PUBLIC FORUM YOUR OWN CITY.

Re ``L.A. myth shattered'' (Editorial, Aug. 26):

Who says the city would ``dwindle into political obscurity''? Perhaps the fiefdom on the other side of the hill will fall into disrepair, but the Valley and the Vals have a wellspring of energy, vision and ambition from which to draw and can and will become a youthful, dynamic new city.

Then what will happen to the rich fogies at L.A. City Hall? Well, they will just have to establish residence in the Valley if they can find digs posh enough for their tastes. If not they can use their fabled power and influence to move the Valley's boundaries a few miles south to include their own homes. So, good luck, Valley. It's so much better to live in your own city.

- Valerie Wasmer

Santa Clarita

Spending priorities

Something's wrong with the spending priorities of a city when it's willing to spend millions on matching street lights for one upscale street but unwilling to offer minimum health care to its poorest and disabled citizens.

- Lynn Walton

North Hills

Petty solutions

Re ``A bright idea?'' (Aug. 15):

It's almost inconceivable how we can pick up the paper and realize that the top story pertains to street lights on Ventura Boulevard. With the numerous problems that Los Angeles faces, such as public education funding, how do we manage to worry about petty lampposts?

Personally, I wouldn't notice if the street lights on my block all suddenly looked the same. Spending $8 million on street lights is, put bluntly, comical. What's next: replacing all the traffic lights because the green just isn't the right shade? As Milton Friedman once said, ``The government solution to the problem is usually as bad as the problem.''

- Jaybee Ann Dato

Panorama City

Sunshine Canyon?

Congratulations to Mayor James Hahn. Once again his dim light (brain) has figured out another Valley problem. Too little, too late has cost him far too many Valley votes than he cares to count. Now that we have learned that radioactive waste is being dumped at Sunshine Canyon - near an elementary school - it makes me wonder if, as city attorney, James Hahn could've done something to stop Sunshine from happening. I can imagine those kids in Granada Hills having to go to school in radioactive suits just to protect themselves from the life-killing waste Hahn has let stray into our Valley neighborhoods.

Cheers to Valley VOTE. If not for them we wouldn't have a reformed charter, a new council member, and Hahn trying to show the Valley some attention.

- Gene Gomez

Mission Hills

Banning soda

Responding to the Aug. 28 article reporting that the LAUSD board voted soft drink sales will not be allowed at school: Being a high school student myself, I find it outrageous that LAUSD thinks taking away soda will make us healthy. ``In order to focus on student achievement we need to focus on the well-being of the whole child,'' states Marlene Canter.

A high school student is required to take two years of physical education when we are in school for four years. Plus, what about all the money schools are losing from their soda sales, which often go to support physical education? If LAUSD cares about our well-being why don't they restore the physical education program to four years instead of taking money away from schools?

- Charles Kalyn

Northridge

Not soft at all

There is nothing soft about soft drinks. Some of these drinks have up to seven times the amount of caffeine that is in a cup of coffee. In addition, here are just a few of the chemicals found in soft drinks: phentlketonutics, aspartame, phosphoric acid, sodium citrate, calcium disodium and citric acid.

The intake of these items can cause and/or add to the following medical problems: esophageal reflux, allergy, asthma and MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity). We cannot stop adults from drinking this junk, but we can at least keep it out of our schools. They have a wonderful new product available that in volume can be purchased for less than 20 cents a bottle, will not stain your clothing, if spilled will not attract ants and will not make you hyper - it's called water!

- R.F. Horn

Chatsworth

Bush at war

I think the time has come for our glorious leader to go into action. He should take a leave of absence from his present gig, activate his Texas Air National Guard Unit and lead it as point man. (He's not too old; there are many older airline pilots.) Then it's off to Iraq and a devastating strike on his emperor of evil-ship, Saddam himself.

Back in D.C., Halliburton-Hawk Cheney, assisted by Karl Rove, the puppetmeister and Ari Fleischer, the spinmeister, will keep the daily photo-ops going and, with flags waving, will rally all good Americans and bring the rest of the world in line. It will make one hell of a movie.

- Frank Johnson

Hollywood

A mad, mad world

It's a mad, mad world and the U.S. seems to be in the lead. A few days ago a women was arrested and jailed because her children got sunburned at the county fair. A man in California was arrested for shooting a possum with a bow and arrow. This was about the time we learned that President Bush, the ``hawk,'' likes to hunt ``doves.'' The president also announced that he wants to save the forests from fire by cutting down the trees.

I've learned that pet owners will no longer be owners, but guardians. Taxpayers are building doggie parks and animal shelters while homeless humans live on the street - many of whom belong in the sanitariums that Reagan closed to save taxpayer money. Protection at the airport is so good that it takes four hours to fly to where we can drive in one. I hope we are not saving lives at home just to lose them in an invasion of Iraq.

- Philip Wilt

Van Nuys

New university

I am very happy about the opening of the California State University, Channel Islands. I am a graduate of Fillmore HIgh School many years ago, and I generally like Ventura County. I think relations between Latinos and whites are better in Ventura County than in the city of Los Angeles. Intermarriage is generally pretty high in towns like Fillmore, Santa Paula, Oxnard and some smaller communities. Virtually all third- and fourth-generation Latinos have finished high school.

Being a strong agricultural area, there are, of course, quite a few immigrants, generally poor and some possibly illegal, and yet relations remain generally good. I know the Latino community will play an important vote in the success and growth of this great college in the future.

- John F. Mendez

Los Angeles

Baseball strike

Patrick Weir is correct when he wrote that the money for baseball comes from television rights and sponsors (Public Forum, Aug. 25). TV might be the where that the money comes from but not the why. The why is sports betting, legal or otherwise, that generates billions of dollars a year.

Without the interest in baseball and other professional sports produced by such betting, the TV audiences, the newspapers' sports pages (not having any betting lines or odds) and the players' bloated salaries would shrink.

Ironically, the very thing that sustains professional sports is what kept Pete Rose out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

- John R. Schlank

Granada Hills

Tree-thinning

Bureaucratic rules and lawsuits from wrong-headed environmental groups like the Sierra Club - and more than a dozen others - share much of the responsibility for out-of-control wildfires that have devastated nearly 6 million acres in the West this summer.

For years, forest clean-up, tree-thinning and salvage (logging dead trees before they rot and create fuel for uncontrolled fires) have been blocked by litigation from anti-capitalist groups who call themselves environmentalists. They can't stand the fact that fire-reduction operations might actually provide work for loggers, whom they hate so much. They'd rather have trees burned and wildlife destroyed than provide anyone with a livelihood or a profit - and a product that everyone uses and needs.

- Charles A. Kramer

Tehachapi