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Vail Daily letters to the editor

Vail Daily Staff
Vail, CO, Colorad
newsroom@vaildaily.com

Honor the soldiers

The soldiers of Baker Company are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and these kids are mainly so deployed because they might not have a job at home, they come from a military family and are impelled to follow their parents in that venue, or they are simply altruistic and principled. Yes, some may be sociopaths, but you find that ilk in our society throughout.

The armed settler or pioneer stood between the marauding savage and the cabin threshold. He was the patriot who stood between the British and a fledgling nation at Lexington or Yorktown. He was the blood in the sand at Omaha Beach, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima and Riva Ridge, and he faced the tyranny that murdered 6 million Jews.



Today, he is your neighbor with the gun ” not to prove his manhood but to come to your defense when your castle is invaded or when sharia law may be imposed throughout this land in the stead of the Constitution with its inscribed rights, including that of the hallowed Second Amendment.

You or I may not believe in a deity, but these kids in their foxholes may have to rely only on their respective gods or the angels that may give them solace. You and I certainly cannot rely on the good will of those who make war or benefit from the blood expended in foreign fields of those who have fallen.

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Were you to stroll through glens of Arlington along the Potomac, the silence of the soldiers is deafening. Would it be that we could trade the din of guns for just one life returned to a grateful nation.

Rather than disparage the endeavors of the American soldier in harm’s way, our antipathy and ire should be directed more toward the halls of Congress, the White House or voter complacency ” not to the kid with a gun who may return in a box or in pieces.

Let us give the soldier more credit than just proving himself to be a man. To say it another way, our egalitarian society does not “bestow” freedom upon you. Only that individual with a gun, your neighbor, your friend, can protect you and preserve what freedom you have.

The kids in Baker Company are or will become men if they are fortunate to live so long. And when they return, they will become your friends!

Fredric Butler

Foster care difficult here

As an Eagle County social caseworker for the Department of Child Welfare, I have experienced firsthand the frustrations of not having Eagle County foster homes. As the caseworker for any and all children who are placed into foster care on my caseload, my responsibilities are tremendous, and I take my job very seriously.

These responsibilities require me to get involved in situations where children have been hurt (abused or neglected) and when their home environments are deemed unsafe.

My responsibilities include making face-to-face contact every month with every child on my caseload. I am personally responsible for working closely and collaboratively with a treatment team that includes therapists, foster parents, biological parents, teachers and community agencies. I am further mandated to ensure that visits take place among the foster children and their parents and siblings.

As the caseworker, one of my biggest responsibilities is to do everything in my power to reunify children back with their parents. This becomes extremely difficult when children are placed far away from their parents and communities.

Thus the reason I am writing this. As a result of few foster-care placement options in Eagle County, the majority of my caseload consists of children being placed out of Eagle County in Denver, Colorado Springs and even Greeley. To see one child in Greeley, in one year, I traveled to Greeley once a month for a mileage total of 4,517.28 (an average of 96 hours a year).

Along with the county dollars it takes to travel, this is time taken away from other duties and services of families in need right here in Eagle County.

Foster children feel the enormous brunt of being placed out of their communities. This just adds to the heartache children already experience when they are removed from their families. Best practice would include having children continue at their schools with the friends and in the communities they are familiar with. Having children placed out of their communities directly impacts the court process as well. It holds up the process of determining reunification, and this can have a negative effect on attachment and permanency goals.

As a social caseworker, my hope is that children will stop being placed outside of Eagle County and that our community will work together to ensure that children have a safe environment and safe homes right here in Eagle County. Let’s keep Eagle County kids safe and in Eagle County!

Contact Eagle County today to see what you can do to help! Call 970-328-8840.

Eagle County caseworker

Editor’s note: This letter is from an Eagle County caseworker who will remain unidentified for safety reasons, given the nature of casework. Under these special circumstances, we are lifting our normal rule of requiring full identification with letters to the editor.

Keep Vail green

I have been following the Vail Town Council’s interest in pursuing the development of the “green space” along East Meadow Drive.

Do not develop it! Enough is enough! Do not do it! Take the terraced concept at the Bridge Street entrance, and expand it all the way to Village Center Road.

Make it a park with patio areas for relaxation, and keep it “green.”

Please, no more concrete and zero setbacks. I’m sure developing the park concept would be more widely accepted. Why not float the idea and get resident input before going any further?

Paul Treacy

More than Target

I am writing to express my concern with a common misconception surrounding the Eagle River Station. There have been many letters written questioning the ability of one big-box store (like Target) to draw shoppers from across the region.

This would be a very valid point if Target was the only store going into ERS, but it is not. It is one store of many.

This type of center will have stores such as American Eagle, Banana Republic, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Gap, etc.

Denver is the closest city in Colorado that provides these kinds of options. Why would people drive all the way to Denver when they can come to Eagle and save two hours on their drive time and not have to drive over the pass?

Target will definitely draw a lot of customers from Eagle County, but it is not the whole center. Not by a long shot.

Darius Rekla Eagle

Another view

I have seen a few letters lately from people who think the poor elk with the bar stool stuck on her head is nothing to laugh about. I agree 100 percent, but I couldn’t care less about the elk.

We all need to take a step back and look at this from a different perspective. I feel very sorry for the poor bar stool that got an elk stuck up its a–. This is no laughing matter.

I would much rather have a stool on my head, and if that were the case, I would love to get so much attention from the media.

Get real, folks. The elk can’t read the paper. No thumbs.

Ryan Scott Edwards


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