• Housing and zoning • Salary Commission • Same-sex marriage • North Shore • Click It or Ticket Housing and zoning I appreciated John Love’s long and minute detailed letter concerning affordable housing on Kaua‘i. I differ, however, on a
• Housing and zoning
• Salary Commission
• Same-sex marriage
• North Shore
• Click It or Ticket
Housing and zoning
I appreciated John Love’s long and minute detailed letter concerning affordable housing on Kaua‘i. I differ, however, on a few of his points. First of all, we don’t need a complete revamp concerning zoning, land use laws etc. We have a perfectly good guidline called the General Plan and it should be strictly adhered to with no deviations. Second, for this island to maintain it’s incredible beauty, and draw to tourists and “rich people,” development must be curtailed. New construction should only take place in concert with the General Plan. Because of the fragile balance of this little island private rights to property must be strictly controlled. I never thought I would say it, but government needs to supply the affordable housing on this island with subsidies and permit efficiency to private developers for accomplishing the affordable housing goal. If left to private enterprise, Kaua‘i will just spiral us to the heights of becoming another Maui, or heaven forbid O‘ahu.
Gordon Oswald
Kapa‘a
Salary Commission
The use of Salary Commissions is a relatively recent phenomenon that has become ubiquitous at all levels of government and most recently in publicly traded corporations as well. I have no doubt that the members of these commissions are dedicated, responsible individuals and I thank Harold Stoessel and other members of the Kaua‘i commission for their service to the county.
But why have such commissions become so popular? In my opinion, politicians and corporate executives have found that the electorate or stockholders consider them greedy and self-serving when they try to raise pay for themselves and their patronage appointees. This is not a good way to get re-elected. So they set up salary commissions as a subterfuge — a sort of fig leaf they can hide behind when voting in such raises. The politicians can then ‘innocently’ increase their pay while the body politic either blames the salary commission or assumes that the raises must be warranted since an independent panel has made the decision.
Of course, the fly in this ointment is that the politicians select the salary commission members. No doubt, those appointed all have similar views on how government employees should be remunerated — and standards that mesh with those of their appointers. I doubt that any politician would consider appointing me to a salary commission..
I wonder if any salary commission, anywhere, has ever voted to lower salaries?
Stan Godes
Hanalei
Same-sex marriage
Yesterday, your paper printed a letter from Eric Oroc in which he makes a few confused and ill-informed statements. Most of them just made no sense, and so I shall pass them by. But, there was a closing statement that might mislead to a point that I felt I must speak up. Mr. Oroc asks: “how can we stop the courts and rogue local officials from overriding the will of the people who continue to oppose homosexual marriage by a wide margin?”
As this is a repeated, and far too common theme, I remind Mr. Oroc and anyone else who this is a champion and grand idea that slavery,
Jim Crow laws, segregation and racial as well as gender discrimination were not only the common will of the people of this country for over three quarters of its history but it was all upheld quite legally (but not morally) by its highest courts.
I am sure Mr. Oroc would not want his mother back in the era where she not only had no vote but could not own property, now would you?
Oh, and by the way, there are quotes in the Bible that uphold exactly those restrictions on mother.
Brent Kincaid
Lihu‘e
North Shore
In all the agony over the problems at the Hanalei Farmers and Crafts Market – the lack of market space, the lack of parking space, mud flats on the Wai‘oli Church soccer field, etc – one important factor is being ignored altogether: that the area from Anini to Ke‘e is the only community on this island that does not have a Neighborhood Center with amenities like ball fields and parking. This despite the fact that the residents in this area, who comprise less than 15% of the island’s population, pay out 32% of the County’s property tax revenue.
Even the Hanalei Police Sub-station has to contend with handed down equipment such as communications gear and computers. The rationale for this second-class citizenship used to be (meaning back in the fifties and sixties) that the NorthShorewas only populated by wealthy haoles and hippies, and so didn’t need any regular service. Unfortunately, this mentality still dominates the mind-set of our CountyGovernmenttoday.
This inequity was made painfully obvious during the aftermath of ‘Iniki. With no help from the County, the people, locals and haoles alike, on the North Shore finally had to organize and obtain funds from private sources such the Weinberg Foundation, to have a modest building constructed on land leased by the Wilcox family (at essentially zero cost); and thus created Hale Halawai Ohana ‘O Hanalei, now popularly referred to as the Hanalei Family Center. The operation of this center receives no help whatever from the County.
It isn’t just the wealthy haoles and hippies who are suffering from this discrimination; there are plenty of locals and Native Hawaiians who continue to suffer in silence.
In the mean time, Mayor Baptiste, Council Chair Asing and Council Member Yukimura all received votes in the five digits from this precinct in the last election.
How about it,
Mayor and Council? A little attention paid to the NorthShorecould reap big-time political benefits!
Raymond L. Chuan
Hanalei
Click It or Ticket
I support the much publicized Click It or Ticket program as a way to save lives on our very dangerous roads. But it upsets me to no end when I see high-schoolers jammed in the back of a pick-up, some sitting on the wheel well, as they depart campus each day during the school year. To allow this makes no sense to me.
Where do “unrestrained passengers” in the back of a truck end up after a sudden stop, weaving or an accident? One more gripe: No sane person would believe the allowable places to pass (broken center lines) on the road between Anahola and Kilauea.
Surely tourists can’t be expected to know the hidden dangers.
The state should review this section and modify it accordingly.
There are ways to save lives and prevent accidents if we all would work on it.
Charles E. Roessler
Kilauea
