• Get tough with barking dog owners • Auditor’s fight for job will continue • Safety changes needed at airport • Friend needs help Get tough with barking dog owners The council is considering a bill that aims to curb
• Get tough with barking dog owners • Auditor’s fight for job will continue • Safety changes needed at airport • Friend needs help
Get tough with barking dog owners
The council is considering a bill that aims to curb excessive barking complaints by educating dog owners? Really, dog owners need to be “educated?” Here’s another idea: Form a committee! Allocate some monies and do a study! Then yak about it endlessly.
Pul-eeze.
What the island really needs is an ordinance outlawing excessive barking — an ordinance with teeth, if you will. Then enforce it! Clamp down on these brain-dead dog owners. Fine them. Hit them in the pocketbook — hard! When they start having to pay for their transgressions, you’ll be surprised how quickly this issue gets resolved. That will put an end to excessive barking. It’s as simple as that.
Steven McMacken, Post Falls, Idaho, former Kauaian
Auditor’s fight for job will continue
Bravo Walter Lewis for your outstanding letter (TGI Dec. 6) about our county auditor, Ernie Pasion. You are indeed an effective citizens’ advocate for “A Better Kauai” and though others may not take the time to send letters to the paper saying this, I know they are as grateful for the work and research you do as I am.
Your piece vividly makes the point that a concerted movement has been underway to get rid of Mr. Pasion as our county auditor.
The 30-page complaint that Mr. Pasion has filed names the county and one individual, Jay Furfaro, et al as defendants. Its thoughtful allegations describe the findings of the Auditor’s Office Fuel Consumption Audit which set forth their belief of mayoral misconduct (although not named his description is unmistakable). The complaint does allege his invoking the Fifth Amendment incident to the fuel audit investigation. The complaint then goes on to allege that the campaign against Pasion arose in retaliation for this episode and became an attempt to humiliate and harass a sincere public servant who was effectively pursuing his function.
Although there are established procedures for investigating potential causes for employee discipline, the council under Mr. Furfaro’s leadership, chose to convene 19 secret executive sessions over a seven-month period from April to November 2013, which neither Mr. Pasion nor his counsel could attend to consider whether it would impose sanctions. These sessions are misuses and abuses of government power and violate the civil liberties of the accused person by failing to allow him to face his accusers and to refute assertions that are made. And it is unexplainable why so many sessions were needed.
Our citizens have warmly supported the auditor by filling the council chambers twice on his behalf.
And why has not the press as a watchdog of checks and balances and the public been allowed to become privy to this whole sordid affair?
Ernie, we wish you the best in your action against the county and Mr. Furfaro to re-establish your reputation from the tarnishing that has been attempted. And then we hope that the budget for your function can be restored so that you will be able to continue your term in office in your valuable service of examining county operations and practices.
Glenn Mickens, Kapaa
Safety changes needed at airport
Since my letter was published (TGI, Dec. 5) I have been contacted by many of the general public and individuals who work in both management and labor at the airport.
I am not the least bit surprised that all of the reaction I have received is critical of airport administration.
It has been brought to my attention that the personal safety of the Securitas employees is a major issue (these are the airport contract employees forced to man the center crosswalk). This is a dangerous assignment, the seriousness of which can be verified by reading or watching the Honolulu papers and TV news reports. Recently, a woman in her 40s (a colleague of the Securitas employees at the airport) was directing traffic at a pier in Honolulu. She was run over by a tractor trailer and taken to the hospital. Do we want to read about this happening at the Lihue Airport?
The human factor is always more important than the bottom line but in addition to safety issues it can now be revealed that the cost to post one Securitas employee at one crosswalk is about $131,000 a year. That means it will cost almost $500,000 to cover all the crosswalks.
All this because someone in airport management decided to try to experiment with safety? Since my letter was published airport management has refused to address this very serious issue.
Will we get a “Oops, we’re sorry” from them after someone is injured or killed?
Bill Doherty, Kapaa
Friend needs help
Help needed! I would like to know how to help a friend find a respectable job. Many of you who read this know him, although I do not want to give his name and embarrass him. He is a good, proud man who now is homeless and, from pictures I have seen in the last couple days on Facebook, starving. This skilled man had a very respectable job and helped Kauai and many of its individuals in their times of great need. He was fired from his job and has been blackballed ever since. I know that most, if not all, of the allegations were false and based on lies. From the skin and bones I see in his pictures, I say “this is his time of need.” I am no longer on Kauai but I care deeply. To those of you who know him and to The Garden Island: Do something! To those of who you haven’t figured out who he is, contact The Garden Island and ask how you can help.
He needs a job, housing and food. Money would be nice, too. Merry Christmas in this season of giving.
Dolly Kikuchi, Honolulu
