Letters for June 14, 2015

Letters for June 14, 2015

Mandatory garbage fee hard on seniors

We have lived here since 1999 but started visiting in the late ‘80s. When we moved here, garbage pick-up was free, which of course we thought was great.

Then the county started charging for the service, which we didn’t mind because the cost of fuel had gone up and the dump was filling up. So a monthly fee added on to our property taxes was something we didn’t like but since everything else was going up we accepted it as a sign of the times.

Now we’re being charged a fee for a service we don’t use and that’s where we must draw the line. My husband and I are in our 70s and arthritic. My artificial knees don’t like going up and down the hill to take our can to our pick-up spot. My shoulders and back also protest. And my husband’s back and knees protest as well.

The new cans, which we’re told we must use but have declined, don’t fit in our car for driving them down the hill and back up again so now when our old one, which does fit in the car, fills up we have to load it into our car and drive to the dump (did I say we don’t have enough garbage to fill the new can every week, let alone our old one?) and unload our garbage. We recycle what we can and take used-but-good to items to ReSource or other re-sale locations.

I’m sure there are other elders who have similar issues. Why must we all be fined, which is basically what this fee amounts to, $120 a year for something we can’t use? Our incomes are limited and with prices increasing almost daily pensions and Social Security hardly cover living expenses. And now this!

Get real, Kauai. Find another way.

Susan Campbell

Kalaheo

Speak up to halt HoKua Place development

Greg Allen and his Mainland investors are hoping to sell you a piece of their paradise, on the disguise of affordable housing. They’ve named it HoKua Place. If you don’t know about this proposed development in Kapaa, here it is in a nutshell: 800 dwelling units, above the roundabout, and behind the middle school. One hundred and eighty-three multifamily apartments; the rest being single dwelling lots in the $650,000 to $950,000 price range. Hardly affordable.

Traffic congestion on the Eastide, as we all know, is horrendous. This project will generate at least 1,600 more cars onto our already over-stressed roads. The developers say that the Department of Transportation is planning to expand Kuhio Highway. Fat chance of that ever happening.

There are so many other ramifications of this project — overcrowded schools, overtaxed water and infrastructure. Do we want this development to happen? Like stopping the dairy project on the South Shore, we can band together as a community to stand strong for the benefit of Kauai’s future.

At this point in time, the developers need to have the zoning of their area changed — from agriculture (which it is now), to urban zoning. We can stop this crisis from happening by writing letters, supporting the zoning to stay in agriculture.

Helpful also to include in your letters, is your personal experiences of specific places, intersections, time and dates, that you have sat in traffic on the Eastside.

Please kokua to help stop this project. Send your letters by June 22 to:

1) Peter Young: info@hookuleana.com

2) State Land Use Commission: luc@dbedt.hawaii.gov

3) Planning Dept on Kauai: mwilliams@kauai.gov

Robin Oaks

Kapaa

Thanks to many for happy ending

We enjoyed Averie Soto’s description of the Moloaa puppy rescue in Thursday’sThe Garden Island. However, we want to note the extraordinary efforts to help these dogs made by so many members of the community, particularly Lulu Stretzer, who took in the puppies and their mama and has committed to keeping them for the eight weeks necessary to wean, then spay and neuter. It was Lulu who spoke the last words in the article attributed to Liz. She truly has “let go” of her own needs in order to care for these animals: She is currently searching for a new place to live because her current landlord won’t allow dogs.

We’d also like to mention KQNG Radio’s Ron Wiley and dozens of Kauai residents who have donated money, food and supplies. We have actually raised over $700 to cover medical and other expenses.

Although this story has a happy ending, many abandoned dogs and puppies on this island die slowly and painfully from starvation, exposure and injury. We realize that some people reach a point where they can no longer keep an animal, and we hope that instead of taking the cowardly route of leaving them to die alone and in pain, they will try to find a new home or at least bring them to the Humane Society.

John Teschner and Liz Hagen

Moloaa