Letters for Monday, April 16, 2007

• Open letter to HPH

• Did we have to pay extra?

• Vacation rental ban will help preserve neighborhoods

• Football memories from ‘47

• What’s the agenda?

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Open letter to HPH

Having spent 30+ years in one capacity or another as a Wilcox Memorial Hospital associate/professional, the last time I recall that facility being anything close to “normal” was while Betty Bell held the CEO position.

She maintained the rural, plantation-style, hospital-clinic ‘ohana along with Drs. Hamblin, Aiu, and Kim, to name a few and along the way ALL of the other prestigious physicians that became part of Kauai Medical Group.

In the ’70s to ’80s a succession of CEO/management hierarchy took great advantage and abused WMH. In the early ’90s, a new CEO with hugely negative baggage arrived, a laughable new mission statement was presented, and a weeding process began.

In one instance, an employee went on vacation and upon his return found his job had been eliminated. From 1992-2000, the mid-management, professional, and subordinate positions began to be at high risk of demotions, firings, forced resignations, etc., and this movement instilled a vicious amount of stress, fear, morale problems and ultimately adjusting to “life after Wilcox.” The words in the employee contract “for cause” was something that after endless meetings, even the not-so-loyal union couldn’t buck.

It’s a shame that all the years of union dues paid out could have been better spent on good toilet paper. Anyway, I became part of WMH history ending in 2000. From 2000 to date, there’s been the nurses strike and shortly after that was resolved, a seemingly quick exodus of specialty physicians, although a handful have retired. That brings the timeline up-to-date.

As stated in an earlier forum letter about things that are broken, you might as well add medical to the list along with county, state and federal. Maybe what goes around comes around will play itself out in the bidding of the open letter plea.

Kapa‘a

Did we have to pay extra?

Did we pay extra for the crooked lines? I have happily lived on Kaua‘i for 15-plus years but prior to that I visited 10 or 12 foreign countries and say 20 of the 50 states. I have never seen the anything like the crooked lines on the newly resurfaced roads on the Southside (Koloa and bypass) anywhere else in the world.

When I first saw it I foolishly told my wife that it was only temporary and they were planning to fix it and apparently I was wrong. Did we have to special order and pay extra for the wavy and crooked lines? Didn’t anyone else, like the guy signing off on the final completion document for contractor, notice that the lines were “unique?”

Maybe the person who signed off on the wavy lines is the person who decided the poor guy in Koloa couldn’t bottle water?

Kalaheo

Vacation rental ban will help preserve neighborhoods

Property managers, Realtors, and vacation rental owners are all writing the same letters to the Forum regarding vacation rentals.

These letters argue that the rest of us should celebrate the undesirable effects of their industry because they are making money from it and paying their high mortgages and helping Kaua‘i’s economy. The same reasoning would apply to setting up a tire repair and service center in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

By the way, I’m paying my high mortgage and helping Kaua‘i’s economy without any ill effects to anyone; so why aren’t they throwing me a party?

The other thing these letters have in common is no mention of anything they are doing to make vacation rentals blend into the neighborhoods. The cynical answer is: “Because they aren’t doing anything.”

After all, very real and specific problems, created by commercial enterprises operating in residential neighborhoods, are why people are in an uproar over vacation rentals.

I’m 20 feet away from a vacation rental not in the VDA and without a resident owner. We can be awakened at 5:30 a.m. by screaming kids jumping in the water because a family just flew in from another time zone without a shred of consideration for their surroundings. At 11:30 p.m., that same day, there are drunken adults yelling and singing outside or inside with open windows.

Others are shooting off fireworks in April while you are having a dinner party. A call to the property manager brings this rhetorical question: “Well, don’t you make noise when you go on vacation?”

Sure, there are the responsible, considerate managers and owners, but the others are taking them down. Correction, taken them down; because the damage has been done.

The vacation rental trend began about five years ago and a general lack of consideration by too many brought about the Council bill under consideration. Long-term bad neighbors must contend with neighborhood pressure, police, and ultimately — the courts. Neighborhoods have had to pay for bad vacation rental tenants. An effective ban will help preserve our neighborhoods.

Wailua

Football memories from ‘47

He certainly became a global entertainment star. And he’s now hailed a prep football standout. But the late Don Ho and his Kamehameha School Warriors went home on their shields after playing on Isenberg Field in December 1947. In the annual Shriner’s gridiron benefit, the legendary Ticky Vasconcellos’ Red Raiders twice came from behind to upset the big, tough visitors 20-12 to cap a 7-1 season that included a KIF championship.

Kaua‘i High stars that afternoon included scatbacks Mitsuru Sasaki and Billy Texeira, alternating QBs Shigeru Tsukayama and Richard Hadama, end Jimmy Westlake and linemen Kenneth Chow, Nelson Makanani, David Fujiura and Gerald Uyeno among others.

Wheaton, Ill.

What’s the agenda?

Judging by the photo in Thursday’s The Garden Island and my own observations in the last few weeks, there are plenty of people who like the bike/jog/walk path at Kapa‘a/Kealia.

However, Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho and Mel Rapozo seem to have some sort of problem with doing what they were elected to do — what’s best for the people of Kaua‘i. Iseri-Carvalho in particular is doing her best to sabotage the path in any way possible, insisting on tearing down shelters already built because of some bureaucratic oversight, thereby wasting buckets of public money.

Why doesn’t she try to find a way to fix it, instead of destroying good work already done? Make it work, don’t act like a nit-picking jerk who insists on dotting all the t’s and crossing the i’s.

One wonders why she’s doing this. Does she have friends in the demolition business or relatives who didn’t get the construction contract for the path? Why is she trying to sabotage a perfectly good, publicly popular project? Please don’t tell me that she is simply demanding that the county follow the letter of the law. She has an agenda; I just wonder what it is.

Princeville