• Personal gains before justice • Personal gains before justice • Strong mayor system works Graffiti is beautiful art Graffiti is beautiful art to me. It is the youth and others expressing themselves. I am a skater and we have
• Personal gains before justice
• Personal gains before justice
• Strong mayor system works
Graffiti is beautiful art
Graffiti is beautiful art to me. It is the youth and others expressing themselves. I am a skater and we have always embraced the graffiti artists, they make many skateparks much more colorful, interesting places.
It is epic when you show up at a skatepark and an artist has transformed a plain mundane cement wall into art. If we do not want the graffiti artist tagging random places, perhaps we should build graffiti walls in our parks for the youth to express themselves upon.
These youths need an outlet, and they art not just going to disappear. Can you hear them? I can. They are bored and looking for support from their community.
Let’s support our youth and provide places such as graffiti walls and skateparks to express themselves. It is a horrible feeling when your community ignores your dreams and aspirations because they are different.
These youths are still our children and we need to listen to their calling.
Todd Anderson, Lihu‘e
Personal gains before justice
A good resume often means higher pay and higher demand when it comes to attorneys in private practice. I believe this is a guideline used by some of the attorneys in our county’s Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Case and point, I spent a few months on O‘ahu and occasionally returned to Kaua‘i for personal reasons. On Kaua‘i I live on the bottom floor of a two-story house. There are no doors separating up and downstairs, respect and consideration for others is the only security.
I came home for a day and the upstairs tenant told me that he had removed my weapons from where they were kept and took them to his boss’s house because he heard that someone was going to break in the house. I told him to bring the weapons back and left that day for O‘ahu.
When I returned my weapons were still missing. I reported my weapons stolen and later all were recovered except for one. The case went to the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The deputy prosecuting attorney was handling the case and the day before the grand jury hearing I was told that the case is being dropped for lack of evidence or something like that.
Let’s see, the guy admitted to taking the weapons, he failed to returned the weapons, police recovered all but one weapon, and to top it all off I lose the weapon that saved my life more than once in Iraq and the convicted felon walks.
Harold Vidinha, Koloa
Strong mayor system works
If Mr. Lewis is dissatisfied with our present mayor, I suggest that he do what the rest of us voters do: campaign against him at the next election.
Mr. Lewis, stop trying to take away my right to vote for our county government (“County mishandles manager proposal,” Forum, Nov. 14).
I totally disagree with Mr. Lewis’ suggestion that a county manager, hired by the County Council, is the best way to govern Kaua‘i. The separation of the executive and legislative branches is as important to state, municipal and county government as it is to our national government.
In my opinion a strong mayor, elected by the voters of the county, is the best and most efficient way to run Kaua‘i.
I speak as one who is personally familiar with this principle. I served as director of civil service for the City and County of Honolulu for 12 years under Mayor Frank Fasi. I also served as director of personnel services on the Big Island under Mayors Herbert Matayoshi and Dante Carpenter.
Our right to vote for the people who are responsible for running local government is too important to give up by letting the council do it for us. Here is how a strong mayor system generally works:
The mayor appoints a managing director who is responsible for directing the activities of heads of departments such as Parks and Recreation, Public Works. Department heads are appointed by the mayor. This is most important, because people who are highly qualified in their respective fields of endeavor are the key to a successful administration.
People will remember that Mayor Fasi brought The Bus to Honolulu. He also had a van, painted in bus colors which was called “the Mayor’s Bus.” He used this vehicle to cover city installations and projects throughout the island. Every Monday morning, we had coat-and-tie department heads meeting with the mayor in his office. The questions that Mayor Fasi asked individual department heads were based on information that he had gathered in his travels around the island.
It sure did keep them on the ball.
If the council appoints the city manager, who will appoint the department heads? Therein lies a basic weakness of this system, because it will be very difficult to keep department head from being political appointments.
Harry Boranian, Lihu‘e
