Ax incompetents from city payroll

Much has been made about the appointment of résumé misfits to key government jobs. The administrative branches of all levels of government must do a better job of researching qualifications before allocating responsibilities and public funding to people who lack the appropriate training and skills for their particular public assignments.

There is also a civic responsibility for nonqualified appointees to reject such public assignments. They are either extremely arrogant, intellectually dishonest or both to accept positions for which they are not even remotely qualified.

The litany of such appointees throughout all branches of government is long, especially in San Francisco. We are not unique. The federal and state governments play the same résumé misfit game. These well-connected, underperformers must not accept positions unsuited to their education, skill-set and academic background.

These people walk away from these positions after receiving bloated salaries, great benefits and the taxpayers are left with a zero-to-negative return on their investment.

Problems that existed before their appointments are usually worse after they leave office. There must be accountability for such incompetence by both the giver and receiver.

We can fire the appointer at the ballot box. Taxpayers should also be able to recover salaries that did not generate any positive returns for their tax dollar. No longer can we award to reward such incompetence and arrogance without financially accountability.

Brian Browne

The City

Hooray for Wi-Fi!

I think Mayor Newsom should be given credit in shepherding this idea through to fruition [“Free Wi-Fi will be a reality for residents,” Jan. 6]. It would indeed be a shame if our Marxist supervisors sacrifice another good idea on the altar of ideological extremism.

The idea that The City would do a better job providing quality Internet service is absurd. We all know how well Muni runs on time, don’t we? Or how well the parks are maintained or how clean the streets are? Now Supervisor McGoldrick and his fellow Lilliputians want to put The City in charge of our W-Fi service.

No, thanks. I’ll take EarthLink or Google over our supervisors handing us another municipal lemon. The last thing we need is a Wi-Fi version of Muni.

E. F. Sullivan

The City

Blood on the tracks

I appreciated Ken Garcia’s column on Caltrain’s appalling pedestrian fatality rate in 2006, but I was disappointed that he did not mention an alternative approach to reducing Caltrain’s fatality rate [“Caltrain’s running on time, but blood on the tracks worrisome,” Jan. 6-7].

Many of these fatalities are a deadly combination of bad judgment and opportunity. People see a train coming and think they can beat it, but underestimate their agility or the train’s speed. Banners, signs and presentations will have a limited effect on this kind of snap judgment.

A more effective solution would be grade separation. By separating the train tracks from the pedestrian and auto crossings, we would remove the temptation to beat the train. We would also improve automobile traffic flow and allow the trains to travel faster.

I realize grade separation is more expensive than banners and signs, but it is a much better, more effective solution in the long run.

Warren Thornthwaite

Menlo Park

Gavin Schwarzenegger

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to pay for health insurance through deep cuts in welfare payments is basically a version of “Care Not Cash” for the entire state. It seems that even a movie star can occasionally take PR lessons from Mayor Newsom. What’s next — will we witness the governor groping the feet of single moms at “Project Insurance Connect”?

John-Marc Chandonia

The City

Doing without

The residents of Richmond shouldn’t feel too put out by Safeway’s temporary closure. In less then a year they will get an entirely new building and an improved shopping experience [“Store shutting down for complete rebuild,” Jan. 8]. If only the residents of Visitacion Valley had this problem. Not having access to a major supermarket in the neighborhood isn’t a temporary condition; it’s a way of life. When Safeway closed its doors in this neighborhood many years ago, they closed for good, leaving us with no other choice but to travel across town or out of The City to do the bulk of our household shopping.

Safeway, when you’re done rebuilding in the Richmond, come out and visit us in Visitacion Valley. We shouldn’t have to go across town to experience your “lifestyle format.”

Russel Morine

The City

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