• Honk if you love Coco Palms • Union concessions • Where is our leadership? • Will Wilcox be next? Honk if you love Coco Palms Saturday I was sitting in traffic by the Coco Palms hotel so I had
• Honk if you love Coco Palms
• Union concessions
• Where is our leadership?
• Will Wilcox be next?
Honk if you love Coco Palms
Saturday I was sitting in traffic by the Coco Palms hotel so I had plenty of time to take a good look at the wreck that grand hotel has become.
Pretty appalling was the air-conditioner unit dangling by an electric cord from the second story. It looks horrible.
I cannot believe that it is legal to have such a pile of dangerous debris — and for so many years.
A tourist couple mentioned it to me in the afternoon — they had honeymooned there 30 years ago and were heartbroken and shocked to see it in such disrepair. They also sat in traffic looking at it for a long time.
I had no excuse to give them. There is no excuse.
Why is that mess not removed, at least?
The list of the heartbroken is quite extensive — surely starting with Grace Buscher.
Let’s stand on the side of the road with signs that read: Honk if you love Coco Palms. P.s. What would Elvis say?
Marta Curry
Union concessions
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Union members pay dues to be represented and Union bosses work to get raises and benefits. If the employer can no longer stay competitive in the market, they go overseas for cheaper labor, all the employees lose their jobs and then there’s no union anymore. Isn’t that a self defeating system?
How can state workers expect to stay immune to the changes in the economy? As everyone else takes a hit in their income, are state employees hoping they can just rely on their unions to hold it all together for them? Instead of taking a few days off a month, they seem willing to let some of their co-workers (or their own) jobs disappear, yet maintain their unity.
Then we’ll have less workers that will have to take up the slack of those that are gone and will have to do more work, but for the same amount of money they are making now. Plus, there will be a whole lot more unemployed people.
You can stick with your unions. Look what they’ve done for the sugar and pineapple industries. American automakers are disappearing because the unions refuse to take any concessions in their negotiating.
One side can win every time for only so long before things finally come to a grinding halt.
Lingle isn’t shoving it down your throats, like your union says, she just has a job to balance the budget and it’s dated. She’s just trying to warn you in advance.
Jack Custer, Lihu‘e
Where is our leadership?
I find it quite interesting to read the word transportation used over and over by proponents of this bike/pedestrian path (“Path’s Phase II opens,” The Garden Island, June 27).
Yes, recreation and fitness may play a part in this trail but even that use will be for a limited group on the Eastside.
And remember that the federal guidelines for use of their funds for a bike path under section 23 U.S.C. 217 page 2 (i) states, “No bicycle project may be carried out under this section unless the secretary has determined that such bicycle project will be principally for transportation rather than recreational purposes.”
By no stretch of the imagination will these multi-million dollar segments of a path be used for anything but recreation. Other than common sense dictating that small non-connecting pieces of a trail going nowhere (work, shopping, etc.), we had a bike day dedicated to leaving your vehicle at home and biking to work — we got a total of 26 bikers out of their cars! And, again, real bikers will never use this path with the possibilities of hitting the walkers, joggers and little kids.
It becomes obvious why we had quotes from path proponents in like, “The possibilities Kaua‘i has for active transportation … are limitless.” And, “… but health and transportation needs are constant.” Since “recreational” activities do not satisfy the fed regulations without the secretary’s permission the transportation words must be added.
The hardest part of this venture to understand is why federal authorities who are appropriating 80 percent of the cost of this path (still a stealth figure to find out in totality, right Mel and Shay?) ignore their own guidelines and allow this project to be built.
And with this catastrophic downturn in our economy and with no priority attached to this project does any one of the proponents of this path think it will ever be finished?
Think of the good that the millions of dollars being spent on this path could have accomplished for so many high priority projects. But where is our leadership, not our dreamers?
Glenn Mickens, Kapa‘a
Will Wilcox be next?
Surgeons in Germany say that a German farmer who received the world’s first double arm transplant is doing well. Doctors pronounced the surgery a success when he was able to hold the hospital billing department off at an arms length.
Johnny Robish, Kapa‘a
