Dinner didn’t meet health district standards
To the editor:
Vin Suprynowicz’s Sunday column regarding the Southern Nevada Health District’s inspection of the farm-to-fork dinner held at Quail Hollow Farms last October perpetuates misconceptions regarding the health district’s activities associated with this event.
The farm-to-fork dinner was not a private, members-only event. It was offered to the public for a fee, and therefore was subject to the regulations of the health district. Most importantly, the overriding issue at the event was that the food had been improperly prepared, stored and transported — and it is important to note the chef who prepared the food has publicly acknowledged his methods did not meet regulatory standards.
The health district strongly believes supporting venues that feature fresh and healthy foods is essential to promoting better health and nutrition habits in our community — and many of our very own programs are designed to do just that. It is unfortunate these issues have been downplayed and the performance of our statutory duties has been portrayed as a health district condemnation of the farm-to-table movement, because that was never the case.
Our goal has always been to support these types of endeavors, and our permitting process, when followed, is designed to ensure these types of issues can be avoided with the appropriate planning.
It is important to note that this very event could have successfully taken place within our current regulatory structure, with one exception over which the health district has no legal control — the issue of serving meat from an approved source. This is a federal requirement that the health district does not have the authority to waive. We are, however, currently working with the Bledsoes, members of the Legislature and other interested parties to resolve this issue.
Lawrence Sands
Las Vegas
The writer is chief health officer of the Southern Nevada Health District.
Not even
To the editor:
In response to the Monday letter from Mike Kerzetski regarding Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spending millions of dollars trying to become president:
Why isn’t Mr. Kerzetski commenting on President Obama, who is scheduled to spend $1 billion to retain the presidency? Also, I guess he figures those nasty millionaires just woke up one morning and became millionaires. The last time I checked, everyone has the opportunity to become a millionaire, if they want to work for it. Some other societies have tried and are of the “even field” persuasion. How has that worked out?
Don Driscoll
Henderson
Word police
To the editor:
Jane Ann Morrison’s Monday commentary on the GOP evening caucus and anti-Semitism was very informative.
In her piece, Ms. Morrison wrote that she overheard a person at the caucus say to someone, “Oh, you’re the Goldman Sachs representative.” That can be taken as anti-Semitic? If I heard that statement, I would have thought that the statement meant the person spoken to represented a supporter of a big-business special interests. So using the term “Goldman-Sachs” as a descriptive could be taken as anti-Semitic?
Ms. Morrison wrote that another person at the caucus used the reference “New York lawyer.” Well, please help us ignoramuses out here, Ms. Morrison. Please write a follow-up column advising us on what terms we should avoid.
I remember watching a Woody Allen movie in which he told his friends he didn’t know if someone was getting nasty with him because he couldn’t tell if they said, “Did you?” or “Jew.” In the future I will try to avoid the sentence “Did you?” or at lease not slur the words, and to annunciate the words clearly to avoid it sounding as “Jew.”
Charles L. Hoelderlin
North Las Vegas
House plan
To the editor:
Like HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, President Obama appears determined to create a solution to the housing debacle without the slightest idea of what the problem is. It is clear neither the president nor Mr. Donovan — nor, for that matter, a single member of Congress — has made the slightest attempt to understand realities from production-level senior mortgage originators.
The president’s commentary in Sunday’s Review-Journal is another example of Washington’s disconnection. The numbers in his pledge to save Americans $3,000 a year simply do not add up. Without a principal reduction, a borrower will need an interest rate improvement of at least 2.75 points. Unless you are stellar in income, job history and credit, the chances of that are slim.
Beyond that, the president and Mr. Donovan have presided over regulatory changes that make a mockery of the president’s pledge. If the average borrower is able to meet the income, employment and credit demands of lenders, he may find himself faced with additional HUD guidelines that makes qualifying difficult. Since 2009, the monthly mortgage insurance rate has more than doubled from 0.5 percent to 1.15 percent. In addition, FHA recently instituted a minimum net monthly savings of 5 percent for a qualifying refinance. Unfortunately, the increase in the mortgage insurance rate virtually obliterates any chance at achieving that 5 percent savings, so any chance at saving $3,000 a year were doomed at utterance.
The problem? Policy continues to be made from afar without the benefit of first-hand, on-the-job experience. When you need a broken bone set, you don’t call on the hospital administrator. You go down to the emergency room.
Jon Sias
Henderson
