• Let visitors experience neighborhoods • Who gets that affordable housing? • Let big sugar convert to fuel production • Hand out water safety pamphlets on incoming flights • Tributes to Heather Bell Let visitors experience neighborhoods This letter is
• Let visitors experience neighborhoods
• Who gets that affordable housing?
• Let big sugar convert to fuel production
• Hand out water safety pamphlets on incoming flights
• Tributes to Heather Bell
Let visitors experience neighborhoods
This letter is a response to all the “hu hu” over vacation rentals in neighborhoods. I think it is wonderful when Mainland folks want to rent a place in a home rather than a hotel and here is why:
Some people want to experience more low-key surroundings where they have the opportunity to learn more about the local way of life and culture. They often return year after year because they get to know a family and become a part of it. These visitors have a better understanding and show more respect for our island and people.
As far as taking the “social character from neighborhoods, increasing traffic and crime” etc., that just is not true.
Try having renters or homeowners in your neighborhood who are involved with drugs — talk about lowering the social character and increasing traffic and crime! How about helping KPD get these kinds of places OUT of neighborhoods?
Instead of being so gung-ho to issue all these development permits, help local people get permits to rent how they wish. Sometimes, it’s our only way to pay the taxes.
Aunty Momi Kahaialii
Hanapepe
Who gets that affordable housing?
It is laughable to hear our local government leaders bemoan the lack of affordable housing here on Kaua‘i.
When Marriott comes in to build a $1.5-billion dollar resort at Kauai Lagoons, they were required to have an affordable housing component. But what does this really mean for people who live here? Nothing — because in the fine print, Marriott is given permission, by OUR planning commission, to reserve these homes for their OWN employees. Priority for these homes works like this: First priority goes to Marriott employees who work on Kaua‘i (the Mainland managers that they will bring in to run things), then Marriott employees who work ANYWHERE in the world (highly-paid Marriott executives who’d like a nice cheap place in Kaua‘i.)
Hey, maybe they can turn it into a vacation rental, then families of Marriott employees, and then, finally, the rest of us. So aunties who have rented on Kaua‘i for decades will continue to do so, while Mainland-based Marriott employees get our affordable housing.
A big mahalo to Marriott Corp. and our planning commission for all their efforts to solve this problem.
And if you’ve never seen the people in the Kauai Lagoons marketing hype sipping champagne on their motorboat, you need to see it — it really shows how out-of-touch these people are with our way of life.
John Patterson
Kapa‘a
Let big sugar convert to fuel production
In response to Michael Mann’s letter about the ethanol debate, I say go ahead and let big sugar abandon food production and convert to fuel production.
In the process, why not use some of that venture capital to increase its soil and water conservation practices? If anyone believes the air isn’t polluted around the sugarcane fields, try going there when it’s windy and the red dirt is blowing, or when the fields are burning and the smoke is visible for 100 miles away.
Did you ever smell the sugar mill? That’s pollution, too. As for water pollution, try walking the beach during the next rain. Soil pollution? Tell me how many chemicals do you have to apply to grow a ton of sugarcane?”
John Wyatt
From the Web
Hand out water safety pamphlets on incoming flights
I have been a regular visitor to Kaua‘i for the past 25 years. Never once in all of my 50-75 trips have I been given any literature on water safety for visitors.
We are given the agricultural inspection form on the plane every time we fly over from the mainland. Why not a small pamphlet that details how many drownings a year, publish a couple of families’ stories, and make someone sign off or initial that they have read the material and are aware how brutal the water can be to even the experienced.
It seems as though the visitors have this image of basking in this tranquil ocean, that they may have seen in a movie or travel brochure, and are eager to get in the water as soon as they arrive.
The ambulances and fire trucks roar past the house almost every day. When we hear ‘em, we just say a prayer.
Rich Fosmire
Huntington Beach, Calif.
Tributes to Heather Bell
Editor’s note: Heather Leann Bell died of injuries from a fall at Kalihiwai July 24, 2007.
• From Joyce Hardy Bell, Panama City Beach, Fla.
Justin Bell and Alyssa Bell are my grandchildren. My heart is broken for them and all of Heather’s family. I never met Bruce or Jacob but I know all the family loved Heather very much.
• From Dale Perkins, kauaiworld.com
Heather was a wonderful woman who touched the lives of everyone she came in contact with. She will be greatly missed.
• From Joseph, kauaiworld.com
I knew Heather as a loving, caring mother. While coaching her son in baseball and around the North Shore I encountered and talked story with a person who loved life and family. On a flight from Princeville to Honolulu a few years ago she shared how her mother was important to her and the flight was to visit her in the hospital. Caring, loving, and full of life with a smile is how I shall always remember Heather Bell.
