Letters to the Editor

Media should have warned us about Harris

The David Polhemus commentary "Blame city's woes on Harris, council" (June 22) made some very good points.

That Jeremy Harris intended to have ridden into Washington Place on a surge of popularity owing to his "vision teams," Sunset and Brunch on the Beach, the Hanauma Bay upgrade, and extravagant soccer and tennis facilities, while deferring necessary infrastructure projects, was most notable. Good point but about three years too late.

Well before the Harris 2000 re-election campaign, astute observers of city politics were well aware of Jeremy's plan to promote his political ambitions at taxpayer expense and at the expense of the city's infrastructure.

Had Polhemus and other members of the mainstream media done more to inform the electorate of this perversion of power back then, perhaps things could have turned out differently and the city wouldn't be in the mess it's in today.

Commission on Status of Women essential

It sounded like the streets of New York City with all the honking, but it was better because we also got shakas, thumbs-up, smiles, waves and nods, all sharing our support for funding for the Hawai'i State Commission on the Status of Women. There were about 30 of us lining the street in front of the state Capitol last Thursday asking the public to join us in letting the governor know that we wanted her to continue the funding for the commission.

How ironic it is that the first female governor of the state cut funding to support the Commission on the Status of Women in the same year that the Legislature passed a bill to establish a Commission on Fatherhood. What kind of message is that?

As we stood holding our signs on the street, we saw many women bus drivers, women in business suits driving fancy cars and young girls driving home from sports practice. Would these women and girls have gotten to where they are today without advocacy from an agency like the commission?

The commission has been instrumental in sponsoring the following initiatives: Women's Health Month, Na Wahine (a collaboration of public and private medical and legal services for domestic violence and sexual assault), Violence Prevention Consortium (groups of individual private and public organizations working to prevent violence), STOP Violence Against Women Planning Committee, Court Monitoring Project of domestic-violence-related cases in our court system, the Women's Coalition (private and professional groups and government agencies interested in legislative issues that impact the lives of women and girls in Hawai'i), Self Sufficiency Standard Study (a study to identify the standard at which a family needs to earn to live in Hawai'i) and Equal Pay Day (an informational day on the inequities between salaries for men and women).

OK, Coach Jones, it's time to earn your pay

June Jones had the nerve to get on local TV by phone and say it was not an issue of money. Right — and I have a bridge to sell you.

Now, Mr. Jones, earn the hard-earned money of Hawai'i taxpayers. Qualify for a bowl other than the one created for UH so it looks successful. Play some games with the top teams rather than playing AA teams for non-league matches. Show some class rather than blaming losses on poor officiating. Your screaming at them only makes UH look bad.

Now earn our money ...

Vehicle drivers are at risk without helmets

Kriss Conley (Letters, June 20) takes Dr. Mark Stitham's logical point about wearing helmets to the next logical level. Conley wants to have everyone in all types of vehicles be required to wear helmets. Conley is very correct, and I'm sure Stitham would agree.

Drivers and passengers in vehicles that are equipped with seatbelts and airbags are still at risk of head injury in the event of a collision. One collision event very few people think about is side impact. Very few vehicles are equipped with airbags that would offer protection from this type of impact.

Conley is to be commended for leading-edge thinking.

Professional input aided vision teams

Having attended the initial kickoff gathering of the mayor's vision team concept at our new Convention Center, I came away inspired and motivated to join in efforts of vision team goals and achievements.

Following UH President Evan Dobelle's speech and offer of professorial expertise to each vision team, plus budget allotments, each team dutifully met and hammered out final recommendations with very professional input. How ludicrous to reduce these items to pothole recommendations. Where is this logic coming from?

Bus now overloaded

I live in Wahiawa and have been riding the express bus that used to leave Alapa'i Street at 3:40 p.m. for many, many years. It has been taken away from many of us passengers. Why did they do this? Why couldn't they take away the nighttime buses if they want to cut down on expenses instead of inconveniencing the early passengers? With this change, the 4:05 p.m. bus gets overloaded.

Public school turned out to be the right decision

Our son attended private school from kindergarten to the first half of sixth grade before we enrolled him in public school, Pearlridge Elementary.

Contrary to the negative image portrayed of Hawai'i public schools compared with its private counterparts, we were pleasantly surprised to experience the courteous and warm welcome from the dedicated staff. Our son even earned an Outstanding Academic Achievement Award from the president's education award program.

