• Vote ‘no’ on meters • Members should share meter costs • Preschool earns A • Learn from nature • Smokey coming to island for visit Vote ‘no’ on meters KIUC board members want everyone to have a smart meter
• Vote ‘no’ on meters • Members should share meter costs • Preschool earns A • Learn from nature • Smokey coming to island for visit
Vote ‘no’ on meters
KIUC board members want everyone to have a smart meter because one of their goals is to charge all of us a higher rate during peak hours of the day.
They believe that charging us a higher rate will create an incentive to use less electricity during peak hours.
Considering we already pay some of the highest rates in the country, I’m quite sure that most of us already do whatever we can to keep our electric bill down.
Smart meters provide KIUC with the ability to differentiate your peak-hour usage from other times of the day.
Without a smart meter on every KIUC account, it’s difficult for them to justify the high peak rates when they can’t do it to everyone.
How else do you think they can justify spending $63,000 on this worthless election.
Please vote no.
Larry Arruda
Lihue
Members should share meter costs
I don’t think that KIUC should be taking sides in the decision about smart meters. This organization is a cooperative and should not be spending members’ money to influence the vote.
There is a valid position that someone with a smart meter installed near where they sleep could have health concerns.
Why shouldn’t all members share in the cost of protecting those members, seeing as the savings from the smart meters should offset the costs?
Jerry Gottsdanker
Omao
Preschool earns A
Lately, I had found myself growing slightly jaded, my philosophic vision blurring. To my delight, however, on this, my second trip to Kauai, one person would restore my vision and rekindle my passion: “Aunty” Val Rita.
I met Aunty Val, a woman of clear personal philosophy enhanced by a strong sense of self, on my first visit to Kauai.
On this trip, she had invited me to visit the school she opened and named A Room to Grow Preschool.
This charming place was the perfect realization of Aunty Val’s personal belief that preschool should “follow the child’s lead and also teach problem solving skills.” It united the best qualities of an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse with her philosophy of early childhood education.
In my opinion, the greatest gift Aunty Val gives her students and their parents is a room in which to learn and create.
Aunty Val is a Kauai local who used her personal savings to start this grassroots preschool tucked away in a small house in Lihue.
Tracy Eagle
Los Angeles
Learn from nature
How sad to read of the beach erosion threatening homes on the North Shore of Oahu. And how sad to see the ocean threatening the highway on Kauai’s Westside.
Equally distressing is knowing that many Poipu homes between the highway and ocean were damaged by Iniki.
However, these homes and highways “came to the nuisance.” Everyone knew the ocean was there and that shorelines change.
But, as in so many other areas of the country, private owners want to be right on the ocean and vow to rebuild (often with financial assistance) after the ocean does what it does.
Wouldn’t it have been wiser to prohibit building between the highway and the ocean in the first place? Wouldn’t this have avoided the private losses of the homeowners? Wouldn’t this have better preserved both public beach access and the ocean views of drivers and pre-existing homeowners alike?
People everywhere must start taking the long view of natural consequences, rather than insisting on satisfying their own short-term interests.
We will learn these lessons or nature will continue to teach them the hard way.
Suzan Kelsey Brooks
Lihue
Smokey coming to island for visit
Dear family of friends on Kauai. Aloha! I have not been on Kauai since the early ‘90s. Yet I have never forgotten your smiles and laughter and have thought of you often and fondly throughout the years. I will always treasure our time and experiences together.
My brother and our friend surprised me with a cruise ticket to Hawaii. I will be on the Carnival ship called Miracle, pulling into the Nawiliwili harbor at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 25. If any, or all of you are available to come and see me I would love it!
Also, I will be with 20 Native American and Native Canadian dignitaries so any type of cultural welcome to them would also be well-received. I still consider Kauai my home island and her people my family.
Wishing you all good health and cheer in 2014 and beyond. Mahalo plenty! Your forever friend.
Smokey Rain
Cottonwood, Ariz.
