A new Legislature and a new City Council are under way. New mayor for Oahu. What are we in for?<\/p>\n
I sense from my emails, those “letters to the Legislature” in the Star-Advertiser <\/I>and general chatter that people are fed up with the rapid pace of development, especially in “the country” – Waiahole to Haleiwa.<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n
Unhappiness over Public Lands Development Corporation is at the rebellion level. People see it as a sneaky build-out initiative.<\/p>\n
We are way overbuilt and over-trafficked, and the infrastructure is neither sufficient nor in working order.<\/p>\n
I note this offering from a reader of the Ian Lind blog:<\/p>\n
“I have some experience with life in both Hawaii and Oregon. Oregon is run like Germany, and I mean that in a complimentary way. In the public sphere everything works, everything is clean, people are invariably polite, conscientious and efficient. Hawaii, on the other hand, is more like Bangladesh or Uzbekistan.”<\/p>\n
And this Facebook posting by the once-would-be-mayor Panos Prevedouros:<\/p>\n
“Hawaii is … a Third World society with First World clothes and amenities.”<\/p>\n
Oahu was a slower, less-crowded place when I arrived in January 1963. There was plenty of parking, even in Waikiki.<\/p>\n
Bars weren’t allowed to be called that, so they just had signs saying “cocktails.”<\/p>\n
The high-end eatery was Canlis, with either steak or fish, baked potato or rice, and the Canlis salad. There was a broil-your-own steak house ($5.95 with baked potato and salad bar) on Beach Walk. Chinatown was still Chinese and full of late-night saimin hole-in-the-walls.<\/p>\n
I wish we’d have said no more suburban housing developments and no new car unless you showed a receipt for shipping your old one off-island. After all, we are an island. No limitless land like Las Vegas. How many people, houses and cars can we stuff in?<\/p>\n
I do wish we had a better selection of high-paying jobs to keep more of our kids here, but we cannot seem to attract high-tech companies. They cite mediocre schools, an untrained workforce and being a minimum five-hour plane ride from the Mainland.<\/p>\n
We had a chance to have a spaceport and space academy on the Big Island, but people shot it down as intrusive.<\/p>\n
The train is called intrusive. Apparently more cars, more subdivisions and more strip malls are not.<\/p>\n
And wouldn’t you say, given the trend nationwide, it’s time for us to make this a same-gender marriage state?<\/p>\n
Also, shouldn’t we drop those public employee funded-pensions for future hires in favor of 401(k) or annuity plans? We’re $21 million underfunded, and making that up seems hopeless.<\/p>\n
And as Marcus Oshiro of the state House Finance Committee said: This is not the year for public worker pay raises, and they are not likely.<\/p>\n
Four years ago we had 45,908 full-time state employees budgeted at $10.37 billion. In 2012, we had fewer employees – 44,747 – budgeted at $11 billion. But those forced reductions in job slots (RIFs) have seriously crimped public services and really need to be restored – meaning a higher payroll. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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