In mid-December, the Allegheny County Council approved a new UPMC bond issue. At the hearing, more than 30 residents gave three-minute speeches asking council to delay approving the new bond and give us the opportunity and time to find another entity that is willing to keep a hospital operating in Braddock, if UPMC couldn't be persuaded.

Four UPMC representatives sat through the 21/2-hour hearing feeling no responsibility to give testimony with the total confidence they had the vote in their pockets. They proved correct. Ten of us have filed a suit in Common Pleas Court to overturn the local bond decision ("Lawsuit Aims to Stop UPMC Bond Issue," Jan. 13).

Now UPMC has gone to the Pennsylvania Higher Education Facilities Authority and gotten approval of a $1.1 billion bond issue to earn millions of dollars in lower interest rates ("Critics Aside, UPMC Gets Bond Issue," Jan. 15), in order to continue its disinvestment in Western Pennsylvania and its lust for higher profits outside our U.S. borders. We will appeal and fight the bond issuance there also.

The 10 plaintiffs and the citizens of Braddock are asking the people of our area to stand up to UPMC on behalf of your most vulnerable constituents, and say no to its abandonment of our community hospitals. Is there any doubt that McKeesport will be next?

If our elected officials are at all in touch with their constituency, they are aware that UPMC has ticked off a substantial number of people of late, this hospital shutdown being the last straw for many of us. I know where Martin Luther King Jr. would be, if he were alive today -- on the picket lines and in the courts defending our poorest citizens and most distressed community. And so should we.

MIKE STOUT
Owner, Steel Valley Printers
Member, Local 3403, USW
Homestead

Re: Rialto closing

Closing Rialto at times is important, and an issue that will always exist, but to do so in such a severe manner with two days' notice is extremely shortsighted ("City to Block Off Section of Rialto Street in Troy Hill," Jan. 21). The majority of the time in winter months the road is just fine. The city of Pittsburgh does an excellent job of maintaining it during the winter months.

The city and Councilwoman Darlene Harris should have delayed the closing for at least two weeks to examine other options for secure road closure instead of concrete barriers. Metal gates that can be securely locked would be a much better solution for closing the road when the weather makes it dangerous to use. They should have asked for community input.

It is a shame that a few people who have used poor judgment and put their lives and property at risk have made it impossible for hundreds of motorists to use this roadway on a daily basis.

JAN LONEY
Troy Hill

Burdening most

Regarding the "temporary" closing of Rialto Street (Pig Hill) by Council President Darlene Harris because of winter conditions ("City to Block Off Section of Rialto Street in Troy Hill," Jan. 21), I feel it necessary to comment. I've used this street for more than 40 years and the only danger I have encountered is driver inexperience, the four-wheel drive mentality (I can go anywhere) and the lack of common sense.

I have seen the wooden horse barriers and the snow covering the street and have used the alternate routes, as have 99 percent of the people who use this hill daily.

Children taking down the barricade as a prank happens quite frequently, and then there's the occasional "idiot" who thinks he or she can make it and moves the barrier, but again conditions and experience are the rule for using this street. When there is no snow or ice, there is no need to close the street.

The inconvenience of the closure is a pain, for the only other accesses to get off the hill lead to the same intersection of Chestnut and East Ohio streets, which on a good day adds 10 to 15 minutes to your commute. The time and wasted fuel alone sitting in traffic because somebody who lacks "common sense" used the hill when he shouldn't have is putting a burden on the rest of us, especially the residents of Troy Hill who use this route daily.

Another solution needs to be found -- and quickly -- for the more than 500 vehicles that use this hill daily.

GEORGE GAVRAN
Troy Hill

Forget maglev

In Charles McCollester's Utopian fantasy world, we would all zip from place to place on the maglev trains powered by something other than a known fuel source (magic perhaps?), after those horrible private, profitable railroads cease to exist ("The Fundamentals Are Anything But Sound," Jan. 20 Perspectives).

Since the American railroads transport more than 80 percent of everything that moves within the United States, how does Mr. McCollester propose to supply us with the things we need? I have to believe that he has never actually ridden on a maglev system, as I have.

The system running from the Shanghai airport to a spot close to the center of the city is the only operating maglev system in the world. If he had he would understand why there were recent riots in Hong Kong against the decision of the Chinese government to dump more money into high-speed rail systems in China.

Even in a dictatorship, it is difficult to force something on people that they know is too expensive, too unreliable and just plain stupid.

JIM CANNON
Mt. Lebanon

A big difference

Letter writer Roger Adamiak ("What's the Difference?" Jan. 20) refers to the "incredibly racist" comments of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Others have equated Mr. Reid's comments about then-candidate Barack Obama with comments that Trent Lott, former Republican Senate majority leader, made a few years ago about the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

To me the difference between the comments made by these two men is crystal clear: In saying that the country "would have been better off" if an avowed segregationist (Mr. Thurmond) had been elected president in 1948, Mr. Lott appeared to express support for a system that rendered African-Americans permanent second-class citizens.

By contrast, Mr. Reid attempted (clumsily, to be sure) to characterize why Mr. Obama (whose candidacy Mr. Reid had endorsed) might win the support of white voters who historically had been reluctant to vote for an African-American. His choice of words was poor, but they were spoken in support of an African-American candidate for the presidency, not in apparent nostalgia for a time when African-Americans were denied the right to vote. If you ask me, that's a pretty big difference.

ELEANOR MAYFIELD
Squirrel Hill

Dan Onorato should want assessments to be correct

The problem with property assessments is that they're just wrong. Why doesn't County Executive Dan Onorato want to make them right?

In doing so, he'd bring relief to tens of thousands of county taxpayers who have been overassessed and overtaxed for years. Many, but not all, of those people, like the ones who brought the suit that led to the court-ordered reassessment, live in communities and neighborhoods where property values have been stagnant or in decline.

Wouldn't Mr. Onorato, a Democrat, look better in his run for governor if he appealed to our better natures and fought for those people instead of against them? Instead, by opposing reassessment at every step of the way, he has let those least able to afford it continue to pay too much.

The county's assessments aren't uniformly wrong. If they were, that would be OK. Instead, they're un-uniformly wrong, which means there are just about as many people who are way overassessed as there are who are way underassessed. Unfortunately, none of us knows on which side of the divide we stand because assessments have been mismanaged for so long. The only way to get them right is through a fair and accurate reassessment.

Taxes are set under a simple equation: Budget equals millage times assessment. The only part of that equation that politics should control is the budget. Assessments can't be part of it. As long as budgets stay about the same -- and there's no reason they shouldn't -- reassessment will affect only those who have been paying too little and those who have been paying too much.

DAVID MICHELMORE
Oakland
The writer is a retired Post-Gazette editor and reporter who wrote extensively about assessments in the early 1990s.

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