• Waste of public funds • Night driving on Kauai is dangerous • All not quiet on New Year’s Eve Waste of public funds Every time I approach Lihue from the south or from Puhi I am reminded of the appalling waste of
• Waste of public funds • Night driving on Kauai is dangerous • All not quiet on New Year’s Eve
Waste of public funds
Every time I approach Lihue from the south or from Puhi I am reminded of the appalling waste of money being expended on aligning of the newly completed road reconstruction contract with the present bridge construction contract.
I have a General Engineering Contractors license but anyone with a modicum of observational ability would have noticed that during the road construction the new road was not aligned with the proposed new bridge.
Sure enough, as soon as the same contractor commenced work on the bridge the first thing they did was to cut back the newly seeded mauka embankment and then this was followed by the removal of the newly placed drainage inlet boxes and associated pipe work.
This was followed of course by the removal of the center grassed island or median strip before the new grass had barely time to get established. This has been followed in turn by the removal and realignment the makai drainage boxes and piping plus large sections of the newly placed concrete roadway.
I can imagine that the bridge contract was not approved at the time the road project contract was signed, but there are change orders negotiated in almost all contracts and it would have been easy to include this likelihood in the original road contract. These millions of dollars wasted is your money and my money, but being a state and federal contract nobody apparently cares.
We are all trying to balance our budgets and make our income go further and we constantly see the state departments health, education and human services delaying or abandoning local projects or services due to lack of funds.
I am well aware that there are convoluted departmental budget processes and admit I am also looking forward to enjoying the improved road access, but such criminal waste of public funds is unnecessary and must stop.
No wonder taxpayers have become cynical. If this was the private sector someone would now be out of a job.
David Collison
Koloa
Night driving on Kauai is dangerous
I would like to second Mr. Griffin’s letter regarding the unsafe roads on Kauai. As a frequent visitor, the one thing that scares me to death is driving north from Kapaa to Hanalei at night, especially in the rain. There are very few strips where all of the road dots are in place and making the road visible. Even driving very slowly does not help. I ask that county government takes a serious look at the situation and take action immediately.
Ed Bracken
Westminster, California
All not quiet on New Year’s Eve
Well, it might have been quiet for the Kauai police on New Year’s Eve, here in Kapahi, however, there was nothing but illegal aerial fireworks, M-80s every half hour on the half hour, firecrackers without permits, fireworks on the days before and the days after, as well as fireworks being set off hours before the legal time.
Sound quiet to you? Idiotically, I, for 20 years, called the police to report all such illegal goings on, until last year an officer finally told me that they would have to see the violator with their own eyes, or I myself could video the violators and present it to the police before they could write a citation or make an arrest!
It is a good thing that other crimes like theft and murder don’t require such evidence for an arrest — eyewitness testimony is acceptable for arrest or citation in most other crimes. And just imagine what one would have to do, i.e., hide behind bushes or sit in the dark waiting for the perpetrators to set off their illegal pyrotechnics, to obtain such footage!
Suffice to say, the pretense of Kauai police enforcing the fireworks law is just that — a pretense — root word pretend.
We and our poor pets who suffer through the noise and smoke twice a year, with no recourse, have to resign ourselves to that suffering, as the “cultural” influence on lawmakers and law enforcement here is just too great against which to battle.
But please, spare us the false reporting that all was quiet and there were no citable crimes that evening. That is just patently ridiculous!
Aloha until July 4th.
Christie Thompson
Kapaa
