PROPERTY TAX

PERSONAL EXEMPTION IS NOW MEANINGLESS

The mayor's recent comments about the city's property tax hike fall right in line with how our politicians regard the public. They don't!

The city has had a windfall of profit on the backs of every homeowner in the state for the last 10 years. The personal exemption of $40,000 has become meaningless in light of the escalating property values and increased tax rates. The homeowner exemption needs to be based on a percentage to keep the playing field level.

Our mayor and City Council will never wane in their lust for our money, and they know that the public has little chance of correcting their course. They spend like drunken sailors.

The homeowner exemption needs to be set at 30 percent — a figure arrived at by comparing the average cost of a home to the dollar exemption amount at the time when it had meaning.

Shame on the mayor and the council for continually pounding the citizens of this island. Take care of our money. Don't waste it or steal it, and you will find that the coffers are quite full.

PROCUREMENT

SHAPIRO IS WRONG ON TRANSIT CRITICISM

Columnist Dave Shapiro is right when he points out that there is a needless furor over a transit contract. But he is way off-base in where he places blame.

First, there is no no-bid contract awarded to any friend or political supporter of the mayor. There is one contract between the Department of Transportation Services and Parsons Brinkerhoff.

If Shapiro and Councilmember Charles Djou, for that matter, would educate themselves a little more, each would know that the Brooks Act sets the federal requirements for procurement of professional design, architectural and engineering services. To put that contract out to competitive sealed bid would violate federal law.

Shapiro errs again when he states that after the contract was awarded, the administration shifted work. The contract was signed in late August. Nothing has been shifted since. No wonder Congressman Neil Abercrombie was rightfully concerned about the baseless allegations from Djou to the inspector general.

In fact, in late July, Parsons e-mailed the potential subcontractors it had asked to be a part of its response to a request for qualifications and told them that until a contract was signed and agreed to by both parties signing the contract, the list was not official, and no one on the list should count their eggs before they hatched.

This apparently is what Communications Pacific did, and when confronted with the e-mail, CommPac President Kitty Lagareta conveniently wasn't able to recall it.

To question the mayor's leadership on the issue is nothing short of insulting. He has far and away led the move to improve transportation for island residents.

RAIL

PLAN SYSTEM WELL

Let's hope that this rail system is well planned. This is a lot of money for such a short distance. Will the same proponents for the rail system today be the same dissidents of tomorrow crying foul to high taxes should it not work out as planned?

MARATHON

DIAMOND HEAD ROAD BELONGS TO ALL OF US

Shame on you, Barbara Cook, for writing to complain about the Honolulu Marathon (Letters, Dec. 15). You wrote that the races are holding residents hostage in their own neighborhoods, that you have no freedom, and why can't the entrants run on another road?

Well, this is Hawai'i, and here in Hawai'i there is this thing called aloha — you may have heard of it. It means a lot of things, but being less selfish is one of them. You may own your house and the land beneath it, but you do not own Diamond Head Road. The last time I checked, all of our tax dollars paid for that. I did not run in the marathon, but for the 28,000 people who did, it must have meant something special to them.

The Honolulu Marathon is for a good cause and helps our local tourism industry, which in turn helps provide jobs for local people. I'm truly sorry that you were so inconvenienced on this one day out of the whole year and felt the need to gripe. If you want to trade your house with an ocean view for my house in Leeward O'ahu (with not a marathon runner in sight), you've got a deal. If not, just relax and enjoy the view.

STUDENTS BENEFIT

KAIMUKI HIGH HAS CLOSE TIES TO MARATHON

The Honolulu Marathon provides educational and financial benefits for the students of Kaimuki High School. Students gain work experience in catering at the Honolulu Marathon Dinner Party, held on Friday night before the big race on Sunday.

For the past four years, the nonprofit Kaimuki students, grades 9 through 12, have been working as wait help with Center Plate to do the Honolulu Marathon dinner party at the Waikiki Shell. Students work the buffet line and gain working knowledge of banquet food and beverage service for 7,500 diners, this year's count.

The money earned from the function goes to the Kaimuki High School's paddle, swim and soccer team uniforms and expenses, the Travel Industry Management and the Polynesian club activities and field trips.

The work experience and financial benefits that the Kaimuki High student gains from working the marathon is a win-win situation for education and the community.

Hawai'i is a tourist state, and the Honolulu Marathon promotes the aloha spirit to the world and to Kaimuki High School. Viva Honolulu Marathon!

