Where is the sweat equity by the homeless?

Volunteers provide landscaping at Hale Mauliola to add a “homey touch” to the complex (“Landscaping at Hale Mauliola adds homey touch to complex,” Star-Advertiser, June 20).

And Home Depot Kapolei is going to build a vegetable garden for them? Seriously? Is it going to weed the garden for them, too? Why wouldn’t the residents (being so appreciative in the first place) volunteer to do their own landscaping and vegetable gardening?

Connie Mitchell, the executive director of the Institute for Human Services, is “constantly trying to think of innovative ways to serve our homeless people.”

In addition to free housekeeping sweeps? What next? Give them a car? Then gas money?

Sweat equity should be mandatory.

Lisa Adlong

Hauula

Perhaps wealthy could help to cool our kids

Oh, please. There is not enough money in this state to air-condition all of its classrooms?

The children must suffer through more sweltering heat this summer while we blame them or their teachers for not meeting national standards on nationally standardized tests?

Surely Kamehameha Schools could offer some money for all of Hawaii’s keiki. Or Howard Hughes Corp., which will profit mightily from the “spirit of aloha” it seems to love so much. Or any one of the many millionaires and billionaires who call Hawaii home, who could cut a check they wouldn’t even notice.

Larry Ellison, are you listening?

It would probably be tax deductible, after all.

Barbara Mullen

Waimanalo

Unsigned tax bill would negate earlier signed bill

In his State of the State address last year, Gov. David Ige said, “We are building a home for our kupuna, ourselves and our children.”

He also said he will modernize the state’s tax collection system to make it more efficient and reduce cheating.

Let’s hope his actions follow his words.

Ige signed Act 204 into law, effective Jan. 1. It gives the state Tax Department the power and responsibility to collect the transient accommodations tax and general excise tax on short-term rentals with full transparency.

House Bill 1850, which negates Act 204, is now on his desk. It would allow our tax collection duties to be handled by brokers who have no responsibility for transparency. It facilitates people cheating and hiding, and the criminal act of breaking our zoning laws. This is adding to a shortage of rental units and affordable housing for our kupuna, ourselves and our children.

Which will he choose for his legacy? Act 204 or HB 1850?

Vernon Hinsvark

Kailua

Shorten rail line but add express bus service

Stopping the rail transit route at Middle Street would be a neat, if not an ideal, terminal site.

But I will accept this proposal only if the city provides an express shuttle bus service between Ala Moana and the Middle Street rail transit station for people who want to travel quickly to Leeward Oahu.

I have heard that future residents of the new Kakaako development will have to pay thousands of dollars for a parking space, and increasing numbers of people are losing interest in owning additional cars or even in learning to drive.

We need to provide faster and more efficient public transportation so we don’t need to depend too much on our private vehicles.

Mariea Vaughan

Kapolei