• Regarding Lydgate Park campground Regarding Lydgate Park campground 1. Thoughtful planning did go into the layout and design of the campground using a national expert in trail and park design and a Hawai’i architect. 2. The restroom facility is
• Regarding Lydgate Park campground
Regarding Lydgate Park campground
1. Thoughtful planning did go into the layout and design of the campground using a national expert in trail and park design and a Hawai’i architect.
2. The restroom facility is more than adequate for the area and exceeds the recommended capacity set by the Hawai’i Department of Health and campground design guidelines set forth by the Army Corps of Engineers.
3. Parking exceeds the Army Corps campground design guidelines. 21 spaces are paved but the majority of parking is adjacent to campsite and is unpaved.
4. Although this area of the park is intended primarily as a campground, adequate parking is available in the area for day use too. During the discussion about maximum capacity in the campground the number of 450 was mentioned. This number was arrived at by persons multiplying the absolute maximum number allowed at all individual campsites and the absolute maximum number of persons that could be allowed at the one group campsite. However, it is unrealistic to assume all sites would be occupied at maximum capacity at the same time. In any case Bernard Carvalho stated during his testimony that the maximum capacity would be regulated by administrative standards just like it currently is in all county campgrounds.
Security concerns have a history at Lydgate Park as they do in any public place. Before ‘Iniki and the building of Kamalani Playground, there were a lot of problems in an overgrown and neglected park. However as the county and community has cared for and expanded the park healthy family use has increased and security concerns have diminished; first in the area around the playground, then in the area around the south comfort station.
Now we have built a campground with great facilities that have been ready for families for over a year. But without the ordinance to open the campground our local families and their kids have been told “you are not allowed to camp there yet” and that end of the park has been left to others at night. I believe that when local families are allowed to use the facility the way it was intended, things will get better not worse. Thank you the thousands of volunteers that have helped clean up the area and build facilities for our local families and kids. It is time to open the campground.
Positive responses
How great it was to read two positive “Letters” in the Opinion section of T.G.I.
Three cheers for Councilwoman Yukimura and her “attempts to reform the way in which new development is carried out on the island.” Though I disagree with Councilwoman Yukimura on numerous issues, I applaud her observations concerning “poor or non-existent long range and “big picture” planning in the past.” In the political world that our little island lives in, citizens cannot rely on trust when it come to insuring that elected officials will, or can, commit to the right, responsible and intelligent thing to do. There is no written law that elected officials will do what is best for the citizen. They should but normally seem to advance their own agendas for personal gains. Do not give up JoAnne, a change is a coming.
This leads to the second positive matter as written by Walter Lewis concerning our precious “sunshine law.” This law was established to aide the public in being kept informed of elected official’s actions and policies and must not be tampered with unless it is to give it more authority or force. Ideas are very much like a seed that require sunshine to grow, lack of light to die. Life is truly simple once one removes the smoke, the shadows, the overgrowth, those elements that contribute to darkness and poor circulation of fresh air. Just imagine if we had more elected officials committed to the will of the people rather than the will of the government and personal agendas of self gain, then we would not need a law to allow “the sunshine” to enter into the decision making process. Next council meeting, instead of deferring this issue, kill it.
Keep up the good work Mr. Mann, Mr. Lewis and council members willing to place the people’s will before that of the government.
Support Title IX
We need Title IX to continue equal rights for girls. Girls should be given a chance to prove themselves as athletes. Title IX should be extended to all high schools. I totally disagree with letters to the editor 11/12/05 by Gerald Nakata and 11/18/05 by Peter Saker.
Girls have been oppressed for too long. We only got the chance to vote in the 1920s. Now look at us! We’re doing better than boys in school in almost every subject since the 1960s. We’re dominating most school activities, student government, academic clubs, band and are getting most of the scholarships to go to college. So dominating boys in athletics would be a logical trend, but it hasn’t happened because too many boys want to play football, and that’s not fair! There should be equality on the athletic field. Football is sexually discriminating against girls, so football should be eliminated from high school sports.
I urge everyone to support Title IX for all it’s done for girls’ athletics and girls’ self esteem.
Fitzgerald is no Starr
To even attempt to link the very decent, just, and honorable Patrick Fitzgerald with Kenneth Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton, is a travesty as sick as any ever foisted off on the American people.
Starr — who hired private investigators to look into Clinton’s sex life; whose leaks from the OIC were almost a journalistic joke; who sent an innocent woman, Susan McDougal, who refused to lie for him, to prison for two years, where she was treated worse than Charley Manson; who destroyed and disrupted so many innocent lives in his fury to get anything on the Clintons — is the lead contender in a judicial American horror story.
Starr’s link to the tobacco industry, to Richard Mellon Scaife, who is as far right and spooky a religious fanatic as we have in this country, is an historical truth anyone reading this can confirm.
How far this administration has descended into religious dementia is there for all the world to see. I hope you are aware that no Republican would be in office were it not for the religious right. If that’s what you want, so be it. But it is my hope, sane, intelligent, reasoning, good, decent, honest, patriotic Americans of any belief, anywhere, outnumber them.
