It may actually benefit communities that the Department of Public Works does not perform frequent street cleaning in many of the residential neighborhoods (“Fewer clean sweeps,” Aug. 6). Many residential blocks have only 16 to 28 houses per block. Why should it not be the neighbors’ personal responsibility to keep their block clean? Everybody can find the time to go out in front of their home and pick up trash a few times a week.

Maybe neighbors might even start talking to each other, discussing ways to improve their block. It could strengthen our communities if we, as they do in Japan, take pride in the appearance of our streets by cooperating with our neighbors for a common goal.

Peter Vaernet

San Francisco

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Where are public services?

It is ridiculous that the city and county of San Francisco can’t maintain basic street cleaning with a $6.5 billion budget, which is bigger then the budgets of 20 states.

In your Aug. 6 story, a Marina resident said, “If it’s a choice between paying teachers or cleaning streets, I’d rather the teachers get paid.”

With a $6.5 billion dollar budget, we shouldn’t have to make that choice. San Francisco could provide high-quality basic public services if our supervisors weren’t wasting city tax dollars on criminal illegal aliens and other “progressive” foolishness.

E.F. Sullivan

San Francisco

Deregulate city taxis

A deregulated taxi industry would shake up the status quo. There would be new winners and losers. Freedom and personal responsibility are not to be doled out like some communist commodity.

It is nonsense to believe that a guild monopoly or a government-sanctioned monopoly could better help the savvy consumer find value in an open market.

Paul Burton

San Francisco

No suicide barrier

I strongly oppose the proposed Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier. More people die in car accidents while crossing the bridge, rather than by jumping. Yet nobody is rushing to complete installation of the long-sought median barriers to prevent head-on collisions or to provide other methods of making the bridge safer for motorists who must drive across it daily.

If someone is really intent on committing suicide and they cannot jump, what is to stop them from running across the traffic lanes or, worse yet, driving into oncoming traffic?

Tori Thompson

Oakland

Keeping kids away

I haven’t seen many middle- or high-school-age children in recreation programs this summer. Our good mayor implemented a registration process making it next to impossible for those kids who are most dependent on the Recreation and Park Department for summer activities to sign up.

Requiring families to visit McLaren Lodge “during regular business hours, with appropriate documents” in order to create a “Family Account” excludes many working families from participation.

This action most negatively impacts the families who can’t afford to send their kids to private camps or enroll them in enrichment programs. It harms families who need their children to be involved in recreation activities close to home while the parents are at work all day. It seems this progressive city has taken a giant step to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Jane Adito

San Francisco

Dumping Asian channels

Comcast has terminated two stations devoted to Asian programming within four months — Imaginasian-TV and AZN Television.

Why is Comcast committing these insults against the Asian community? Is there something else going on besides what their public relations department is telling us?

Rene Del Prado

San Francisco

Vote McCain-Clinton

I nominate Hillary Clinton for vice president on the Republican ticket with John McCain. It would be unusual but possible — and unbeatable. A McCain-Clinton ticket would unify the country and be a win for everybody.

David Silverman

Manila, Philippines

Spectacle of evil

As the world watches Bosnian-Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic quibble with his Hague war-crimes tribunal judges, it is important not to let his psychotic behavior overshadow the suffering of his Bosnian victims and their survivors.

Karadzic is being charged with the brutal murders of 8,000 men and boys from the city of Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in July 1995. The families of the murdered Bosnian children continue to suffer trauma from their memories of the slaughter.

Kevin Beck

Las Vegas

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