Emotion must take back seat to common sense, responsibility

Common sense: In 1948, the sensible minds of St. Joseph citizens saw the need for protecting our historical heritage. Is there any confusion, in my mind, where or what the tax money was intended to support? No.

Is the current need by other protectors of our proud past understandable? Yes.

When the Museum Board decided to go from a city-owned, municipal museum, to a private, not-for-profit corporation, do you think the value of the generous artifacts donations and other financial contributions made to date had anything to do with the decision? Yes.

Is it hard to understand why any contribution or artifact made to the municipal museum on Charles Street by the citizens of St. Joseph, at least prior to the forming of the corporation, should not belong to the citizens of St. Joe? Yes.

Do I think the many years of hard work, dedication and dreams of droves of community-minded citizens should go unsupported or unappreciated? No.

Do you think St. Joseph Museums Inc. and the Wyeth-Tootle mansion are the only museums deserving support? No. The Patee House Museum is where the Pony Express started, where the young riders stayed and the building itself has more history than any artifact in any museum. Yet, over a century later, where the horses pooped is receiving more community support. Why?

Responsibility (This is key): For starters, do I think after Judge Jackson’s ruling, the city should have developed an operational/business plan ... and determined specific services they wanted performed ... at their museum ... before entering into a contract co-penned with only one museum? Yes.

Over the years, have city employees and other city councils looked the other way on their responsibility to the municipal museum and put the proper administration of taxpayers’ museum monies on the back burner? Yes.

Conclusion: The mansion belongs to the people of this historical city. As an elected citizen, emotion and understandable need for other very worthwhile museums must take a back seat to common sense and responsibility to the taxpayers’ original intention for passing the tax in the first place.

Finally, no matter how understandable, the city manager and the city attorneys have no right to siphon off $80,000 of taxpayers’ money for any purpose other than where, why and what it was originally intended to support.

Ken Shearin,

St. Joseph mayor

Let’s call it

what it is

Ms. Snapp’s letter supporting Barack Obama was very well written and I am sure she is a very intelligent lady with well thought-out opinions. Mine differ a little.

As a radiologist, since the advent of ultrasound, I see unborn babies very day. Even though helpless, I see their hearts beating, they breathe, move arms and legs, even suck a thumb on occasion. In fact, they do everything before birth as afterward, except cry for help when threatened.

So I feel the word abortion is a misnomer. We should call it what it is: murder of an innocent.

And I can certainly sympathize with Ms. Snapp’s opinion that an unwanted pregnancy is a real threat to the woman who “wants to maintain control of your own body.” Yet God seems to have placed that burden on women and not on us men for some reason.

There are obvious differences between the born and unborn. As my five children approached teenage years they were much more trouble, but by then they were all well protected by laws (and I had developed a certain attachment to them), so even the elderly Supreme Court justices were no longer a threat to them.

Even though I think it is high time for a woman or a black or even a Hispanic to become president, I will probably delay voting for one of those this time around.

Edward M. Stevens, M.D.

St. Joseph