The Herald-Zeitung

It’s a shame adults can’t have fun without alcohol

What great news. I appreciate the city looking out for our young adults. It is very sad that the symphony organizers didn’t care so much about the underage debutants. Shame on them. The adults can’t have fun without alcohol? Show the young adults that life can actually be fun without it? Goodness. What poor examples.

Juliandra Bryan

New Braunfels

Smoking inappropriate

at public playgrounds

My two-and-a-half-year-old son and I spend a lot of time at Landa Park, especially since the new playgrounds were added this summer. I like to put emphasis on a healthy, active lifestyle for my son.

So I am deeply troubled by some parents who think it’s acceptable to smoke cigarettes right there on the playground. Most of these people sit around the periphery and let their smoke drift over the play equipment and kids and other parents. However, I have seen parents with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths helping kids up on the play equipment within feet of other folk’s kids more than once.

I have one question for you people: What in the world is wrong with you? It is offensive that you smoke in other public places and expose non-smokers to your pall, but the Landa Park playground? If you want to expose your children to cigarette smoke and the whole gloomy culture that goes along with it — fine (I truly feel sorry for your kids), but don’t make that decision for other people.

I call upon the New Braunfels Parks and Recreation Department to post “no smoking” signs around our children’s play areas in all city parks. In addition, vigorously enforce no smoking rules around play equipment. Surely public health and safety in our city parks is as important as collecting table fees.

I encourage parents to bring this issue to their elected city officials.

Eric Stolinski

New Braunfels

Landa golf course improvements not a million-dollar project

I play Landa Park Golf Course often. Last Saturday, I was playing and noticed how beautiful it has become now that we have had some rain. It has always been one of my favorite courses, winding back and forth over the Comal River. It is just fun to play.

Not once during the round did I think, “Hey, we should tear this beautiful course out and build a brand new one for $6 million.” I didn’t think, “Maybe we should spend several hundred thousand dollars on another study.”

It is my opinion that all that needs to be done is install a new sprinkler system, fill the ponds with water (today), repair the cart paths and, maybe, add some traps and landscaping to make it a bit more challenging.

Landa Park is land-locked, and will always be hundreds of yards short of what is considered to be a championship course. It does not have room for a driving range, which is another key requirement to draw golfers willing to pay premium prices. I am surprised that the high dollar proposal to replace a perfectly functional course has gained any traction at all.

I mean no disrespect to those who support it, but I wish it would go away.

It is delaying maintenance and improvements that would have a positive impact on an already wonderful facility.

Will ‘Mac’ Landrum

New Braunfels

One rep sided with corporations in arbitration legislation

Fathers, husbands and brothers think of how you would feel if your daughter, wife or sister was raped, drugged and beaten. Then she was locked, under guard, in a storage box. Now think of how you would feel when you found out that it had been by her fellow employees and her company had several cases of this happening.

But, because of the fine print in her employment contract she, and you, are forbidden to sue to company.

True story. Good thing that she’s from Texan Republican Congressman Ted Pope’s district. She was able to convince one of her guards to let her call her father here in Texas. Her father contacted Mr. Pope who got the State Department to send people to free her and get her home.

An amendment was added to legislation to prevent government contracts being awarded to companies that have mandatory binding arbitration clauses for rape cases written into employee contracts.

Thankfully it passed by a 68-30 vote.

Regretfully, our senator from Texas, John Cornyn, was one of the 30 who voted against this amendment. Sen. Hutchinson voted for it.

Cornyn put the interests of corporations ahead of the victim.

Companies are created legal entities. They do not have the same inherent rights as We the People under the U.S. Constitution.

Cornyn should not forget that simple fact.

Max Holland

New Braunfels