• Current system is not working • Gift of card saves the day • Smart meters not only options • Cost causers should pay extra expense • Vote yes on meters Current system is not working JoAnn Yukimura’s statements in
• Current system is not working • Gift of card saves the day • Smart meters not only options • Cost causers should pay extra expense • Vote yes on meters
Current system is not working
JoAnn Yukimura’s statements in opposition to districts for council seats come close to implying that you do not have the aloha spirit if you support districts. She also claims that the current system is working. I suspect that if a poll was taken on Kauai, the County Council would be about as popular as the U.S. Congress!
What we have now is the best possible system for incumbents to hang on to their offices and the worst possible system for those who want to challenge particular councilors because of their performance or because of positions they have taken. It cannot be done because a challenger must run against the entire council, not just one incumbent. Because of this, it is almost impossible to dislodge an incumbent.
I strongly support districts for council seats but believe that the County Council is much too self-serving to ever let it be put on the ballot for the voters to decide. So, I suggest that the County Council be divided into positions, 1-7, not based on where they reside. Just draw straws for the positions. That way, a person who wanted to run for the council could select the position of the particular councilor whom they wanted to oppose. And, residents could still vote in all seven races. That should deal with Ms. Yukimura’s concern about “unity” and “separation thinking.”
Linda Estes
Koloa
Gift of card saves the day
I found more aloha at a recent Costco checkout counter than I could have imagined. I arrived at the checkout with an expired membership card. Awkward. The lady in line behind me came to my rescue with a gift card for a year’s membership. She gave me this card anonymously — so anonymously she disappeared before I could even thank her. I just wanted her to know that I will show my deep appreciation by paying ahead and not only me but family and friends who were also touched by her generosity.
Alice Fix
Lihue
Smart meters not only options
KIUC is railroading all of us that are concerned about our health and the effects of smart meters into paying an additional fee each month to read our analog meters.
I have two suggestions, one is that I take a photo of my meter each month and email it to them so they can read it from their office.
The second one is: Average our yearly usage and charge us each month what the average is and send someone once a year to read the meter and make whatever adjustments are necessary.
There are plenty of unemployed people who would gladly go out once a year and read meters. I am retired and I would be open to such an arrangement and would use my own car.
How many people that have smart meters have noticed a reduction in the charges?
The radiation is going 24/7 from smart meters. There is a relay meter across the street from my home, how is that affecting my health?
Advocates of smart meters are saying it’s no worse than a cellphone. Who said cellphones are safe and how many minutes in a day are cellphones used by the average person? Smart meters are being protested across the globe, not just here on Kauai.
I just received a postcard telling me how to vote on the ballot we will be receiving regarding charging for the reading of our old meters. Is that legal? What did that cost us for the mailing and the postcards?
Is this truly a co-op?
Marjorie Lewis
Kapaa
Cost causers should pay extra expense
What if The Garden Island newspaper was a cooperative owned by the members instead of a for-profit corporation, and what if the member-elected board decided to discontinue delivering the paper to members’ homes as a printed hardcopy and as a cost saving measure to publish a web-based newspaper and provide electronic reading tablets to all coop members, and what if some members objected and insisted they still receive their newspaper as a hardcopy delivered to their home? Who should pay the expenses (printing presses, paper stock, delivery personnel, vehicles and gasoline, etc.) of servicing these members, the entire membership or just the cost causers themselves?
Ed Coll
Puhi
Vote yes on meters
It’s time to vote on extra fees to be charged to the few people on the island who have refused to accept smart meters and whether the rest of us should subsidize their ill-defined and poorly conceived scientific and political paranoia. We should all vote YES on the ballots from the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, and say emphatically that people who, for various philosophical reasons, won’t accept smart meters should not stick the rest of us with their costs.
Smart meter opponents profess to be justifiably paranoid of the health consequences of these meters, as well as the Big Brother concept of having “the government” able to monitor everything we do. They are also likely to be the very people who most vilify the KIUC for not reducing our reliance on fossil fuels to generate our electricity. The truth is that smart meter opponents have no legitimate science on their side. As to the government knowing what we’re doing with our electricity, hello!
But instead, smart meters allow a utility many of us love to hate to better address the very tricky balance between legacy generating (read that “diesel-powered”) capacity and smarter use of alternatives, from solar to more hydro power.
Your vote, this week, should be emphatically yes to require the few who will not accept technological progress to pay their fair share of the consequences. If you got the ballot but didn’t vote yet, please retrieve it, today, from your trash can and vote yes.
Allan Parachini
Kilauea
