Let each community retain a white bin

Although people living in single-family homes are able to take advantage of the city’s curbside recycling program, not all of us are so fortunate.

I live in a townhouse and take my recyclables to Kaiser High School several times a month. The white bin there is often full, indicating that it is being well utilized by the community. If the white bins are removed, it will be much more difficult for me and others to recycle our paper, plastic and glass. I might just have to resort to sneaking around Hawaii Kai under the cloak of darkness, slipping my recyclables into multiple blue curbside bins.

I urge the mayor to rethink his stance on removing the white bins and let each community retain at least one bin for people who do not have access to curbside recycling.

Judy Keith
Hawaii Kai

Berg asks questions that need asking

Why is there only one voice on the City Council that speaks up for the people of this state? District 1 Councilman Tom Berg appears to be the only member of the Council who has the guts and tenacity to stand up against all the politicking that goes on in the City Council.

Maybe, just maybe, if certain Council members did not take their orders from the power brokers of this state, they would, like Berg, ask the questions that need to be asked about rail.

It appears that they prefer to sit on their hands and do nothing, or you might say, take the coward’s way out by questioning nothing.

James Robinson
Aiea

Why are UH execs paid so highly?

Whenever I hear University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood’s attempt to justify the UH-Manoa chancellor’s excessive salary and benefits, and by implication, her own, my stomach turns.

Are we so gullible that we believe that these people should be compensated so extravagantly? How can our publicly paid administrators be paid such excessive sums?

They are running the University of Hawaii, not Stanford or the University of California at Berkeley. Is that more difficult than running the city or the state? Their salaries are more than 3½ times greater than those of the mayor and the governor. I cannot believe that the number of employees or the number of programs that must be administered at UH are greater or more complex than the city or the state.

So, what gives?

Let’s have the state auditor examine this whole process and tell us whether we are being "snowed" or not.

Paul Chun
Niu Valley

Public being ignored in Haleiwa land sale

I oppose the proposed sale of eight vacant Haleiwa parcels at this time and in this manner ("Landowners might get a shot at acquiring city land in Haleiwa," Star-Advertiser, June 20).

There are a number of issues involved, including: the original purpose of the city’s acquisition of the parcels for the express purpose of creating public park space and the community’s wishes to keep the land park space.

However, the overriding issue is that the Sustainable Communities Plan for this area (which was approved just last year) specified retaining this property and continuing to improve it for the benefits of the North Shore community.Now, without any acknowledgment of the plan, the City Council is considering just selling it to the highest bidder.

If this is how decisions are made, without public input — or despite public input — why bother to have the pretense of Sustainable Communities Plans or public input?

Rene M. Garvin
Hawaii Kai

Calling city park land ‘remnant’ is misnomer

The Star-Advertiser’s poll on Thursday referred to the designated (P2) parkland in Haleiwa as "remnant" ("What should the city do with eight vacant land remnants in Haleiwa, which it doesn’t plan to develop?" Star-Advertiser, Big Q, June 21).

Nothing can be worse than to refer to these pieces of land this way. It makes it sound as if they are useless, when the land in question, all of it, abuts Kamehameha Highway and is open to the ocean. Perfect for developers. Irony there.

Of course, with Oahu’s population rising, this land must be saved as public land.

Paul Nelson
Waialua