Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for March 30, 2025
Elected officials need to listen to constituents
I just read the recently published Marin Voice commentary about Regional Housing Needs Assessment numbers written by Amos Klausner (“California’s housing mandates for Marin don’t add up,” March 25).
I agree with Klauser, but what can we do? It is obvious that our politicians, the ones we elected, are not listening. They go to Sacramento and help pass these mandates on our communities. Sometimes it appears that they do so without taking their constituents’ opinion into consideration.
Having been raised in Fairfax in the 1950s and ’60s, I remember the congestion then, now it seems to take 30 minutes to get from one end to the other. San Rafael feels 20 times worse. I worry that all these tall, dense proposals for apartment buildings will lead to intermittent cellphone reception. No thank you.
— Sandi Von Bima, San Rafael
Fairfax can’t afford not to recall council members
I urge Fairfax residents to join the push to recall two members of the Town Council. The time for a recall is now.
Based on the history of the Fairfax Town Council, I do not believe residents can afford “business as usual” by waiting until November 2026 to replace Mayor Lisel Blash and Vice Mayor Stephanie Hellman. I think those two have squandered considerably more taxpayer funds than the potential $60,000 cost identified for a recall.
I suspect they are more willing to entertain outside influencers and personal agendas than those of their constituents, embroiling the town in one controversy after another. They’ve been arguably reckless and inefficient with our patience and funding
This recall isn’t about partisan politics, it’s about performance, or the lack there-of. It’s about transparency and representation. In November’s election, the voters of Fairfax sent a clear message: They demanded to be heard, yet it appears to me that these two council members are continuing to obstruct and ignore the electorate.
It’s time the voters of Fairfax recall them.
—Steve Ardito, Fairfax
San Rafael High should honor former coaches
After seeing the new basketball floor at Archie Williams High School with the names of former basketball coaches Ann Scott and Pete Hayward inscribed, I think San Rafael High should do the same.
School officials in San Rafael are now reconstructing the pool and gym. They should inscribe the names of Mike Diaz and Bret Tovani. Those former coaches gave up a lot of their time sharing their knowledge of basketball to many athletes (including me). They provided us with everlasting memories of shared good times.
— Al Rossi, San Anselmo
We must give credibility to Warren Commission critics
I am writing in regard to a recent New York Times article published in the Marin IJ on March 20 with the headline “JFK documents won’t end speculation.”
I think the discussion about the investigation into the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy in the article unfairly hints that critics of the Warren Commission are paranoid. Author A.O. Scott comes off as a culture critic lamenting that the commission has been “subjected to a steady stream of revisionism and rebuttal.” Scott is right: it has been, and not just by a fringe contingent.
A 1970s government reinvestigation concluded a conspiracy was likely. Two subsequent independent government probes skewered the commission for failures stemming from not hiring its own investigators, instead relying on agencies that had rushed to judge Lee Harvey Oswald the lone assassin.
“The evidence indicates that facts which may have been relevant to, and would have substantially affected, the Warren Commission’s investigation were not provided by the agencies (FBI and the CIA),” the House Select Committee determined. “Hence, the … findings may have been formulated without all of the relevant information.”
Similarly, the Senate’s “Church Committee” reported that it “has developed evidence which impeaches the process by which the intelligence agencies arrived at their own conclusions … the investigation of the assassination was deficient and that facts which might have substantially affected the course of the investigation were not provided to the Warren Commission.”
Given the doubts of both government investigators and informed observers, it’s now past time to ascribe skepticism to unfounded paranoia, as the article appears to ask us to do.
— Dr. Gary L. Aguilar, Greenbrae