Increase pickups for bulky items

It is good that the city is trying to address the bulky-item issue. But with so many high-rise residential buildings, having bulky items picked up once a month is not enough. There are many move-ins and move-outs every month, which generate tons of bulky items.

Like the country, urban areas need transfer stations. Bulky items always seem to accumulate in the same places. Maybe sending one or two extra trucks around weekly to collect from the worst areas between regularly scheduled pickups would lessen the eyesores and accommodate the taxpayers. What would it cost to try this? Fuel, maybe a job for somebody? Come on, it's a problem, fix it.

Honolulu is a big city with big needs. Trash will always be put on the curbs, legally or illegally. This has been an issue for many years. We don't need fines; we need more pickups. Life is messy, clean it up.

Bulky pickup fine would be fine policy

The mayor's proposal on the introduction of a bill to fine property owners $500 is in order. Property owners have been reminded many times as to when it is time put out bulky items on the curbside.

Bulky items left on the curbside for a long time are an eyesore, unhealthy, causing rodents and other pests to dwell in them, and taking up parking space, whereas passengers in automobiles are unable to open their doors.

Property owners should be happy they are not charged to remove their bulky items from curbside. I have been a property owner practically all my life, and know what is right and wrong on dumping bulky items on the curbside.

A law of this kind should be enforced, and I am hoping the City Council will agree with the mayor's bill.

U.S. economy needs to get back to basics

President Obama is asking for ideas on creating new jobs. I have one: How about bringing them back from other countries? We could actually make things here. What a concept. And I don't mean just component parts; I mean everything. We could make things that don't poison our children or our pets or require dismantling toxic building materials.

How I yearn for the days when I could find something—anything—that is “;Made in the USA.”;

And how great would it be to once again talk to a real live customer service representatives—ones who don't disconnect you after 20 minutes and actually know what they're talking about.

And one more thing: How about instead of sending out stimulus checks and extending unemployment benefits, we pay people to actually do something. There's no shortage of people power, and there is so much to be done. What happened to all the jobs repairing bridges, highways and schools?

Remember schools, where students used to go five days a week?

Maybe instead of more leveraged buyouts that sent so many jobs overseas in the first place, or saving more corrupt bankers' bacon, we could get back to the basics of what made this country so great: manufacturing and services, “;Made in the USA!”;

Natatorium stance deeply disturbing

Your editorial supporting Mayor Mufi Hannemann's logic that the best way to honor our war dead is to demolish the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial erected to honor them is deeply disturbing (”;Mayor is correct on natatorium,”; Star-Bulletin, Dec. 2). It scares me to think that major media like the Star-Bulletin, which enjoy the constitutional free speech privilege of editorial bias, can be so careless in their analysis of a public policy statement that flies in the face of simple logic.

To claim that public morality is best served by committing an immoral act and destroying the very thing meant to pay tribute is an assault on common sense. You even printed the city's Photoshop-manipulated picture that depicts the memorial arch standing as a backdrop to a new beach, which misleads the public into thinking that all is redeemed because the arch is preserved. The truth is that the arch will also feel the wrecking ball, because it cannot be moved, and a facsimile arch will have to be constructed mauka of the volleyball courts and parking lot (which will also be demolished).

Every vestige of the historic value of the structure will be demolished and the institution of the 20th century will have been politically bullied into obscurity.