• Harry Kaneakua Jr. • John Hoff Editor’s note: The following seven questions were posed to the 22 candidates for Kaua‘i County Council. Two candidates a day will have their answers reprinted in their entirety until all candidates’ answers have
• Harry Kaneakua Jr.
• John Hoff
Editor’s note: The following seven questions were posed to the 22 candidates for Kaua‘i County Council. Two candidates a day will have their answers reprinted in their entirety until all candidates’ answers have appeared.
1) Define what future development on Kaua‘i means to you. Please use specifics.
2) What is your vision of the island in 10 years?
3) What specific credentials do you have for being a County Council member? Why are you the best for our county? Again, let’s get specific. What positions of power have you held in the past? What connections do you have that will benefit the county?
4) How will you work with the other six members of the County Council if elected? Would like some specific tactics and strategies you would use to act on the county’s behalf within the larger group.
5) What is your history? Born and raised here? Mainlander? Family? Residence? Career? Education?
6) What does open government mean to you?
7) What is the single, most important issue to you?
Harry Kaneakua Jr.
• Harry Kaneakua Jr. did not respond to repeated attempts to acquire answers to the questions posed to all candidates.
John Hoff
1) Future developments can mean only one thing if Kaua‘i is to survive: expanding Kaua‘i’s infrastructure beginning with our most immediate health hazard, our solid waste dilemma being that top priority. 15 years of wanton trash dumping into a brand new landfill has resulted in an overflowing landfill that reaches capacity this upcoming December or January, just a matter of weeks away, with no new site yet chosen for a new landfill. A project that requires five to seven years.
Is that responsible leadership? Is this what you want our children to inherit? Further residential and commercial development needs to mirror infrastructure development and maintenance.
2) I envision a thriving 85 percent to 95 percent “sustainable agricultural community” producing marketable products such as alternate fuels and building products, right here on Kaua‘i, via local jobs for local residents, from our solid waste.
I envision agricultural activities growing and harvesting food products and crops to be used as feed stock for solid fuels along with recycling all plastics, 1 through 7’s, back into crude oil and then into diesel, bunker oil, gasoline, even asphalt with residuals being incorporated into other solid fuels. The plastics buried in our landfill annually can make about 2,000,000 gallons of diesel here on Kaua‘i.
I envision fallow lands of today being plowed into productive growing fields of tomorrow for food and energy purposes as well as a meat processing and rendering plant aiding in making our island community’s food supply more sustainable, to the highest degree we can possibly achieve, while providing jobs for the futures of my six grandsons and their friends.
Perhaps this question should be asked of the residents of Kaua‘i, not only the candidates. If they don’t have a vision than do not expect any changes because the same old politicians that keep getting voted back into office are not going to change a thing. They like the direction Kaua‘i is headed … toward urbanization and, like our landfill, overflowing.
3) “What specific credentials” do I have? What “specific credentials” do our incumbent County Council members have? Look at their records:
a. 15 years of total neglect resulting in an overflowing landfill with no idea where a replacement landfill will be built. Does this behavior qualify as “credentials?”
b. Special favors given to large landowners resulting in violations of environmental rules and regulations and in the over-development of our “broken agricultural community” into “large urban pockets” of unaffordable communities for unqualifiable local residents. Where are our future generations going to work and live?
“Positions of power” I have held? I ran a small contracting business on Kaua‘i for 42 years including helping to re-build Kaua‘i after two hurricanes as well as payrolls of over 50 to 60 employees and we survived. I have founded, organized and managed volunteer programs involving senior citizens: Aloha Pax shipping care packages containing Kaua‘i food products to troops fighting terrorism and “A Grip on Life” installing safety grab bars in the homes of seniors allowing them to live independent lives longer. I also organized and managed Substitute Teachers Professional Alliance in efforts to gain collective bargaining rights for substitute teachers and aided in winning a $15,000,000 “class action lawsuit” against the Department of Education for withholding portions of substitute teachers’ pay for nine years. All projects were financed by private funds.
As for “connections,” certainly not with Steve Case, but enough reliable connections, will and persistence to actually find solutions and funding for my vision of a “sustainable agricultural community” as well as a solution to Kaua‘i’s solid waste dilemma and alternate energy dilemmas: up to $100,000,000 worth.
Through my efforts these past six to seven years I have been able to bring to our island a “letter to commit funds” up to $100,000,000 to build a complete recycling facility along with an added-value process to turn our solid waste into marketable products as well as into alternative fuels for energy. I had no help in these efforts with the past three mayoral administrations, with numerous county councils and councilmembers, staffs of over 1,000 government employees, nor several millions of taxpayers’ dollars (wasted) for studies, reviews, advisory committees with hundreds of volunteers and engineering firms. No, these resources were not available. My “connections” were probably with less than a dozen individuals who get things done and not one taxpayer dollar was spent.
4) I am hoping to work with at least three or four additional new councilmembers not married to “old guard” special interests who are selling out our island. It is very important this election that everyone of the 13,000-plus voters who voted for the Ohana Kauai Charter Amendment in the 2004 General Election to vote for only four new councilmembers willing to support this effort, myself one of them. I ask for one of your votes. Remember, “Vote for 4 and No More!” The remaining three councilmembers will be elected by the same old block of voters that keep re-electing the same people back into the same offices. Your ohana votes will affect only candidates supporting the Ohana Kauai tax relief.
5) • 41-year Kauai resident, Lawa‘i
• Married 41 years to wife Lorna, three sons, one daughter
• USCG veteran, 8 years, bachelor’s degree, Peace Corps Volunteer
• 37-year small business owner, Kauai, general contracting
• 8 years Little League coach
• President Lihue Chapter AARP, two terms
• Substitute teacher, 2000-2008; Taught in every public school on Kaua‘i.
• Founder Substitute Teachers Professional Alliance (STPAL).
• Appointed to Governor’s Executive Office on Aging (PEBEA).
• Appointed to Kekaha’s E Ola Mau Leo O’Kekaha community revitalization board.
6) Open government means: accessibility to information; having trust in our elected officials; making accountability of actions a standard rather than an exception; placing the interest of “We the People” before special or self-interest; honest, transparency, trust … qualities missing in today’s vocabulary and practices of government.”
7) The single most important issue to me is similar to the birth of Siamese Twins: “One of a pair of congenially united issues existing or associated together harmoniously.”
