Bouquets and Brickbats: It’s too soon for goodbye, Chief Linden

Similar stories:

• Bouquets and Brickbats: SLO County isn't short on kind hearts

  Bouquets and Brickbats: SLO County isn't short on kind hearts

  We’re firing up the good humor truck and delivering a freezer full of sunflowers to Jodi Fisher, the Cayucos woman with inoperable cancer who celebrated her 44th birthday by handing out free ice cream to neighborhood children.

  Bouquets of sunshine also go out to Tribune readers who read about Jodi and went out of their way to see if they could make two more of her wishes come true: to see a live taping of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and — how’s this for a challenge? — to meet President Barack Obama.

  San Luis Obispo residents Theresa and Pat Perry passed on Jodi’s story to their son Seamus, who works at the White House, and just like that, Jodi and her family met the president Thursday in San Francisco.

• Bouquets and Brickbats: County sets bar unfairly high for medical marijuana

  Bouquets and Brickbats: County sets bar unfairly high for medical marijuana

  Memo to medical marijuana suppliers: San Luis Obispo County doesn’t want you.

  Sure, the county has an ordinance that ostensibly allows you to operate in certain commercial zones, provided you’re not too close to any schools, libraries, playgrounds, etc. But don’t consider that a welcome mat. Even if you manage to meet all the permit requirements — and that in itself is tough — the Board of Supervisors will find some other reason to deny your application.

  That’s what happened to Tammy Murray, who recently became the third applicant who tried and failed to get acounty permit for amedical marijuana outlet.

• Letters to the Editor 2/18

  Letters to the Editor 2/18

  A logical conclusion

  I would like to propose an answer to the letter to the editor by Wilhelmina Rodenhuis entitled “Live in the real world” (Feb. 8).

  Her belief is that it is insane to accept the idea that George W. Bush was involved in the orchestration of the 9/11 disaster that caused the deaths of 3,500 people. How many people died as a consequence of his lie about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, which was used to justify our invasion of Iraq? He stated many times that he wanted to be a war president. The only thing that he required was a justification.

• Letters to the Editor 1/25

  Letters to the Editor 1/25

  Public locked out

  Last year the Atascadero City Council and the city staff stopped taking questions during the Community Forum portion of the City Council meetings. Now the only way to ask a question of a council member or city staff is to submit the question to the city clerk, and she will answer the question at City Hall. This is all done well out of the public purview.

  The policy has now been taken to a new level in that neither the City Council nor city staff comments on any of the issues raised during the Community Forum. This stonewalling of the citizen has been going on in Atascadero for a while. Now it is overt and total.

• Bouquets and Brickbats: SLO County had little choice but to scrap faulty alarms

  Bouquets and Brickbats: SLO County had little choice but to scrap faulty alarms

  It’s been seven years and 60 false alarms since the “new” County Government Center opened and finally, San Luis Obispo County supervisors have decided to — sigh — just give up and replace the doggone alarm system, to the tune of $513,000 .

  We suppose that’s better than continuing to waste tens of thousands of dollars in lost staff time whenever there’s a false alarm during business hours. (So far, 13 of the 60 false alarms occurred when work was in session, leading to evacuations that cost an estimated $163,000.)

  On the other hand, we wouldn’t want the county to simply ignore the problem, either. We don’t want any modern retellings of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, with county staffers growing increasingly complacent every time the system dings or beeps or blows a horn or whatever it does, until the fateful day when there really is an emergency and it’s too late to keep the wolves at bay.