Serving the community since 1922
Serving the community since 1922
Sorted by date Results 1 - 9 of 9
To the editor: I am writing this as a concerned citizen of Shafter, as well as a former employee and former Board member of the Richland School District. On July 20, 2023, an article appeared in the Shafter Press concerning school districts spending of federal covid relief funds. It was stated, “Numerous attempts to contact Superintendent Rosa Romero have gone unanswered, as well as calls to Richland Finance Director Martin Rodriguez” as to how the Richland School District had spent their allotted $11.1 million of funding. On Aug. 24, 202...
To the editor: This letter is in regards to the mandate that our three trash cans are in our streets and not in the alley. I agree with Garry Nelson's letter to the Shafter Press dated March 31, 2022. However, the Rotary motto doesn't have a safety component. Many of our streets have no sidewalks, forcing students walking to and from school to travel in the street. When you add a line of garbage cans to the line of parked cars, those children will now be in the middle of the street. This is a dangerous situation for our community's children and...
To the Editor: There are few things that keep me awake at night, but the recent decision by our City Council to move all trash pickup to the curb is one. The many years I served on the City Council, being a Rotarian, I tried to base decisions on the Rotary 4-Way Test. 1) Is it the truth? Impacted citizens in our community were not involved in the process to determine the final, best and most economic location for our trash service pickup. We were told the three-bin individual home pickup is state mandated. That part was true, but the location o...
I have lived almost my entire life here in rural Wasco one mile away from where I was born at the peak of the “Dust Bowl.” In the last 25 years a problem has become of epidemic proportion – the dumping of city waste onto roadsides of our valuable farmland. The cities of Wasco and Shafter do a good job of keeping the waste hauled to our county dump and recycling center located within a few miles from both cities. The dumps are well run and have a staff of very helpful employees to assist you when you take your load to the dump, and the hours the...
I have lived in Shafter for 30 years and have seen many positive changes for the city. Let me say that I usually don’t get involved in local politics because we elect people whom we feel will get the job done for the people who elect them. The last few years we have seen a turn of events to suggest that some of our elected City Council members have not served this community well. The division of Council Members has been very apparent to the citizens who voted to put them in office and attend council meetings. We have seen them pursue their own...
To the editor: I considered it an honor and privilege to have served the City of Shafter for 20 years as a member of the City Council, eight of those years serving as mayor. Throughout those 20 years, the council worked together to maintain a financially sound position for the city. The council also set priorities of providing a safe environment to live and raise a family by maintaining and adequately staffing our Police Department. Other major goals were to create a business environment conducive to companies locating here to provide jobs and...
After reading Stan Voth's "Letter to the Editor" in the June 27 Shafter Press, I feel compelled to state a few more facts. The Richland School District is in a sorry state of affairs, with approximately a half-a- million-dollar deficit. The Richland School Board trustees, with a 4-1 vote, just approved the second deficit spending budget in two years. This budget approval included the creation of two new nonteaching positions, shifting money away from classroom instruction. As enrollment decreases each year, mainly because of the Grimmway...
We received a letter recently but the letter was not signed, so we are unable to verify its author. Since it's the policy of the paper not to publish anonymous opinion, we didn’t have the privilege of printing the the submission. If any reader has a concern or just wants to voice an opinion, they are invited to write a Letter to the Editor. But any letter must be signed and have a phone or email so that we can verify its authenticity. We encourage input from our readers and value your opinions. If you have any questions about this policy, p...
My interest in Richland School District affairs was again sparked by the forced resignation of Superintendent Dr. Garcia, and public statements by district CBO and others in position to know of the financial health of the district. Most enlightened citizens of this community were fairly sure, after the election last fall, that Dr. Garcia’s resignation would be the end result. But few, if any, would have even imagined it would have happened in a short 6 months. Well, that is now water under the bridge, but this boards past record over the p...
