Dear Editor:Regarding the letter by Mike Sandoval about the people who want NASA to pursue a trip to Mars (Letters to the Editor, 9/2/10), I won't pretend that I understand what he wrote, but I would wager that NASA will spend many hundreds of millions of dollars to try it. After all, they can't have all those high-salaried engineers and scientists standing in the unemployment lines. Then the letter about the old palm trees that have been removed from Downey Avenue. They will probably be replaced with different kinds of trees that will more aggressively heave-up and break the sidewalks, as they do in my neighborhood. Finally, the letter concerning $90,000 being paid to someone to "rebrand Downey." I suppose the City Council has done what they reportedly did a couple of years ago when they created the three-hundred-and-some thousand dollar position for someone to protect us from unsafe water. It was reported they said "we can afford it." Many of us could use that amount of money; and it could have patched quite a few pot holes in our very needy streets. -- Jim Lucas, Downey

********** Published: September 9, 2010 - Volume 9 - Issue 21