Please continue your front-and-center coverage of the Red Hill water crisis by adding a count-up box to your front page daily. This counter shows the number of days passed since the promise to safely remove the tanks and provide all accompanying clean up. Your paper is an important voice of our community. If the powers that be count on our good-natured aloha spirit to be appeased now, your keeping public count of the days our watershed continues to be at risk can be a game-changer.

One small space with one big number, every day on your front page. Please keep them accountable!

Marie Miyashiro

Pauoa

Government is not a business, must serve all

In electing government officials, it is crucial to understand that government is not a private business and cannot function as a private business.

First, private businesses can decide on their own what goods or services to provide. No one expects Disney to care for the mentally ill, or McDonald’s to build and maintain highways.

Second, private businesses can deal only with those who pay their price. Governments don’t have that luxury. The Fire Department doesn’t check if you paid taxes before putting out a fire. Public beaches and parks are open for recreation to everyone, taxpayer or not.

Third, everyone understands that private businesses need to make a profit. A private business has the right to discontinue a product or service that is unprofitable even if popular. Governments don’t.

Imagine if a company’s CEO and board of directors were elected by its entire customer base with one vote per customer.

Carlton Saito

Wahiawa

Duke Kahanamoku truly embodied aloha spirit

With all due respect to the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, I’ve never fully understood the naming of Honolulu International Airport after him. Yes, he brought funds for its construction and many other projects back to the islands. Yes, he fought for Hawaii and the USA. The fighter and hero he was, having a warship named after him appeared to be more than appropriate.

One person in the history of Hawaii has the honor of being known as the “Ambassador of Aloha,” Duke Paoa Kahanamoku. This is the spirit Hawaii purports to greet and send off all kamaaina and visitors with from around the world. This is the spirit of which Duke spread all over the world with a humbleness that first brought visitors to the islands.

How does such an honor go so inappropriately wrong? I get it, politics. Yet the name of an indigenous Hawaiian waterman could be the most appropriate name to grace the airport facility. Go see “Waterman,” the documentary movie of Duke, and see if you agree.

Richard Marshall

Pearl City

Jones Act waiver would hurt workers, consumers

Your editorial, “Put a Jones Act waiver to the test” (Star-Advertiser, Our View, March 15), in support of U.S. Rep. Ed Case’s misguided proposal, failed to recognize the concerns for the jobs and working conditions of Hawaii’s maritime and transportation workers.

The Jones Act, in fact, has little to do with preventing delivery of oil to Hawaii or other ports or causing high gas prices. The 2020 study by the economics firm Reeve & Associates concluded that the Jones Act “has no significant impact on the cost-of-living in Hawaii.” Your editorial failed to acknowledge the obvious price-gouging and profiteering of the huge oil companies, the main cause of high gas prices.

The Jones Act requires that vessels carrying cargo between U.S. ports will be U.S.-manufactured and flagged vessels, subject to the taxes and charges that other U.S. corporations pay. Foreign vessels do not pay these taxes and same charges and pay their sailors and workers much lower wages, giving them an unfair advantage. Waiving the Jones Act’s protections, as the right-wing Cato and Grassroot institutes are urging, would harm consumers and workers and not lower gas prices.

John Witeck

Kamehameha Heights

No masking mandate, but COVID not done yet

With the mask mandate now lifted for indoors, it is surprising to see the controversy on this situation come alive.

As someone who is often surrounded by people with health issues and a higher chance of getting serious symptoms of COVID-19, I constantly take precautions when in public areas.

Being questioned about why I still choose to wear a mask frustrates me. At sports practices, I am the only one wearing a mask fully covering my nose and mouth. I am asked, “Why are you still choosing to wear your mask? No one else is.”

Some of my loved ones have a higher chance of catching a bad case of COVID-19, and choosing to wear my mask is the same as choosing to protect them.

Why is it anyone’s business whether or not I still want to wear a mask? What makes it right to judge someone’s decision without knowing their full story?

Ashley Tom

Punchbowl

Tie property tax rate to the rate of inflation

Our property tax system is all wrong, and there is an easy fix.

Right now everything is based on tax rate as a percentage of property value. As we have seen, property values do not have a direct relationship with inflation. Our county expenses go up with inflation, as do our pensions, Social Security and, hopefully, wages.

For an example, if your property taxes are $2,000 and home value goes up 50%, your new taxes will be $3,000. Where does that $1,000 come from? Do you skip after-school programs? Skip meals out? Whatever you take out of your spending to pay higher taxes, that $1,000 does not make it’s way into the local economy.

If inflation was 5%, then an appropriate increase in property tax would be $100. Our county expenses would have gone up about 5% and the homeowner’s income will have gone up, on average, about 5%.

Tom Wallace

Hawaii Kai

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