Lack of quality oversight makes working polls tough

After working the polls more than 70 times, there hasn’t been one time that I have not heard complaints from the poll workers and voters.

We know that the more voters we get, the fewer incumbents who will survive. Everyone with a comment recommends Saturday or Sunday voting as a better choice. We would possibly get more voters, and we certainly wouldn’t have to put up with missing poll workers.

Two years ago, showed up to work at a polling place in Bethel Park. County supervisors should be charged for not doing their jobs. Last year, I knew of two sites with one and two workers.

This year, I had two people show up to work in one of my districts. I had to give them one of my constables to work for them, then had to scramble to fulfill my duty.

When I first started, there was a man from the county who actually got complete staffs together. Everything went well.

Newbies are being trained very well but don’t know what to do if no one shows up.

The lack of quality supervision of the polling system has been missing for years. Keep letting poll workers work twice as hard for 15 straight hours with no breaks for $100, and we will soon have no one show up.

I, for one, after 70 elections, am pretty tired of wanting to do my civic duty but being thwarted by those who are supposed to make this work. TOM TOMKINS

Bethel Park not include so much detail when mass shootings occur and that not every threat against a school should be reported on radio and television.

I realize that the parents and guardians of our children have to be notified if there is a problem. I also realize that telling that many people of a problem will soon spread the word. That cannot be helped.

However, putting on television that someone scribbled a threat on the lavatory wall and then having it on every television and radio station is, in some cases, doing just what the perpetrators want. They get publicity and are able, in some cases, to close an entire school district.

I think the school districts are doing the best job they can to keep our children safe. The media should stay out of it. MARY HIRSH

Bethel Park

Does anyone in the city of Pittsburgh know when Mayor Bill Peduto and his administration stopped caring about community youth athletic programs?

In Beechview, we have had to cancel several games because of weather — not because the weather was a safety risk for the children, but because the fields the children play on have been so poorly maintained that after a light rain shower they become unusable.

For nearly a decade, the Beechview Athletic Association has fought hard for the city to fix the fields at Vanucci Park. It has been granted Neighborhood Needs dollars, which the city has refused to allow the association to spend.

After rain, our fields become lakes. There is such serious erosion happening on one of the fields that players are forced to walk through pools of quicksand. The fencing of the away team dugout is the

We welcome your opinion

only thing holding back a potential landslide. The batting cage is slowly falling down the side of a cliff.

Even getting the soccer fields at Alton mowed has become a weekly fight.

There are broken bleachers, flooding bathrooms and unusable fields. And while some community athletic programs don’t have this problem, Beechview seems to be treated like the forgotten and lost child. I suppose these children are too young to vote so they fall off the radar.

I suppose that years of empty promises are just the modus operandi of an administration that sees no value in supporting local community athletic programs. It’s saddening, at a time when it’s already a struggle to get kids involved in their communities. ALEX KNAPP Beechview