Letters to the Editor
There's a lot to be angry about in strike
I am a teacher. And I am angry.
Angry that the hard work my daughter and her basketball team put in is for nothing due to a probably canceled season. Angry that, as a single parent/sole supporter, I have to dip even further (than I usually do) into my savings to support my family. Angry that the momentum created in my classroom has been disrupted, resulting in lost lessons. Angry that the union supported this yahoo-of-a-governor in the first place. Angry that I have to spend my days picketing (of all the wastes of time).
So, please. Anyone who cares, anyone who supports quality education, who supports teachers or state credibility: Call the governor, call our legislators, call the union, call business leaders, and please let's settle the teachers' strike. Now.
C.E. Lusk
Governor's legacy already established
Instead of building Uncle Ben's grand aquarium, maybe the teachers could take students on excursions to Hanauma Bay. His legacy is established: first governor in U.S. history to shut down every public classroom.
Michael M. McPherson
Waimea, Big Island
Cayetano could end both strikes right now
Legislators have set aside enough money to settle the strikes that professors and teachers were forced into.
It is time for the governor to allow students to return to classes and parents to go on with their lives. It is time for the governor to stop weakening our economy by allowing businesses distressed by the strikes to resume normal operations. It is time for the governor to rise above retaliation and move toward reconciliation.
In his campaign and subsequent speeches, Ben Cayetano claimed to want to give teachers everything they deserve. However, he revealed his true intent when he disregarded the funds that were made available to settle the contracts and scornfully announced that the state's offer was wiped off the table.
Destroying previous efforts toward a settlement and forcing negotiations to regress to zero will prolong the strike and seriously distress students, parents and businesses. Can revenge be sweet when it harms our children and the entire state?
Instead of blaming legislators and union leaders, Cayetano should join them in supporting teachers and making the education of Hawai'i's keiki his top priority, too.
Ralph Oshiro
Housing agency trying end run around law
As a resident of low-income housing, I would like to draw the public's attention to the actions of the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i to enact legislation to lessen our rights to appeal decisions regarding evictions.
The State of Hawai'i enacted legislation several years ago that gave citizens the right to appeal eviction proceedings through several administrative steps before the process would be referred to the court system. This law requires the housing agency to review cases to affirm their correctness prior to forcing tenants into a court system they do not have the resources to pursue. It serves as a safeguard of citizens' rights against errors or maliciousness on the part of property managers and as proper oversight of local offices by the central office in Honolulu.
The housing agency in a recent audit was found lacking and was cited for serious shortcomings. Among the problems was the amount of time the appeals process takes before a resident can be evicted. The main delay in this process is caused by waiting for the housing agency to schedule hearings, as it has only assigned one employee to oversee this area.
Rather than take the obvious recourse of hiring more people for the job, thereby lessening the time and subsequent income loss, the agency has seen fit to seek to have the Legislature introduce a bill (SB331) that severely restricts residents' ability to appeal their decisions before ending up in court.
It is as if they were given a bad job evaluation and, rather than changing their habits to do the work they were hired to do, they are seeking to change their job description. The problem does not lie in the citizens having rights, but in the agency's poor performance.
I urge all residents to contact their state senators and representatives and tell them to vote against SB311.
Henri Carnal
Kekaha, Kaua'i
Prostitution pleas were unjustly denied
I disagree with your April 5 editorial "Prostitution can harm changing neighborhood." Judge Russell Blair was wrong not to grant the deferred-acceptance-of-guilty plea requests of the 11 of 13 men who appeared before him for soliciting prostitution, a petty misdemeanor.
These 11 men deserve the chance to clear their records regardless of the fact that their crimes were committed in a "Weed and Seed" area.
It's a fact that most crimes of prostitution historically have always tended to occur around downtown areas, as that is where prostitutes congregate. That fact alone should not prevent the 11 men who were denied a deferral a fair opportunity to receive a deferral.
Deferrals are routinely granted in far more serious felony cases, and it is an unjust result as well as unnecessarily punitive that these 11 men should not have been given the opportunity to erase a petty misdemeanor from their records.
Steve H. Cedillos
56 miles of bikeway
Kapolei is already bicycle-friendly
Regarding the March 27 article "Isle to be more bike friendly": Kapolei has been bike friendly from its inception. Campbell Estate has supported bicycling as an alternate mode of transportation for more than a decade and has incorporated bike-friendly policies in its plans for the city since 1988.
The Kapolei Area Bikeway Plan prepared by Helber, Hastert and Fee was adopted by the estate in 1991. This plan guides the development of more than 56 miles of bikeway through the Kapolei region. Plans by the city and state will now provide the necessary connections between Kapolei and other bikeway facilities.
