Sadly, it appears that Democratic Party members of our state Senate have learned nothing. Sen. Gary Hooser, D-7th (Kaua'i, Ni'ihau), who is calling for an increase in the minimum wage, has stated that "modest increases in the minimum wage have no detrimental impact on employment rates or business activity."

I suggest the senator talk to his radical colleagues in San Francisco, where a "modest" hike in the minimum wage has devastated the City by The Bay's famed restaurant industry. Hundreds are now unemployed and over 93 restaurants have closed since the increase was implemented. No impact? Auwe!

With an unemployment rate less than 3 percent and companies desperate for help, no one should be having trouble finding a good job in Hawai'i Nei unless they lack skills. Raising the minimum wage will not solve that problem. Fixing our education system will.

Counties have failed to protect ag land

Your Sunday front-page article on ag land misses the big point. The counties have failed to uphold the public trust in protecting agricultural land by allowing developers to subvert this process, and this responsibility was passed down from the state.

Hawai'i Revised Statutes Chapter 205 is clear, and was made clearer through the Hokuli'a case. If you don't have a farm, you have no need for a farm dwelling. Everything on agricultural land must be accessory and ancillary to the farm.

If the counties cannot enforce the law, they should abdicate this responsibility and transfer it back to the state, namely the state Land Use Commission. The governor's attempt to get rid of the Land Use Commission, as well as the Commission on Water Resource Management, is ill-advised. These regulatory agencies are so important if we're to have any agriculture and water in the future.

Most people don't realize that high housing prices are due to these gentlemen's estates that do nothing to generate food and fiber for our state. No developers with dollar signs in their eyes will even consider building affordable housing when they can sell a two-acre lot for $1 million.

These estates must pay their fair share of the taxes, as well.

One solution is to charge gentlemen estates higher tax rates if they don't farm their lands. More importantly, give the Land Use Commission back its guts and let it do the job it was mandated to do though the state Constitution, and that is to protect agriculture land as a resource for future generations.

We must also protect unique agricultural lands such as Hokuli'a because Kona coffee can only grow in Kona.

Legacy Lands bill is a tax hike in disguise

A bill awaiting the governor's signature will affect the cost of housing and doing business in Hawai'i. Under the proposed Legacy Lands bill (House Bill 1308), the conveyance tax on many real estate transactions may more than double or triple on July 1.

In the June 9 Honolulu Advertiser, Rep. Brian Schatz' commentary, "Legacy Lands: preserving Islands' beauty," outlines his support of the bill. However, Rep. Schatz neglects to mention how the conveyance tax increase would affect consumers and businesses, which are already facing an increase in the general excise tax and minimum wages.

Under HB1308, conveyance tax increases would apply to all real property transactions, including residential, commercial, industrial, hotel, resort, agricultural and conservation property sales. For a median-priced single-family home on O'ahu, the conveyance tax would double from $610 to $1,220.

The Schatz commentary also states that under HB1308, money raised by increasing the conveyance tax would contribute $12.6 million annually into the General Fund. For the 2004 fiscal year, the Department of Taxation estimated that the total conveyance tax deposited into the General Fund was $7.9 million. The difference would be a 60 percent increase in the amount of conveyance tax deposited into the fund.

The bill amounts to what is a tax increase for the state's General Fund.

With boom times, where's the relief?

When Hawai'i was in a recession, city and state governments raised many taxes, licenses and fees and invented a slew of new ones to make up for the revenue shortfall. Now that our economy has recovered and real estate prices are at an all-time high, filling city and state coffers to the brim, why haven't we canceled the recession emergency revenue measures? Why haven't we lowered the property tax rate to accommodate skyrocketing property assessments?

Perhaps a monstrous surplus is needed to pay the enormous debt incurred by years of eye-catching but frivolous spending on frills and fancies and the resultant gigantic backlog of neglected infrastructure maintenance. Or worse, perhaps another big batch of ill-conceived and ill-considered laws and projects is about to be foisted upon the hapless and jaded taxpayers.

Get ready to cast ballot — you matter

Register, register, register! Now, before the 2006 election and the all-important 2008 presidential election. You who have just turned 18, you who have registered but did not vote in 2004, and you who need to register who have never voted, now is your big chance to make a difference.

We need to get people who will solve our dilemma in Iraq, to help our own people who are poor and require housing, and help create jobs so that it boosts our economy.

Don't wait any longer! Register, register, register!

Driving with aloha should be stressed

As a yearly visitor to your island paradise since 1985, I think it may help bring a sense of aloha back to the streets if you printed page 10 of your newcomers guide, "Tips on Driving in Hawai'i," and had it handed out on all incoming flights to the Islands and at driving schools, car rental agencies and even automobile dealerships.

I remember a time when it really was a breach of the aloha spirit to sound your horn. I remember when people really did slow at yellow lights and not block intersections. I remember when pedestrians waited for the light in the crosswalks. Now it seems as if not only have we lost the aloha spirit, but we've lost the charm of being on Hawaiian time. Everybody is in a rush.

I think your guide is a nice reminder.

HECO can service school air conditioners

A very thoughtful comment by Advertiser community board member Steve Doyle called for air-conditioning public school classrooms, especially those where the temperature regularly exceeds 90 degrees (Focus, June 12).

