Letters for Monday, February 10, 2014

• Bus shelters are overdue • Canines and owners appreciate dog park • Dairy farm welcome on Kauai • Warden does best to help inmates

Bus shelters are overdue

Open letter to Celia Mahikoa, executive on transportation, County of Kauai:

Recently, I wrote a letter (Feb. 17, 2013) regarding missing bus shelters. Your response was Mayor Cavalho’s Holo Holo vision that includes providing bus shelters for every bus stop on the Garden Island.

This will take time. However, in October or November of this year, we will begin construction on the first of eight out of 46 bus stops.

Am I missing something? I have yet to see a new shelter erected. The kupunas at the bus stop in front of King’s Chapel in Hanamaulu are still standing in the rain, wind and heat. In your closing quote, we will look forward to seeing bus shelters coming up all over the island before year’s end. This is the year of 2014 and nothing.

Please respond to the people of Kauai and make good on your promise.

Jerry Kaialoa, Kapaa

Canines and owners appreciate dog park

From our ohana as well as the Dog Parent community, we would like to sincerely thank Tommy and Rene Tokuda. Many people have ideas, visualize what they want in life, but don’t know where or how to start. Some would stop at that, but not the Tokudas. They were polite, patient, yet persistent and willing to learn as they moved along in hopes that everything would come together.

They have been working passionately for the past three and a half years to make the dream of Kauai having a dog use area, via County of Kauai’s support, become a reality. The Tokudas organized everything from meetings right down to the building process. They rolled up their sleeves, got their hands dirty from fencing to benches right down to the final touches.

So here we are today. Sunday, after a heartfelt blessing, the mayor and Lenny Rapozo officially opened the Wailua Homesteads dog use area. Tommy, Rene you have truly given a priceless gift to Kauai. We are forever grateful!

If our dogs could talk they would say, “Ruff, ruff, mahalo for creating a place for us to run, play, bark and learn to socialize with each other!”

Donna, David Pickard and The Dog Parents of Kauai

Dairy farm welcome on Kauai

I am all for the dairy. I would like to see a mix of organic milk and nonorganic milk produced. However, it seems that a whole bunch of you are newcomers to our island and do not remember that when Meadowgold was here, the milk prices were much higher and it is common knowledge that locally grown products aren’t cheaper, especially milk.

Honey is an amazing new product on our island and is amazingly delicious, but like the milk, also costs more than Mainland honey by about double.

Pre-frozen Mainland milk, which tastes yechy and has half the shelf, is usually much cheaper, unlike locally produced milk, or anything for that matter, organic or not, is almost double the price of Mainland anything.

I still only buy Kauai honey, or Hawaii honey, I purchase Kauai goat cheese, and I buy Mokihana eggs, and purchase locally grown kale. I happily eat goat meat from Kokee, and fresh caught fish if I can get it.

We need to start figuring out why our locally produced essential food items are costing so much and try to get it to where the prices can be compatible with the Mainland varieties.

Where is the assurance that these guys won’t do the same thing? There isn’t any. When the milk hits the market, we will probably do what we did last time. Buy the cheaper Mainland milk and grumble about how we have a dairy but the milk is more expensive.

Other than that though, I have absolutely no complaints about a dairy farm here, if, like I say, it is actually cheaper to produce and it doesn’t gouge everyone at the checkout counter. I remember a moment in time when I went to the market and actually saw a gallon of Meadowgold milk for $11. Ridiculous. Let’s hope these guys can do much better than that — produce a whole range of products, employ a lot of people and stay a long time on Kauai.

I would also like to see more goat farming, and products such as more cheese, yogurt and milk produced here.

I support real farming and ranching and fishing here in Hawaii and on Kauai. Go Dairy! And, I am a 2491 supporter and an environmentalist. I would rather smell cows then RUPs in the air.

Anne Punohu, Kapaa

Warden does best to help inmates

I am a former inmate and was a five-year participant of the lifetime stand program at Kauai Community Correctional Center. In regards to the Neal Wagatsuma allegations, that is totally absurd. This warden has done nothing but help inmates live clean and drug free lives. He has a unique program that deals with deeper issues than most programs dare to go, with a better chance of success. I would trust him with my own child’s life. Speaking to many people in the last few days, I have not run into anyone who does not support Neal in his effort to save lives.

There’s always going to be one or two inmates when incarcerated who will find fault with every program, every correctional worker and anyone they may come in contact with only because they just don’t want to face their own demons. If I had to put my life in his hands one more time, I know that I would be safe.

Annette Armstrong, Koloa