Letters to the editor, April 4

Are you ready for your electricity rates to rise?

Get ready to pay more for your electricity. Why? The smart meter will send usage information to NV Energy four times per hour. So what? The Nevada PUC has already approved tiered rates, which means you will pay more if you use electricity during peak hours, and smart meters give NV Energy that data, and those new peak rates will start for residential customers possibly very soon.

So, get ready to use your air conditioner from midnight to 6 a.m., and don't forget to cook your Thanksgiving turkey at 2 a.m. to save on your electric bill.

What does NV Energy get? They will end up with just as much profit on selling electricity, they will fire employees - so much for green equals jobs - and here is the kicker, the meters are paid largely from tax dollars.

Aren't public/private projects great? Government gets to control your life and the private gets the profits. Government gets their global warming agenda - no new power plants - and NV Energy gets its profits. All you and I have to do is pay both of them.

I think green energy is where we are headed, but it will take decades to be cost-effective. Meanwhile, we have decades of our own resources. My tax dollars should go to making green energy cost-effective, not to forcing me to alter my lifestyle.

Michael Tipton

Carson City

Everyone benefiting from GROW's work

Thank you for your March 23 front-page article, "Etched in stone." Gardeners Reclaiming Our Waysides appreciates the publicity.

It is true the project was conceived by Carson City's GROW, but here is more in-depth information regarding the gardeners: They are master gardeners who have been educated by the University of Nevada, Reno, Cooperative Extension program.

This project, landscaping the freeway, was envisioned in 1997, and (we) became a nonprofit organization with more than 100 members supporting and believing in it.

And because of its dynamic cause, it was awarded the Search for Excellence award at the International Master Gardeners Conference in 1998. To have been selected for this award was a tribute to our endeavors.

The first few years, we struggled against (the idea that) there will be no landscaping of the first phase of the freeway. No funding had been allocated for it.

When the $2 million grant was received, everything changed, and the community is now viewing the result. And the entire freeway will be landscaped.

Marie Bresch

Carson City