LETTERS: ESAs will provide students with learning-conducive environments

ESAs improve outcomes

I agree with Sylvia Lazos' commentary ("Education Savings Accounts imperil public education," Tuesday Review-Journal). ESAs do jeopardize public schools. But in my opinion, that's not a bad outcome.

Parents should have an opportunity to place their children in an environment free from distractions by children who constantly make it impossible for teachers to instruct and well-behaved students to learn. Some of these ill-mannered juveniles live in an environment where distractions are the norm. Thus, they feel the need to create chaos in the classroom, in order to feel at ease.

Any parents who strive to have their sons and daughters in an atmosphere conducive to optimum learning will most definitely take advantage of ESAs. Hopefully, the powers that be in our public schools will be forced to rethink Horace Mann's main idea of turning unruly children into disciplined, judicious citizens. I'm quite certain it was not at the expense of the well-mannered.

Jeff L. Larson

Las Vegas

Baseball stadium

Howard Stutz wrote a very informative article regarding the baseball stadium in Biloxi, Miss. ("MGM Park providing boost to Gulf Coast," Aug. 23 Review-Journal.) Where is the outrage within our city, county and the media for having the worst Triple-A baseball park in the country, in Cashman Field? This venue is an eyesore in our city.

The park in Mississippi cost $36 million to build. I find it hard to believe that the local hotel-casinos could not pony up the funds to get a first-class facility built quickly in the Summerlin area. The public could be invited to create a name for the venue, using the names of the contributing casino companies.

John Turzer

Henderson

NV Energy monopoly

Nevada has actually taken two more steps toward modern free enterprise by allowing both the solar industry and the ride-sharing industry to continue, but not without a serious effort to remain behind the times and in the dark ages of a free market, with the Nevada Taxicab Authority and NV Energy in full anti-competition mode. Most of the time, the fight was neither fair nor clean.

But we need to ask ourselves, how is it that entities within the state of Nevada were able to become as anti-competitive and powerful as they are? Without the support of big people in high political places, it would not have been possible. So why is no one asking the 800-pound-gorilla-in-the-room question: How was our previous full-monopoly, all-powerful power company allowed to become a for-profit monopoly utility in the first place? How is that even legal?

When confronted with the question of fairness in dealing with our power company, which puts its billion-dollar heel on the throat of any competition, Gov. Brian Sandoval put his hands up and claimed to be a neutral party to it all. Really? Our state's leader? Yet our state's one-time monopoly electric utility contributes more money than any other industry to the pockets of our politicians. That's our money going to their pockets.

At some point, a very few were handed a license to maximize profits, to the detriment of all Nevadans and the reputation of this state. Why isn't anybody asking how and why?

Mike Gross

Henderson

Paying price for solar

If my affluent neighbors in Summerlin install rooftop solar panels, I assume it will cut their power bill and save them money. I wish them well, but not at my expense.

The issue with me arises when rooftop panels generate excess power and my neighbors want to sell that excess. I want NV Energy to pay the lowest price possible when it buys solar energy, so that my bill will be as low as possible. Solar power is not the issue.

I read that it costs the utility about 4.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity it generates, but the rooftop solar panel industry is demanding to continue receiving the much higher price of 11.6 cents per kwh ("Obama joins the Nevada political fray over rooftop solar energy," Sunday Review-Journal). I was shocked to learn that NV Energy is currently paying this exorbitant amount.

I am not so stupid as to believe that NV Energy can pay 11.6 cents per kwh to my neighbors for solar power without it raising my electric bill, and I wholeheartedly support the plan to reduce it from 11.6 cents to 5.5 cents. This price can be met by the Moapa Band of Paiutes, which is building a large solar power plant with hundreds of solar panels at a site north of Las Vegas.

Richard McGarrity

Las Vegas