Tree alert!

Residents of Denton having mature trees near city streets, beware. Code enforcement is issuing violation notices if your curb tree(s) have a limb lower than 15 feet, measured from the top of the curb. According to a city “know-it-all,” the code was changed from 12 feet of clearance to 15 feet because some RV driver in Denton was not able to get his RV down a certain street.

Talk about pull at City Hall! The whole town gets its trees trimmed over one bad RV driver.

But wait a second — isn’t the city encouraging residents to plant trees along our curbs and sidewalks? Does it make sense on one hand to plant trees and then have to mutilate them to meet the city code?

Call, e-mail, write, or stop on the street or in the grocery store any and all City Council members, asking for an immediate halt to this butchering of our older trees. I say the old rule of 12 feet is bad enough. I would recommend the code be changed to 12 feet on major roadways and 10 feet on residential streets.

Between trees getting their tops slaughtered by the power company and code enforcement requiring 15 feet of clearance from the curb to the first limb, our trees are going to be so ugly we will get a citation for “having an ugly tree” and will have to cut the entire tree down. Is this a case of the city not visualizing the destruction this code is causing? Stop it today!

Alice Gore,

Denton

Gas-can inflation

I have now encountered the epitome of gasoline-related price gouging in North Texas. 

My partner let his gas light stay on way too long, and of course ran out of gas this morning on the way to work at 6:30 a.m. Luckily, it was near the house, so I took him to a local gas station. It is the only gas station in about a 10-mile drivable radius of our area, thus it routinely charges more for gas than most stations.

That is not my complaint. My complaint is that the station has the utter nerve to charge $12 for a 1-gallon plastic gas can! 

Someone put into a situation such as ours is not only placed in the inconvenience of running out of gas, and then making an extra trip to remedy the problem, but then being price gouged for a can that probably costs $2 anywhere else in the country. It is bad enough we’re already paying $4 a gallon for the gas, in an area with zero mass transit options.

This store should be ashamed of itself. It already holds a mini monopoly on gas and liquor in the area. Now it wants to hurt people in emergency situations. I hope to never have to return to it and strongly advocate for any other retail gas outlet to build a store in the Paloma Creek, Providence and Savannah areas. 

John McClelland,

Little Elm

Deliberate smear

Regarding The New Yorker magazine’s cartoon cover satirizing the Obamas, I consider it to be a precisely deliberate action on the part of the editor/editors.

Clearly, the intention is at least twofold. First and foremost, the editor’s goal is to sell magazines.

The “firestorm of controversy” from the cover created the highest quantity of free advertisement conceivable. For the editor to proclaim he is surprised by the response is disingenuous, to put it nicely. But no other claim is to be expected.

The defense of satire is built into the very presentation of the material itself. The editor must simply follow through. Nanny, nanny boo-boo … stick your head in …

Clearly, the cartoon is intended to disparage the Obamas. The illustration depicts them in the worst possible manner.

The image lands on the retina and enters the subjective mind as it is without all the baggage of the intellectual satire and disclaimer.

How much lighter yet does it float in the collective subconscious? The New Yorker’s editor can answer that question better than I.

Surely he has studied the science of that phenomenon vigorously. It is essential to his craft. And he is amongst the cream of the crop.

Dan W. Bartlett,

Denton