Here’s how to ruin visitor experience

Here are some ways that Hawaii discourages visitors:

» Allowing Waikiki to be used as a rec room, bedroom and outdoor bathroom for disturbed/disturbing homeless.

» Outdating the comfortable Hawaiian muumuus that tourists had so looked forward to wearing for a carefree vacation.

» Replacing Hawaiian colors and furniture with dark contemporary ones.

» Turning off the wonderful Hawaiian music that once played in all stores and hotel lobbies.

» Taking live local Hawaiian musicians out of hotel lobbies and side rooms.

» Replacing popular shopping areas with expensive shops that most tourists will never need for themselves or for gifts they had planned to take home.

» Planning to take down the International Market Place, probably the one place that all tourists enjoy exploring and where generations have found gifts for friends, kids and grandkids.

» Continuing to raise taxes on room rentals and car rentals, creating shock value at checkout and shaded memories of their last moments here to take home and share with others.

Doris Markland
Waikiki

Don’t rejoice yet about bus Route 14

The return of bus Route 14 to the Kahala Avenue area is a relief to the students of The Arc. But it represents only a partial restoration of the original Route 14 before it was cut back in August.

The service around Diamond Head Road and Kahala Avenue is available only in the midday hours. After 3:30 p.m., a would-be bus rider in the Kahala area could find himself stranded there. Also, the new Route 14 no longer covers all of its former stops in the Kahala area, notably Diamond Head Memorial Park on 22nd Avenue and along and around Kahala Mall.

The service to Kahala is totally eliminated during morning and afternoon peak hours as well as in the evening.

It is not yet time to celebrate the complete return of the original bus Route 14.

The Rt. Rev. Wayne W. Gau
President, St. Louis Heights Community Association

‘Dignity Villages’ can help homeless

Toby Allen’s letter gives us a rare peek into the prejudiced, cold, hardened mindset of a very large number of residents ("Force homeless into specific lots," Star-Advertiser, March 23).

Yes, he voices support for legal, protected areas of some kind for the homeless. However, Allen’s letter strongly suggests that the disadvantaged and unlucky are viewed as unclean insects, bugs or pests who need to be forced to a place where no one need suffer from facing this particular reality in person.

Meanwhile, the folks on the City Council just don’t get it.

Give folks alternative shelters — in small cabins, shipping containers, tents, etc., on plots of land around the island designated as "Dignity Villages" — a positive communal setting, in the "ola" Hawaiian way.The sidewalks (and other very public spaces) would be cleared, as so many people, compassionate and otherwise, would prefer.

David Cannell
Waipahu

Top city officials shouldn’t get raises

The Honolulu Salary Commission’s recommendation of pay raises for city officials is an outrage ("Mayor open to a 4% pay raise," Star-Advertiser, April 2).

It justifies it with statements like, "We want to make sure that the heads of departments are being paid more than their subordinates," or the mayor’s statement, "I think everyone who came from the private sector took the cut, made the sacrifice, and so a little bit of an increase would help alleviate some of that pain and keep them here."

Really? Like those people didn’t make conscious decisions to leave their lucrative private-sector jobs?

Whatabout the serfs serving in government making far less than six figures who didn’t get a raise for four years, but instead got 5-10 percent pay cuts with furloughs and increased medical insurance costs? Do those making more than $100,000 a year need the raise more than a staffer struggling with $35,000 a year or less? Are these city officials more deserving than the rest?I don’t think so.

These people should not give themselves raises until everyone else gets theirs.

R. Mark Ing
Salt Lake

U.S. should adopt labeling for GMOs

Those of us old enough will remember when major U.S. waterways were polluted from farm chemicals, songbirds were disappearing and birds of prey could not reproduce because poisons worked their way up the food chain. Organic farming took off as a backlash to toxic, industrial agriculture.

The effect of GMO (genetically modified organism) technology is in some ways similar.Molokai and Kauai residents are suffering airborne pesticides carried on the trade winds and ill effects from spraying of nearby fields. Runoff from these fields is harming the ocean environment.

Other effects are not as obvious. Environmental health physicians are taking their ailing patients off GMO food, as are pediatricians treating autistic children, with good results. Allergy specialists are successfully reintroducing non-GMO food.

Thirty states now have GMO labeling moving forward. Large retailers want federal GMO labeling to avoid the chaos of laws from 50 states.Sixty-two nations label GMO food to protect their citizens: Cameroon, El Salvador, Latvia, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam and most of the developed nations, except for the U.S. and Canada.

Merle Inouye Hayward
Hilo