Spend no more tax money on natatorium

Restoring the Waikiki Natatorium to its former glory would be fabulous in a perfect world. But unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world. Millions of Hawaii taxpayer dollars have already been wasted on trying to restore it. The city and state always say that they have no money for school improvements, homeless shelters, raises and so on, and now Mayor Harris wants to spend another $10 million and more on this financial black hole.

I know it's close to Christmas, but does Mayor Harris have to spend taxpayer money so fast and frivolously to restore a large saltwater pool right next to the ocean?

Keep the monument at the entrance but remove the pool and make it a sandy beach. Or just leave it as it is.

Let's encourage fuel-saving ideas

There are a number of things that we can do to both improve traffic and our environment. Public transportation should be expanded with either light rail or more buses and should be free. It should be paid for with an increase in the gasoline tax. This financial carrot and stick will encourage many to shift from cars to public transportation. Untangling our gridlocked traffic will improve the gas mileage of the cars remaining on the road, and help get everyone to where they are going more quickly. It would also be a good marketing tool for tourism. "From your hotel to Diamond Head, free; the view, priceless." Oahu should build an extensive network of safe bike lanes, and should encourage workplaces to provide showers and lockers for employees who ride bikes to work. Oahu could then market itself to tourists interested in cycling, and could develop a bike rental industry.

Paid parking lots, large employers and/or high-rise office buildings, neighborhood associations and private schools should be required to coordinate the formation of car and van pools. Newspapers should allow free classified ads in their online editions and ideally also in the hard-copy editions for ride-sharing as a public service. Suburban shopping centers should be required to allow 5 percent of their parking lots to be used for park-and-ride bus or carpool parking. Biodiesel, electric and hybrid cars should be allowed to use HOV lanes even with only one occupant, to encourage a shift to these cleaner technologies. Finally, we should continue with the plans to add locally produced alcohol to our imported gasoline, reducing the amount of oil that we must import. Let's get working on this.

Merging would make bus routes better

I think Route E is a great bus route that connects downtown, Kakaako and Waikiki, which used to take longer on other routes. I have tried the route several times and want to praise TheBus for the great job. However, we all know that the ridership is low on Route E. I am suggesting to merge Routes B and E and extend Route E to Kalihi Transit Center via School Street. Extending Route E to Kalihi will still give Kalihi passengers an express route to Waikiki without using additional buses. Since Route B's inception, the ridership is low. Route B pretty much overlaps Route 2. From what I observe, nobody really waits for Route B. The only people that take Route B just happen to because a Route B bus comes first. And Route B is not really that much faster than Route 2. Since both Kalihi and Waikiki will have Route E, there will be no need to continue to have Route B.

Superintendent didn't go to the media

Fred Valmoja (Letters, Dec. 12) unfairly questioned Superintendent of Education Patricia Hamamoto's motives. Valmoja said "rather than taking the issue directly to the governor, Hamamoto prefers to broadcast it over the media first" and further implied that the superintendent has political motives. The fact is, the superintendent reported these budget cuts to the Board of Education at a board meeting open to the public. There was no press release or phone call to alert the press. In fact, prior to making her report, the superintendent had already scheduled a meeting with the governor's staff to discuss the budget cuts.

Patricia Hamamoto is an educator committed to improving Hawaii's Public Schools. She does not "play politics."