Letters to the editor

Banks got themselves into this mess

I have two complaints about your lead article (“Balancing local banking” published March 22) telling us how “Community banks in Winter Park and Maitland struggle to meet increasing federal regulations.” The first is that nowhere did the article suggest in any way what actual regulations were burdensome. “It’s just da gubbamint.”

The second was that the article provided no perspective on the conduct of banking recently that might have caused additional regulation to be needed and proposed. Like loan-to-deposit ratio regulations? Like baseline home mortgage loan standards and appraisals? Like requiring banks to retain some risk on the mortgage loans they make so they have some “skin in the game”?

For about four to five years in the late 2000s, the banks had everything going their way and they made a bundle.

Now that the real estate bubble has burst,

• The mortgages they made are in foreclosure,

• The construction business is in the tank and

• The government is trying set up some banking standards to prevent the abuses the banks perpetrated on the economy and on their customers from happening again.

Don’t blame it on the “gubbamint”.

—William Paton, Maitland

Police step up seat belt enforcement

The Winter Park Police Department has joined state and local law enforcement agencies and highway safety groups in supporting an aggressive statewide Click It or Ticket seat belt enforcement campaign. Stepped-up law enforcement activities will be conducted during the 2012 Click It or Ticket mobilization period from March 18 through March 31. Officers will be focusing their traffic enforcement efforts toward unbelted vehicle occupants around the clock, both night and day, during this campaign.

Seat belts clearly save lives. Regular seat belt use is the single most effective way to protect people and reduce fatalities in motor vehicle crashes. In 2009 seat belts saved 12,713 lives nationwide. When worn correctly, seat belts have been proven to reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by 45 percent, and by 60 percent in pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans. Yet nearly one in five Americans still fails to wear a seat belt when driving or riding in a motor vehicle. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 61 percent of the deaths attributable to not wearing a seat belt in a passenger vehicle in 2010 occurred between the nighttime hours of 6 p.m. and 5:59 a.m. Daylight traffic fatalities caused from not being properly restrained during a motor vehicle crash were at 42 percent.

More regrettably, seat belt discussions too often revolve around adults in the front seats of vehicles and child safety seats are often overlooked. Kids have to be buckled up too. Your child seat can be installed by a certified police officer at the Winter Park Police Department by calling 407-599-3562 for an appointment. This is a long-time service that we’ve been providing for years at no cost to the public.

The Winter Park Police Department encourages everyone to wear their seatbelts and use proper child safety equipment at all times, but is asking drivers to have a heightened sense of awareness during the enforcement campaign. Our agency is encouraging compliance in lieu of having to issue citations as costly reminders of a law that everyone should be following every time that they are in a vehicle.

— Lt. Randy Durkee Special Operations Winter Park Police Department