There’s no place for racism in HS football— or society. Lakes deserved better from Stanwood

Lakes deserves better

As a former high school basketball official for 20 years, I was appalled to read about the incident at a Stanwood High School football playoff game when Lakes cheerleaders and players were taunted with racial slurs. This kind of behavior is sadly a reflection of our society and has absolutely no place anywhere.

The Stanwood students should be ashamed of themselves. They have brought dishonor to their school and community. It’s hard to imagine that their coaches weren’t aware of this conduct. I hope that they don’t condone this since one of the objects of sports is to promote sportsmanship and that clearly was lacking.

Where were the administrators who are supposed to ensure proper behavior? Did the officials know about this and if so, why wasn’t it penalized or the game suspended?

Unfortunately, an apology is never enough in a case like this. Lakes students deserved far better treatment.

Sig Nottingham, Puyallup

Homeless village

I’ve been a lifelong Pierce County resident and mental health worker in this county for over 20 years. I am dismayed by the state of our community, seeing people overtly living in squalor but also the amount of garbage and graffiti destroying our beautiful city.

A regular shelter bed is not enough to change lives. Pierce County’s proposed community village for the chronically homeless would provide many enhanced services, including supported employment and onsite treatment services. A serious barrier to any effort to address chronic homelessness is the lack of insight into this population. In addition to more services, we also need in place to compel people to participate in treatment, which will be essential to maintain stability in this community setting.

Historically, we offered more robust involuntary treatment services to help people with chronic mental illness. Now, even legal interventions are diminished by our well-intentioned desire not to incarcerate individuals suffering from mental disorders. We need more opportunities to intervene, including involuntary treatment services and legal programs like drug and mental health courts.

This is a complex problem to solve, but one that we must address if we want to help the chronically homeless population. The proposed community village is a great start, but we also need to consider how we get the most vulnerable people stable enough to participate.

Jaime Long, Tacoma

Prius blues

I paid for my 2023 tabs for my 2008 Prius yesterday and noticed a new charge of $75 for hybrids. First, I support charging a fee to plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. We need money for our roads, bridges and highways.

My Prius is a 2008 model (before plug-in) and my wife’s has a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid (one of the first hybrids). Both are “old hybrid technology.” The electric battery only “assists” the gas engine. Unlike plug-ins hybrids, our cars cannot drive solely on an electric battery.

Although hybrids, both of our cars only get 30 to 35 mpg (city/highway). And because they are older hybrids and the batteries are slowly fading each year, our mileage continues to decrease. The bigger issue is that within the next year we’ll have to replace the hybrid batteries in both. The cost to replace each is between $2,100 and 4,000.

I propose a new law that removes older hybrids (non plug-in) from this fee. There is precedent because the current law includes exemptions for classic cars 30 years old or greater from having to get new tabs each year.

Larry Sagen, Bremerton