A few weeks ago, in this newspaper, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Carl Guardino gushed about how adding 22,000 Google employees to downtown San Jose was akin to “the excitement and anticipation of awaiting a newborn baby”. We all better hope it’s stillborn.

Now we read that Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association, believes that “Part of the long-term strategy for downtown is we really want to increase the densities. You have to have more people working and living there. The development door is wide open”. We don’t need more housing and jobs, we need fewer people. We have serious water and traffic problems, and they aren’t building any more dams or freeways.

As for “transit villages,” do they really think that after people make their five-minute walk home from work, they’ll stay in their little rabbit hutches and never own or drive a car?

Let’s stop this obsession with unbridled growth.

Barry Hennings

Los Altos

Everyone is for relieving traffic gridlock, but why should only bridge users bear the burden of a $3 increase in bridge tolls to pay for work around the Bay Area? How fair is a nine-county ballot measure that is going to end up costing mostly Alameda and Contra Costa commuters? How is the current $5 toll being used, especially for improvements on the bridges themselves?

Anh Do

Milpitas

Gun control advocate is displaying naivety

Safe Cities Coalition’s Irene Olender (“Guns may need to be kept under lock and key,” Page 1B, Oct. 17) demonstrates how extremely naïve she is regarding firearms. Speaking about requiring guns in the home to always have a trigger lock, she states “A trigger lock takes no more than one or two seconds to disable” when discussing accessing the gun during a crime. Really? So she advocates storing the trigger lock key next to the locked gun? That defeats the purpose. The children she cares so much about are not dumb. What I think she is really saying is rushing to where the key is stored, returning to the firearm, unlocking it, then taking aim, all under extreme duress, takes no more than two seconds. What we can agree on is she is little more than an uninformed gun control advocate.

Mark Davis

Monte Sereno

President Trump bent on blaming blameless

The opioid epidemic is fueled by our own greedy, profit-driven makers, distributors, et al., while the forked-tongued leader of this nation blames the blameless, punishes the innocent and gleefully sells weapons to governments around the world that bring pain and suffering to helpless populations. At the same time that gun violence and overuse of drugs are killing so many in our communities, this president is set on dismantling regulatory agencies.

Alas, to quote Pogo “we have met the enemy and it is us.”

Blanca Alvarado

Former member, Santa Clara County

Board of Supervisors

San Jose

President Obama did honor fallen military

As a friend of 1st Lt. Ken Ballard, who was killed in action in Iraq in 2004, I am incensed that President Trump has refused to acknowledge that President Obama invited Gold Star mothers to the White House. A trip no mother would want to take, Ken’s mother, Karen Meredith, attended two events at the White House, sponsored by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden including a visit to Arlington Cemetery where Ken rests. Previous presidents have indeed honored our fallen military.

Gary Zega

Monte Sereno

Tiny, twisting roads increase wildfire risk

Criticism is being levied against areas struck by the recent fires that narrow roads prevented firefighters from being able to react quickly.

We have similar problems in this area. Portions of Los Gatos, Atherton, Woodside and other towns are exceptionally difficult to get in and out of, even on a normal day. Tiny, twisting roads lead through masses of thick brush fuel and trees. A fire would move quickly, causing horrific damage with the majority of houses unreachable in a timely fashion.

During summer and fall months we have friends we will not visit due to the hazardous fire situation their house provides.

James Thurber

Mountain View