Transit should be age-friendly

When we think about accommodating new modes of transit on Oahu, we often have a dim view.

However, if you attended Saturday’s Living Age-Friendly event, presented by the city, Kaiser Permanente and AARP, your thoughts might have expanded on transformative projects taking place here. Participants were challenged to consider solutions that promote public well-being on a packed island, where so many of us live and play together. What was especially striking was the attentiveness to the needs of our growing population of kupuna.

Let’s take these opportunities to be more thoughtful about improvements we can make happen in our own neighborhoods.

Honolulu residents can take more care and responsibility in ensuring positive impacts of projects whether we agree with them or not.

We will continue to watch how presenters will carry out their spoken commitments.

Antonia Agbannawag
McCully-Moiliili

Pilikia at Paiko offers a lesson

It’s an invitation for problems when private residences surrounded by public conservation land are allowed.

Paiko Peninsula is another example of a wealthy malihini speculating property at the expense of the public and impressing false territorial claims on public lands nearby ("Land battle," Star-Advertiser, Feb. 8).

This private landowner has had much opportunity to work with the community that’s been helping malama Paiko lagoon with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources clearing invasive limu from that beach for several years now.

Instead, he has attempted to tell the community to stay away by stating false claims, performing illegal landscaping on public lands and threatening a lawsuit to stop a recent successful government/ community invasive limu removal project. Now he wants to contest this case.

A great opportunity was missed to participate in the kuleana of Paiko. Instead, strife has been created due to an inability to mesh with the local community.

Kimo Franklin
Niu Valley

City gave away store to Kyo-Ya

In 2010, former city Department of Planning and Permitting Director David Tanoue agreed to let Kyo-Ya, a multinational developer, replace a nine-floor hotel with a 28-floor one, violating shoreline setback and height restrictions that had stood for 39 years.

DPP would allow a doubling of the height limit, impinge on the 100-foot shore- line setback by 60 feet, and exceed allowable square footage by a whopping 74 percent, all in exchange for some restrooms and trash cans generously donated by the developer.

Such a fiasco reminds me of the Native Americans who were tricked into selling Manhattan Island for $24 worth of beads. Is this kind of sell-out the best we can expect from our public servants?

Fortunately, a coalition — the Surfrider Foundation, KAHEA, Hawaii’s Thousand Friends, Ka Iwi Coalition and Michelle Matson — has taken up the cause, and an appeal is being heard by the Hawaii Supreme Court on Feb. 19.

Ken Sentner
Moiliili

UH should keep language classes

House Bill 555 proposing to abolish some undergraduate degrees, including language programs with few majors, was ill-advised ("Proposal to delete degree programs is tabled," Star- Advertiser, Feb. 16).

As French professor Kathryn Hoffman argued, her department educates some 4,500 students in European languages who are not necessarily majors.

Every student, whatever their major, needs two levels of a foreign language to graduate. Or, they may minor in a certain foreign language, if they plan to study abroad where these languages are spoken, to get academic credit.

Likewise, hundreds take Ilokano every semester, not as majors but as students wanting to discover their ethnic heritage. Approximately 90 percent of Filipinos in Hawaii are of Ilokano ancestry.Or they take Tagalog, the Philippine national language.

Besides, how much will the University of Hawaii save if it dismantles these smaller programs? Probably not much. Meanwhile, UH is plagued by overspending and mismanagement by the much-larger programs like the Cancer Center, which the university cannot afford.

Belinda A. Aquino, Ph.D.
Professor emeritus and former director, Center for Philippine Studies, UH-Manoa

Kaiser hospitals’ staff awesome

Workers at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics deserve a super raise for the job that they do.

I am currently a KP member and I wouldn’t be in good health if not for all the awesome doctors, nurses and staff.

I hope a quick resolution can be reached between the union and company so patients will continue to receive the best health care.

Joyce Choy
Salt Lake

Mayor puts rail over residents

It is the height of arrogance by Mayor Kirk Caldwell to pit the real needs of Honolulu’s citizens against the perceived need to continue feeding the beast that has become the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.

If the 0.5 percent general excise tax for rail is extended, it will continue to add $1,000 a year to the cost of living for a family of five. The mayor has threatened that if he doesn’t get the extension, he will have to raise property taxes up to 45 percent instead. This would greatly burden elderly, fixed-income homeowners, and be passed along to low-income renters by landlords.

It appears that financing rail, regardless of what it will eventually cost, is more important than the ability of Honolulu’s citizens to afford to live here.

Pam Smith
Ewa Beach

Makapuu Trail plan unsuitable

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources should have asked for the community’s input before implementing its vision for the Makapuu Trail.

The area is already at capacity each day with cars parking on Kalanianaole Highway. The Star-Advertiser reporting that 400 people use the trail daily must be a typo, as the count is much higher ("Makapuu make-over," Feb. 6).

Granted, some of the area does need improvements, but building four new concrete/rock wall lookout points with binoculars is totally the wrong direction for Ka Iwi. This is not Diamond Head.

A few years ago, there was discussion on charging for parking. That will come next, along with widening parking lots, T-shirt sellers, water vendors, graffiti and, inevitably, broken binoculars. Stop this and let the community decide.

Chandra Huang
Hawaii Kai

Container homes will be unsightly

About the Feb. 5 photo of the model of a community of tiny, shipping container-sized homes, I have come up with an acronym that describes the future of such a neighborhood: Sustainable Living Units (Mobile) — or for easy identification, SLUM.

Beverly Kai
Kakaako