Replacing PERS: Allen Alley is a Republican and is probably pretty conservative. I’m not, but Mr. Alley got it right in his op-ed, “It’s time to retire PERS,” (Feb. 10). It is time to retire the current Public Employees Retirement System and replace it with a 21st century solution – a 401K type retirement plan. The Oregon Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible to tinker with the current PERS, and the employees’ union won’t help. But Mr. Alley’s solution will honor the horrible bargain our elected officials made with the union, and will protect current employees. New employees will have to live in the 21st century, pension-wise. Often simple solutions to complex problems don’t work, but this one will.
Richard Friedmar, Southwest Portland
Trashing our city: I love Portland. Our city may be one of the last examples of the shining city on the hill. Maybe not the one that President Reagan imagined, but the one that makes my heart swell when I think of all the good that we can do, and the hope that we can show the world. We attract immigrants from around the nation and have a global reputation as a place where injustice is fought and wrongs are addressed.
So what’s with the trash? The I-84 corridor is simply covered in trash. Piles of it, streaming like debris torrents from numerous encampments. Every highway medium and planter box is choked with the detritus of a modern society that doesn’t make the effort to clean up its own backyard.
It’s shallow and hypocritical to congregate and protest over the injustice in distant places when we don’t make the effort to fix our own problems. We can do better, Portland. Let’s get together and clean up our mess before the burst of spring hides our garbage and we all go back to pretending that our city is an environmentally sound place to live.
Mark Brodesser, Damascus
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