Puna needed Superferry

The situation seems so obvious now: extensive damage to property and livelihood, now being attended by a number of agencies in the Puna area (politicians not included).

Would it not have been prudent to have both of our Superferry ships available to be called immediately into service? Among other things, emergency food, water, fully loaded Hawaiian Electric Co. trucks, heavy equipment and the like could have been driven on board and on the scene in a few hours. We need to seriously revisit that need and soon. This surely is not the last emergency that will be faced in the islands.

Meantime, hats off to all those, including the hired guns, who performed the dramatic protest at Nawiliwili on Kauai a few years ago that sounded the beginning of the end to our ferry service. Shame on you all and the anonymous powers behind you. You served only yourselves, and poorly at that.

J. Ford Murray
Hawaii Kai

Abercrombie alienated voters

Evidently Gov. Neil Abercrombie forgot the reason why he won his first Democratic primary for governor.

It was not his easygoing personality so much as his primary opponent. He won on many, many anti-Mufi Hannemann votes.

History repeated itself in the recent Democratic primary. This may surprise some, but it was not on charisma alone that state Sen. David Ige defeated the governor.

In four years, Abercrombie found a way to alienate a large percentage of his Democratic supporters. The teachers union will claim most of the credit, but in reality, it was a somewhat suicidal performance across the board. Taxing pensions was a huge self-inflicted wound. I don’t think that idea will resurface soon, if ever. We retirees have long memories. Shorter lives left to live, but long memories.

Ige will not make a similar mistake. He is the anti-abrasive. A consensus builder.

But thank you, Neil, for 40 memorable years.

Peter Chisteckoff
Mililani Mauka

Wrong to delay trash pickup

I live in Wahiawa and our trash pickup was understandably skipped due to the storm. We heard on the news that trash would be picked up on Saturday, but we were told the Director of Environmental Services canceled our trash pickup altogether.

This was a poor decision. Why cancel an essential service right after an emergency? What about all the emergency trash? Boxes and bottles were piled high and sitting in the street.

There was nothing preventing trash from being picked up. Yet on top of all the other tasks to do, as we clean up after the storm, the city wants us to go to the dump as well. Our kupuna left the trash on the street until Friday, when trash pickup hopefully resumes.

This decision by the city impacts families, kupuna, schedules, health and the appearance of our neighborhoods. It should not be made indiscriminately.

Jim Guzior
Wahiawa

Chancellor for Manoa campus

Do you want someone to be a principal of a high school while being the superintendent of the Department of Education at the same time? Probably not, because that is an obvious conflict of interest.

Yet, we have recent columns by Dave Reardon and Dave Shapiro asking why the University of Hawaii system has separate positions for UH president and UH-Manoa chancellor. They asked why the responsibilities of both positions could not be done by the same person, like it used to.

With the UH system consisting of three university campuses and all the community colleges, it would be an obvious conflict of interest for one person to be the chancellor (equivalent to a principal) of the Manoa campus and yet be the president of the entire UH system at the same time.

Pablo Wegesend
Moiliili

Re-use materials in Ward project

Regarding the replacing of Ward Warehouse with condo towers, I hope that the developers will adhere to a strict eco-friendly approach, with complete deconstruction to keep 90 percent of that material out of our overflowing landfills ("Ward Warehouse might give way to high-rises in 2015," Star-Advertiser, Aug. 13).

There is easily enough lumber in the existing Ward Warehouse structure to construct hundreds of homes. And look at those large crossbeams! Timbers in those sizes just aren’t available anymore.

Progress notwithstanding, the county and the state had better ensure that hardly any of these materials end up as termite food in our landfills.

Von Kaneshiro
Honolulu