It’s too expensive!
It’s too expensive!
Has anyone noticed that according to the news, most people leaving our state to resettle on the mainland are retirees?
They are leaving because it is getting too expensive to live here. These retirees are mostly on fixed incomes and cannot afford to live here any longer with ever-increasing prices for goods and services, including utilities, vehicle registration fees and on and on. Yes, HELCO now wants to raise their electrical costs!
We have become a magnet for the rich, well-to-do and developers who supposedly agree to build “affordable housing” along with their proposed housing.
Questions: Affordable for whom? Their contracts contain more escape clauses than a block of Swiss cheese.
My work includes approval of shipping containers for people in the process of shipping their household goods to the mainland. Of the past four, I have asked the owners, “Why are you leaving Hawaii?” Their answers: “It is getting too expensive to live here any longer!”
These retirees have worked hard most of their lives to have a home here in the islands where they could enjoy their retirement and now they are virtually being banned from doing so.
And our so-called officials, including those elected to the Legislature on Oahu, just don’t give a damn. To them, I say, “You better start saving your money ’cause you are going to need every penny of it and more when you retire!”
Ron Baptista
Mountain View
‘Stupid’ ferry
It’s back again! (Somebody forgot to put a stake through its heart.) The stupid ferry!
You remember the one. The boat that nobody wanted (except a bunch of homeless people and senators on Oahu).
The Neighbor Islands were totally against it. It was blocked on Maui and the state lost its financial butt in the bankruptcy. So, what has changed? Nothing, except some federal morons (and state senators) are throwing money at the idea again.
The recent Associated Press article in the Tribune-Herald (“State’s ferry dreams face cost, public opinion hurdles,” Dec. 30) gives a long list of why it never could, would or will work.
This is just another pork barbecue for the consultant industry (remember the Honolulu airport?). After many meetings and lunches (probably at the hostess bars) the consultants will get paid to prove (again!) it won’t work. This will finally end it. Not!
A bad idea will never die in our state, as long as somebody can find a way to use it to suck money out of the taxpayers.
William Wade
Kehena