Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to [email protected]. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    Austin City Limits Music Festival ticket sales are fast approaching. I have enjoyed listening to both internationally known and local Austin musicians perform for the past three years. However, I will not be attending this year’s music festival due to the date change from mid-October to September 16-18. As an Austin native, I know how excruciatingly high the temperatures climb in early September. I will be saving my $200 and purchasing aftershow tickets at local clubs to escape the heat.
    Zilker Park is one of the wonderful jewels in the greater Austin area. But with 65,000 people trampling the dry grass over the three days, it becomes a dust bowl. Also there is limited shade in the section of the park where ACL is held. Sunburns, heatstroke, and dehydration are common among participants. Since average temperatures in mid-September are 10 degrees hotter than those in mid-October, festival personnel can expect an exponential increase in these maladies this fall.
    This past fall, in 2010, the festival producers finally got the weekend right. Mid-October is the perfect time to enjoy an outdoor festival in Central Texas. The risk of rain is less, the temperatures have moderated, and it is a perfect way to celebrate the first days of fall. By mid-October, the grass has had a chance to recover from the devastating summer heat and is better able to withstand the large crowd, making for a lush carpet in the spring. I will consider attending the 2012 festival if the promoters stay true to their promise of returning ACL to mid-October.

Dear Editor,
    Re: “Safety Net or Dead End?” [News, Feb. 18]: I have been volunteering at "Town Lake" Animal Center with my daughter since the moment she became old enough to do so (13 years with a parent). We have not been the most reliable volunteers – sometimes her school/sports or my work obligations get in the way – but Joanna Johnson (the volunteer coordinator) has always greeted us with open arms. She does a terrific job! Yes, the training is long, but you need to have it to properly care for the animals and represent the shelter.
    My daughter loves to teach the dogs tricks, as she is convinced that dogs who know "sit," "down," or agility exercises will have a better chance of being adopted. We are never exposed to the euthanasia aspect of Town Lake, so no one should let a fear of that deter them from volunteering! In my opinion, if you feel strongly that Austin should be a "no-kill" city, then you should be helping out – either at TLAC or one of the other rescue operations! Working together, we can make it happen.

Dear Editor,
    Many residents of Austin are comfortable knowing the city puts fluoride into the water because they believe it is safe and reduces tooth decay.
    How many would be comfortable if they knew that the fluoride Austin is putting in our drinking water is fluorosilicic acid (toxic waste from the fertilizer industry) that the city buys from Lucier Chemical Industries?
    How many know that worldwide there are now 25 studies showing fluoride in water lowers IQ in infants?
    And how many know that comparisons between communities that fluoridate and communities that do not show similar reduction in tooth decay?

Dear Sirs,
    After reading Michael King's Texas, how do I hate thee, let me count the ways column ["Point Austin," News, Feb. 18], I have but two questions for him.
    First, if Texas is so lousy, then how come everybody and their brother are trying to move here? This observation from The Washington Examiner on Dec. 21, 2010:
    "First, the great engine of growth in America is not the Northeast Megalopolis, which was growing faster than average in the mid-20th century, or California, which grew lustily in the succeeding half-century. It is Texas.
    "Its population grew 21 percent in the past decade, from nearly 21 million to more than 25 million. That was more rapid growth than in any states except for four much smaller ones (Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho).
    "Texas' diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states."
    Second, if Texas sucks so badly, why don't you haul your sorry ass out of here?

Dear Editor,
    Re: “Safety Net or Dead End?” [News, Feb. 18]: According to the city's website, the Town Lake Animal Center currently has 127 dogs available for adoption. Most of them are full or mixed breed pit bulls or Labrador retrievers. Both of these breeds have been fashionable over the last 10 years or so, meaning that millions of morons have bought pit bull or Labrador puppies without thinking of the consequences. Once they grow up, they are big, rambunctious, difficult-to-care-for dogs. All of the sudden the morons lose interest, and the poor dog or its mixed-breed puppies wind up at TLAC. Maybe Austin Pets Alive! should focus its bile on those people, rather than the TLAC staff.

