Why not survey other
cities on homelessness
So, the way to resolve our downtown “issues” is to hire a facilitator, collect information, study the results for nine to 12 months and then come up with recommendations on a solution or solutions which may or may not solve the problem.
This approach must be based on the premise that Morgantown is the only municipality in the world to face such issues and must therefore, on its own and with city taxpayers bearing the bill, study and resolve this issue.
Give me a break!
Morgantown is not unique in experiencing these issues. They occur in thousands of municipalities in this country and around the world every single day.
Is it not possible that some of these other cities have developed and put in place processes that successfully deal with each of the issues that we face? Processes that have been tested by daily use and shown to work.
Doesn’t our city manager belong to some League of Municipalities that can share the successes of other communities dealing with the same issues? While our city manager may not possess, as he says, the expertise or time available to come up with the solution to our issues, he surely has the expertise and can make the time to survey municipalities in this country and abroad and find out what they are doing that is working.
Let’s do that before we go charging off to reinvent the wheel that may well already be invented.
Robert Cockrell
Morgantown
Let’s get on with due
process in Constitution
The exercise of power is give-and-take. There is little or no doubt that President Donald Trump is a taker. The House of Representatives is currently engaged in the legitimate investigation into whether in taking he has overreached, has gone beyond the power authorized for the president in the Constitution.
Similarly, the Senate leadership, in expressing its intention not to allow the Senate to act upon any proposition not favored by the president, is giving its legitimate power to advise and consent to certain actions of the president as authorized in the Constitution to the president. Thereby, the Senate is surrendering its legitimate duty to advise and consent.
Trump may have overreached and Mitch McConnell may have abrogated the Senate’s responsibility in the nebulous game of checks and balances. Has the president taken too much? Has the Senate given too much?
The only sure thing is that the House of Representatives is authorized to conduct impeachment and the Senate is authorized to try the case if the House impeaches. The authority comes from the U..S. Constitution.
Let’s get on with this due process; let the Congress do its duty. Then the president and the Congress can get on with the give and take of exercising the legitimate powers of government in the United States.
Bill Wyant
Morgantown
Census results to weigh
heavily on voting, etc.
The 2020 Census begins on April 1. The results of the Census will determine the number of seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives and how they are used to draw congressional and state legislative districts.
As of Nov. 8, the U.S. population was 330.5 million people. There are 435 U.S. House seats with none added since 1913.
With all the immigrants illegally in the United States since the last Census, the population will grow by the millions in each state. The 2020 Census could skew the number of U.S. citizens and misrepresent the number each House seat represents. We need to know how many undocumented immigrants are in America versus the number of U.S. citizens.
The Census Bureau was prohibited by the U.S. courts to ask this question: Are you a U.S. citizen. This number is important to protect our voting rights so we can count the number of legal votes versus the population to eliminate voter fraud.
Since the number of House seats is fixed at 435, many states will never have their numbers increased. If the Census shows the population has in fact increased in the millions and Congress votes to give citizenship to all illegal immigrants, this would impact all social programs. We have to be careful and do the math.
William R. Woodall
Waldorf, Md.
