Chamber needs to take a stand
OK, so I am really failing to understand what the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce is hesitant about? I mean, come on, our Grand Junction Police Department and Fire Department buildings are two facilities that are definitely in need.
Is this the image we want to portray? Our public safety personnel deserve much better. They are there to protect and serve, and for them not to be given the tools necessary to do their job is truly a crime.
The chamber is supposed to be an organization that represents business. I believe it wasn’t too long ago that it sent out to its members a questionnaire asking just the questions that are being asked of the voters now. The majority of those polled supported these two measures.
Now the chamber wants to take a back seat and not take the lead in supporting one of the truly most beneficial initiatives on the November ballot?
When the city first approached the chamber for support last month, the chamber supported 2A but differed on the terms of 2B. Now, after the city revisited those concerns and is going out to the voters, the chamber appears to be hesitant on 2A but supports 2B.
I believe this is a little like “lawyering up” — you argue both sides and never really take a stand.
As a business owner and winner of this year’s Chamber Small Business of the Year, an award I truly do appreciate, it saddens me to see this lack of leadership. Take a stand Chamber and back up your position.  Our men and women in uniform deserve it.
MICHAEL ANTON
Rocky Mountain Electric Motors Grand Junction
Warren’s questions wereboth appropriate and fair
I am writing to state that I strongly disagree with Kathleen Parker’s column in the Aug. 21 edition of The Daily Sentinel. Since when is it morally, and constitutionally wrong for an evangelical pastor to be involved in learning what the candidates believe?
I learned a good deal more about each of the candidates through Rick Warren’s event than I had ever learned by watching the network TV programs.
I think Rick Warren did an outstanding and fair job of asking the questions of each candidate, and to claim it is unconstitutional and wrong of him to ask questions such as he did is, in my opinion, completely wrong.
I believe the answers to the questions he asked were not only fair, but much needed. I usually agree with most of what Kathleen Parker writes, but not this time.

JAMES C. SPARKS
Grand Junction

Exotic creatures should beconfined to public exhibits
If six freaky lionfish were dumped into the Atlantic Ocean back in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew shattered a private aquarium, they are now showing up everywhere in the oceans and wreaking havoc.
Mark Hixon, a marine ecology expert, tells us that controlling the damage they do — devouring fish and crustaceans, sucking down 20 small fish in one violent gulp — is like trying to control a plague of locusts. They are spreading in the Carribean like wildfire.
It has occurred to me when I see these TV shows featuring snakes — some of them humongous, some deadly — that we should ask what will happen if an earthquake or flood should destroy the museums or private homes they are in. They just might proliferate and be everywhere.
Some of these creatures are brought in by people wanting recognition. It certainly can’t be they love these creatures.
There are plenty of our own live animals, etc., for us to see in zoos, museums. Perhaps it is time these oddities from other countries should be outlawed in the United States. I know I would feel more safe if they were.
DEDE RANZENBERGER
Palisade

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