LETTERS LETTERS (January 28, 2004)

Fundamental flaw in city's art ordinance

Editor:

When someone buys a work of art, an artist is supported. When people support arts education and organizations, art can grow in the community.

But when government mandates art, we get a gasoline service station held hostage for $10,000.

There is more to the Menlo Park's 1 percent for art ordinance that applies to all commercial projects of more than $250,000 than the bureaucratic injustice done to Chevron station owner John Conway and others. We need to re-think the role of city government in the arts. I hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and take art very seriously, especially public art. The intentions of the Menlo Park ordinance were only good, but the ordinance is fundamentally flawed.

It may be too much to ask that the City Council reconsider this recent arm of bureaucracy, but at least let's learn a lesson. Many things can be accomplished by volunteer community effort: fundraising, farming opportunities, raising awareness. Putting warm thoughts into ordinance to extract your ideals from the wallets of others is rarely successful. Or honorable.

Henry Riggs Callie Lane

Lyceum sign-up site for Microsoft users only

Editor:

The Menlo Park Lyceum is a group of volunteers that provide enrichment activities and classes to children and families in the Menlo Park area.

Registration for Menlo Park Lyceum activities began Jan. 24, but only for users of Microsoft Windows. If you go to www.menlopark-lyceum.org with a browser on other operating systems, the buttons on the site strangely don't work. It all becomes clear when you view the source of the registration page and see:

content="Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 7.0" name="GENERATOR"

Try it yourself in Netscape or Mozilla on Linux. Go to the lower left and click on Ready to Register. Then try "continue" or other buttons and note they don't work. Then try it in Internet Explorer on Windows and note that it works.

Microsoft Web page composition tools deliberately make content that cannot be used except by Microsoft browsers. Our federal government has failed to protect us from the same old sleazy tactics Microsoft has been using for years. Web developers beware.

Patrick Killelea

Cambridge Avenue, Menlo Park

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