The Mayor’s Building Friendships
Developers and politicians should not be friends. To suggest they should promotes cronyism, corruption, and plain bad governance [Letters, Sept. 30-Oct 6].

Publicly elected officials should put public interests before private developer interests. This line gets blurred when your friends are developers (and probable campaign donors).

Marina Heights is a case in point. Mayor Ila supported the sale of the former Ft. Ord land for $10.6 million (about $10,000 per lot) when the appraised value likely exceeds $100 million. No fiscal impact study was done as the City Manager recommended.

Mayor Ila has lots of friends and she plans to keep them happy. —Jeff Lerner | Monterey

Teachers Deserve Respect, Too
I enjoyed the article on “The Meaning of Etc.” by editor Eric Johnson. As a teacher at DLI, I note a striking resemblance between an editor’s job and that of a teacher. 1) The teaching profession has a rich and fragrant history, dating back to Aristotle. 2) The unwritten and unspoken credo of teaching is to train students to stay away from out-of-town-owned organizational ideas. 3) A teacher’s mission is to inspire independent thinking and conscious action, etc. 4) A teacher’s mission is also to teach smart, in-depth materials that inform, inspire, and entertain. 5) Teachers and students should belong to two different species—teachers with their ideas, and students assertively and aggressively challenging those ideas. The classroom is where ideas are argued, assignments made, perspectives fine-tuned, etc. —A. Soheili | Monterey

Don’t Drink the Plastic
Many of us buy “clean water” because “tap water” smells/tastes awful and the chlorine (a poison) and the fluoride (an aluminum, which contributes to Alzheimer’s) is bad for our health. I recently found out that the 100 percent pure water we pay for is usually in low-grade plastics that leach dioxins and hydrocarbons—carcinogens.

A diamond symbol on the bottom of most plastic containers shows its grade. A diamond with a number one leaches the most because it decomposes the quickest. A diamond with number seven is the only grade that doesn’t leach. These containers are found in water stores over the Internet. So, if we care about what we are putting into our body, it’s equally important to flip over the container to check its grade as well as the contents. —Alinda Worley | Carmel Valley

Vote Locally
While the national elections are receiving nonstop press coverage—and they should—our fast approaching local elections are largely “off the radar.” Funny thing is, local elections will have a more immediate and direct impact on our quality of life and we have the greatest possibility of affecting them.

Three of four Monterey City Council positions are up for grabs—and these new council members will decide Monterey’s priorities for at least the next two years.

Local voters can actually take control here, but only if we vote. A month from now, will we be congratulating ourselves—or still complaining about City priorities? —Mary Hill | Monterey

Note: The Weekly’s local (and national) election coverage can be found at this website. Click the “Countdown Election ‘04” button. Our story on the Monterey race is scheduled for Oct. 28. Endorsements for all races and ballot measures will be published next week.