Letters to the editor, April 22, 2023

On the mayoral race

Our City is at a time in history where significant changes are about to occur. To be prepared we need a mayor that will provide leadership and management skills to lead us in the right direction. The areas of concern include:

Adequate long range planning including infrastructure development, repair and needed replacement. Funding is absolutely necessary as many times infrastructure investments occur in the early stages of development. We must take care of our existing and future needs.

Long term budgeting three to five years is essential. The City Council needs to debate and support budget development where major expenses will occur.

Protection of our water, the Rapid Creek watershed, calls for watershed management with appropriate resources and utilization of a joint jurisdictional effort.

Monitor the candidates’ platforms and observe their comments on these critical issues. With the talent and experience in the candidate pool, we have an opportunity to be ready for the future. When the candidate is ultimately elected, I am sure she will do a great job.

Jerome “Jerry” Wright, Rapid City

Favorite authoritarians

Hillsdale’s history curriculum, approved by political appointees, opposed by most parents and almost all professional teachers, makes no sense, except to use school kids as talking points for a Noem run for national office. Though impossible to implement, everybody earns a virtual BA in history to graduate high school, most people could get behind a workable curriculum providing citizens a commonly believed, accurate, balanced account of how our ancestors produced the current world. One vital history lesson is that stressed people make choices that seem senseless, impossible to imagine fellow citizens doing, until they do it. Profound, rapid changes in society in the mid-20th century left many vulnerable to bizarre cult leaders, shocking us with unthinkable events like the Jonestown massacre. Amid aftershocks of the World War, educated, middle class Germans disbelieved that crude Nazis, with their ridiculous scapegoating of Jews, could possibly take their government. Facing workplace globalization, computerization and failed nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither pundits nor most voters believed Donald Trump could win the Presidency. Facing post-covid inflation, war in Ukraine, threat of war in Taiwan, don’t discount as impossible the danger that the most politically passionate Americans reject democracy in favor of favorite authoritarians.

Peter Hasby, Rapid City