WAIKIKI

CELEBRATE HALLOWEEN À LA BRUNCH ON BEACH

As Halloween night nears, I remember last year's festivities along Kalakaua Avenue. The sidewalks on both sides were crowded to the point of claustrophobia with drunken revelers. We are obviously at a point where the sidewalks cannot handle the onslaught of partiers.

My issue is not with the partiers. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and the police do an excellent job of keeping order.

Why not close the street on Halloween night, allowing for easier movement of both police and citizens?

Police would be better able to stop fights and combat underage drinking, and tourists could use sidewalks without sidling through belligerent celebrants. If we can shut down Kalakaua on a Friday afternoon for a marching band parade, why can't we close the street from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. for Halloween? Is it because Halloween doesn't help the city's coffers? Hmm ... very curious.

Perhaps a city-sanctioned block party on Kalakaua, much like Brunch on the Beach, might be the answer. An 18-and-older event with beer gardens and corporate sponsors might persuade the city to restore some order and civility to this night.

SPENDING

NEW EDUCATION LAW SHOULD BE FLUNKED

So what exactly has the Reinventing Education Act of 2004 changed?

This law gave principals the right to expend, not control, about 70 percent of their budgets. That was a deliberate choice of words by the Legislature. The committee on weights established by this law, and charged with developing the weighted student formula, recommended 48 percent of the Department of Education budget be expended by the principals at the school level at their discretion and an additional 24 percent of the budget be expended by the principals, but earmarked for specific categories or programs.

The Board of Education and DOE have chosen to ignore the recommendations of this committee and instead are adopting a weighted student formula that allows only 10 percent discretionary spending for the principals in the first year of a four-year phase-in. Will that make any difference in student achievement? No. Does that empower our principals? No. Will it get the money to the classrooms our kids sit in? No.

Under the plan that Gov. Lingle was advancing, 90 percent of funding would be spent at the school level, entirely at the discretion of the principal, with no school losing funds.

Hawai'i is still at the bottom in National Assessment of Educational Progress testing, and yet the DOE wants a $453 million increase in its budget. What is all that money for? School-level spending that will reach into our classrooms and energize our teachers, principals and students? I doubt it.

With test scores falling, the spirit of weighted student formula being distorted and misrepresented, and the DOE still asking for almost $500 million more to feed its failing bureaucracy, perhaps we should call this the Deinventing Education Act of 2004.

FUEL PUMP

DRIVING ON EMPTY NOT WORTH THE RISKS

My husband has background training as a auto mechanic. One area of training he would like to share is: Never allow the fuel tank to run dry.

The fuel pump in a vehicle with fuel injection is located in the fuel tank. The liquid fuel acts as a coolant to keep the pump cool. Whenever the pump runs dry without any fuel flowing through it, you run the risk of overheating and burning up the pump. This would require the pump to be replaced.

Is this worth saving a few cents waiting for a lower gas price?

MICHELLE WIE

GENEROSITY IN LINE WITH OTHER PRO GOLFERS

Carlino Giampolo (Letters, Oct. 7) criticized Michelle Wie for her integrity in making a gesture to "give back to the community" and for giving a "donation of $500,000 to Hurricane Katrina victims" because "normal 15-year-olds" do not do that and "that is something more meaningfully reserved for adults."

Needless to say, Michelle Wie, who recently turned 16, is not a normal teen. In her chosen profession, she is an adult. In this day and age when you think every frontier has been conquered, she is breaking new ground and pioneering into formerly unknown territory. She is truly courageous and a role model for anyone who dares to challenge to be the best in the world.

To her credit, she is following the lead of professional golfers who, as a group, are the most generous of all in professional sports. As for giving back to the community, as a junior golfer in Hawai'i and America, she did not get to where she is without freebies from public, commercial and private individuals, agencies and organizations. That includes thousands of dollars worth of golf rounds, instruction, equipment and support, and thousands of hours of community volunteer participation in junior, amateur and pro golf activities.

My congratulations to her and my best wishes for continued success in her chosen profession.

UNPLAYABLE LIE

MICHELLE WIE'S DROP WITHIN ACCEPTED AREA

Bill Kwon's Oct. 20 explanation of Michelle Wie's disqualification is wrong.

His accompanying diagram (attributable to Greg Nichols, PGA) shows the allowable drop area as being behind a straight line, perpendicular to a line from the unplayable lie to the hole. The result is two right triangles, with a greater distance from the hole to the two points indicated by the two club lengths. The correct allowable drop area is outside of the arc of a circle with its center at the hole and radius to the unplayable lie.

Ironically, the diagram seems to show that Michelle's alleged incorrect drop was legitimate. Try it with a compass and see that the questioned drop distance seems identical to that from the unplayable lie.

