Army hospital isn't under Akaka's purview
Clint Basler has it wrong about Sen. Dan Akaka ("Akaka not blameless in Walter Reed scandal,"
Letters, March 16).
Walter Reed Army Medical Center is a U.S. Army hospital, not a Veterans Affairs hospital. The news media even confuse this issue when presenting it on TV and radio.
Military hospitals are not VA hospitals. This is not to give a full pass to our legislative bodies. Both the Senate and the House should have been looking at the care for our soldiers and veterans. Instead, they are too busy chasing pages and getting into other troubles trying to fill their pockets with the loot.
Mark Trexler
Waialua
City is working on transit management
The
Star-Bulletin's March 14 editorial on the need for the city to ramp up its transit staffing and expertise in accord with federal requirements was much appreciated. Rest assured the Hannemann administration has been developing a plan for the past 18 months for managing the coming mass transit system.
Our proposed budget provides for 35 people to staff a new Rapid Transit Division within the Department of Transportation Services. The new division will handle initial project management, including overseeing the preliminary engineering and preparation of an environmental impact statement. Our budget also calls for $1.9 million for a 12-person office of transit-oriented development in the Department of Planning and Permitting.
We expect the Rapid Transit Division eventually will be integrated into a transit authority. It is clear that the system, once running, will be too big to manage directly as a branch of Transportation Services or another city department. We are already studying several models for managing the transit system, including a private operator reporting to the city, the way Oahu Transit Services runs TheBus; a semi-autonomous city authority like the Board of Water Supply; and various configurations in other cities. We believe accountability to the public would be an essential requirement, no matter what the setup.
Melvin N. Kaku
Director, Transportation Services
City & County of Honolulu
Hawaii loses with each restaurant's closing
I have been reading the news on the Internet and I am saddened to see restaurants that are closing down (
Star-Bulletin, March 15). They serve the homemade types of food that bring us islanders back home.
It seems that Hawaii is losing the touches that make it special. How sad that Hawaii is so corporate and commercialized. It's a replay of how Hawaii was taken over by the United States only this time its a different way. Same meaning.
Regards to the Kaimuki Columbia Inn.
Roxanne Maumasi
Mount Shasta, Calif.
Conductor's ego ruined 'Return to Romance'
We have never been to a concert in Hawaii we didn't enjoy. That is until we attended "Return to Romance -- the CD" last Friday, March 9. With so many Hawaiian music stars on the bill we were looking forward to an exciting evening of wonderful music. We had never heard of Matt Catingub and his orchestra, but we figured with the program loaded with talent one unknown wouldn't matter.
Were we wrong! Catingub seemed intent on dominating the show. On many of the songs, his uninspired big band arrangements took the edge off the performances we had come to hear.
Unfortunately, he insisted on singing duets with the stars. On one song he even had the nerve to use Na Leo as backup singers.
Two-thirds of the way through, the show was rained out. We were disappointed and relieved at the same time.
Our final verdict: a lot of ripoff, little romance.
Hugh and Sandra Castell
Bellevue, Wash.
Regulate, don't outlaw, vacation rentals
My husband and I are repeat visitors to Kailua, staying at a vacation rental in a residential neighborhood. The owners of the property at which we stay have rules regarding noise, parking and so on. There are elderly residents in this neighborhood who greet us on our arrival and have no apparent animosity toward us. We enjoy visiting with them and seeing a slice of life in Hawaii from the residents' perspective.
It seems to be that Ursula Retherford's quarrel ("Letters," March 11) is not with the "illegal transient" vacationers, but with the irresponsible owners who allow bothersome activities to take place on their property. It would seem that a compromise could be reached by regulating the vacation rental business rather than outlawing it.
As a resident of Alaska, I, too, would like to see a return to the good old days when my husband and I could go fishing and not have to fight tourists for a place along the stream. It is simply a fact of life these days that there are more people, and more people who have the money to travel, than there were 35 years ago.
In Alaska we regulate fishing. Why not regulate vacation rentals in Hawaii?
Karen and Darrell Shoop
Wasilla, Alaska