Werner Gans

Sunnyvale

Time to thank SSWR for
serving dinner at dump

"Dinner at the Dump—Serving up a Trashy Affair" is given annually by Specialty Solid Waste and Recycling for the benefit of Leadership Sunnyvale and Sunnyvale Community Services. The owners, Jerry and Julie Nabhan and Rebecca Buldo, move all of the garbage trucks from the yard so the Sunnyvale Public Safety Officers Association can cook a delicious barbecue for over four hundred people. Everyone agrees that it is a huge success.

Leadership Sunnyvale wants to publicly thank Specialty Solid Waste and Recycling for supporting us by putting on "Dinner at the Dump." The donation from the company enables Leadership Sunnyvale to continue its excellent course of monthly public affair seminars and monthly leadership skills training.

Many will agree that SSWR has been and continues to be an exceptional corporate citizen.

Margaret Lawson

Board Chairwoman, Leadership Sunnyvale

Sunnyvale plans are
recipe for disaster

1. Start with a baking pan the size of Block 18 (the Mall block—Mathilda to Sunnyvale Avenue and Washington to Iowa).

2. Add 300 housing units like the Cherry Orchard project at Mathilda and El Camino.

3. Add 2 Mozart buildings (300,000 square feet of office space).

4. Add 3/4 of a Mercado Theater complex.

5. Add 2 more Macy's buildings and 2 more Target buildings (600,000 square feet of retail).

6. Add 3 more parking garages.

7. Add a pinch of open space.

8. Marinate in $100,000,000 of city funds and land ($50 million in tax increment + $50 million—in city-owned land. Please keep this a secret; if anyone asks, call it a "swap.").

9. Bake until the developer says you can stop.

Friends of Sunnyvale call this a recipe for disaster.

Paul Jay Reed

Friends of Sunnyvale