The City and County of Honolulu is looking to ship out its trash to Washington.

Why not? We already ship our prisoners to Texas and Oklahoma. Why not send what’s ours away for other communities to deal with?

And of course it makes sense! It costs twice as much to ship it away then it does to take care of it here. Money well spent if it’s out of the way…

Seriously, I’m at a loss here. The ideas that come in to solve the challenges we face do not seem like they are adequately debated and/or thought through.

Look the rail situation. It gets more clouded each day. You got a 4 billion dollar legacy project that none of the current elected officials are going to have to with deal the endgame repercussions as it’s not going to be fully operational for another ten years. I predict that an Oahu Councilmember will run for a state elected office and get it and then hypocritically come down on the City when the **it hits the fan. Every week, almost daily, something new comes up with the rail. You got landowners that will now be forced out and “given fair market value” which I’d guess is no where near what they’d make if their business stays put and/or they were sell to a private investor.

I suppose that is the nature of politics. Again I ponder and ask, how does the community really get to weigh in? How does the Average Joe and Jill Da Kine’s voice concerns and remain in the know on it all? I never wanted to be a community watch-dog as Malia Zimmerman likes to call herself . But maybe that’s what it takes. More of us voicing our concerns in all media ways possible. I’m willing to bet myself and others in the community could connect better with the everyman and everywoman than some of the douche bags that be.

But then again, maybe I’m just an angry pedestrian.

Shoots.

JMAW

The City and County of Honolulu City Council members will be meeting to discuss the issue of mass transit on Oahu, the most populous island in Hawaii, for the 5th time, yes that’s five times, today.  The issue has been quite the nightmare and is being explored to death, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on where you stand on the issue.

For advocates of the issue, getting it right the first time is important, so it makes sense for the Council members to be in agreement before implementing a project that could rival the Iraq War in cost (3.7 billion cost, for one county, c’mon).  It’s also important that they hammer out a few details before breaking ground because some of the areas that have been selected initially (Salt Lake) don’t make so much sense (how about linking the UH campuses, another example of students getting it in the …).  Other benefits include clearing up traffic on the congested H1, H2, and at times H3.  Eh, here’s an idea, why not not build an H4, it’d be cheaper, nah, nah, I kid.

Opponents of Mass Transit argue the pollution family (noise, physical blight, and environmental impact) as the reason for not implementing this project.  Others are supportive of the project but wish a different type of rail choice was made over the more reliable but noisy steel.  There is a push to get the Phileas rail installed.  Phileas is a bus transit system that runs on a fixed track and the biggest thing I’ve heard about it is that it makes less noise.  

All this fuss about noise.  I wonder if it really makes that much difference.  I mean a leaf blower and a lawn mower are both loud in my opinion so does it really matter if one is louder than the other?

Will this issue be resolved today or anytime soon?  Is this just a legacy project for Mayor Mufi?  Stay tuned same rail station (that’s a funny one), same rail time….

Dunna dunna dunna dunna Rail!!! (Old School Batman reference just in case you no know)

Shoots.

JMAW