Columnist termed misinformed
about hydrogen fuel’s potential

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letter was written in response to a recent column by Mark West in the Daily Planet.
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Maybe one should look into what they are talking about before displaying it to the people.

Hydrogen fuel is a 100 percent sustainable, renewable gas found in the most abundant resource on the planet, WATER.

One can make their own hydrogen fuel in their garage. Or in their hydrogen car while they are driving their hydrogen car.

Water is H2O, 2 parts hydrogen, 1 part oxygen.

Look on Youtube.com if you don’t believe.

Hydrogen IS the fuel of the future. Not buying an expensive hydrogen car, but making your own hydrogen and putting it in your car.

Check it out...

WILLIAM BODWAY
Asheville

Council praised for its anti-drug tack;
many more goals also merit attention

Asheville’s City Council has set a collective eye on the extraordinary goals of eliminating our open-air drug markets and working to make our city the safest in America.

Every success begins with vision, and this council is to be commended for their courage in reaching for the exceptional over the convenient.

Driving crack dealers underground will dramatically impair their ability to recruit and train new dealers, users, and supporters — an outcome that will have eventual positive impact on every man, woman, child, family, school and employer in WNC.

There are more goals needing everyone’s attentions.  WNC has a 30 percent physical school dropout rate that becomes horrific when matched with the even higher mental dropout rate reflected in so many students who graduate without the skills and knowledge needed in a competitive world.

Our eviscerated mental health system and an underfunded court system with no capacity for fair and timely justice need the strongest enthusiasms of state leaders to break the chain of dysfunction that is tearing the heart out of our culture.

Every new day brings new hope.  Asheville’s leaders have said “enough” — and are going to work harder to stop the drug world from kidnapping our children.

CARL MUMPOWER
Member, Asheville City Council
Asheville

Letter to paper, board triggers response

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a letter to the editor that also was sent to members of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners and triggered a response, which is printed below.
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After I wrote the commissioners a note (about the Parkside sale of land in City/County Plaza), I heard that there were possible ties between a couple commissioners and the developer.  Then I heard on TV that the price to get the property back could be over $3 million.

Didn’t the land just sell — and did the contractor accumulate $2 million in costs in a few months?  This cannot be true ... You’d better see substantial proof ... of documented costs after the sale.

But all that aside — he should be ready to accept even less than he paid for the property — it was a large risk — with possibility of large reward or huge failure and he knew that.

I don’t know what ramifications are for unjustly enriching a contractor ... I suppose it could be loss of job and maybe jail.

While commissioners might be legally covered by the county during normal business, this might later be considered outside the normal scope of work, due to the circumstances of the sale, it being a park?  A much too friendly relationship? And the rush to approve at the last minute? etc....

I hope you seriously consider an amount under the purchase price as a cost to buy back the property. The talk of collusion will end and the commissioners can return to doing work for the benefit of Buncombe County.

JERRY HINZ
Asheville
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JERRY,

I, for one commissioner, have never had a conversation with (developer) Stuart Coleman about the property.

I was a partner in the (Hayes & Hopson) building for nine years and we restored it.

I was sole owner for one year, but sold it back to Wallace Hyde, when I sold the restaurant, all of this prior to 1989.

BILL STANLEY
Member, Buncombe County Board of Commissioners
Asheville