The Cave Creek Banner Program
Except for an unfortunate headline, Linda Bentley’s September 16 article about our street banner/banner posts is correct.
I believe this program was presented to the Council two years ago with deliberate misinformation. My own vote was heavily based on what the town was told in public session. While the banner program was, and is now, a controversial program, it needs to be looked at like a stock investment. Don’t make decisions based on how it was acquired and what we paid for it. Decide based on what it is now, and how to best manage what we have.
For the citizens, it’s largely about money. Yes, the structures do impinge upon our beautiful road medians. Possibly they did help to reduce sandwich sign clutter. (Our Town Marshall has played an independent and very effective role in this objective.) But do the banners bring in business? And can Cave Creek recover our cash outlay?
With a change in leadership of the Cave Creek Merchants and Events Association (CCMEA), we have seen an impressive increase of banner advertisements. There is money coming into the CCMEA and the town has been reimbursed for nearly half of its investment, even though this has been slower than we expected and it has been a strain on the CCMEA.
Our Town Manager is working with CCMEA leadership for the best way to reimburse the town, and yet allow the CCMEA to preserve its own economic viability. That’s what good management does.
Furthermore, the new CCMEA leadership has enabled it to become a more viable organization and better fulfill its mission in promoting business, and the generation of tax revenues.
Many issues we deal with require flexibility and community insight. This is a good resolution our citizens deserve, and Sonoran News has played an important role in the process. Thank you.
Thomas McGuire
Councilman, Cave Creek
Wonderful paper!
I'm new to the area and just received a copy of your newspaper.
Generally I scan a newspaper but in this case I read every article.
I've now finally found a newspaper that I can relate to; a paper that tells it like it is without the usual PC verbiage that I note elsewhere.
Keep up the excellent work!
John Shields
Email
Have problems with your mail?
Attention Carefree business owners and residents – have problems with your mail? I opened my gun store almost two years ago and immediately started having mail issues. Great frustration has ensued ever since. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when one of my firearm suppliers sent me a package by US Mail to my physical store address. The package was promptly returned by the Post Office as undeliverable, vacant address, no forwarding information, return to sender. Luckily, for me, this supplier immediately called me to discuss why I was closed and to obtain my new address information to redeliver the package. I obviously haven't moved or closed, so I asked them to send me a picture of the label area of the package, which they were kind enough to do.
After many more hours on the phone dealing with USPS QA and QC personnel and customer adjuncts, and having an extensive background in computer programming (in a former business life), I focused on those last two lines of the yellow label that had been attached to my package. It read, at the bottom, no forwarding information, return to sender. This got me thinking, it meant that there was a database of my store's physical address, and that the important field (for forwarding) was blank. So, with a little more telephone work with USPS customer adjuncts, and their supervisors, it was decided that this indeed might fix my non-delivered mail issues.
Today, I received confirmation of my mail issues being resolved, hopefully. The solution is simple, go to the United /States Post Office, or do it online at usps.gov and have your mail forwarded from your store address to your PO Box. Do this for your personal name, DBA, legal name, and important employees that receive mail. The mail forwarding is good for one year, so do it every year.
Steve Jones
Old West Guns & Trading Co.
Annual Turkeys to Troops
What does it take to feed 2,500 military families a Thanksgiving dinner? You!
Autumn is just around the corner. With that is the start of AZ Heroes to Hometowns Turkeys to Troops program. Once again we are providing OEF/OIF Injured/Wounded Troops, Deployed Military Families, Guard, Reserves, and Active Duty Military with the fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner for their families. AZ Heroes to Hometowns has entered into partnership with local food banks to provide 2,500 food boxes to support these military families for the 2015 Thanksgiving season.
To ensure the success of this project, AZ Heroes to Hometowns is in need of 2,500 - $20.00 grocery gift cards or monetary donations for a turkey or ham to complete the food boxes for Thanksgiving. Donations of grocery gift cards and checks may be mailed to AZ Heroes to Hometowns. Also, Pay-Pal may be used for donations – information at www.azheroestohometowns.org. All donations received with subject: Turkey to Troops will be used for this project.
Donations are needed by November 11, 2015 to allow time for the purchase of grocery gift cards and delivery to the six Arizona locations along with the food boxes.
In partnership with AZ Heroes to Hometowns, you can thank our military service members and their families and let them know Arizonans care by helping provide a much needed Thanksgiving Dinner.
Please consider helping those families that have done their part to fight for our freedom:
______ $4,000 to feed 200
_______$500 to feed 25
_______$2000 to feed 100
_______$200 to feed 10
_______$1000 to feed 50
_______$20 to feed 1
Thank you in advance for your assistance and support of our troops.
Kathy Pearce, Founder
CEO AZ Heroes to Hometowns
Email: [email protected]
AZ H2H, P.O. Box 31646, Mesa, AZ 85275
Guns, cars, knives, fires, bombs don't kill people; people do!
We are consistently bombarded from individuals or organizations dedicated to taking our gun rights away. When confronted by these entities who are not able or are unwilling to grasp the concept of why the second Amendment to our Constitution was constructed to begin with, those explanations almost always fall on deaf ears. Here's a sound reasoning construct that when presented to the misinformed, uninformed or the ideologically impaired! It may have the effect of either befuddling, angering or having them totally change the subject. You may even have them reacting to all three of the potential outcomes at once!
