Letters to the Editor
Waikiki Theatres offered 'big' feeling
The closing of the Waikiki Theatres signifies a great loss to the area.
Waikiki Theatres offered an alternative at night — for tourists and residents — to escape the clubs and the endless shopping spree. It was also the last "true" theater: the only one able to deliver the profound experience of cinema, which to me always meant watching my favorite film on a big screen in company of an equally big audience.
Waikiki Theatres was my only option to see great movies ("Star Wars," "Lord of the Rings," etc.), and during the International Film Festival, it offered the possibility of bringing big audiences to see alternative films.
Perhaps it is too late, but I hope Consolidated Theaters reconsiders its decision for the well-being of Waikiki and of movie lovers alike.
Alejandro Barcenas
School bus fare hike will have bad results
Regarding the jump in school bus fares: Maybe those budget figures need to be recalculated. Not only are you not going to get another 40 cents a day out of our family's budget to pick up and return my two girls to Kahuku High School, you can subtract out the $1 a day you're getting now. For that price, I'll drive them myself.
Granted, I'll be contributing to the interminable gridlock that happens every morning and afternoon there, but with money as tight as it is, I know we won't be the only family (especially those with more than one student there) who will opt to not use the school bus. Even a monthly pass for TheBus will be cheaper.
How do other U.S. school districts have free bus service? Maybe the Hawai'i DOE ought to do some homework.
Ann Allred
La'ie
Giving thanks today
My first-grade daughter, Melissa Yee, wrote this for her Thanksgiving prayer: "Dear God: We are thankful for freedom because some countries do not have freedom. We are thankful for my family and my cousins. I am thankful for food. Please feed the people that don't have food. Amen."
Peggy Liao
Sierra Club complaint on impact fees off base
Enough of the Sierra Club's ignorant ranting that borders on noise pollution. In typical Sierra Club fashion, Richard Weigel criticizes The Advertiser and City Council Chairman Gary Okino without consideration for all the facts.
It is in fact the state's responsibility to finance and manage educational facilities. This has always been done with funds drawn from taxpayers. How much extra cost is a new community to the DOE, relative to the tax dollars it generates? How many new students are brought in from out of state? Most students are already a cost to the DOE as they are already in the system.
It is not a developer's fault (nor the council's) if the DOE does not manage its boundaries to properly distribute student population and DOE resources. In the 1990s, Hawai'i had some 100,000 people leave the state. Yet the number of government employees grew.
With this kind of payroll, it is no wonder that the state cannot allocate appropriate resources and funding to the DOE. Any extra impact fee that the state or the city imposes on a real estate developer gets passed on to the homebuyer. It's just another tax. In the past, the state and city ran their operations without hidden taxes (impact fees).
The Sierra Club would have us pay more impact fees, driving up the cost of new homes and causing our children to flee to the Mainland for a more affordable life. On the flip side, the Building Industry Association of Hawai'i lobbies for a more efficient government so that services, like education, can be delivered without a tax to homebuyers.
Enough sign-holding and hot air. Join the Building Industry Association of Hawai'i and be a part of real action and solutions.
Craig Watase
2002 president, BIA Hawai'i
Hawai'i makes it easy to sell Island vacations
Your HVCB did a superb job at this year's American Society of Travel Agents' World Travel Congress. All the seminars, trips to the Neighbor Islands and the aloha shown by all were very educational and heartfelt. Your Islands are blessed by Mother Nature, and you are home to just about the friendliest people anywhere on Earth.
I learned that there are endless ways to approach Hawai'i: as a shopping trip, cultural adventure — the beaches defy description. Traveling in Hawai'i is easy and convenient, with efficient and wide choices of transportation, reasonable accommodations and delicious cuisine.
Thanks, again, and I for one am looking forward to selling this dream to my clients.
Barbara Webb
Gateway Travel Service; Poulsbo, Wash.
Rodrigues' 'legacy' shouldn't be saluted
The articles by David Waite and others on the Rodrigues trial and verdict were well done. But there seemed to be a disconnect with your Nov. 21 editorial on Gary Rodrigues. Instead of saluting Rodrigues' legacy and claiming that members believed he was worth his $200,000 pay (when in fact most did not know the board hiked his pay after his indictment), you might have raised questions such as:
- Why did Gov. Cayetano term Rodrigues one of the "most effective" labor leaders while he continually belittled the more democratic and effective teachers' union?
- Did the Cayetano-Rodrigues relationship undermine the Pacific Group Medical Association investigation headed by Rey Graulty, who seemed to have dropped the ball despite indications that Rodrigues had received thousands of dollars via his "consultant" daughter from the failed health insurance provider?
- Was Rodrigues' membership on the judicial selection panel a factor, especially for Graulty, who quit the investigation to seek a judgeship (note: Rodrigues did not recuse himself, nor was he asked to recuse himself from the decision on Graulty).
