On Day 57

I have read a full text copy of our new Mayor's first state of the city address -- and I was left with a few questions

Although the blame game is quite clear through a substantial portion of the text -- I have always wondered how far does the traditional concepts of raising fees and looking to hire more, improve deteriorating facilities, and maintain the quality of existing facilities

Anyways here are my questions -- doesn't fixing sewers mean ripping up roads usually -- I mean, they are mostly not in areas that aren't covered with pavement -- so fix sewers equals perhaps fucking up traffic -- ok, it's time for sacrifices on all our parts not to take dumps and pee infrequently or else face the wrath of traffic in our pursuit of bodily comfort -- an odd but probable consequence

Okay, potholes suck -- but to regularly maintain the road like in 1989 -- all I can think is that more crews on the roads means, well more traffic, doesn't it? I mean, I'm fascinating watching the slow roller roll back and forth -- while I do not roll on the street alongside large trucks and SUVs

Dumping -- you know, I had always thought that the whole abandoned vehicle, dump the washing machine thing was only an outlying area problem -- well, no no not anymore -- while I was at training last week in the Ala Moana area, I saw three corners that were piled high with household crap like DOORS -- DOORS?!??!?, stovetops, washing machines, busted woodpieces, several pieces of McD rubbish -- yeah, there's bulky item pickup and then there's people who should throw their rubbish away properly -- but hey, more bulky item pickup in the early morning -- you know what that means, yes yes, what I love the most, trucks and other large service vehicles on the freeway along with you during the commute -- beautiful

Okay, so far, our mayor has proposed three ways to increase traffic headaches -- although in the long term, you would like to flush, you would like to stop getting alignments and popped tires fixed every month, and you don't like all this crap put out with legit bulky item refuse

Okay, so short term traffic is obvious -- but like with all the ideas to reduce traffic in this speech, like a ferry, mass transit, buses, moving stuff out to Kapolei, etc. -- well, do you really think with all the cars driving every morning with a substantial % of them with ONLY ONE passenger, the driver -- that all of a sudden these people will see the error of the ways -- in other ways, how they are adding to their own misery -- and join in the mass transit solution

Call me stupid but I think people are more selfish than practical

In the end, I think the speech got across the idea that there's a lot of work to be done due to some misplaced priorities in the past ADM -- that I do not disagree with -- the part that was kind of hard to swallow was this continued implied you should have elected me last time bullcrap that doesn't do anything except make the speech longer by 15 minutes

I think the way we measure our new mayor is on how life here in the city doesn't make obvious to us the problems of it -- smooth driving, the arrival of emergency response when we have emergencies -- the ability to flush away our logs of waste -- it's certainly not glamorous, I guess that's why I wonder why anyone wants to be a part of city government