• The last word
• Sleepless and stressed
The last word
Their seems to be a bully on the pulpit in the County Council Chambers.
Council members Lani Kawahara and Tim Bynum are not the only people to suffer the chair’s bullying.
Chair Asing often attacks members of the public that offer testimony claiming they are “incorrect” and “wrong” then gavels them out of the testimony chair. After this verbal sucker-punch the hapless citizen must vacate the chair unable to respond. I seldom testify before council but I did so at the July 23 council meeting on a subject I know something about.
In my testimony I said that channel 53 could be carrying the County Council meetings live and could have been doing so for years. I said citizens are paying for expensive real-time captioning services.
The county chooses to plug the live cable feed into their own private cable system rather than into the government channel where everyone could watch the meeting live. Department heads have the luxury of watching the live proceedings in their office and show up just before they are needed to testify. The rest of the citizens around the island are denied that opportunity by the county withholding the live feed.
After my testimony this dialog occurred:
Chair Asing: In the county budget is Hoike television video streaming $200,000. Your assertion that we are holding it back is incorrect; we are moving on it. So we have allocated funds and it is with the Finance Department at this time. So I want to make it clear that your assertion that we are holding it back is incorrect, we are in fact moving on it, but you make these assumptions that are totally wrong.
Ed Coll: I’m not making assumptions and I’m not wrong.
Chair Asing: It’s wrong!
Ed Coll: I’m not wrong!
Chair Asing: That’s it! I’m not going to get into an argument. Thank you very much.
Here is what Chair Asing would not let me say: I was not talking about Internet video streaming. I was talking about real-time cablecasting of council meetings on the Hoike TV channel. These are two separate issues and technologies. One has nothing to do with the other.
This bait-and-switch tactic is a well worn technique used by Chair Asing to avoid addressing the issue at hand through the substitution of a different issue.
Chair Asing did the same thing to Council members Karawara and Bynum when they complained about not receiving their e-mail in a timely manner (or at all). In response to this issue, Chair Asing launched into a long-winded multimedia presentation on how United States postal mail is distributed to council members. U.S. postal mail and e-mail are two separate issues.
In closing, I still maintain the citizens of Kaua‘i could and should be watching live, captioned council meetings on the government TV channel. This could have been done years ago and the only reason we are not receiving a live cablecast of the council meetings is government incompetence at best, or lack of political will at worst. I suspect the latter.
If Chair Asing is going to assert someone is wrong he should a least have the courtesy to allow a response. Last word by fiat is an abuse of the power by the chair and discourages citizens from offering testimony.
Mahalo for allowing myself and others to respond here in the newspaper to defend our positions, something Chair Asing does not allow in council chambers.
Ed Coll, Puhi
Sleepless and stressed
We arrived home Saturday evening and I went to bed because I felt so tired.
The next morning I woke up and could hardly get out of bed. I was beginning to think that I was sick. I got back in bed and slept for the entire day. That evening I was up for a few minutes and got back in bed as I could hardly stay awake. Monday, I woke up and still felt pretty worn out. I had to drive to Huntington Beach but I returned home pretty wiped out. Today, I am at least beginning to work on e-mails, bills, etc.
I am not sick. I think the most simple explanation for this total exhaustion is that I had so little sleep in the 10 days that we were in Po‘ipu. I was constantly at the window watching our front porch and lawn each time I heard the wind, the alarms, or saw the motion sensors go off outside.
I was walking the hall and checking on the kids’ rooms. We made them sleep with their doors and windows, including curtains, completely closed.
On the night the sensors went on the neighbors were robbed. On the night I saw what was most likely one of the burglars I could not sleep. I believe this total exhaustion is from stress and lack of sleep.
I think it is a travesty that Kaua‘i does not report these daily burglaries in the paper. If the rental agencies are not professional enough or honest enough to tell each renter personally when they arrive that there are active thieves working in the neighborhood then how can we as vacationers choose what is best for our families and friends.
Jill Theno, Del Mar, Calif.
