On Sunday I read both Mufi Hannemann's and Duke Bainum's commentaries on their plans for "the first 100 days." There were points that I agree with and others that I absolutely abhor.

Bainum calls for establishing a "dumb project" hotline — another program that creates more bureaucracy for people to go through. Why not go to the project managers or City Council itself? Why not take advantage of the system in place rather than Band-Aid solutions that only sound good in election years?

This sounds not only like the usual campaign rhetoric that comes out every election but also a dig at city employees. As if city employees haven't been blamed for every other fiasco that has happened. Come on, now, someone take responsibility!

It seems that when there are praises to be passed around, some leaders are quick to raise their hand, but when it's crunch time, city employees are the ones to blame. The "dumb project" hotline is a dumb project.

Who will remember after we are gone?

I commend William Cole for his Aug. 1 article "Recovering the fallen," acknowledging the work of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. I hope every Hawai'i resident shares a sense of pride that it's the 50th state that serves as the first stop for these veterans' journey home.

My family visits Punchbowl cemetery regularly to decorate the grave of my cousin who died in World War II. He is buried in a section of mostly World War II Mainland dead, an area usually devoid of floral arrangements. Family members are far away, so often our floral tribute stands alone among the sea of graves.

On Memorial Day, however, one grave always catches the eye. A lavish floral arrangement marks the grave of a World war II soldier from Missouri. The card always reads, "I love you Frank, Gloria." Gloria faithfully remembers a loved one over 50 years after he gave his life for freedom.

Gloria and I are lucky. We have graves to decorate. However, I wonder, who will send the flowers when we are gone? And who will continue to search for the missing veterans long after those who miss them are gone? Will our war dead be forgotten by future generations who will choose to embrace life and abandon the graves?

Many members of the POW/MIA teams weren't born during the conflicts they research. Yet they persevere. They have promised to search until everyone is home. They deserve our heartfelt thanks. After all, they are the future Glorias.

Ban bicycling, already: Riders get no respect

I propose that Honolulu ban bicycles. As a bike commuter, my suggestion does not spring from my own animosity toward bicyclists. Biking is healthy, relieves congestion and reduces pollution. However, Honolulu and its politicians are unwilling to support anything but automobile transportation.

Residents harass bicyclists, putting riders in a catch-22. If you ride on the road, people yell "Get off the road." If you ride on the sidewalk, people yell "Get off the sidewalk." And, residents appear unaware that riding on sidewalks is legal in many areas of the city, as only "commercial" areas such as downtown or Waikiki prohibit riding on sidewalks.

The prevalence of harassment, combined with politicians' unwillingness to provide supportive infrastructure, lead me to conclude that Honolulu should face up to its opposition to bicycling. At a minimum, this would inform potential tourists and non-residents considering locating here of the antagonism to bicycling.

And, if the city is looking for more free press to add to the international coverage of the Dobelle debacle, Honolulu ("The Parking Lot of the Pacific") is sure to get attention as the first major U.S. city to ban bicycling.

TV listings important

Auwe to The Honolulu Advertiser for eliminating Saturday night and Sunday morning listings from the TV Week. Both The Advertiser and Star-Bulletin have been running a plethora of stories on the apathy of voters in Hawai'i, and yet, with both KHNL and KGMB playing musical chairs with the timing of "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" — frequently being run before 7 a.m. listings begin — the average voter is hard-pressed to become informed to vote intelligently.

West Coast had good bus-to-work system

Every time I travel from Mililani to Honolulu, I wonder how much better it would be if there were fewer cars on the road.

We moved here from the West Coast many years ago and found that some Mainland traffic solutions really worked.

For example, the major employees in the downtown area were given bus passes by their employers so they could commute by bus. In exchange, the employers were able to offer the newly available parking spaces to employees who needed their cars on a daily basis. And the employers made money with this plan.

Merging improperly should be banned

The July 26 article "Nice driving can be bad habit" was excellent. However, I would like to comment on merging improperly.

Although some drivers stop instead of using the accelerating lane, there are valid reasons for taking such actions. If the accelerating lane is short, which is very common, the driver may stop to prevent impatient drivers from cutting out from behind onto the main roadway. I have had this happen all too often, so I am now one to stop to make sure this doesn't happen.

The courteous thing to do would be to let the lead car enter the main roadway first. Maybe we need a law that makes it a $200 fine to cut out from behind another car waiting to merge.

Another bad road design is the crossover where both the accelerating and decelerating lanes are together (primarily downtown Honolulu on the freeway). This can be a nightmare for drivers.

There is also the problem of exiting from the freeway onto a decelerating lane. Many drivers tend to slow while still on the main roadway. That's the purpose of the decelerating lane. Drivers should maintain normal speed until off the main roadway and on the decelerating lane.

Public has a right to know what happened

William McCorriston's apologia (Aug. 1 Focus section) for the recent confidential settlement of the dispute between Evan Dobelle and the UH Board of Regents is optimistic but, in an important respect, misleading. He characterizes the settlement as "constructive," "forward thinking" and "in the best interests of the university."

What McCorriston and those who espouse the "let's move on" view appear not to have factored in is that the best interests of UH are not solely vested in practical and financial closure. He allows, "We acknowledge the public frustration in being unable to learn the details about Dobelle's termination for cause. ... At all times the Board of Regents has tried to balance the need to do the public's business 'in public' with the privacy rights of Dobelle."

Talking only of the rights of disputants fails to note that a settlement of individuals' rights is not the same thing as a settlement of the ethical issues underlying the dispute.

The private settlement between parties in this dispute has obscured and threatens to invalidate the "right" of the public and the good name of UH itself: to be given a transparent narrative of what happened and why. This, even more fundamentally, is in "the best interests of the university." This public "right" remains, to date, unmet.

