Letters to the editor

+ Outgoing Mayor Spoll should be commended for leadership
Dear Editor:
Outgoing Mayor George Spoll should be highly commended for his leadership and service to our town over the years and especially guiding the Town Commission as mayor. During his tenure, our town has faced historically pivotal issues that will positively impact the health of our community for years. The most notable being the decision to allow the Longboat Key Club to significantly reinvest in its property to the benefit of all real-estate values and island businesses.

Spoll’s leadership through the morass of detail and obstruction took much intelligence and critical strategic thinking. Protecting our most important asset, our beaches, is another.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, and we wish you continued health and success!
Bob and Shannon Gault
Longboat Key

+ SmartMoney magazine gets it wrong on gold
Editor’s note: This letter was originally sent to SmartMoney Magazine.
Dear Editor:
I was very disappointed with Russell Pearlman’s “The Power of Gold” in the March 2011 issue of Smart Money magazine.

He should read a piece on the subject by George Rauch in the March 3 issue of the Longboat Observer.

Hopefully, Pearlman is not above it all to take the time to read about gold from someone without an agenda. Sadly, the American public has a hell of a time getting the real facts on our money and its relationship to gold, and you did not help this time.

Please take the lead on this, rather than following the typical Wall Street culture of omission and ignorance on gold and our money.
Wolfgang Doerschlag
Longboat Key

+ Town should create state-of-the-art bikeways
Dear Editor:
We should be creative as a community and engineer truly safe, state-of-the-art bikeways. As only one example, Copenhagen has a safety curb between the bike and car traffic. The town should hire talented planning professionals, which could result in both desirable eco-tourism and truly safer conditions for both drivers and bicyclists. Let’s be thoughtful and innovative so that all can enjoy our paradise more safely.
Alan Lenowitz
Longboat Key

+ Thanks to all who made fashion show a success
Dear Editor:
Thank you, Longboat Observer, for loaning your Senior Editor, Dora Walters, to us to model in the Lord’s Warehouse Fashion Show and Luncheon Feb. 22, at the Longboat Island Chapel. She was a great “mystery guest” and had fun hamming it up with Hawaiian-themed clothes, then looking smashing in the evening-wear fashion scene.

It was a full house, and everyone enjoyed the afternoon event. All clothing was generous donations to the Lord’s Warehouse, complete with a full line of accessories. The luncheon, provided by Martha Miller and kitchen crew, was again a big hit.

We would like to express our appreciation to all of our volunteers and donors for helping to making it a success.
Cindy Kuehnel and Sue Reese,
Fashion show co-chairwomen

+ Thankful Scott averted high-speed rail wreck
Dear Editor:
The proposed high-speed rail is a wreck. It’s astonishing, to say the least, that there are those who want this boondoggle built and have no clue that the federal government has no way to pay for this other than its printing press. To add more debt financing to an already huge federal deficit is insane. Simply put, if this high-speed-rail proposal is such a good idea, and that it can be profitable and pay for itself over time, private industry would be building it. Government interference is not the answer.

I love the part about “politicians guarantee Florida taxpayers would not be liable for any costs.” What rational person is going to believe that? The only reason this federal government and the temporary occupant of the White House want to interfere in an intrastate project in which they have no business is to further their socialist agenda by making local governments beholden to them and to collectivize transportation. This is a trap only a fool would fall for.

Thank goodness for Gov. Rick Scott.
Milan V. Adrian
Longboat Key

+ Flight path opposition shows entitlement mentality
Dear Editor:
Andrew Aitken’s sense of entitlement is unbelievable — no aircraft over north Longboat Key. There is no concern that pilot safety is critical at takeoff and that flight patterns are determined by air traffic controllers in Tampa whose responsibility is traffic safety in a busy corridor.

The taxpayers of Longboat Key have wasted enough money on trivial matters.  The Longboat Key Town Commission, the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport Authority and the Tampa Air Traffic Control have more pressing and important concerns than Aitken’s complaints.

As long-term residents of Longboat Key and pilots, we do not share his sense of entitlement.
Norton and Lucille Wolf 
Longboat Key