Letters: Stay out of reading choices; Grateful to attend game

Stay out of reading choices

Candidate Megan Layng and Ken Layng. No one died and left you in charge concerning our public school libraries. Stay out of them. Who do you think you are to decide what students should read?

Grateful to attend game

I want to thank the president of Penn State, athletic director Pat Kraft, and Penn State for giving me the honor of attending the military appreciation game on Oct. 28. I served in the USAF-Air National Guard for 25 years with honor. I have been a Penn State fan since 1984, also a supporter of Joe Paterno. Thank you again for allowing me to see the game.

Would you break up a winning team?

Centre County has an experienced leadership team of Democratic County Commissioners and elected Democratic Row Officers. Working together under the banner of Teamwork Centre County, they make decisions that affect our future and our taxes. It’s a winning team.

Under their leadership, Centre County Government has not raised county property taxes in 13 years. How have they managed to do this?

Here’s just one example: In 2019 Democratic Commissioners Mike Pipe and Mark Higgins approved a solar array at the Centre County Correctional Facility. At the time, the estimated payback was 8 years, with an estimated benefit to the county of $4-6 million over the 40-year expected life of the array. It turned out even better: the current estimate is a 6-year payback with an expected benefit of over $8 million to Centre County over the array’s projected life. That’s $8 million the county, and all of us through our taxes, won’t have to pay for electricity. This is visionary thinking and planning that reduced our carbon footprint and saved us all money.

Amber Concepcion has replaced Mike Pipe as a Democratic Commissioner. She brings strong leadership and financial skills from her service as president of the State College school board, which has a larger budget than Centre County government. Centre County’s strong Democratic leadership team is even stronger with Concepcion as Commissioner.

Democratic Commissioners and row officers have brought intelligent thinking and forward leadership for all of us. Let’s keep this winning team.

Board of trustees should have vision checked

At a recent meeting of the University Faculty Senate, Matt Schuyler, chair of the Penn State board of trustees, offered this buzzword-laden explanation to justify withholding from employees a promised 3% merit raise: “It’s the overarching optics that go into this algorithm.” Perhaps Mr. Schuyler, a multimillionaire, should consider the optics of paying some full-time instructors less than $40,000 a year — and then asking them to wait patiently for a modest pay increase. Penn State’s students, faculty and staff aren’t mere factors in an algorithm; we are people, the people who make this university great. Perhaps it’s time for the board of trustees to have its vision checked, because its perception of “optics” is clearly myopic.