Hawai'i paddlers represented us well

I just returned from the USA Canoe Kayak National Championships in Georgia, where I got to see our Hawai'i youth and senior paddlers compete as members of the Hawai'i Canoe/Kayak Team.

They did an excellent job, winning medals in most age groups. More importantly, they consistently demonstrated the spirit of aloha throughout the five days of competition, even to the point of teaching the Mexican team some Hawaiian words while learning a little Spanish in the process.

Many mahalos to the coaches and support parents, including Geordan Purdy, Ryan Hurley, Stewart and Lesle Gaessner, Blane and Kaili Chong, Florence Coletta-Rice and Ethan and Jean Abbott.

Although I now live in Pinehurst, N.C., as a "long distance" member of HCKT, I always enjoy seeing our kids and adults compete in our national competition. They are all a great advertisement for our lovely state.

It's not OHA's kuleana to help trust buy Maui land

I appreciated Vicki Viotti's July 29 article regarding the Trust for Public Land's $342,000 grant request to OHA for the purchase of a 70-acre parcel at Mu'olea Point on Maui. While she did an excellent job of summarizing the discussion, I would like to add a few points.

It is outrageous that the trust would request money from OHA, monies that are to be spent for the betterment of Hawaiians, so that it can purchase land and hand it over to Maui County. Why should OHA help pay for land that Hawaiians will never own?

The state of Hawai'i and Maui County are derelict in their responsibility to protect and preserve the lands at Mu'olea Point. If the Hana community truly feels that the site is so important, why doesn't Maui County condemn the land using its power of eminent domain?

Maui County has the power to seize the property for public use if it can prove that doing so will serve the public good. Cities across the country have been using eminent domain to buy private property at a fair-market value so that they can build roads, schools and even courthouses. That's what the City & County of Honolulu did when it purchased Waimea Falls Park.

I believe OHA trustee Linda Dela Cruz made an excellent point at the board table that in the past, many organizations have used a connection to Hawaiians to push various proposals and developments through, but, after the dust settled, how many Hawaiians really benefited?

The Trust for Public Land has argued that there are many culturally significant Hawaiian sites on the property, but, in the end, it is only Maui County that will truly benefit by acquiring the land. OHA has a fiduciary responsibility to all Hawaiians. I still don't see how OHA giving $342,000 to the trust would truly benefit the Hawaiian community at large.

And let's not forget that Hawaiians receive only 20 percent of the revenues from ceded lands. The state should think about using the 80 percent of ceded land revenues it takes to purchase and preserve the property. After all, it's part of the state's mandate.

There are many ways to save the Mu'olea Point property besides asking OHA for a bailout. The state needs to step up to the plate, and Maui County needs to get more creative.

Education oversight stifling

The "Reinventing Education Act" that was passed earlier this year by the Legislature is not much more than an empty shell of grandiose words and phrases that has fooled even The Advertiser (Aug. 2 editorial).

Believing that the quality of education can be improved by increased funding, The Advertiser was distressed because the Lingle administration initially held back $11.8 million appropriated by the act for education. However, that amount does not represent even a 1 percent increase to the $1.8 billion budget for public education. Trying to make substantial improvements to education with money alone would take much more than that.

A better approach would be to make sure that money that has already been appropriated is being well-spent. With about 180,000 students, Hawai'i's public school system is operating with an equivalent of about $10,000 per student annually. In comparison, the average private school tuition in Hawai'i is several thousand dollars less. Nevertheless, there's a general perception that the education provided by private schools is superior to that of the public schools. If that is so, a lot of money is being wasted by Hawai'i's public school system.

There's no doubt that reform is needed. But public education needs real reform, and not just the rhetoric of reform. For starters, the school system should be reorganized to give it a modern organizational structure that would allow teachers and other employees to more fully utilize their talents and skills.

The current structure of the Department of Education is reminiscent of how factories were organized a hundred years ago. Back then, employees were generally poorly educated, so they had to be told what to do and how to do it. The DOE operates under this same organizational principle, as evidenced by the mountains of policies, procedures, rules and regulations that have been adopted. The current structure does not recognize the fact that teachers, principals and other school professionals are well educated and are fully capable in determining what students at their schools need.

Of course, a certain amount of direction should be provided to employees. But in the case of the DOE, it is onerous. The obsolete structure of Hawai'i's public education system stifles the enthusiasm and creativity of educators, resulting in substandard education for Hawai'i's children.

Private-sector businesses have learned long ago that the employees who are closest to the customer must be given substantial authority to make decisions. These employees can better understand changing customer needs and determine how to satisfy them more effectively than those in the central office, who rarely come into contact with customers.

In the case of public education, the customers are the children and their parents. Teachers, principals and other professionals at the school level should be making most of the decisions for the school. Instead, these decisions are being made by hundreds of bureaucrats in the DOE's central office who have a comparatively poor understanding of what is happening in the schools. It is no wonder that parents are not satisfied with the quality of public education.

Getting back to the funding for class-size reduction and textbooks, the decisions on how most of the funds for public education are spent should be made at the school level. The funding of specific items should not be predetermined. Class-size reductions and textbooks may be priorities at many schools, but other schools may have other priorities.

For example, some schools do not use textbooks, which are generally bland and uninteresting. Instead of using textbooks, some schools now use material from magazines, newspapers and other sources that make the subject being taught more appealing. The schools using these kinds of more authentic materials will be treated unfairly because they cannot use the textbook funds.

There's a lot that has to be changed with respect to Hawai'i's public education system, but very little of it is in the so-called Reinventing Education Act.