• Love your garbageman • Sad state of affairs • Election-year smears • The right to hunt Love your garbageman This letter is in response to the letter “Garbage truck blues.” It saddens me to hear the lack of appreciation
• Love your garbageman
• Sad state of affairs
• Election-year smears
• The right to hunt
Love your garbageman
This letter is in response to the letter “Garbage truck blues.”
It saddens me to hear the lack of appreciation you have for your refuse collectors.
If you are so unhappy with your refuse collectors waking you up why don’t you take your own trash to the transfer station?
You are not paying any fees (like other islands) to have your trash picked up, yet you have the nerve to complain.
Don’t you think the county has a reason why they pick up your trash early in the morning? It’s not practical to pick up the trash during the hustle and bustle of traffic.
Your refuse collectors are trying to get your trash picked up before the road gets busy with school buses and daily traffic. Not to mention, it’s not safe.
Do you know how many homes on an average day your refuse collectors service? Minimum of 600 homes per day. About 2,400 trash cans/trash bags. Plus not to mention green waste every day.
Do you know they work every day; Monday to Friday. Even on holidays. Yes they work on Thanksgiving, Christmas and, New Year’s Day, every holiday. Rain or shine.
You remember when we had all those days of rain? When the Ka Loko Dam broke. Yes they worked every single day during that storm.
Do you know the toll it takes on their body? Do you know how many times they get on and off that trash truck? The jolts their knees and backs take when they get off that truck?
Not to mention the pain in their hands and arms from grabbing and carrying all those cans during their daily runs.
And the back pain because someone has overloaded their cans? By the way, the weight limit for your trash can is 75 pounds.
Think how lifting 75 pounds per can, multiplied by 2,400 feels. Also remember your trash pickup is once a week. One day a week.
So remember you have an option. You can dump your own trash at the transfer station yourself.
Please have some compassion for your trashman/refuse collectors. Don’t try to make this a political issue.
Attached is a copy of the do’s and don’ts for the public who uses our home trash pickup.
You can verify this at the county Web site, www.kauai.gov
• Verna Costa, Kapa‘a
Sad state of affairs
I was disturbed by the Rowena Akana letter to the editor in the Oct. 7 issue.
As a Hawaiian, born on Kaua‘i, who cares deeply about Kaua‘i and its people, I must speak out. I have had to do so in the OHA Ka Wai ‘Ola (KWO) January 2008 and March 2008 issues to correct Akana’s prior misinformation.
Akana’s letter presents ‘opala (rubbish) which readers can see for themselves is clearly refuted in OHA’s audit reports for 2005, 2006 and 2007, as well as through financial information and annual reports dating back several years. Check out www.oha.org
Readers need to become aware Akana, elected as all Trustees to prudently expand horizons for Native Hawaiians through responsible decision-making, is instead using her “free” space in the KWO and title of her office to demean and irresponsibly destroy the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to satisfy her admitted personal hatred for Chairperson Haunani Apoliona and anyone associated with her. A sad state of affairs.
I am certain that the people of Kaua‘i will see through such distortions by Rowena Akana and misguided supporters and make the pono (right) choices. Mälama pono.
• Winona Rubin. Honolulu
Election-year smears
Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Rowena Akana’s childish attack on fellow trustees Haunani Apoliona and Colette Machado (Letters, Oct. 7) can be summarized by one word — election.
Akana is making false and ridiculous assertions to knock out trustees running for re-election on Nov. 4. In her letter, Akana criticizes Chairwoman Apoliona’s travel on OHA business, but Akana fails to address the fact Akana is the biggest spender among trustees.
Akana solicits invitations to take trips when she has no board chairmanships, and regularly goes to Las Vegas, claiming board business when there is none. She flies on unrestricted tickets making personal stops. She took a trip to the Cook Islands after she falsely claimed she headed a health committee of the board when we have no such committee.
Akana regularly violates board policies and uses trust funds for personal gain. She is the trustee who used OHA money to pay for her beauty salon bills for three years before she was reprimanded by a state audit in 2001.
Akana is the trustee who wanted to hire Jack Abramoff as a lobbyist. Abramoff is now in prison after being convicted of stealing millions from Native Americans. Good thing OHA didn’t hire his firm, as Akana insisted, as OHA would be among the victims of his scams.
The majority of OHA trustees are working together, and diligently, to meet its mandate to better conditions of Native Hawaiians. The exception is Rowena Akana, who is up for re-election in 2010.
• Oswald Stender, OHA trustee
The right to hunt
I would like to echo Bob Moulton’s letter (“Hunting a bonding experience,” Letters, Oct. 10) and say right on man. We all deserve the right to hunt. So vote for John McCain so we can continue to kill defenseless animals for pleasure. My wall doesn’t have enough heads on it. The animals can’t fight back so it is really easy. Just point and shoot, you know, like a Polaroid camera. And in this land of America, where over half the population is overweight, we need to hunt to put food on the table.
• Roger Olsen, Hanama‘ulu
