Forum: Dismayed by lost businesses
January 17, 2013 9:30PM
Updated: February 19, 2013 3:10PM
I recently moved back to the south suburbs with my young family. I decided to go to Lincoln Mall in Matteson and found it bare and practically stripped down. I was astonished at the lack of shopping options.
Our area can honestly boast about award-winning schools, safe neighborhoods and prestigious residents. There’s no reason for the business exodus that’s happening in the south suburbs.
The residents of Matteson and neighboring towns need to get together and Save Our South Suburbs. By keeping our dollars in our communities, we will create such a large demand that corporations will take our spending power seriously.
How many of you have iPhones? Where’s the closest Apple store to your home? How about Victoria’s Secret? Can we get a Kohl’s? What happened to Old Navy?
Stop taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to someone else’s tax revenue. Support the vendors who support us, our families and our neighbors. Our communities just might be headed in the wrong direction. Save Our South Suburbs.
Danielle L. Shorter
Matteson
Reeder simplistic on pensions
This is in response to Scott Reeder’s Jan. 11 column (“Time for Illinois to exit the pension business”) in which he takes a very simplistic view of the state’s pension crisis.
Reeder refers to a retired teacher’s $91,692 pension and implies that a teacher doesn’t deserve such a pension because it’s more than “most Illinoisans can ever expect to make working.”
A pension of $91,692 doesn’t mean the teacher doesn’t deserve it and doesn’t mean the teacher hasn’t earned it.
To look merely at the amount misses the point of this current pension crisis — state government promised certain pensions to its employees, failed repeatedly to fully fund their pension plans and now is planning to break its promise. It’s all about trust!
The Legislature is saying, “Our desire to be re-elected is what’s important and not what happens 20 years down the road.”
Joseph J. Matula
Palos Park
Tighter gun laws not total answer
Regarding Dennis Gorecki’s Jan. 11 letter, he writes that states with strict gun laws have the least number of gun deaths. Perhaps, but that’s not the case in Illinois where Chicago is close to being the murder capital of the country despite having some of the most strict gun laws.
Assault guns and multi-round clips should be banned, except perhaps for collectors who must strictly obey regulations on them. But tighter gun laws alone won’t dramatically reduce gun violence.
Let’s look at addressing some of the other causes, such as people with psychological problems being able to obtain guns and the growth in violent games and movies.
When I saw the movie “The Hobbit” recently, there were many children in the audience and five violent movies were advertised in the previews.
Richard Smith
Monee
