• No room for pets • Kindness will be remembered No room for pets I just want to voice my frustration with housing on Kaua’i. I am an Emergency Room Registered Nurse and have gotten a great job offer on
• No room for pets
• Kindness will be remembered
No room for pets
I just want to voice my frustration with housing on Kaua’i. I am an Emergency Room Registered Nurse and have gotten a great job offer on the island, which will allow me to move to Kaua’i to be with my family, who are long-time (20-year) residents IF I can find a place to live!
I have no kids, but I have two little dogs. It seems that the majority of the rentals always say “no pets.” This is unfortunate. I am a responsible dog owner. My dogs are my “keikis.” They are clean, housebroken, quiet, and not destructive at all. I make a good steady income as a health-care professional. I will never be a deadbeat tenant. If I had children, I wouldn’t have a single problem. Don’t people realize that some children can be MORE destructive than dogs? I think property owners should consider tenants on a case-by-case basis. If I cannot find a place to rent, it will be a shame, because I have a lot to offer the island as a caring, competent nurse. And I will have no way to spend the rest of my life with my only family, one of whom has medical problems and really needs another adult family member there for her support. Mahalo for listening.
- Krissy West, R.N.
Ft. Stewart, GA
Kindness will be remembered
I want to share a story of human kindness. Too often we only see the negative in the letters to the editor or in the news.
On Nov. 10 my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. I was frantic to get off the island and get back to Canada to be with my father. It was 7:30 at night and trying to get a flight was almost impossible.
I finally placed a call to Island Air. I am sorry I do not remember the name of the lady I spoke to, but her kindness and compassion will always be remembered. She not only got me a flight to Honolulu to be able to catch a flight to Canada, but she called ahead to make sure that they waited and did not close the gate at the airport until I got there, as I would be late. The flight was to leave at 9 p.m. and I live all the way in Kekaha, had to pack and drive to the airport.
When I arrived at the airport, I was greeted and checked in without delay. Nothing was said about me being late. In fact, the clerk who checked me in said, “I heard about your mother, I am so sorry.”
And she reached out and squeezed my hand.
That is the kindness of Hawai’i, the aloha spirit. To treat a stranger with such caring.
The death of my mother is a pain I will feel forever, but the kindness shown to me by the staff at Island Air will also be with me forever. Thank you so very much.
Lift the veil of secrecy
At a time when one would expect the hierarchy of KIUC to be at its best behavior; after the Andy Gross expose’ that put sunshine (NOT THE SUNSHINE LAW!) where even werewolves would cringe; and after users of electricity on this Island wrote scathing letter after scathing letter to The Garden Island protesting quesdo the leaders of our utility do?
They have TGI run a story on the front page of their paper (11/16) noticing that a “Special KIUC board meeting is tonight.” Realizing that any “proper” meeting is given to the public at least a week in advance if the real purpose of the meeting is to educate the people and address the many questions that Andy Gross left on the table. Forget that this KIUC bunch doesn’t have to abide by the Sunshine Law (and hopefully that will be changed!) courtesy and consideration for its members would dictate that they notice the meeting well in advance to accommodate the public. But from the get-go secrecy and closed door sessions are the standard by which OUR utility is operating.
Lo and behold, at the 11th hour this “meeting” was canceled and the reason for the cancellation was that head guru, Gregg Gardiner, couldn’t get back from a meeting on the East coast!! Even if Mr. Gardiner couldn’t make the meeting isn’t the rest of the board along with the CEO capable of holding a meeting that the public was asked to attend? More unanswered questions to go along with the laundry list of the ones still pending!
With absolutely no reflection on the hard-working men and women in the trenches who are doing their jobs at KIUC (in fact they want to know the answers to the questions being asked as much as the public does!!), the heads of this Co-op op are burying themselves in a veil of secrecy and deceit or at least, this is the impression they are giving the public.
Could we keep it civil, please?
The County Council’s proposed gasoline tax cut has been shelved, but since R.S.Weir’s very uncivil Nov. 16 letter to The Garden Island accused me of “innumeracy,” “mistake,” “rhetoric,” “error,” and
“irrational[ity],” I must respond.
Under the 7-cent per gallon tax cut proposal, a 30 mile-per-day driver of a 30 mpg Toyota would have received a tax cut of about $13 over the 6-month life of the tax cut. A 30 mile-per-day driver of a 10 mpg Humvee would have received about $38.
R.S.Weir argues that this type of tax rebate would have been fair, based on “relative savings” (i.e., both drivers would have received the same percentage rebate). Similar reasoning is used by those who disagree with the nation’s progressive tax structure; and similar arguments were made to justify the Bush tax cuts that granted the greatest number of absolute dollars to the small group of wealthiest taxpayers.
My conclusion, on the other hand, was that this type of tax cut would have been bad public policy, since it would have directed the greatest rebate to those who wasted the most fuel (not to mention directing a large portion of the tax cut to visiting rental car drivers). There were no “innumerac[ies],” “mistake[s],” “rhetoric,” “error[s]” or “irrational[ity]” in the analysis, nor in reaching this conclusion.
In the end, whether or not a tax policy is “fair” can only be a matter of opinion, based on how one views the role of government in creating an equitable society, the role of tax policy in creating incentives to conserve, the role of taxes in paying for “externalities” (such as health problems created by polluters), etc. We can and should argue about all of these. But we should keep the debate civil.