In addition, Campbell Estate has required, in its Urban Design Guidelines, the provision of bicycle parking in the development of all Kapolei businesses. It has, for a number of years, also supported the excellent bike education programs conducted by the Hawai'i Bicycling League in our public schools.
Henry Eng
Community Development Manager, The Estate of James Campbell
New theater complex is a massive eyesore
It is apparent the city Building Department does not take into account the aesthetic aspects of a structure when it issues building permits.
The biggest and ugliest eyesore on this island — worse than the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, if such a thing is possible — is the new theater building on the Victoria Ward property. This big cube of an edifice does not have a single redeeming quality.
Unless this mass of ugliness is swept away by a heaven-sent tsunami, we will have to look at it for the next 30 years. Even ivy couldn't improve this blight on the landscape.
Robert Levy
Convention Center should be sold off
Everyone knows that the Hawai'i Convention Center is a white elephant that has now become a burden on the taxpayers of Hawai'i.
Those tax dollars should be going into improving our public schools. The center is rarely used to its full capacity and could serve Hawai'i much better if it were being used as a gambling casino, and also for Asian cultural entertainment.
The state should sell the center to the guys who really know how to make money, casino operators such as Donald Trump, Steven Winn, Sheldon Adelson, etc.
We could and should legalize gambling to allow Hawai'i to compete with the other tourist destinations.
A casino here would employ hundreds, if not thousands, of people in high-tech as well as service and performing-arts occupations. All of Hawai'i businesses would benefit.
Russell Grisham
Waikiki waters should be a nature preserve
I was shocked to learn from employees of Atlantis Submarine Waikiki that boats come in during sub tours with nets to try to fish out the area. Many divers also spear the larger fish.
With so much activity in such a small water space, this is a "USS Greeneville" waiting to happen. My recommendation is to close this area to fishing and make it a nature preserve like Hanauma Bay.
The fish stock would be able to reproduce and spread out to the other fished-out areas of Waikiki.
I snorkel almost every day at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the lack of fish on the reef is depressing.
Tom Sebas
Boat accident could have been a disaster
The sinking of the Ehime Maru is a tragedy, but this U.S. military error should never have happened. This could have been a nuclear catastrophe for all of us living in the Hawaiian Island chain.
Why hasn't the focus been on that? A nuclear submarine should not carry civilian guests and be giving tours off Diamond Head. What about our safety?
Maize "Mavis" Ruest
History holds sway over 'indigenous'
The commentary by Alani Apio (Focus, March 25) provokes this letter.
It is time for some perspective on the whole question of impacts and interactions between differing cultures and ethnicities. The very concept of an "indigenous" people comes into question when we take a look at human history.
Modern man began somewhere in Africa (current theory) and spread over the entire globe. Waves of people have flowed and ebbed over our planet for tens of thousands of years. Even the insular-minded English represent a stew of Britons, Celts, Romans, Danes, Normans (French-speaking Vikings) and, more modernly, many other ethnicities. Vast movements of peoples across the great Eur-Asian land mass have gone on for millennia. The first people to get to a place have always been impacted by successive waves of people.
So too Hawai'i. If they hadn't come from the United States, they would have come from elsewhere.
That the Polynesian culture was, in many ways, unfavorably impacted by the invasion from the east is obvious. That these iniquities must be (and will be) dealt with is also obvious. The American political system, as well as a deeply ingrained ethical sense, ensure eventual solutions to our problems here in Hawai'i. I look forward to Apio's suggested solutions with great interest.
Apio complains bitterly about perceived stereotypical perceptions of Polynesians by the rest of us. From his language, I suggest Apio has stereotypical perceptions of us non-Polynesians. We are widely acquainted in Hawai'i, and not one of our friends has uttered the slurs and character assaults he attributes to so many of us. Almost everyone I know feels concern for and a desire to devote thought and treasure to long-term solutions to our problems. Methodologies may differ, but the will is there.
No one I know wishes the Polynesian people to lose a single iota of their culture. We applaud the recent strengthening of the Bishop Estate Board of Trustees to protect and extend the Polynesian education system. A bilingual child is a noted improvement over most of us monolingual Americans.
The Hokule'a was supported by all segments of our society. But the Rice v. Cayetano decision was not in the hands of us ordinary citizens. It was found to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution, which protects us all, Polynesians too. I took my vote for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees as seriously as any and made every effort to select candidates whose maturity and judgment would do the most good. A Polynesian voter could do no more.
This brings me to my final point. You notice that I refer to the first people here as "Polynesian." When we are talking about ethnicity, that is the correct term. But when we talk about "Hawaiians" today, we are talking about the residents of our state, especially those who are not "just passing through." Forty years ago I was a Californian; now I am a Hawaiian. It is my state, my home. I can't honestly be described any other way.
Park Shorthose
