Why has school already started? September is often the hottest month in Hawaii. Why open the school year earlier and earlier, so September is always included, instead of later, when the weather starts to cool?

School used to start in September and end in June. September to June is not sacred. But it makes no sense to include one of the hottest months if we’re going to change the school year. Not only should we sympathize with the students without air conditioning; it costs big bucks to air-condition the few schools with it.

So next year, let’s start school in October. Save on the electricity bill and help the sweating students.

Pearl Johnson
Pauoa Valley

Repair restroom at Magic Island

City Parks Director Michele Nekota had a big week, including an interview with the Star-Advertiser (“Michele Nekota,” Star-Advertiser, Name in the News, July 31), and a press conference announcing the new shower at Ala Moana Park.

However, the media failed to ask her the tough questions. Why is one of only two urinals at the heavily utilized Magic Island men’s restroom been out of commission for weeks?

Please cut the happy talk and deliver results.

Glenn Young
Nuuanu

Treat mentally ill in proper facilities

Yes, criminal (“Mental illness appears criminal,” Star-Advertiser, Aug. 3).

Criminal that the public has to tolerate these people and their behavior, the suffering the parents have to endure, the suffering the mentally ill have to endure. Nothing has been proven effective since the government started closing the mental facilities in the early 1970s.

The answer? Remove these individuals from the public sector. Care for them in a proper facility. Protect the public and the individual.

Once people become adults, no one can force them to take their meds. If they take the meds, they don’t feel right if they stop the meds, they behave inappropriately. We hear their screams in Waikiki, we see them wandering, we see them attacking others.

Helpless parents wait for something horrible to happen, then it is too late.

Diane Tippett
Waikiki

Beware company that supports Bush

NextEra gives Jeb Bush $1 million plus to his PAC, apparently as a payback to Bush for his help in pushing through a 2009 rate increase for Florida customers (“NextEra gives $1M to Bush effort,” Star-Advertiser, Aug. 2).

Jeb Bush would love to continue the war that his war-mongering brother, George W. Bush, started and funded with the lives of our young men and women. For NextEra to help fund his campaign reflects the immoral mentality of this company.

Everyone should do their own due diligence on this company via the Internet to see just how NextEra used its vast political powers to keep solar companies out of Florida.

Gov. David Ige is absolutely correct. This is not a company we need or want in Hawaii.

James l. Robinson
Aiea

Construction hurts Ala Moana residents

Most of us residents who live in the area near Ala Moana Center will be happy when construction there is done.

Those of us who live in the Hobron Lane/Ena Road area should have a portion of our tax money returned to us because we are blocked from using part of the roads we help pay for.

Five days a week, traffic is a nightmare on Ala Moana and Piikoi due to traffic lanes being used for construction work. And to a lesser degree, the same problem exists on Kalakaua in front of the convention center due to more construction.

I get frustrated every day and I can only imagine how the residents feel where the work on the rail is going on.

Loretta Falls
Waikiki

‘Affordable’ rentals won’t be enough

Bob Nakata and Catherine Graham’s demand to create more “affordable” rentals is not a solution and would burden us with only more expenses (“Don’t stop at short-term fixes in effort to solve housing crisis,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, July 22).

It does not make sense to create more affordable rentals, because they are like a sponge attracting and soaking up newcomers.

As long as we have no control over in-migration, problems associated with high housing costs will just grow.

Volker Hildebrandt
Kaneohe

Red Hill fuel tanks have been reliable

Thank you for the article by Rear Adm. John Fuller on the Red Hill underground tank farm (“Navy committed to keeping Oahu drinking water from Red Hill safe,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Aug. 2).

The Japanese navy on Dec. 7, 1941, failed to attack the 4.5 million barrels of fuel oil that were stored in surface tanks around Pearl Harbor.

If those oil tanks had been destroyed that morning, consider the impact of the huge fires on the shipyard’s facilities and the effect that the loss of fuel oil might have had on our victory at Midway.

In 1941, Red Hill was already under construction. The Navy Public Works officer who authorized the project stated that the first requirement was absolute reliability and that the tunnels “must be completely free of all leaks.”

The project received its first oil in 1943 and has a magnificent record of providing an essential supply of fuel for our Navy.

Alan S. Lloyd
Kailua