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• Cleaning up North Shore facilities •

Fear tactics shouldn’t resonate

Cleaning up North Shore facilities

On the North Shore we have some major problems with our beach parks and rest rooms. They are meticulously cleaned, however the usage and overload overrides their efforts. The ancient sewage systems create health hazards and these parks were never meant to handle such an influx. That has been most evident in March and April of this year.

If money is the key issue holding back the much-needed growth and further maintenance of these parks, as well as parking, and accompanying lifeguard services, I suggest the following:

1. Charging a daily county fee for boats throwing anchor overnight in Hanalei Bay from Memorial Weekend thru the end of September. These boaters pay an infinitesimal state stipend, however the boaters themselves use the county parks and rest rooms, and beaches daily, and operate smaller leisure craft, impacting safety issues from the Pavilion to the Pier on a daily basis.

Note: Vacation rental homes in this area go for $500-$1000 per day during high season, while these boats basically utilize our resources for free, while creating an impact on our counties infrastructure that affects local use of the public beaches.

A $300 per week or $50 a day charge for overnight boat parking in Hanalei over a 13-week period that has an average of 30 boats per day can raise up to $117,000. These funds can be added to the overall growth and maintenance of our parks during key summer impact months.

Parking is at a premium along Weke Road and its associated beach parks. With families and visitors frequenting the bay along with folks paying for recreational services along the shoreline and out to sea. To raise monies from this stressed infrastructure so that a sense of order can be restored and ENFORCED might  include:

1. Opening up the grassy fields close to pine trees beach park during summer months for daily parking.

2. Posting signs and issuing tickets along Weke Road on cars block safe passage on public roads.

3. Restructuring the parking lots and issuing tickets for illegal parking inside the lots, having the county benefit from these ticketed revenues for the area.

4. Additional stipend charged daily to surf schools and recreational businesses that charge money to use this area. $2 per person, per day could be a levied county tax that these businesses pay for use of county areas to provide commercial recreation.

5. Parking stipend for boat operators using Hanalei pier for loading and unloading passengers the same $2 per person.

These extra charges can pay for bathrooms being maintained more than once per day and even placed in a fund where the bathrooms can have proper lighting, plumbing, etc.

I am relying on County Council, administration to address these problems proactively, otherwise the reaction might be related to the following consequences:

1. Someone dies from bacterial infections from our bathrooms or bayshore water quality, with no proper signage and warning issues.

2. A child gets run over while walking with his parents along Weke Road where obstructions are prevalent because of improper parking facilities and enforcement.

3. Accidents occur along the shoreline this summer with power crafts operating from boats to the beach.

I have faith things can be addressed…

Andy Melamed, Hanalei

Fear tactics shouldn’t resonate

I recently read an article by an author that was shocked that the FBI was creating a massive civilian data base.

All of these databases (the FBI, NSA, DOD, CIA) including Homeland Security are an attempt to identify and eliminate Risk. They are all part of Risk Preemption (RP).

RP says if there is someone, some process, organization, financial transaction, etc., that you as the watcher don’t fully know about it is a risk.

The RP argument goes like this…

A risk can jepardize national security. It can  disrupt government. It can endanger our nation.

If our nation’s existence is at risk then preserving it is the prime goal, the essential mission. And, unfortunately if this goal is blindly pursued all other considerations such as objective justice, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights become secondary. Even torture, sedition and domestic spying become acceptable to save the nation.

The result of course is we kill the very thing we fight to preserve, a Free and freedom based nation.

Further we need to accept the idea that safety and security are not freedom. In fact total safety and security are not possible in a free nation.

Fear is the way the government scares us into accepting our loss of freedom in its persuit of Risk Preemption “to keep us safe”.

Its time to choose. Risk is a fact of life. Fear is not.

Don’t let the government use fear to purvey Risk Preemption, we will end up with neither freedom nor security, but we will lose our sacred rights.

Scott Robeson, Hanalei