Automobiles have been the implement used to either accidentally or purposefully kill nearly 35,000 Americans in 2012. The blame is always placed on either an inattentive, intoxicated or "crazed motorist". The automobile is never blamed for such deaths. When a bomber mixes a deadly concoction of diesel fuel and fertilizer and blows up a building killing 168 people, the blame is placed on the terrorist committing the act rather than the fuel and fertilizer. When a madman using a knife attacks shoppers in a mall and kills 7 innocent people, it is the madman who is blamed and not the knife. A building set on fire resulting in the deaths of numerous residents, is always blamed on the arsonist.......not the fire.
However, in the politically correct charged society we live in today, whenever a gun is used resulting in the deaths of innocents, the attention is primarily focused on limiting or eradicating guns. The murderer is generally portrayed as an unstable individual. The gun somehow is given equal responsibility as a "dangerous and evil" implement, allaying a sense that the gun has a personality and a mind of its own. The obsession to blame an inanimate object for the deaths of humans rather than laying the total responsibility upon the perpetrator is absurdly illogical and underscores an agenda to disarm the law abiding citizenry while usurping a Constitutionally granted right.
Vince Anselmo
Scottsdale
Are your eyes wide open?
Barack Hussein Obama is letting into OUR country thousands upon thousands of un-vetted Muslims. By the actions of those we have previously let in you can already see that they are not interested in "fitting in." They want OUR laws, OUR schools, YOUR values and YOUR lives altered to accommodate them.
The enormous costs of housing, feeding, medical care etc. will be borne by you, the American Taxpayer while many of our own citizens are already barely getting by. At the very same the government is considering cutting YOUR Social Security benefits as the your costs of health insurance is set to skyrocket.
Barack Hussein Obama and his liberal followers are like an incurable case of syphilis that is infecting all of us while draining the very lifeblood out of OUR families and OUR country.
For those of you that are doubters you only need to look at liberal "paradises" such as San Francisco, NYC, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Chicago etc to see the havoc, damage and destruction these maniacs have heaped upon the United States.
Tom Carbone
Arizona
U.S.A. is daydreaming to lead the world without debating Ukraine at CNN-Republican debate
Anybody who believes in Americanism will be frustrated and saddened by the debate among 11 Republican aspirants for U.S. Presidency) hosted by CNN. Every aspirant was claiming he believes in U.S.A. providing leadership to the world but their words sounded hollow given the fact nobody debated Ukraine. Even CNN, the leading media of U.S.A., did not raise the issue of Ukraine for debate.
The entire world knows the U.S.A. is under legal obligation to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum 1994. But U.S.A. with NATO European Allies are doing nothing to reclaim Crimea which has been taken by Russia and Donbass region (Donetsk, Luhansk, etc.) with Russian supported rebels.
Leadership to mankind can be provided only by the powerful. The U.S.A. (the so-called leader of free world) is so afraid of Russia it cannot discharge its legal obligations to Ukraine. The situation leaves people baffled whether to weep or laugh on such daydreaming with regards to America providing leadership to mankind.
This CNN - Republican debate is proof that now a majority of the people (important in any democracy) do not live in or come to the U.S.A. to realize the American dream but to fulfill their own dream (filling their tummy and producing children) and have nothing to do with Americanism which once inspired mankind.
Today’s U.S.A. reminds us of the famous couplet ‘Bade shauk se sun raha tha zamana tum hi so gaye dastaan kahate kahate’ (world was listening to your story with great interest but Alas! you slept while narrating it).
Americanism, which is nothing but joint capitalism, will never die; the only difference is that it will rise from some other part of the world and certainly not from the U.S.A. if said CNN - Republican debate and the policy of the U.S. government with Democrat Administration policy regarding the Ukraine problem, is any indication.
Regards
Hem Raj Jain
Author of ‘Betrayal of Americanism’
Edina, Minnesota
McDonald's egg pledge is a small step
McDonald's pledge to start using cage-free eggs is only a small step in preventing staggering suffering endured by millions of birds.
Hatcheries that annually supply 200 million female hens for U.S. egg production, including cage-free, also kill the same number of male chicks at birth by grinding them up alive in industrial macerators or suffocating them slowly in plastic garbage bags. The female laying hens endure a lifetime of misery, crammed with 5-6 others, in small wire-mesh cages that cut into their feet and tear out their feathers.
Eggs are common carriers of food-borne bacteria, including Salmonella, Campylobacter. Listeria, and Staphylococcus. USDA estimates that Salmonella alone accounts for 1.3 million U.S. illnesses and 500 deaths annually.
Eggs contain saturated fat and cholesterol, key factors in incidence of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. They are a common cause of allergies in children.
Waste from millions of egg-laying hens ends up in waterways, rendering vast areas unsuited for recreation or water supply.
The good news for compassionate, health-conscious, eco-friendly consumers is that our local supermarket offers a number of delicious egg substitutes and egg-free food products. Entering "egg-free" in a search engine returns tons of recipes.
Sincerely,
Clark Duncan
Cave Creek
