It is time for Hawaii sports fans like me to realize our ability to compete at Division I NCAA football has disappeared. We can’t compete today against the prime mainland schools in recruiting outstanding players and coaches. We can’t even keep our best players at home. Would you rather play for Alabama or Hawaii?

Please don’t tell me how the great victories against teams like Nebraska in the 1950s and other anomalies from the distant past show that we can compete. The past is past.

Let’s rebuild that stadium at the university, move to Division II and play week in and week out at that level. Give the local fans a chance to see us play with a fair chance to win. Give the students competition that they can be proud of rather than the hopelessness we see today. We can still schedule one of those premier teams each year.

James Hildenbrand

Waialae Iki

HI-5 recycling deposit program isn’t a tax

Regarding Michael Nomura’s letter, “Instead of a rebate, reduce unneeded taxes” (Star-Advertiser, Sept. 12): I agree that we should stop charging taxes on groceries and over-the-counter medicines. If you spend $100 per week on groceries, you are paying approximately $5 per week, $260 per year. Do away with the grocery tax and you wouldn’t need to give each taxpayer a $300 refund.

But as for the “unnecessary beverage container fee,” this is not a tax. The deposit program places a 5-cent refundable deposit on each beverage container plus a nonrefundable 1-cent container fee. The deposit encourages people to recycle their empty containers. Customers get back their 5 cents deposit when they return the container to a redemption center. The 1-cent container fee is used to pay for redemption center costs.

If you return your bottles, as the program was intended, you are only out 1 cent on each container. This program is intended for environmental reasons, not for collecting taxes. Return your bottles and save our ocean and beaches.

Frankie L. Ruggles-Quinabo

Makiki

Hawaii should remove Union Jack from flag

Now that Queen Elizabeth II has passed, isn’t it time for Hawaii to remove the “butcher’s apron” from its flag and design and adopt a state flag that truly represents its rich heritage and the aloha spirit?

Jeff Jones

Makiki

Self-interested can corrupt condo boards

Bob Speers proposed that Ordinance 22-7, the city law requiring a minimum 90-day-rental, be amended to allow condo associations to set their own vacation rental policies (“On vacation rentals, let condominium associations decide,” Star-Advertiser, Sept. 8).

I met Speers when I joined his board in support of a dedicated, beleaguered president. Serving for six years, also as president, I retired at age 77.

A slim majority of us focused on energy savings exceeding the state’s 30% energy reduction goal while also enforcing the Hawaii Community Development Authority’s 180-day rental law through fines for vacation rentals despite self-serving dissidents and threats of lawsuits.

Board members who espouse short-term rentals can quickly gain support from some owners. Money talks. Democracy works if supported by public servants who elevate the public good above self-interests; otherwise, it is quickly corrupted.

Condominium association boards are not much different.

Klaus Radtke

Waimanalo

Sept. 11 events ignored in Sept. 11 newspaper

Not a word. Not a single word about the events of 21 years ago on Sept. 11, 2001, in your Sunday edition’s news sections.

Certainly the events of 30 years ago deserved the solid remembrance in your paper. After all, Iniki was a major disaster and hugely impactful to the state. I know, as I was intimately involved in the recovery effort on Kauai.

But to omit mention of 9/11 on the occasion of that anniversary is tantamount to journalistic malpractice. Sure, you had minor coverage in your Saturday online edition but really, nothing in the Sept. 11, 2022, edition?

I guess California’s cooling heat wave and beavers battling fires in the west were newsworthy, but not the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Shameful.

Robert Lottie

Kailua

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