Pearlridge Elementary School's motto, "Together We Can," proved true. Everyone works as a team. Mahalo to Principal Ray Sugai and a very special mahalo nui loa to Ms. Leah Karratti, our son's sixth-grade teacher, and, of course, the entire school 'ohana. You can count on me the next time to walk the picket line with you.

Lucy Gay was bold, innovative at LCC

Lucy Gay was my mentor, counselor and teacher when I was at Leeward Community College. Her intuitive style brought forth a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at ourselves, a new way of making a difference as a change agent.

She made us go out and volunteer in community programs with the tools she had taught us. Not leaving us to fend for ourselves in our learning process, Lucy held individual and group counseling sessions to provide us an opportunity to understand our growth process in relation to community work. Lucy even fought alongside us when we saw inequities in the system we were assigned to.

Yes, it was a time of change back in the '70s, whereby teaching at LCC was innovative. It was bold. So bold, it brought national recognition to a little, unknown academic community in the Leeward area. Why? Because the administration then allowed for people like Lucy Gay to be bold and innovative to provide the proper training and service to its students and the community it served. People like Lucy Gay changed many of us so-called "country bumpkins" to be inquisitive and cognitive thinkers.

I applaud the Wai'anae community and The Advertiser's editorial in support of Lucy Gay. I applaud Lucy Gay for continuing to be a woman of substance in standing up to a system that seems to only repress innovative thinkers.

I therefore challenge the journalists of your newspaper to become true investigative reporters and ask the question, "Why?" You might just find that Lucy's individual case is just the "tip of the iceberg" for all those others in the UH system who are being reprimanded for being an "agent for change" in a time when education is at the precipice of failure in meeting the needs of the community it serves.

God bless all who remembered Glen Grant

The family of Glen Grant would like to thank the people of Honolulu who have been so kind to us during our stay here as Glen died.

Each of you in your own special way has made our loss bearable, and your kindness and love for Glen are overwhelming.

Thank you to the doctors and nurses of Kaiser Permanente Moanalua Medical Center, the newspapers and television stations, the congregation of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, the Bamboo Hotel and, most especially, Glen's colleagues and students at Tokai University.

Glen was first and foremost a teacher, and through his students and the stories they will tell of Glen the professor, he will live on in their hearts.

We thank also Glen's wonderful friends who came to the hospital, many of whom we didn't meet. God bless you all. Glen loved his adopted home.

This toy makes no sense

The logic of allowing Segways on our city sidewalks escapes me. But, at $5,000 a pop, I doubt we'll be dodging them soon. The Segway Human Transporter is just a new toy for people who have too much money.

Recycling plan potentially flawed

Your May 31 editorial proclaiming the "killing" of curbside recycling was way off the mark.

The City Council strongly agrees that an islandwide recycling program is the right thing to do. However, the administration's recent proposal was hastily conceived and riddled with potential flaws. Were it implemented, national experts told us, it would have failed. To rush implementation of such an important program would be foolhardy.

To demonstrate our commitment to recycling, the council this year appropriated funds for a pilot curbside recycling project with the requirement that an islandwide program be rolled out no later than July of next year. Councilman Mike Gabbard, chairman of our Public Works Committee, will take the lead in developing the pilot project. With this approach, we expect to resolve the following problems inherent in the administration's proposal:

• Second-day trash pick-up. The administration's idea of providing a second trash pickup per week only as a fee-based option would severely exacerbate our illegal dumping problem and be troubling if not unsanitary for those trying to live with just one pickup per week. In addition, monitoring who pays for a second pickup and who doesn't would be an administrative nightmare. From our standpoint, maintaining twice-a-week trash pickup is essential.

• One or two containers. National experts have told us that using the same container for both recycling and trash collection will not work. While the administration opted for just one container, claiming that a second container for all would cost $12 million, we note that other municipalities, with participation from civic-minded private-sector firms, provide a second container at a fraction of that cost. By developing a cooperative program, I'm confident a second container can be provided at an acceptable cost.

• Extensive education. In addition to well-founded operations, a successful recycling program requires extensive public education. Rather than taking a quick blind-faith jump as proposed by the administration, we will first test options via the pilot project and then invest the time to fully educate our residents in order to achieve broad-based participation.

Most municipalities in the nation operate a fee-based trash collection service with integrated curbside recycling that works well. The National Recycling Coalition has studied every municipality in the nation and knows exactly what will work and what won't. With this knowledge, we can design and conduct a pilot project and then custom-tailor an effective program for Honolulu.

Far from killing recycling, this council is committed to recycling — but we want to do it right. With proper preparation, we can provide a superior, cost-effective curbside recycling program for our community. The City Council has taken the steps necessary to assure this.