‘Pennies’ column recollects reader’s pennies story
[Regarding “A Penny Saved is a Penny Spurned?” March 13:] About 40 years ago, I lived in Italy, and they had recently gotten rid of the centissimo coin (“penny” equivalent). Prices stayed the same, but without the “penny” coins, shop keepers handed out penny candy to make up difference in the change amount. In my hand after one transaction, I had a few pieces of penny candy and a gettone (ridged coin you could use in pay phones), along with some various Lira notes.
Biggest change I can see: Well, the “99 cents” store, certainly, as well as the time-honored practice of charging “XX dollars and 99 cents” to bring in customers.
Anne Whitacre, San Francisco
Anti-density column misses point
The “Outside City Hall” article by [John V.] Fox and [Carolee] Colter commenting on Seattle’s handling of [the] Washington Growth Management Act (GMA) provisions (“Seattle Grows at Record Rate; Developer Lobby, City Say More Needed,” March 20) rather misses the point.
The answers to their open-ended but poorly addressed questions about City Hall’s motives for speedy in-City “upzoning” are obvious, but they clearly missed them in their rant over the pro-development “cabal” supposedly corrupting City Hall.
The [City] Council and the mayor may give lip service to anti-business and pro-greenie rhetoric, but ultimately they have a city to run and pay for between elections. Fox, Colter and the other fine folk at the Seattle Displacement Coalition may not have noticed, but the regional economy still sucks, yet more tax revenue is needed, and fast. Poor folk and everybody in single-family houses pay low taxes per acre — duh. Empty lots, closed businesses and empty apartments pay zero.
By contrast, high-density apartments in upzoned, gentrified, overbuilt neighborhoods are a perfect setup for (potentially) higher revenue. It’s no skin off the City Council’s collective nose to sign off on hundred-unit abominations like the latest superplexes nearing completion in Ballard. City Hall has progressively destroyed Ballard’s small-town flavor and human scale, transforming it from Scandinavian village to just another bedroom McBeehive.
But revenue must be raised, so let’s raise that ol’ FDR cheer, “That’s Progress!” as another empty storefront gets scraped.
Yes, calcining minerals in the making of concrete emits lots of CO2, as do all those fossil-fuel-powered, heavy trucks and machinery pouring that concrete. I doubt that City Hall is aware that the “cost” of CO2 from construction would soon be paid back by CO2 reductions from more-efficient transport and lower home-energy costs; Fox and Colter, for all their bumper-sticker greenness, evidently seem unaware of it.
But, ironically, the occupants meant for this upzoned, plentiful housing actually need jobs to pay those anticipated taxes. This is where City Hall, Fox and Colter, the architects of the GMA, the Progressives running Seattle and Washington state and, indeed, the economic gurus of the Obama administration all fail in their solid-Blue ideology: No jobs — beyond short-term construction. No taxes — after businesses fail and flee Seattle’s hostile government.
Alex Templeton, Magnolia
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