Letters to the Editor 07/31/2025

Along Tumalo Creek, Clea Santangelo is in the midst of a doggy daycare reunion, featuring, from left, Scout, Swami, Little Bear and Indie. We want to share your photo! Tag @sourceweekly or email info@sourceweekly.com for a chance to be featured. Credit: Sophie Haney

Prioritize Long-Term Recovery

We continue to allocate funding toward temporary solutions that fail to address the root causes of homelessness. Rather than investing taxpayer dollars in managing individuals in low-barrier environments where long-term progress is often limited, we should redirect these resources toward high-barrier shelters that provide structured support and require participation in treatment programs.

These facilities should offer comprehensive services to help individuals address underlying mental health and substance use challenges. Those who are unwilling to engage in meaningful support or treatment should be required to seek alternatives outside Deschutes County.

Our focus must shift toward long-term recovery and community restoration, not the maintenance of unmanaged encampments that contribute to the deterioration of our public spaces and community.

—Nicole Perullo

Another Unintended Consequence?

After the fact it’s easy to see the major unintended consequences in traffic problems created by the north 97 Parkway rerouting.

Almost certainly the proposed Hawthorne bike bridge will do the same by:

1. Closing the primary exit from the Parkway to downtown at Hawthorne, will reroute 3,000 cars daily. This will likely cause serious congestion at several intersections.

2. Franklin Avenue is designated as the primary east west bikeway. Because there is no money for a bike bridge here, it will force bikers and cars to dangerously merge at the bottom of Franklin underpass. Insane!

3. An elevated 10-20 ft wide bike bridge ramp will go down Hawthorne, east of the parkway, making this key stretch of the BCD very undesirable for development.

4. Heading west bike traffic will conflict with cars and create congestion and safety concerns with the already crowded streets downtown. It has no logical connections to key bike routes.

5. The bridge ramp east will end one block west of 3rd Street, with no plans for a crossing. A crossing will be either very dangerous and interruptive for 3rd Street traffic or require an expensive bridge for which there is no money. Or it is a bridge to nowhere, as pointed out in an article in The Source 8 months ago!

Clearly these many unacknowledged negative impacts vastly outweigh any potential benefits of the bridge.

—Alan Bruckner

Letter of
the Week

Thanks for your thoughts Alan. As Letter of the Week, you can pick up a gift card to Palate coffee at our offices on NW Georgia and Bond.

—Nic Moye

This article appears in Source Weekly July 31, 2025.