$10 A GALLON?

TRANSIT LOOKS BETTER AS GAS PRICES SKYROCKET

The City Council needs to recalculate the O'ahu transit ridership estimate based on when gasoline is priced at $10-plus per gallon. When the transit is completed, gas will probably be at $10 or more, or gas may be on a stricter rationing. If gas is at $10 per gallon, we sure would like to have the transit system.

Also, the O'ahu transit plan should include future routes to be added later from Hickam Air Force Base to the Kane'ohe Marine base and from Hickam AFB to the Schofield Army base to handle emergency war situations and to take care of Windward passengers.

This way we can get more federal money and get Windward City Council members to vote for this transit system.

DODGING ISSUE

WAS THERE A WAY TO AVERT O'AHU BLACKOUT?

The comments by Mindy Spatt and Clark Gellings ("Preventing blackout would cost us dearly," Oct. 19) are shibai. No one is suggesting a redundant system that would preclude all outages.

The question at hand is whether the utility system could have shed load better than it did to avoid the complete shutdown of the system.

The initial newspaper reports were that two plants were automatically shut down by the earthquake, resulting in a loss of 10 percent of generating capacity. A properly designed load-shedding protocol should easily handle this loss of generation without shutting down the entire generating system.

The Oct. 19 article reports three generators were tripped off. So what really happened? Getting the facts straight will help get to the bottom of this issue. Spatt and Gellings changing the subject is not helpful.

CHARTER QUESTION 3

PROPOSAL WOULD BOOST PRESERVATION, HOUSING

I just want to express my heartbreak that you would recommend a "no" vote on Charter question 3 on the Nov. 7 ballot asking: "Should 1 percent of annual property tax revenues be appropriated to funds for land conservation and affordable housing?"

I would assume with all your articles on the homeless situation in Hawai'i in the past weeks, The Advertiser would be even more sensitive to how much we need Charter amendment 3. Those are the very people this would help. Like they said in the article, many of them work and have money, but it's just "not affordable."

Why not give people the information and let them make their own decisions? I have spoken to many people of various financial and environmental views, and every one of them is ecstatic about this amendment — especially when they realize that it does not make their taxes go up at all.

The reason this is such a great amendment is that when we consider preservation, we must also consider housing needs, and if the two can work together, that is an ideal situation.

I travel the world extensively, and Hawai'i is way behind on environmental issues as well as housing issues. We continue to cater to all the out-of-state visitors, renters and buyers (and buyers who want to flip houses or have yet another empty overpriced vacation rental), at the expense of our communities being displaced with no other options.

Yet we have nothing to support our people from Hawai'i who work hard and want to raise their families and live here, while keeping it preserved at the same time.

Yes, I agree: Our elected officials should take care of our people and surroundings outside the Charter amendments, as you suggest. But they have not, and this is an amazing opportunity for us to voice where we need and want our tax money to go.