• Good deed with bitter taste • Highways, roads should be in better shape Good deed with bitter taste Let me start with a big, big mahalo nui for the Poipu Beach Rotary Club for painting the tables and pavilions at Salt
• Good deed with bitter taste • Highways, roads should be in better shape
Good deed with bitter taste
Let me start with a big, big mahalo nui for the Poipu Beach Rotary Club for painting the tables and pavilions at Salt Pond Beach Park recently (TGI, March 3). The park which has been one of the most neglected parks on our island, badly needed the repairs and repainting, but the county always had other priorities. The Rotary clubs do a lot of good deeds for the community and we are proud of them.
Why is the bitter taste then? We, Native Hawaiians who go every day to this park to relax and walaau after work wanted to fix and repaint the tables and the pavilions at Salt Pond Beach Park. Last year, we have proposed to the Parks and Recreation Department to do this job free at our time if the county provides the paint and the tools. We even made plans who would volunteer and when.
We also have talented artists who would have painted the pictures of Hawaiian fishes on the wall of the main pavilion and a different marine animal’s picture on every pavilion for easier identification. The county did not respond. They dragged their feet and finally they did not approve our proposal of voluntary beautification of the park under their management.
Why? Perhaps it would have been shameful for the county that simple working people, whose rightful property this land is, could do a beautiful job that the county neglected. The voluntary job was approved for the Rotarians though. Is the sweat and tears of Native Hawaiians are not as valuable as that of the Rotarians? Apparently not.
The fact is that whenever we placed carefully designed stickers on the pavilion walls asking the visitors and the locals in Hawaiian and English to keep the park clean, next day the county have them removed. When at the entrance of the park we installed a beautifully designed sign donated by visitors with a message asking the people in English and Hawaiian to keep the park clean, next day the county sent out a work crew to remove and confiscate that too.
What kind of aloha is this to the people of the island? This land belongs to us, Hawaiians, and the county doesn’t even allow us to take care of it and be proud of that!
Ryan Kamala, Makaweli
Highways, roads should be in better shape
We all know that portions of both our state highways and county roads are in need of repair, especially Kuhio Highway from Kuamoo Road north to the Kapaa By-pass Road, and the washboarded portion of Kawaihau Road from Nunu Road to Gore park (fronting Mahelona Memorial Hospital).
Kauai has a lot of cars and trucks which use these arterials, but how many? I solved that question by calling the County’s Office of Motor Vehicles. Upon asking, the representative told me to “hold on” while he asked his supervisor. The answer is 90,000 licensed motor vehicles are currently registered in Kauai.
I drive a 2001 four-door mid-sized sedan that weighs 3,210 pounds. My license registration fees are as follows:
State fee: $45
County Fee: $17.50
State Weight Tax: $56.18
County Weight Tax: $64.20
Beau Fee? $5
Total: $187.88
Granted, my car is a mid-sized, but if we simply consider 3,000 pounds to be an average weight, then 90,000 vehicles times $188 is $16,920,000.
That’s $80,000 less than $17 million. I have a hard time understanding why our state highways and county roads are in such poor condition.
Bill Null, Kapaa
