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Monday, July 21, 2008
Letters to the Editor July 21, 2008
By Andrew Walden @ 12:05 AM :: 4108 Views

Good factual information

Dear Editor,

I am an avid reader of your publication. It isn’t because its free—it is just good factual information that should get to the public.

I was dismayed a couple of issues ago when an article mentioned that there was no settlement for the Kaloko reservoir overflow. I worked for the Ag Dept. after finishing college, and we did lots of dam work, so I have some knowledge about spillways.

As I recall, when a dam was built we calculated the 100-year storm runoff from the watershed above the dam and made the spillway large enough to take that amount of water.

I know there is no question that the reservoir would not have overflowed has the spillway remained intact. Any hydrologist will attest to that fact. The evidence points to the fact that the owner wanted a larger lake. How do you do that? Raise the level of the water. How to do that? Block the spillway.

Nuff said!

Don Seaton, Kea`au, Hawai`i

Reading pleasure

Dear Editor,

I commend you for publishing ‘the other side’ of the news so desperately needed in this state and particularly on this island. I look forward to many hours of reading pleasure to replace the increasingly left-leaning Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

Aloha

Lee S Motteler, Pahoa, Hawai`i

Stopping School Closures

Dear Editor,

Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed a bill that could have led to the closure or merger of small schools in areas with declining enrollment, an veto which elicited massive writhing within the recesses of the state Department of Education. Thereupon DOE belched forth yet another new idea: “Creating specialized academic focuses at certain schools.”

Whether or not this is putting new wine in old skins -- i.e. repackaging the idea of ‘magnet’ schools under a new name -- there is one thing of which your readers can be absolutely certain: DOE, currently sucking up the better part of three billion dollars annually, will most assuredly demand even more money to launch this new initiative.

An assistant DOE superintendent of business services -- was quoted by the Advertiser as saying, “We’re looking at the opportunity that underutilized facilities offer to expand educational programs at the schools.”

This worthy made his bones in the trenches as the Act 51 ‘implementation manager’ in charge of the budgetary gutting of small, ‘unimportant’, rural, outer island schools whose funds were then transferred to large, ‘important’ schools on O`ahu in a rob Peter pay Paul scheme known as the ‘weighted student formula’.

He actually had the brazen audacity to come to our small complex and tell teachers in schools forced to staff reduce (fire) people who work with children, “You will simply have to learn how to do more with less.”

When asked how many desk driving, non teaching bureaucrats would lose THEIR jobs in DOE as the result of this ‘reinventing’ of education according to Act 51, it suddenly became necessary to change the subject.

This public school teacher has a better idea. Let’s cashier her royal highness the Supe, all of her perfumed courtiers, their budget sucking entourages and oh say 90 percent of the rest of the non-teaching desk-driving, oleaginous careerists who pervade DOE like blubbery marbled fat in Prime cut beef. With the money saved, NO schools would have to be closed and all children in this state might be deemed worthy to have an education, not merely those in politically important areas of the state.

Delusional fantasy? No way. We have a once in a decade opportunity to vote for a Constitutional Convention, thus an opportunity to eradicate this DOE altogether and replace it with REAL school districts, locally established and controlled at county and sub county levels. Those who care about children can end the reign of rot and ruin that threatens the future of our children and of this state.

Thomas E. Stuart Public School Teacher, Kapa`au, Hawai`i

Political prostitutes

Dear Editor,

It is that time of year again. No not Christmas or Thanksgiving and neither is it Halloween. Guess again, now you’ve got it; it’s election time. And now our roads are littered with signs displaying the designates of their favorite prostitute.

Did I say prostitute? Maybe I should have said the politician. But then again the equation is very close. I view the political scene as one enormous “red Light” district. The political prostitutes and their pimps are driving us numb. They line the highways and clutter the airwaves with promises that they have no intentions to fulfill. Buy me. Buy him/her with your votes, shouts the pimp. They will fulfill all your desires.