Dear Jordan Smith,
    Thank you so much for your insightful article about the effects of budget cuts to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and library programs statewide ["Library Cuts Run Deeper Than They Appear," News, Feb. 11]. Your efforts to shed light on the subject – and the care you took to get it right – mean so much to us here at the commission, and to those we serve.
    We value your contributions to keeping our citizens informed and look forward to reading more of your work.

Dear Editor,
    Re: "Amazon's Waltz Across Taxes" [News, Feb. 18]: Rep. Elliott Naishtat said House Bill 1317 "is not about raising taxes. Rather, this bill is about fairness."
    He does have a good point that the bill is not about taxes, as similar legislation in other states such as Colorado, North Carolina, and Rhode Island has shown that it doesn't generate income for the state.
    In states where an "advertising tax" has passed, Amazon.com and other online retailers simply kick out the affiliates in that state from their affiliate program.
    So, the net result is that those companies still don't have a tax nexus, and tens of thousands of residents (if not more) are fired from the affiliate programs.
    The tax revenue doesn't appear, but plenty of income for residents disappears.
    I hope the lawmakers take the overall negative impact on the state economy into consideration rather than focus on this nebulous notion of fairness.

Dear Editor,
    As one of several hundred volunteers at the Town Lake Animal Center, I wanted to respond to the animal welfare article in this week's Chronicle ["Safety Net or Dead End?," News, Feb. 18]. I thought TLAC came off relatively well, but I did want to mention that "no kill" is a confusing term that, I'm guessing, most readers might not fully understand – I certainly didn't understand it prior to volunteering at TLAC. Many of TLAC's partner organizations may call themselves "no kill," meaning that they don't euthanize any animals ever, but that obscures the fact that these organizations refuse to take in numerous animals in the first place. That's where TLAC comes in: TLAC is a "no-refusal" entity, and takes in any animal (canine, feline, porcine, bovine, etc.) brought to the shelter. Then, as the spaces fill up, the wrenching decision to euthanize is considered. Then, after all options are exhausted – after all of TLAC's partner organizations (including Austin Pets Alive!) have been unable to find a home for the animal – then and only then is the animal euthanized. Maybe I'm missing something, but in my two years as a volunteer, I've seen nothing but dedicated, compassionate staffers at TLAC who show that they appreciate every bit of help that comes their way from volunteers, partner organizations, and the general public. I was surprised to see that we humans working on behalf of animals were being characterized as vicious animals ourselves in this article.

To the people at Borders Books Westgate,
    Sad to see you go.
    Yeah … it was a chain. But your little corner of the 04 was a cool and safe spot to sip juice, nurse a hangover or broken heart, and maybe hatch a new plan. It was a coffee den where you didn't have to bear a poet's struggles, and it was quiet. God love ya … it was quiet.
    For 10 years Borders Westgate was a sweet communal tree house. I saw lots of you guys come and go. When I was at some of my lowest, poorest times, the black coffee and live-and-let-live attitude of your spot gave me a safe place to sit, read, or hide in plain sight. Y'all allowed everyone a safe place. From briefcases to bedrolls, everyone was allowed in till closing time. That's not measured in profits, but in soul.
    To everyone who worked there, y'all really made the place what it was. My sincere thanks and respect. Corporate suits halfway across the country may never acknowledge what you did, but lots of us regular people do. I, for one, won't forget it.

Dear Editor,
    Help! I’m stuck in Kansas City and the only way I connect to Austin (having lived there for seven years) is through the Chronicle’s website. Whoever redesigned and launched the new site should be horsewhipped. You guys have destroyed the user experience. The site loads extremely slowly now, and a lot of the content, if I can find it, does not load at all, including the comments to the online letters to the editor. Come on, folks, get it together!

   [Web Director Brian Barry responds: Our Web redesign is a work in progress. We take feedback from our readers seriously, and we're grateful when anyone takes the time to report problems. However, we cannot abide Mr. Coon's brand of justice; horsewhipping went out with the Reagan administration.]