Eatery regulations could be improved

After 17 years, the state Department of Health in 2014 refreshed its food safety regulations.

Now restaurants are inspected annually and post ratings in their windows, and holding temperatures match the science.

However, people must be properly trained and restaurant ratings should be easily accessible.

DOH recently closed three restaurants due to violations related to the new standards. People may be unable to meet the new standards, especially with Hawaii’s demographics, so the department should mandate training.

States such as Texas, Washington and California require training and passing an exam at the manager and/or employee levels. Associated fees also help generate funds.

Many people go online to decide where to eat, but ratings are posted only at the physical locations. DOH needs to put restaurant ratings online so consumers can actually use them without having to visit each location. Hawaii and Minnesota are the only states that do not post ratings online.

Jessica Siu
Makiki Heights

Ige deserves thanks for refugees stance

Mahalo to Gov. David Ige for his important symbolic message about Hawaii accepting Syrian refugees ("Ige welcomes refugees," Star-Advertiser, Nov. 17).

With some state leaders scoring cheap political points by closing their states to refugees when in fact they have little power to do so — the federal government chooses where to settle refugees — it was critical for the governor to speak up. He is one of the few governors who knows from his own history the shame, suffering and cost of discrimination based on race or birthplace.

Hawaii is likely to host few new refugees; refugees are placed in locales with job prospects, low costs of living and family sponsors. Hawaii will not qualify.

Despite criticism, Ige must continue to speak up for Hawaii’s best values: multicultural inclusiveness, reconciliation and the danger of making decisions based on fear.

If fear rules, terrorists achieve their goal. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Doris Segal Matsunaga
Aiea

Accepting penalty to do haka was odd

Not to take away from the win that the Kahuku High football team fought hard to get, but a bitter taste is left in one’s mouth to note that the team happily took a 15-yard penalty to start the game for the sole purpose of performing the haka at the coin toss.

To read the paper the next day you would think that all reason and sportsmanship were cast aside for the display ("Total domination," Star-Advertiser, Nov. 21).

Was it known in advance the penalty would be levied? If so, why proceed? To willingly accept an unsportsmanlike penalty reveals something most will turn a blind eye to, because Kahuku got the win.

Losing takes class to move on. Winning also takes class. I’m not sure this display revealed it.

Michael W. Turman
Wahiawa

Military could easily build micro-housing

With so many of our most vulnerable, unlucky fellow citizens living on the edge, unwanted and homeless, Gov. David Ige has finally, inevitably, declared homelessness a "state emergency."

We can all help end this sadly deplorable situation soon, and on a budget, by placing very compact, sustainable, basic homes on idle state lands.

Let’s face it: Left to themselves, developers have almost no interest in building low-cost housing.

The U.S. military is capable of setting up entire, self-sufficient, potentially more permanent "micro-towns" almost anywhere on the planet within days.

For now, political corruption and short-term greed remain in place, wasting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars while exacerbating Hawaii’s severe low-cost housing shortage.

It’s time to change that.

David and Evelyn Cannell
Waipahu

Wahine volleyball not getting its due

When will the University of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine volleyball team get the respect it deserves from the Star-Advertiser?

The losing football team gets three full pages of its loss to San Jose State in the Sports section ("Coming up empty," Nov. 22), while the Wahine, who have won 16 straight matches in the Big West, get their writeup on pages 5 and 9 ("Perfection in the Big West," Nov. 22).

I say put the football team on the back burner and Wahine volleyball on the front page.

Rodney Cazimero
Hawaii Kai

Use rail guideway for express buses

Instead of building a whole new power plant near West Loch to supply electricity to operate rail, let’s use the columns to support a roadway for express buses.

Not only could we avoid building the power plant, we could avoid building elevated rail stations at enormous cost. We could avoid having to initiate a brand-new system of operating driverless trains.

We could avoid paying to insulate and air-condition all the apartments along the route of the train, as LAX has had to do near the airport.

The elevated roadway could be used immediately by our existing bus system to speed commuters from their neighborhoods to town, using two reversible lanes — into town in the morning, out of town in the afternoon.

More people would use one bus that takes them from home to work than would take a bus to the rail station, wait for the train, then another bus to work.

Pearl Johnson
Pauoa Valley