Mr. Doyle noted that Superintendent Pat Hamamoto stated that "Hawaiian Electric Co.'s power grid could not support the additional demands of individual classroom air conditioners." As a retired electric utility engineer, I can affirm that that statement is simply not true. All regulated utilities are obligated to serve their customers' electric power requirements, and Hawaiian Electric is quite capable of meeting that utility service obligation.

It is true that the existing wiring systems within many public schools are not adequate to support the additional load of individual classroom air conditioners, and for this reason the expense of providing additional wiring within the school grounds would have to be considered.

Several private schools on O'ahu have installed ice-storage-type air-conditioning systems that permit the air conditioners to run all night making ice during off-peak periods when electric rates are lower and use the melting ice to cool the classrooms during the day.

Keep tourists coming back by keeping Waikiki frills

As a frequent visitor, I have no qualms with Michelle Spalding Matson's suggestion to remove the movie screen from Waikiki Beach. Whether the food and craft booths stay is not important, either. I concur wholeheartedly that the torch-lighting and hula performances should stay.

However, I disagree with Ms. Matson's statements that these events "have cost us all a pretty penny" and that sponsoring the hula and torch-lighting "should not be burdensome for Waikiki hotels to jointly sponsor as a goodwill gesture." She fails to note that we visitors contribute more than our share to the support of these events already. On our rooms, we pay a total of 11.41667 percent tax; on our cars, we pay sales tax, a $3-a-day surcharge tax and a 50-cents-a-day license fee. Apply those taxes in various amounts and combinations to 7 million tourists a year and you will see that we differ from local residents in terms of a tax burden primarily in the fact that we have no representation in the expenditure of our tax money.

I mention this in part because of Ms. Matson's well-intentioned letter, but also because of comments when I first arrived to the effect that Mayor Hannemann was considering turning off the fountains in the city to save $200,000 a year.

Rather than asking the hotels to jointly sponsor the hula and the torch-lighting, maybe the state and city should jointly fund those events, along with keeping the fountains running (have you noticed how many tourists like to have their pictures taken in front of those fountains?) as a "goodwill gesture" to thank us tourists for our substantial contributions to the city's and state's coffers.

I write this not in jest or derision, but to point out something that I think is worth noting. One of the reasons that tourists come in such numbers is that Waikiki is the most attractive and pleasant tourist destination of the country. Don't mess with the goose that lays the golden egg. Not lighting torches, not having fountains running, doing away with the free hula shows will yield minuscule savings, but at a major cost. Anything that looks like neglect of Waikiki's attractions will come across as a sign of disrespect to the tourists who fuel much of the Hawai'i economy.

Mr. Mayor, keep the fountains running. Ms. Matson, don't try billing us visitors a second time, even indirectly, for something that can easily be paid for out of the taxes we have already paid.

Eddie, Hawaiian fishponds and me

Eddie Albert

We're not talking Star Wars here, or a sequel to "Green Acres." No, we're talking about a film about Hawaiian fishponds. Albert, who died on May 27 at the age of 99, did the narration. I wrote the script.

In 1979, I was working for the Aquaculture Development Program (ADP) of the Department of Land & Natural Resources. Albert was an investor in aquaculture projects in Kahuku. When we needed somebody to serve as narrator, Art Lowe, the owner of Lowe Aquafarms, suggested that we give him a call at his Pacific Palisades home.

We did. And without hesitation, Albert volunteered to help us out ... no compensation required.

We wanted to emphasize that Hawaiian fishponds are a precious resource and we should do everything in our power to preserve or restore them. At the coming of Captain Cook, there were some 400 scattered throughout the Islands, and they played an important role in feeding the population. Today, scarcely 60 still exist in reasonable condition. Most of these are on Moloka'i.

Albert was a strong conservationist, and I suspect that a good part of his interest in Hawai'i was because of the state's large number of endangered species. I guess he saw the fishponds as a kind of an endangered species, too.

Albert, who was 73 at the time, met our film crew wearing a Navy blue shirt and dark pants. Tall, with a full head of wavy gray hair, he looked every bit the handsome movie star — as if he had just stepped out of a limo on Oscar night. But this wasn't a studio set. It was He'eia Fishpond in Kane'ohe; the weather was steamy; and he had to navigate his way through mud and rocks to reach us.

"Thank you for your help, Mr. Albert," I said. "Call me 'Eddie,' " he replied, wiping the mud off his pants. So "Eddie" it was.

We spent a day together, mostly at He'eia. When we weren't discussing his efforts to conserve trees or his meeting with Albert Schweitzer, Albert would take short naps in the shade of a coconut tree. He was no stranger to the boredom accompanying any film production.

But when it came time to start filming, Albert was up in a flash. He would take a quick look at his lines, read them over once or twice, and recite even the longest paragraphs perfectly. He had an outstanding ability to memorize words — even more amazing for a man in his 70s.

The film never made it to Hollywood, but it was a quality product nonetheless and was shown several times on one of our local TV channels. I called Eddie to tell him that we had received many positive comments from people who, up until the airing, had not known that the ponds existed.

I don't imagine that a compilation of the actor's distinguished work will ever mention the fishpond documentary. But those of us who had the honor and privilege of working with Eddie Albert that day in Kane'ohe will treasure the friendship of a truly remarkable man, and remember that film as if it had won an Academy Award.