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Remember Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football? Beginning every football season Lucy would convince Charlie she'd place-hold the football while he kicked it. Year after year Lucy jerked the ball away at the last second, propelling Charlie into airborne humiliation as she smiled smugly at another successful deception.
Analogous to this Charlie Brown comic-strip joke are the successive efforts to renege on providing safe passage for Kihei high school students crossing Piilani Highway. The football is the requirement for a pedestrian underpass/overpass. Lucy represents the disingenuous Oahu-centric education- and transportation-department cabal, and poor betrayed Charlie personifies everyone believing Lucy's commitment to place-hold a separated student crossing.
After years of manipulatively jerking away the underpass/overpass football, "Oahu Lucy's" latest deception is attempting to convince "Maui Charlie" that a pedestrian walkway across a four-lane state highway roundabout is more safe and efficient than an underpass/overpass (see the Nov. 6 letter to the editor about the Maui Lani roundabout). C'mon Charlie, you can trust Lucy.
And, "Oahu Lucy" promises that if, years after the school opens, the roundabout has proven unsafe or inefficient, she'll reconsider an underpass/overpass. Lucy would never deceive you Charlie.
After all these assurances and promises, would "Oahu Lucy" jerk the underpass/overpass football away from "Maui Charlie"? Absolutely, in a New York minute!
Actually, Lucy once held the football for Charlie. After his critical illness, Lucy sympathetically let Charlie kick the ball. Would "Oahu Lucy" reconsider an underpass/overpass following a student death or injury in the roundabout crossing? Nah . . . only happens in the comics.
Tom Sams
Kihei