To the Editor:
Leah Goodridge’s Opinion visitor essay, “New Yorkers Deserve Extra Public Restrooms” (Dec. 30), makes the form of good sense that each one community-minded people ought to have the ability to agree on, even on this divisive political local weather.
Councilwoman Sandy Nurse’s invoice that may require the set up of a free, public lavatory for each 2,000 New York Metropolis residents by 2035 and Councilwoman Rita Joseph’s invoice to require public restrooms in all municipal buildings within the metropolis make excellent sense.
Having lived within the New York metropolitan space for a very good portion of our lives, now we have typically gone searching for a public lavatory with out success. Making individuals depend on personal companies for restroom aid, whether or not or not they’re clients, just isn’t the suitable resolution.
In the event you reside in a contemporary, compassionate metropolis, city or village, a fairly proportionate variety of public restrooms is a necessity. This can be a drawback whose resolution is apparent and lengthy overdue.
Gerald Sternberg
Merle Sternberg
Madison, Wis.
To the Editor:
As has been famous in The Occasions and elsewhere, Japan is a mannequin in offering its individuals with ubiquitous entry to public restrooms which can be spotless — and infrequently fantastically designed.
In cities like Tokyo, many of those public bogs are contained in the stations of town’s huge subway and rail system. Each metro station I visited in Tokyo had no less than one public restroom. This consistency of infrastructure ensures that you simply all the time know the place to look when you’ve gotten the urge to go.
As New York Metropolis explores requiring extra municipal restrooms (and I hope it does), it ought to think about working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to broaden public restrooms inside its personal subway infrastructure, which is each intensive and extremely utilized.
There are a restricted variety of current public bogs inside some subway stations, however they don’t seem to be all the time open or properly maintained. Given how integral the subway is to the each day routine of so many New Yorkers, having a clear public restroom inside each subway station would considerably enhance the standard of life for everybody within the metropolis.
Heath Madom
Oakland, Calif.
To the Editor:
Clear and accessible public restrooms will not be luxuries; they’re important infrastructure. That’s why the New York Metropolis Division of Parks and Recreation final yr introduced an over $150 million funding to construct 46 new public bogs over the following 5 years and reconstruct a further 36 — including to the greater than 700 restrooms that we already present day by day, totally free, to anybody who wants them. For context: In New York Metropolis, there are extra public park bogs than Starbucks areas.
Sadly, Leah Goodridge referred to a deceptive Metropolis Council report on the cleanliness and availability of restrooms. The report cherry-picked 7 % of park restrooms to color an image of neglect. These restrooms had been chosen due to constituent complaints obtained by Council members and low rankings from the Parks Inspection Program.
Even there, we had been gratified to see that almost all had been discovered to be clear and freed from litter. Actually, on any given day greater than 90 % of our amenities are open, clear and protected, as measured by our inside audits.
We’re making a serious funding in our public restrooms, and we’re grateful to the a whole lot of park workers who work tirelessly day by day to verify they’re cleaned, stocked and properly maintained.
Sue Donoghue
New York
The author is the commissioner of New York Metropolis’s Division of Parks and Recreation.
A Soldier’s Ethical Trauma
To the Editor:
Re “Indicators of C.T.E. Vexed Soldier in Vegas Blast” (entrance web page, Jan. 6):
This text in regards to the ultimate epoch within the lifetime of Matthew Livelsberger, the previous Military Particular Forces Group grasp sergeant who took his life and blew up his Tesla Cybertruck exterior the Trump Worldwide Resort in Las Vegas, ends with a quote that calls into query the complete premise of the article.
Mr. Livelsberger is depicted as a form and loving man who doubtless suffered from a progressive mind damage incurred from many explosions in his army coaching and fight expertise. It’s implied that his ultimate motion was a manifestation of a extreme flare-up of his neurological situation.
But the article ends by quoting Mr. Livelsberger, who in a be aware explains his suicide as an try to “cleanse my thoughts of the brothers I’ve misplaced and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”
These look like the phrases of a soldier whose service was a shock not solely to his mind but additionally to his conscience. And that’s one thing that no quantity of blast safety or medical remedy can ever mitigate. If solely the article helped us to know the ethical trauma that Matthew Livelsberger additionally suffered for serving his nation.
Samuel Pensler
Los Angeles
Medical doctors Must Weigh Sufferers
To the Editor:
Re “Some Medical doctors’ Workplaces De-emphasize the Scale” (entrance web page, Dec. 29):
The concept that physicians ought to cease weighing sufferers is patently absurd. Physicians don’t ask sufferers if they need their blood stress or pulse price checked. It’s a doctor’s obligation to judge every affected person in one of the best and most full method attainable, and these quantitative measurements, along with eliciting an entire historical past and performing a bodily examination, are necessary.
Any doctor who shames a affected person about weight or any bodily attribute is professionally derelict and needs to be admonished. Since weight problems has been proven to be clearly detrimental to a person’s well being, a doctor ought to tackle it in a nonjudgmental method, providing the affected person a number of choices to handle the issue.
Many individuals, even physicians, keep away from measures which can be extremely really useful by medical societies, comparable to smoking cessation or most cancers screening. That’s extraordinarily unlucky, however it’s each particular person’s proper. Nonetheless, to dismiss an important and easy measurement as a result of some sufferers would possibly keep away from doctor visits is illogical, and is a disservice to all sufferers who worth their well being.
David Guttman
Scarsdale, N.Y.
The author has practiced medication for greater than 40 years and is board licensed in inside medication and gastroenterology.
Entry to Environmental Information
To the Editor:
Re “This New 12 months, Resolve to Inexperienced Up Your Information Feed” (Opinion visitor essay, nytimes.com, Dec. 30):
I tremendously appreciated Margaret Renkl’s essay providing numerous glorious sources of knowledge on environmental points. With an incoming administration that’s as soon as once more more likely to try to eradicate any point out of local weather change from authorities web sites, it’s extra necessary than ever to make sure the general public’s entry to goal, evidence-based sources of knowledge on the atmosphere.
As carbon emissions and international temperatures attain all-time highs, it’s crucial that all of us have entry to dependable information to tell our choices on the poll field and in our each day lives.
Chad Edwards
Altadena, Calif.