You want good clean government? I’m the person to do it. (Wait? Hasn’t their party been in power for forty years? Then who is corrupting the government?) Again, I’m confused, who do I vote for? I have scant recognition of their congressional record and the news media are guaranteed to slant the opinions to a liberal view. As you might have ascertained, I lean to the conservative side of politics and vote independently. I do not conjecture in “party lines” nor do I believe someone should dictate to me regarding why or how I should vote. Have we not been taught to stand on our own two feet? In school didn’t your teacher tell you that you must think and act independently? Any number of times you have heard the same old clichés. In your place of employment you are told, “not to rely on the next person or think for your self.” But come the election year and everyone is telling you how to vote as if you were some mindless twit.

If anyone conjectures that the politician is not indebted to his campaign workers or to the individuals that make donations and especially to his party, then please introduce me to them as I still have some shares in the George Washington Bridge that I would like to sell.

In retrospect it is only the prostitute that gives you something worthwhile for your donation. Unfortunately for her she is not protected by the law if she lies, but their politician has a battery of lawyers at his beck and call and his political friends to distort the truth. Do you still want to vote along party lines?

Ronald Korman

Kea`au, Hawai`i

Where are the police when you need them?

Dear Editor,

I’ve been reporting loud boom box noises from moving vehicles going up and down my road, or parked on an empty PRIVATE property, between Paradise and Kaloli, and was told by police dispatch, that the officer(s) cannot do anything if they show up and nothing is going on.

Naturally, common sense can tell you when these “hopeless ‘animals’, probably on welfare, living off of our hard earned money” sees the blue light they turn the noise down or off!

They’re like “little devils” come out when it gets dark. When I call the police department, I get the same line of questions? Worse yet, sometimes I get a person who don’t even know her map??? How in the world can we honest citizens be of help to them if they cannot help us first?

While on the highway heading home from Hilo on the one way stretch to Kea`au, a small pick up truck with boxes in back, taking off and not paying attention to the boxes flying off the back of his truck. I called the police department, from the time I talked to dispatch till I got home, there was no police vehicle in sight! Yet, when a car is stopped off the highway for one thing or other, there’s about three to four police cars on the spot!! What’s up with this picture??? The Police Commissioners should do something about this! If they can’t do the job, get their butts out and put reliable bodies in there!!!

Frustrated Resident

Gladys W. Brigham

Kea`au, Hawai`i

Hele On the bus

Dear Editor,

People of Puna! The Hele-On bus now has expanded services in Puna. There are now 3 busses a day that service the Pahoa, Nanawale, Kapoho, Pohoiki, Opihikao, Seaview, Kalapana, and Leilani areas that take riders to and from Hilo at 7:30AM, 12:15PM and 5:05Pm. They arrive in Kapoho about 70 minutes later via Pahoa, Hawaiian Beaches, and Nanawale. The bus also runs on Saturdays.

There is also and express bus leaving Pahoa at 8:15AM and arriving Hilo Mo`oheau Terminal at 9:05 AM. This is a real help to those Pahoa residents who work in Hilo.

Many thanks to the forward-looking folks at Hawai`i Mass Transit. For more detailed schedules and information concerning other island-wide improvements, visit www.co.hawaii.hi.us or call 961-8744. Enjoy the ride!

Margaret Levy-Dohanos

Pahoa, Hawai`i

A choice for Puna

Dear Editor,

In my years on the County Cost of Government Commission and the County Board of Ethics, I watched with dismay as the County Council frittered away the opportunities created by the now-ended economic boom.

Instead of addressing real issues such as roads, police, crime and drugs, Council members fought amongst themselves sometimes even calling the police to file charges against each other or their staffers.

Instead of cleaning up our parks and professionalizing county departments to better do their jobs, council members have wasted months on depleted uranium, GMOs, and a jury-rigged attempt to re-write our flood control ordinance. Immense amounts of money have been spent on government buildings. The only protest has come from Kona council members who want to make sure that similarly immense amounts are spent on government building in Kona.

Now I open the pages of the July 8 Tribune-Herald to discover the Puna council district 5 race portrayed as a two-person contest between a current and a former Council member who have some of the worst records in all of this.

Not so, there are other candidates in the Council District 5 race and I am one of them. On September 20 Puna Maka`i voters can break from the disappointments of the recent past and chart a new direction.

Wayne Joseph Kea`au, Hawai`i

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