POLITICAL POWER

FULL PUBLIC FUNDING OF STATE ELECTIONS NEEDED

I wholeheartedly agree with your editorial statement that in Hawai'i politics, "the bankroller and the voter should be one and the same." We should now extend this principle to local fundraising and pass a law creating a full public funding option for elections to statewide office.

Each of us is allowed only one vote — why are some of us entitled to much greater political power based on the size of our bank accounts?

It is fundamentally undemocratic to allow wealth to influence politics, whether it flows from the Mainland or in our own backyard.

SPYING

BUSH, HOOVER PUT COUNTRY TO SHAME

Your Dec. 18 front page says it all. President Bush wants to spy on us, and that reprobate, J. Edgar Hoover, spied on Patsy Mink, no doubt for her Japanese ancestry.

It is a shame that this garbage is coming out now that her husband is no longer alive to defend her.

Hoover represents all that is shameful and ugly in America, and his name should be stripped from the FBI building. He spent valuable time and resources trying to defame Martin Luther King Jr. and many others, to hide the fact that his own life and career were entirely questionable.

This is why Bush's zeal in allowing spying on us should never be allowed. He speaks of "freedom and democracy and fair elections" for Iraq while violating them here.

WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE?

HOUSING PRICES KILLING THE DREAM

Where is the outrage about the increasing price of a house on O'ahu? As reported (Advertiser Dec. 3), the November median price of houses on O'ahu was $640,500. Exhilarating news for investors, mixed for homeowners, numbing for some, denial for others, and devastating for families with children. Is everyone blind or silenced about the ramification of these prices?

Do the math: A home at $640,500 with a $128,100 cash down payment (20 percent) carries a mortgage of $512,400; the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6 percent computes to $3,072 (principal and interest only); since lenders require a loan-to-income ratio of 28 percent, the monthly household income needed is $10,971 per month, or $131,652 per year, to qualify.

The numbers get grimmer: Subtracting the reported (Advertiser, Oct. 23) annual median household income of $67,750 from the needed $131,652 to qualify results in a gap of $63,902. This gap is almost equivalent to the median income itself; in other words, almost two annual median household incomes are needed to purchase one median-priced home.

The prosperity, happiness and joy that blossom from homeownership no longer exist for a generation of families and beyond. Being middle class with a solid upbringing and a good education combined with working hard while raising a family is just not good enough. The dream is dead.

Homeownership builds communities, provides safety and harmony in the neighborhoods, and does wonders for families raising keiki. Parents and keiki both thrive from its stability. Yet the very ones who benefit the most from the added space, privacy and security a house bestows are ripped off from the housing market. How cruel and shameful that the coming generation cannot reap the fruits of their labors even during a booming economy.

And it only gets worse for a family without a house; either they live in a crowded home with extended family or must compete in the high-priced rental market that prefers couples more than families with keiki. A nomadic style of living, by moving from place to place, further destabilizes the development for a healthy family life. Families need roots to flourish.

Disgustingly, both housing and rental markets react apathetically to the needs and well-being of families with keiki. The market's message is cold clear: tough.

The dream of homeownership is still alive in other lands; houses at half the median price with double the living space, "but it ain't home." An unprecedented exodus is inevitable and already under way. The next two generations and beyond: lost. The absence of outrage at the price for a home on O'ahu is outrageous.

OVERTIME

WEEKEND WORK WOULD BRING SCHOOLS UP TO PAR

I am a plumber with the DOE facilities maintenance branch, and I for one am tired of hearing about the backlog of repairs. The red tape and hoops you have to go through to get things done in this system is ridiculous.

When I first came to work for DAGS, then the DOE, we had our own people working overtime seven days a week doing renovations of entire schools, and it made sense. The plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters and even masons were ready, willing and able to work the overtime.

If you ask the schools that were renovated in-house, you would find that they were all more than satisfied with the work we did and we did it at a substantial savings to the state. In June 2004, the state stopped our in-house renovations, saying that our main job was repair and maintenance, not construction. What did we do? We went to work overtime for Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawai'i, helping it repair all the public housing that had a backlog of its own.

The backlog at the schools is now at half a billion dollars, and instead of fixing the schools on weekends, our men were working at Kuhio Park Terrace. Go figure.

We have been asking to work overtime for over a year, and it is obvious that there is a lot of work to be done and we should be the ones to do it whenever possible. We don't get paid a lot, and the overtime would be win/win for all involved.

We have three plumbers for 45 schools — you do the math — and every school thinks that it is the most important, as it should. But we are limited as to what we can do. Now we have workers who want to work and put in the extra time to try to get the schools up to par and make some extra money in the process, but we are not allowed to, and I just want your readers to know that it's not because the workers don't want to work.