Honor system will cost a lot

I am a 22-year driver with our city bus system. I don’t know how some of the numbers revealed in Sunday’s headline article were derived, but I find them to be inaccurate at best ("Honor bound," Star-Advertiser, Dec. 11). Here are some real numbers:

Let’s take the average between the current youth and adult bus fare: $1.85. We have approximately 450 buses on the road every day. If just one incident of no payment — transfer misuse or bus pass misuse, for example — happens to each bus, every day, it is at a cost of $832.50 each day. That adds up to $24,975 per month or $300,000 per year. And that’s if there is only one incident per day, per bus. In reality, there are closer to a half-dozen.

City planners are considering an "honor system" for rail transit. Every driver knows that relying on people’s honor is ideal; but it does not work, leaving someone else to pay for the shortfall.

Dave Verret
Mililani

Honor system ignores security

The "no barrier concept" for access to rail clearly will not meet current security needs, post- 9/11.

The issue of security should be of paramount concern in the design. Citizens groups will be concerned about privacy and "Big Brother."

The honor system will not meet the revenue needs for the taxpayers and requires greater manpower for enforcement; lower revenue and greater expense is a bad formula.

This idea should be reconsidered in light of the basic requirements for public safety and the economy.

Myron Berney
Kaimuki

Tax the wealthy to help homeless

Here we go again, criminalizing these very poor folks without a home to go to.

Their only "crime" is being too impoverished to afford the outrageously overpriced rents.

Aren’t these people being punished enough for having to live in these degrading conditions?

It is not their fault that they live under this very dysfunctional free market gone wild, an economic system that has failed to include this whole segment of the population.

All it would take is a progressive tax on a tiny fraction of income at the top to enable a basic decent home for all.

And the ultimate irony is that we are already spending that much, plus more, on homeless shelters, emergency medical care, police enforcement, courts, prisons, etc., without solving the homeless problem.

Federal studies have shown that the Housing First approach is the way to get folks back on their feet.

David B. Cannell
Waipahu

End subsidies to golf courses

As long as the City Council is considering actions on property tax exemptions, why do they refuse to consider eliminating the millions of dollars per year toward operation of the city-run municipal golf courses that obviously should be self-sufficient?

Councilman Tom Berg brought up this misuse of taxpayers’ money on several occasions, along with questioning the rail contract irregularities.

Obviously those Council members with municipal golf courses in their districts will not budge.

As Berg emphatically stated at one Council meeting, "Golf is not a core function of government," and the subsidy of municipal golf courses is not a legal use of taxpayers’ money.

James L. Robinson
Aiea

Advice to court wrong again

The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled 5-0 in favor of Hawaii’s racial discrimination in property tax. Now this newspaper’s editorial page urges the Supreme Court of the United States not to hear the appeal ("High court should decline case," Star-Advertiser, Our View, Dec. 14).

We’ve seen this pattern before. In 2009, this newspaper’s predecessors urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to consider the ridiculous Hawaii Supreme Court 5-0 decision prohibiting the state from selling any state-owned land without permission from ethnic Hawaiians. The high court ignored that advice and overturned the state court, 9-0.

Ten years previously, this newspaper’s predecessors urged the Supreme Court not to consider Hawaii’s racially segregated voting system. But the court did hear the case and ruled 7-2 in Rice v. Cayetano that everyone has a right to vote regardless of race, even in Hawaii.

Thank God the U.S. Supreme Court heard those cases despite Hawaii newspapers urging it to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Kenneth R. Conklin
Kaneohe