• Elected officials should be opposing dairy • Focus on the future, seniors • Raising taxes is ridiculous Elected officials should be opposing dairy The dairy being installed in Mahaulepu is a very bad idea. All of the letters to the editor expressing their discontent
• Elected officials should be opposing dairy • Focus on the future, seniors • Raising taxes is ridiculous
Elected officials should be opposing dairy
The dairy being installed in Mahaulepu is a very bad idea. All of the letters to the editor expressing their discontent with it list numerous reasons why it shouldn’t be allowed to go forward. All of the reasons make sense and we are faced with the inevitable outcome if it heads toward production.
So why don’t we hear anybody in office voicing their objections to it? If you listen to those that are for the dairy (just like the ones that are for the GMO companies), it will provide money and jobs, period!
If you try to reason with them by mentioning all the data, personal letters and evidence pointing out the obvious downside to what is going on, almost always you hear the same response.
They say, “That’s not true.” They also use the phrase “self-sustainable” even though there is no food being produced for us here on Kauai.
The powers that be are only looking at it in this manner: money and jobs. They don’t consider what is pono.
Syngenta isn’t worried about winning any lawsuit, they just want to delay for as long as they can. They can’t really win with all the history of them losing lawsuits around the world that revolve around the exact same thing, but to put off the ending will at least give them time to keep on doing what they are doing.
We don’t want to have to play catch-up and undo the dairy. Do we need to beg the council to stop it?
Jack Custer
Kalaheo
Focus on the future, seniors
Waimea High School should frame the photo of Mariebeth Watanabe that filled page B-1 of the May 6 issue of The Garden Island. After framing, every graduating senior should study it. Look at how focused Meriebeth is! No wonder she earned top honors in softball at Eastern Oregon.
Stay focused seniors and you’ll make us proud of your accomplishments. Never lose track of what you set out to do as you go to bat in life for your future.
Mahalo!
Stu Burley
Lawai Valley
Raising taxes is ridiculous
So, we have property owners providing two-thirds of revenue which has doubled in about 10 years and which supports about 1,500 county employees providing services (many of which are totally unneeded) to about 60,000 residents and 18,000-20,000 tourists? And the only solution the mayor and council can apparently come up with is to raise taxes and fees even more!
This place is so mismanaged it has become totally ridiculous. The traffic has become unbearable. The roads are worse than many Third World countries. The other day I drove through the old Lihue Big Save parking lot and saw about 50 county vehicles sitting unused. Anybody heard of car sharing?
Every development is green-lighted as that will provide even more revenue for a government that seems to exist only to perpetuate itself, drive out any middle income residents and lure as many millionaires and billionaires as possible to move here.
Meanwhile, we continue to milk the tourist cow by marketing this island as some sort of paradise, which it long ago ceased to be.
After over 30 years here, my dream of living in a pristine rural environment on this still beautiful island has been totally destroyed by overdevelopment, overpopulation and the total mismanagement of both. Anybody heard the word moratorium?
There are revenue solutions. However, for whatever reasons the county refuses to implement them. Growing industrial hemp on the Westside is one. Growing medical MJ for export to other states is another. Ethanol production is still another. I could go on but won’t as our elected government is totally unresponsive anyway.
As a low-income, retired senior, I now face the choice of slowly going broke here trying to pay ever increasing taxes (realizing that it’s only going to get worse because our asleep electorate will just keep voting in their old friends and classmates) or voting with my feet. Some may be happy when and if I choose the latter!
Michael Wells
Moloaa
