Just give it to him
Instead of the constant and financially wasteful probe into the 2020 Presidential election, why don’t we just declare Trump as the winner, thus of a second term, and therefore ineligible for this term, which would be his third term. That way, he could be gone, before indicating further damage upon our country.
— Bob Cushing, Carmel
Melania, The Movie
Not since Jacklyn Kennedy , 63 years ago, have we had a First Lady like Melania with her intellect, fashion elegance and unapologetic patriotism.
Thank you Melania for producing a beautiful and telling movie that all Americans could and should be proud of.
And for those uninformed Trump hating citizens that elect not to see the movie they can always refer to their reliable source “The View” for a fair and unbiased
review of the movie.
— George Galakatos, Monterey
Winter Olympics
Good grief, according to the Herald, the U.S. is sending an ICE unit to the Winter Olympics. Somebody better tell them that in Italy not everyone is a U.S. citizen. Given their obvious lack of training, I’m worried that some ICE officers at an ice hockey game might drag the Zamboni driver out of his vehicle and pepper spray him at center ice. There may be no penalty box for ICE misconduct here in the U.S., but there may be in Italy.
— Glenn Nolte, Carmel Valley
Cal Am
Cal Am recently announced a 24.36% increase in water rates over next three years, way in excess of The Public Advocate Office report just out that recommends a 9 to11% increase over the same period. Monterey County already has the highest water prices in the country, despite (and perhaps because) it has one of the best records in reducing water usage. Cal Am is playing a shady game exploiting its ratepayers to reward its shareholders and executives. As we get better at using less water, it jacks up its prices to sustain its profits at our expense.
Strenuous efforts directed at regaining local control have been foiled by a greedy company trying to extract as much as possible. Cal is not really a public utility; instead, it is a private rip-off.
— Donna Manning, Allen Frances, Carmel
Higher stakes
Remember the hullabaloo of 1999? Panic! What will happen when the calendar goes around? Will banks crash? Will the world come to an end? Many people worried, some prepared. But for everyone, the calendar page turned. We adapted to writing all four digits of our birth year on forms. Someone made goofy “2002” glasses; banks and institutions survived. The world did not come to an end.
On a much more serious note, something similar is happening again. For 250 years, the majority of U.S. voters were white; soon there will be no majority group. Some people (in and out of government) are fighting tooth and nail against the inevitable – trying to control immigration, banning books, restricting voting rights, clinging to the past by ripping up the days that remain.
Even those of us who welcome the majority-minority transition acknowledge we haven’t done enough to prepare. “Fill in two digits for year” had an easy fix. Repairing a system where liberty and justice haven’t really been for all will take hard work and soul searching, but it’s vital. The future is coming; this time if we don’t get it right the world really might come to an end.
— Helen Spiess Shamble, East Garrison
Too many employees?
For years Monterey’s population has remained fairly stable at around 30,000. So it comes as a shock that the number of city government employees has exploded from 420 in 2021 to 488 in 2025. The employment burden has busted the budget and the city council now insists on raising taxes. The government could cut the budget instead, but this is not the way our government works. Cutting the budget is always put off for some indefinite future. So we will have two tax measures on the June ballot. They include an increase in the sales tax by 0.375 percentage points, which sunsets in nine years, and an 8-percent parking tax.
A new spending program was started in 2024. The city government hired two additional full-time employees to do a rental inventory, with total operational costs of around $400,000 per year. The inventory is still underway. Will we ever get useable information? The goal of this invasive program is to survey residential rents in Monterey. Sadly, representative rent estimates are already available from a number of sources, including Zillow. The bill for this boondoogle, higher taxes, comes due in June. Let’s end the program and defeat the tax increases.
— Thomas F. Lee, Monterey
