• Public deserves real accessibility • Keep the proposals straight Public deserves real accessibility I am a librarian. I know how crucial making important information readily accessible to citizens is to sustaining democracy. I would like to expand on Ed
• Public deserves real accessibility
• Keep the proposals straight
Public deserves real accessibility
I am a librarian. I know how crucial making important information readily accessible to citizens is to sustaining democracy.
I would like to expand on Ed Coll’s July 4 letter in The Garden Island. He makes it clear that reporter Michael Levine’s contention in his July 3 article “Council minutes posted online” that “it appears one major gripe has been rectified” is incorrect. Mr. Coll is absolutely right that in making key public documents available on the county’s Web site, mere accessibility is not enough.
These online documents need to be useful, easy to use, and searchable. Council staff’s scanning printed minutes to create image files, and then converting these to Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format does little to really enhance their accessibility to the public.
As Mr. Coll says: you can’t copy and paste parts of the document to use in writing testimony; you can’t search it. You also cannot search for the documents by keyword on the county’s Web site like you can for those from other county commissions, boards, and departments.
The council needs to follow the example of other county agencies and put documents online the modern way — converting digital text files to .pdf files. This process takes seconds and the online documents created are so much more useful to the public, and can get put online faster.
The public deserves real accessibility to council public documents. The actions described in the article will not achieve this goal. A few meeting minutes, recap memos and agenda outlines do not constitute real accessibility.
To really give the public the information it requires to effectively participate in public decision making, a lot more types of documents need to be posted online: full agenda packets and accompanying documents; the public testimony and correspondence, full text of resolutions, bills and committee reports, relating to each agenda item; and full text departmental staff reports on topics before the council or Planning Commission (plus documents like permit applications and draft EISs and EAs).
The county’s IT specialist, Eric Knutzen, has said that the administration is about to start posting and even doing live video streaming of the meetings of the planning and police commissions. These files would be enhanced to allow searching by topic when the saved videos are posted online. The technology is here now, or will soon be, to have streaming video of live council meetings — and why not have the meetings shown live on Ho‘ike.
That’s real open and transparent government. Other counties in Hawai‘i are offering their citizens online access to all or most of the documents and files I have listed above. Kaua‘i County departments, boards and commissions have been posting a host of documents online for awhile now. Why not the Council?
Is it that the council chair and council clerk fear that ready public access to council documents online will lessen their power? That’s not a valid reason. It’s also a violation of the state’s Uniform Information Practices Act.
These documents belong to the public. They will be used to make decisions that will impact our lives and the lives of future generations. We have a right to have ready access to these documents, so we can effectively participate in decision making that affects all of us.
David Thorp, Kalaheo
Keep the proposals straight
Dr. Gordon LaBedz’s letter promoting a “Triple R Solution” to our landfill concerns has its merits. However, it should not be at the expense of the erroneous implication that burning trash for electricity has been advocated by John Hoff or me.
The waste-to-energy proposal should not be confused with the Western Renewable Energy proposal.
I have lived in Kekaha since 1937 and as such, I am well aware of what it is like to be in the community that has been next to the landfill since 1953. As such, I have had the privilege to be appointed to, and thus involved in, situations and arrangements that include the review of other sites on Kaua‘i that have been studied in depth; the ramifications of a host community compensation fund; and the considerations and proposals that look into alternative renewable energy delivery systems that involve diverting trash from the landfill.
I am also actively participating in school and community centered activities and projects revolving around sustainability programs and the encouragement of sound environmental concerns and practices.
These are just bits and pieces of the extent to which some of my community advocacy activities have been pursued. As I respect the ways in which you may wish to advocate your perspectives, I request you accord me that right as well.
Jose Bulatao Jr., Kekaha.
