Letters to the Editor: Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024

Mailboxes along a street inundated by floodwaters near the Little Econlockhatchee River in Orlando on Thursday morning, Oct. 10, 2024. After leaving a path of destruction across Florida, with flooding and hurricane-force winds ravaging communities across the state overnight, Hurricane Milton’s center was moving away from land on Thursday morning and into the Atlantic Ocean, forecasters said. (Nicole Craine/The New York Times)

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

Mailboxes along a street inundated by floodwaters near the Little Econlockhatchee River in Orlando on Thursday morning, Oct. 10, 2024. After leaving a path of destruction across Florida, with flooding and hurricane-force winds ravaging communities across the state overnight, Hurricane Milton’s center was moving away from land on Thursday morning and into the Atlantic Ocean, forecasters said. (Nicole Craine/The New York Times)
Ideas & Voices
Oct 12, 2024
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Your recent coverage of Hurricane Helene (and now Hurricane Milton) is tragic. It is one more example of climate change. We are passengers on a slow-moving train wreck and if we don’t stop the train soon, everything we value will be destroyed. Hurricane Helene has killed over 120 people. Wildfires killed over 100 in Maui and 85 in Paradise California. Last year, extreme heat in Phoenix killed at least 645 people – nine times the number of a decade ago. More than eight million people have migrated from the Southern Hemisphere toward Europe and North America because increasingly unpredictable rains and drought have made farming nearly impossible. Nearly 30% of Houston residents are considering leaving the city because of extreme weather. In Florida, due to the increased number and destructiveness of hurricanes, home insurance premiums have risen by more than 40% over the past year and a half. Many can’t get home insurance at any price. In Lake Charles Louisiana, they tore down its’ only skyscraper because the windows had been repeatedly blown out by hurricanes and the owners couldn’t afford the repairs anymore. Vote as if your future depends on it. It does.

- Doug Bell, Kenwood

The failure of One Fair Wage to submit enough signatures to eliminate the tipped wage was a win for Ohio’s restaurant industry. We have long been committed to paying our employees a living wage. Eliminating the tipped wage would drastically diminish our servers’ and bartenders’ ability to earn. Most of our service team makes over $38 per hour, allowing them to pay their bills and raise their children. Without the tipped wage, our servers and bartenders would see more than $20 per hour in lost wages. As small business owners, we would have no choice but to raise menu prices since we’d have to pay our staff a higher hourly wage to ensure they maintain their quality of life. Never before have we been faced with artificially raising what we charge our customers; this is simply not good business. It’s important the public understands that Dayton small businesses are fully committed to both their incredible staff and loyal customers. Eliminating the tipped wage would benefit no one. Don’t let an outside special interest group experiment with Ohio’s restaurant industry now or in the future.

- Liz Valenti, Dayton

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