Letters to the Editor | Jan. 16, 2023

NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard.” NIMBYism is a phenomenon that occurs almost every time a significant proposal for change in an area is made. I am a Center City resident who supports a new arena for the 76ers. I believe the project will benefit the entire Delaware Valley. However, there is opposition from Chinatown residents and business owners. They have a legitimate interest in protecting their community. If all concerned parties negotiate in good faith and compromise when necessary, this project can go forward. If not, we could have a city full of empty backyards.

Shel Seligsohn, Philadelphia

One of the first votes of the new GOP-controlled U.S. House is to gut funding for the recently approved plan for increased IRS staffing and system improvements. The bulk of the people to be hired would be nonpartisan civil servants used to audit tax returns and catch errors and fraud. Their cost should be more than offset by additional legitimate tax revenue being paid to the IRS. I struggle to see how anyone can perceive this vote as anything other than the GOP kowtowing to their well-heeled donors. I suggest we look to add auditors and audit processes to various other government programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Paycheck Protection Program, etc.) and catch and prosecute fraudsters, rather than look to entirely cancel programs that are meant as a life preserver for the least of us.

Kent Kingan, Malvern

I was an off and on again smoker for 30 years. A friend strongly suggested e-cigarettes as an alternative. Since I began vaping in 2017, I haven’t had the desire to smoke cigarettes. When a cigarette is lit, tobacco leaves are burned and the smoke inhaled. Cigarette smoke contains nicotine, dozens of carcinogens, and chemicals harmful to health. Nicotine, PEG, and vegetable glycerin — the components of vaping liquid — are harmless. PEG, or polyethylene glycol and glycerin, are in thousands of skin, hair, and food products we use every day. Nicotine is an important neurotransmitter in the nervous system. E-cigarette vapor is steam and nicotine. That’s it. Why is the most effective smoking cessation alternative such a political hot potato? Almost every published, peer-reviewed scientific study concludes it is relatively harmless, and certainly less harmful than cigarettes. Unfortunately, uninformed opinion and disreputable science drive policy decision-making.

Christopher Knob, Drexel Hill

The Jan. 9 shooting of four young men in Mayfair along Rowland Avenue was yet another violent incident in a community that, for all but the last handful of years, had been almost entirely without any such violence. This latest episode is perhaps the worst thus far. Even before the increased violence, people were leaving Mayfair in the face of the city’s long-term regressive fiscal policies, loosened residency requirements for some city employees who lived there, an elderly population aging out, and widespread real estate speculation. Communities such as Mayfair cannot expect gentrification or trendiness to magically abate growing quality-of-life problems there. Indeed it, and much of Northeast Philadelphia, has long experienced neglect on the part of City Hall, as if these areas would be stable, clean, and safe in perpetuity. It is ultimately costlier for the city to allow such a community to join the already bloated list of areas that have sunk into experiencing regular violent crime, dirty streets, a lack of code enforcement, and a sense that the neighborhood is done. This is a mayoral election year. A candidate worth his or her salt would embrace communities such as Mayfair as the prime example of what they intend to work on: demonstrable safety improvements, efficient and responsive public services, and reforming fiscal policies to entice investment and jobs. This is far more within the purview and immediate control of the mayor and City Council than the bigger and more complicated social issues they have long seemed more concerned with solving.

Ryan Caviglia, Philadelphia

Legislation proposed by State Reps. Malcolm Kenyatta and Jared Solomon to move Pennsylvania’s 2024 presidential primary to March 19 may look good for the state nationwide but could make things worse for its citizens. Voters will have too short of a break after the 2023 election and too long of a wait until November to be inundated with campaign ads, mailings, and pesky signs. March 19 is also the next-to-last day of winter, forcing my fellow committeepeople and other outside-the-polls election workers to endure 13-plus hours outdoors in potentially cold and snowy conditions, especially in rural areas. Most of us are older and may not be up to this challenge. It may also keep many people from voting in person, and give them less time to make their crucial decisions. Keep it where it is, or move it to a Sunday for everyone’s convenience.

Paul Kaplan, Philadelphia

I find it comical that North Wildwood is suing the state of New Jersey for $21 million over beach erosion because the state Department of Environmental Protection hasn’t been doing its job for the last decade. You can move sand from point A to point B all you want, request bulkheads, temporary dunes, etc., but guess what: Mother Nature always wins. Be it Superstorm Sandy in the fall of 2012, Hurricane Ian last year, and all the storms before, in between, and after (and those major storms yet to come). Beaches will continue to erode. Won’t surprise me if you’ll eventually need to take a tramcar from the boardwalk to the ocean.

Joe “Jake” Dunphy, Philadelphia

Isn’t it amusing how conservative groups, think tanks, and NIMBY organizations have suddenly developed concern for animals and the environment? Despite a simple timeline that shows how whale deaths in New Jersey couldn’t be linked to offshore wind development, and despite the actual science that shows how warming waters caused by climate change would lure more whales to the coast (and thus there would be more whale mortality), these groups persist in linking whale deaths to wind. I am completely in favor of researching how wind will affect both marine and avian life: We need to know these costs so that we can mitigate them. But please do not print another article on the supposed “dangers” of renewable power structures without providing the statistics on how much wildlife is killed by the soundings necessary for oceanic oil and gas exploration and infrastructure, or by the oil fields and tar sands, pipelines, fracking, refineries, and oil spills. Or without tabulating the human life endangered by and lost to particulate pollution and carcinogens caused by the fossil fuel industry. (Researchers at Harvard learned that in 2018, pollution from fossil fuel combustion was linked to eight million premature deaths worldwide.) Do not print such stories without asking those opposed to offshore wind if they are willing to dramatically cut their carbon emissions in order to make up for the renewable power lost by delaying these projects.

Cheryl Wanko, Coatesville

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