Richland’s new one-way street plan makes no sense to me | Opinion

Richland plan for ‘Couplet’ a worry

I’ve been following Richland’s plans for making a loop with George Washington Way going north and Jadwin going south. It doesn’t make any sense to me for these reasons:

• The main traffic tie-up on GWW seems to be near Winco, which is not addressed by this re-routing.
• The concept that it will be good for the businesses along those streets is problematic. Ask any business owner who lived through Pasco’s Lewis Street closure how it affected their business, and it should be clear that it was a loss of income for the entire construction phase. Some didn’t recover.
• Buying rights-of-way is expensive and usually takes longer than anticipated.
• What purpose does it serve? Moving traffic through this area faster mainly helps people who live outside the north Richland area, while making it harder for those of us who live here to get around. Ask yourself if, when driving in any city with one-way streets, was it easy? Or confusing?

Once a project is planned, it is hard to get it stopped. This time, I truly hope the planners and city council will reconsider their plan. It’s very expensive and seems to create more problems than it solves.

Judy Brager, Richland

Israel has lost moral high ground

I have always been a supporter of the state of Israel, until now. The oppressed have become the oppressors. What set this disaster off was the unspeakable act of terror by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostages. The instructions found on dead Hamas fighters included, “Kill as many people and take as many hostages, as possible.” This triggered a massive Israeli military offensive to root out Hamas from Gaza.

Only a trickle of assistance is getting through to Gaza, and Palestinians are facing catastrophic levels of hunger. Deaths by starvation and disease are occurring. This action by Israel is more than vengeful; it is vindictive. It is deliberately cruel with the intent to cause widespread suffering on the whole populace.

Only a massive entry of food aid distribution and medical supplies and care can reverse this dire situation. Babies and young children starving to death as a direct cause of Israel’s actions is unconscionable, and must be condemned by governments around the world. Aid trucks must be allowed in now to relieve the suffering and prevent further deaths by starvation.

Amy Small, Richland

Trump budget bill bloats Pentagon

President Donald Trump’s new budget bill increases the world’s largest annual Defense budget to over $1 trillion by adding $113 billion to the 2025 budget. The Pentagon is currently spending over $100 million per hour. The U.S. spends more on defense than the next nine biggest spenders combined (seven of those nations are U.S. allies). China, the second largest spender, spends about 1/3 as much as the U.S.

While Trump and the subservient Rep. Dan Newhouse continue their efforts to end waste and fraud in federal spending, they have seen fit to award the Department of Defense a 13% increase in funding even though that department has not passed its annual audit for the past seven years.

As we add hundreds of millions of dollars to a bloated defense budget, we are told that we can no longer afford to fund mentors for at-risk students, maintain current funding levels for food banks and Meals on Wheels and must significantly reduce spending on Medicaid.

Mr. Trump, Mr. Newhouse and their supporters have interesting values and priorities.

Ed Frost, Kennewick

Rich buy yachts, stiff nation’s poor

It’s hard to believe that people wealthy enough to own yachts and multimillion dollar homes without going into debt want to cut medical care and food support for poor Americans and blow up the deficit just so they can pay less income taxes and have even more disposable wealth.

Don’t they worry that the misery of the masses might come back to bite them? Wouldn’t they rather lord over happy people? It’s probably a loud minority of the very rich who are buying and intimidating lawmakers while trying to stay in the good graces of the “Mango Mussolini” but, even so, they have accelerated America on a path that is destructive even to them in the long run.

America needs to vote out and replace the bent lawmakers in 2026. The new lawmakers’ mission will be to stop the bleeding and, after Trump is out of power, to build our institutions back better than before.

Some billionaires have publicly said that they believe they should be paying more in taxes. It’s like they’re saying “Do I really have to be the one to state the obvious? You can’t fix this by taking more from the poorest Americans.”

Greg Carl, Richland

Trump can brag but he’s a loser

Trump recently bragged about his successes in his first six months in office, but most Americans see him as a big time loser. Some of his so-called successes are:

• Passing a tax bill that favors the rich, cuts services to millions of poor people and further increases the deficit by billions of dollars.
• His hateful immigration actions.
• His arbitrary, disruptive layoffs of government employees, based on unsubstantiated claims of waste, fraud and abuse.
• His reduction of funding of U.S. scientific and technological institutes.
• Staffing many of the U.S. departments with people whose only qualification was their personal loyalty to him.
• His failure to re-establish an agreement with Iran over their nuclear program and then bombing their nuclear facilities.
• Withholding foreign aid authorized and paid for by the previous administration.
• His destruction of a reliable trade network throughout the world.
• Actions that put in doubt the previous dependable alliances with other countries.

Many voters and politicians see his first six months as a series of failures for the president and his administration on almost every issue. He continually lies about his accomplishments, and his lack of popularity isn’t going to help him as the Epstein scandal continues to envelop his presidency.

Bill Petrie, Richland

This story was originally published August 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.