A critical point: Was Sunday's re-created measurement wrongly taken to Sunday's hole location, or properly to Saturday's hole location? And how was Saturday's unplayable lie and Michelle's drop locations accurately determined? (And was the Sports Illustrated reporter able to see the location of the unplayable lie on Saturday?)

Aren't the existing protocols of golf professionals to accept the good-faith visual estimates of participants? Certainly a pro is not expected to pace off or use a string to verify his drops.

PARKING, DRIVING

MOPED RIDERS SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

I read with interest Bob Krauss' article "Mopeds deserve a break" on Oct. 19. I agree with Mr. Krauss that mopeds look like a reasonable alternative for travel as gas prices rise. I am sure that moped owners will disagree that they are not Third World, poor, underprivileged and the soup-kitchen society.

However, a moped should not be classified as a bicycle. Once a motor is attached, it should be classified as a motorized mode of transportation and treated as such. Moped drivers should be cited for illegal parking and reckless driving if they are not complying with the rules of the road.

I have a serious problem when they park all over the sidewalk, blocking pedestrian traffic, zip in and out of traffic with total disregard for the lane markings, lock them to parking meters and no-parking signs, and tamper with the muffler so you have to plug your ears as they speed by. It is time to do something.

I saw a handicapped person in a motorized wheelchair who could not continue on his way because the sidewalk was blocked with student mopeds on Fort Street Mall. That is why it is not ridiculous to give parking tickets to riders who park on the sidewalks.

You are correct in saying that we should not discourage moped riders. But the police need to encourage them to follow the law. Don't get me wrong. There are some very considerate moped drivers. The problem is, I can only count them on one hand.

CURBSIDE

CITY'S HANDS TIED ON RECYCLING

Jeff Mikulina of the Sierra Club Hawai'i Chapter shows an ignorance of the city's current solid-waste disposal program, which includes recycling, when he asks about the Hannemann administration dropping one curbside plan and looking to implement another ("Curbside recycling delay exasperates proponents," Oct. 19).

First of all, there have been no cans or bottles collected curbside for more than a year. There is no curbside recycling of bottles and cans taking place.

The company with the recycling contract awarded by the previous administration had tax and permit problems. The City Council did not want that company involved in island recycling. Our administration canceled that contract.

We expedited the solicitation of new bids and received three. We began our examination of those bids when one of the bidders challenged the bid of the "company willing to pay the city to collect the waste," as Mikulina is quoted as saying. That challenge has triggered another investigation. And depending on the outcome, the city decision can be further challenged both administratively and legally. In other words, it could be years before all the legal hurdles are cleared, and then we'd have to start all over and be open to challenge once again.

So the Hannemann administration asked that if we couldn't do curbside recycling of bottles and cans anytime soon, why kid people? Realistically, what can we do?

We can help the state with its HI5 redemption program. Consumers need more redemption centers, and the Hannemann administration is looking at making more available.

And we can expand the recycling of green waste. Right now, 200,000 tons of green waste is generated on O'ahu every year. We are only recycling one-fourth of that amount.

Still, Honolulu's recycling rate is 58 percent, significantly higher than the nationwide average of 34 percent, and we're looking to take it even higher.

What Mikulina and others need to understand is that the Hannemann administration is totally committed to reducing the use of landfills as our solid-waste disposal method, with or without the curbside recycling of bottles and cans.

PACKED PRISONS

THE 'BOOK 'EM, DANNO' MENTALITY MUST BE ENDED

In her Oct. 2 commentary, Marilyn Brown gets it right. In seven years of teaching in Hawai'i prisons, I can say it is no exaggeration to state that at least one-half of the inmates do not belong in prison.

Since Charles Marsland, through Keith Kaneshiro and currently with Peter Carlisle, plus state Attorney General Mark Bennett and U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo, the "Book 'em, Danno" mentality seems to prevail. "Do the crime, do the time" has resulted in people going to prison for "crimes" that harm only themselves and immediate family — like spending money on drugs instead of food.

An arbitrary and capricious parole board has been slow to release and quick to re-incarcerate — packing the prisons with ever more inmates.

In-prison drug programs generally have long waiting lists; and some of those programs, notably KASHBOX, are proven ineffective if true outcomes are reviewed. In-prison education efforts are underfunded in terms of teaching cadres and caught up in a variety of union rules determining who does and who leads what. Corrections Programs Services education relies on the DOE and the community colleges to fund and staff academic programs in prison while consistently claiming a lack of funds for any form of enrichment programs. OHA has been slow and reluctant to address the high percentage of Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian inmates with targeted monies.

A governor with some form of vision, combined with understanding of realities as outlined by Brown, Kat Brady and Peter Gellatly in your Oct. 2 paper, would have the potential for leadership into something better than you describe. Neither Ben Cayetano nor Linda Lingle did, or seem to be doing, what is necessary.