In your Jan. 13 issue, under the title “Twin Lakes vote,” you write: “Residents of Twin Lakes community will vote Saturday, Feb. 6, on whether to double their homeowners association dues to help preserve the Twin Lakes Golf and Country Club.”

Although this is a true statement, the choice of words makes one see it as the glass is half empty. A more positive way of saying the same thing might be:

“Residents of Twin Lakes Community will vote Saturday, Feb. 6, on whether to pay an additional $25 a month more in homeowners dues in return for a Twin Lakes Golf and Country Club amenities package which is valued at upwards of $130. This would give each homeowner the rights and privileges to facilities of the club, including 12 times per year golf, swimming, tennis and restaurant/lounge use and more. Furthermore, it would give the Twin Lakes community an opportunity to have their own ‘Community Center’ creating many other amenities, i.e., exercise equipment, tutoring, arts and crafts, poker or other games, the ideas are endless as to what can be done to join together, whether having fun or lending a helping hand to our neighbors — having a place in which to do it.”

But more than the benefits of the club, this same $25 would help assure home values would not decrease. You can’t take away 118 acres of green grass, swimming pool and beautiful restaurant from a neighborhood — replace it with more homes, apartments, townhouses, strip malls — creating more congested traffic, crowded schools and higher taxes to accommodate more classrooms, crime increase and vandalism and possibly think it would not have a huge impact on decreasing the home values and neighborhood. But before all that would begin, the neighborhood would be full of 10-foot-tall weeds and blackberry bushes replacing the beautiful green grass, boarded up buildings with graffiti all over them, inviting more crime and vandalism.

It costs more that $25 to take a family out to eat at McDonald’s nowadays. How could anyone not think this is the deal of the century?

Thanks for hearing the other end of the glass — as half full.

Jane Hill, Federal Way