Question: Is the Waipahu pool ever going to reopen?

Answer: Not anytime soon, although the city says it will reopen eventually.

The public swimming pool at Waipahu District Park originally was projected to reopen in the summer of 2018, after a long closure for extensive repairs of the pump room and pool deck and other renovations.

Those repairs are done, but over the course of the work, problems with the pool’s electrical bonding were discovered, which will require a separate contract to fix.

Nathan Serota, a spokesman for the city Department of Parks and Recreation, said the electrical bonding project is going out to bid, which means the city is selecting a contractor.

It is hoped that the work will begin next year, but there’s no firm start date or projected completion date, so it’s impossible to say when the Waipahu pool will reopen.

There’s a similar situation at Pearl City District Park, where the pool closed Nov. 1 for what was initially projected to be a year. But as in Waipahu, work to upgrade the pool facility revealed problems with the electrical system. Although the initial pump room and pool renovations are expected to be done by September, the separate electrical bonding project is only in the preliminary design stage. So there’s no reopening date projected for the Pearl City pool, either.

“We understand that the community has been eagerly awaiting the reopening of these pool facilities, and apologize for the delays, but we must ensure that our park facilities are safe before we reopen them for public use,” Serota said.

Swimming pools use electricity to power pumps, heaters, lights and other equipment. Their electrical systems must be properly bonded and grounded to prevent harmful transmission of electrical voltage. Bonding directs electrical current to a bonding wire or grid, away from the water and metal parts that swimmers might touch, such as a pool railing. Without proper bonding, pool users could be shocked or even electrocuted.

Q: For the 2020 election, does our system have “backup paper ballots” in the event our election system is hacked?

A: Yes. Under Hawaii’s vote-by-mail system, which will be statewide for the 2020 election, all properly registered voters will automatically receive a paper ballot in the mail about 18 days before the election. They will return the completed ballot in a signed envelope, and their votes will be recorded by the clerk’s office of their respective counties. There will be an auditable paper trail.

We’ll note that Hawaii’s former system also involved paper ballots. Most voters who chose to vote in person filled out a paper ballot and fed it through the ballot-scanning machine as they exited the polling place.

Only five states used electronic voting machines without a paper ballot verification system to audit the results, according to the cybersecurity company Norton. Hawaii was not among them.

Auwe

Honolulu is an aging city. By that I mean there are a lot of people like me walking around, over 75. We want to be independent. We want to stay active. We want to live our lives. We can’t do that if drivers won’t slow down! Have we fallen so far that we don’t think it’s important to stop at a red light? Please, drivers, consider your kupuna. — Senior citizen

Mahalo

Many thanks to the alert man who prevented my purse from being stolen off a bench in Waikiki. I was sitting right there and didn’t notice another man coming to take it. The first man did and yelled out “Hey!” I looked at him in shock and gratitude, and he just smiled and kept walking. — Grateful visitor

Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.