• Olohena Bridge • Creditability of schools • Ka Leo meetings • Property taxes Olohena Bridge I do not believe the mayor should be held responsible for the increased traffic to the Kapa‘a area. We all know that the increased
• Olohena Bridge
• Creditability of schools
• Ka Leo meetings
• Property taxes
Olohena Bridge
I do not believe the mayor should be held responsible for the increased traffic to the Kapa‘a area. We all know that the increased traffic is in fact due to more malihini on the island; whether just visiting or have moved here! You can’t blame the mayor for that, now can you? Let him go ahead and be responsible for the emergency vehicle response situation!
The Olohena bridge needs to be repaired and the decision to close the road has been made. The folks that normally use that road will now have to plan ahead and add an extra 10 minutes of travel time (during the duration of the bridge being fixed) to use Ka‘apuni to Kawaihau road, then on to Olohena past the poi factory or go down Hauiki or Waipouli roads to get where they need to go. No need to go through Kapa’a town. No problem, just plan ahead! Yes, the roads are smaller back there along the forest reserve, but it is nicely paved and you just have to slow down a bit (most people don’t though!)
Yes, it will be a (temporary) inconvenience, but my opinion is that we are all just spoiled and don’t want to give a little to get a lot in return.
- Susan Andrade
Wailua Homestead
Creditability of schools
The leaders of the Hawai‘i State Teachers Association must think that we are all products of their school system. They, once again, are bargaining for huge pay raises despite the dismal results of their efforts at education our young. To justify their demands, they went to their members, told them that they were not being paid what they were worth, and then asked them if they might “rethink” changing jobs if their demands were not met. Not surprisingly 55 percent said they would ‘consider’ it. Not do it, mind you – consider it. Hey, I would ‘consider’ taking a job as CEO of something paying $500,000 per year plus bonuses. It’s not very likely – but why not?
I can just see the interview when those ‘considerers’ apply to a main-land school system. “Where did you teach?”. “In Hawai‘i”. “Wasn’t that school system ranked last in the nation in providing good education?” “Yes, but the teachers were underpaid.” ” I see, thanks for your time. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
Sure there are good teachers who like what they are doing and care for the kids. Then there are others who would rather walk the picket lines. If the purpose of our education system is produce literate citizens able to cope with our technologically advanced society and prosper therein, then the results thus far would suggest that perhaps a significant percentage of HSTA members might be better off doing something else.
I am surprised that The Garden Island printed this nonsensical propaganda on the front page of Monday’s edition as if it were some sort of factual news item.
Ka Leo meetings
The headlines of the GI (3/31) read, “Hundreds celebrate Ka Leo accomplishments.” Reading further into this celebratory article, we see a laundry list of issues that “were discussed with solutions proposed – note that the words solved or accomplished were not used!
Having attended most of these meetings for 2 years, trying to get the Mayor to resolve the hottest button issue affecting thousands of people in the Homesteads the closing of Olohena Road for 8 months while a new bridge is being built was truly an exercise in futility. The Mayor, through his liaison, Bev Pang, simply said that this bridge would be built his way or no way no alternate plans were ever investigated. Irate citizens have now taken their case to the County Council and with members, Furfaro and Rapozo, solidly fighting on the people’s side, there is hope that a bypass bridge can be built and 2427 motorist a day can continue to use Olohena Road.
So to further make the point that these Ka Leo meetings were nothing but social gatherings with a lot of discussion about what the communities need – no action – we, in the Homesteads, have seen attendance drop from 10 to 15 to 3 and 4. The Mayor made this “feel good” Ka Leo program the center piece of his administration but why not put these efforts into fighting for the hard core problems like traffic (the top of everyone’s list), road repaving and affordable housing? Find a way to get our cane haul roads open as was done to build the Kapaa bypass in 9 months anyone can talk the talk but we need someone who will truly be an action person and not deceive the people by making them believe that their social chats will solve the hard problems that face Kaua‘i.
Property taxes
February of last year marked the end of a very, very long and successful process during which the Real Property Task Force of uniquely qualified citizens donated thousands of hours creating an incredibly sound tax model that would give Kaua‘i a better, fairer, more logical tax system.
This model seemed well on its way to being approved.
Funny thing happened on the way to its approval…the majority of us voted for the Ohana Amendment.
The threat was made, “You pass Ohana, we’ll drop the entire Tax Force model.”
Whether the Amendment was truly legal (most of us are convinced it was) may still be debated for years, in or out of court. But dropping the Task Force Bill because the people supported Ohana, was not a logical step to take…the Task Force bill was independent, and perhaps the better, more complete alternative.
Please Councilmembers, we should be back to approving the Task Force model! If the Ohana has been ruled as legal or not, we must stop piecemealing real property tax issues and instead implement the Task Force tax model immediately.
Mayor Baptiste has done his part by submitting the bill to the council to give owner / occupants, renters and farmers significant tax relief. Kudos to the mayor.
Now it’s your turn! Months have already been spent discussing it, don’t discuss this to death.
Please vote for the task force bill as it stands. You as council can always fine tune it over the years ahead.
Show your constituents that you are listening by passing the Real Property Tax Task Force Bill.
It will provide many with the tax relief they need now.
More importantly, it, and you, will provide all of us with an excellent, citizen-generated tax model, and recognize the thousands of hours of those who volunteered to create it.
Let’s dust off the Real Property Tax Task Force solution and put it into place.