- How was union democracy (the vital checks and balances) undermined at the UPW? What were UPW state executive board members doing when these crimes occurred and did they act responsibly?
The media might examine how they helped to inflate Rodrigues' image, calling him the "26th senator," and inventing other mythology that Rodrigues himself no doubt came to believe.
John Witeck
City Council abusing condemnation power
On Oct. 23, the City Council passed the first reading of a bill condemning the First United Methodist Church's land (across from the Honolulu Art Academy); the last reading will by Dec. 4. The purpose is to force the church to sell its land to the leaseholders in the adjacent Admiral Thomas, a luxury condominium.
This is a terrible use of the city's condemnation power, mostly by council members who lost in the last election (see Treena Shapiro's article of Nov. 13).
When we built the Admiral Thomas (yes, I am a member of that church), it was for two reasons: first to raise funds for outreach programs, second to convert the Admiral Thomas to a retirement home after the lease expired. Why in the world would the city exercise its condemnation power under Chapter 38 to satisfy the desire of luxury condominium owners to get out of their contracts?
Where is the "public interest" here? This old church, in Hawai'i since 1855, helps thousands of poor and downtrodden people every year with its foodbank and computer ministry and by providing space to a host of community organizations such as the Samaritan Counseling Center, the Shepherd Center, AA, OA and others. Since when does the City Council condemn churches for what they do with their property?
Let us halt this bizarre behavior. Write your council members. If they can do this with our church, they can do it with any church for any reason.
Dick Chadwick
Lack of access to Waimanalo no big deal
I don't see why everyone is making such a big fuss about the road to Sea Life Park and Waimanalo being blocked. Can't you just drive through Kailua? It's not like going through Hawai'i Kai is the only way to get there.
As someone who lives on the Wai'anae Coast — which is probably the only section of the island that has only one road in or out — having people complain about one of their two roads into their community being temporarily blocked boggles my mind.
Allen Carter
Wai'anae Coast
High schools shouldn't indoctrinate students
On Nov. 24, Bryan Mick wrote that "The most important things for public high schools to do are produce involved citizens who vote (through social studies and history) and produce citizens who are healthy."
Incorrect. The best a school can do is to prepare a child for a self-responsible adult life. It's great if schools show children the importance of living healthy, so that they'll remember to do it even when a teacher isn't watching them — but not forcibly policing exercise.
And if a social studies teacher has thoroughly informed a student about public issues, has he or she failed if the student doesn't later vote? Whether a 23-year-old votes is his rightful choice — not his former teacher's.
Educators need to teach students morality to the extent they behave civilly and respect others' rights, if they haven't already learned this at home. Beyond that, high schools have no business indoctrinating kids about what their priorities should be — that's up to teenagers themselves and their parents.
I don't know if schools should have less P.E. time. But I do know that this attitude — that high schools are obligated to play "god" with the priorities of other people's children in politics and lifestyle — doesn't help.
Stuart K. Hayashi
Mililani
Coaching staff should evaluate team's mood
How to solve the UH games problem: At the conclusion of the football game, players would be required to assemble at their own bench to show their unity and congratulate the coaching staff and each other. The coaching staff would then evaluate the mood of the team and determine if the team could return to the field and congratulate the opposing team.
Robert Cravalho
Intersex problems are now treated differently
The debate and confusion over how best to help patients who are born with ambiguous genitalia have raged for many years, intensifying over the last few years by cases such as those reported in the Nov. 20 Honolulu Advertiser.
When I began seeing patients with intersex problems in the late 1980s, we dealt with matters much differently than we do today. The teaching at that time was to put together a group of highly specialized pediatric professionals — urologists, endocrinologists, geneticists, intensivists and psychologists — and make a decision for the family.
We believed that explaining to the parents that their child was one sex and we were assigning a different sex would confuse them and interfere with their ability to raise the children with one unambiguous "sex of rearing."
The concept was that if, in the back of their minds, they thought their child was a boy but were bringing her up as a girl, they would transmit a mixed message and engender more confusion as to the child's sexual identity.
Fortunately, this is not done anymore (I hope). The families are now involved in the process from the beginning, and in my experience, they are usually very capable of understanding the issues if we, as medical professionals, take the time to explain them. This has certainly helped dramatically in the care of individuals with intersex.
What I don't think has helped is the recent proposals of rearing these children as a "third sex." Not only are most intersex patients comfortable with their sex of rearing, the social challenges of not assigning a sex or assigning a "third sex" to these children are daunting.
Just imagine trying to explain to a young child why their friends are boys or girls, but they are neither. Someday they will be able to pick which they want to be (but only if they want to?). I think the potential psychological trauma that this would inflict outweighs any benefit.
I don't claim to have the perfect answer. We don't know that a child will be content with his or her sex of rearing, but we actually have done a pretty good job in light of our limitations. The main problem is that while we are fairly comfortable with what determines sex from the waist down, we are woefully ignorant of what determines sex from the neck up.
Howard M. Landa
Pediatric urology, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group
