Embarrassment Embarrassment ADVERTISING Teachers are ‘fiscally irresponsible?’ I did spend $3,000 of my own money to provide for my students. OK, I took money out of my household bill paying funds. I usually work every summer to make up the
Embarrassment
Teachers are ‘fiscally irresponsible?’
I did spend $3,000 of my own money to provide for my students. OK, I took money out of my household bill paying funds.
I usually work every summer to make up the shortfall, but buy materials for my students.
I show up for meetings, extra-curricular activities and again spend my own money. Oops, there goes another bill not paid.
“But state-sanctioned ‘fiscally irresponsible’ behavior took place last summer at an AP conference held at Punahou, President Obama’s alma mater.” Imagine telling all Hawaii teachers to:
Go home on Wednesday, even though $800 per teacher was spent for a five-day workshop. “If you don’t leave, your principals are instructed to bring insubordination charges against you.” The airline tickets for outer island teachers would be invalid and not covered by the state. The loss of money to the state was only one part of this fiscally irresponsible behavior.
Teachers from the outer islands having to pay the cost of the leftover two nights for the hotel rooms that were booked for four nights.
The waste of food provisions bought for a large group of people, when half the attendees left, was a disgrace. Some teachers stayed, but did not sign in each day; others hid out in their hotel rooms because they could not book returning flights.
The embarrassment to Hawaii was incalculable. Teachers from other countries were also in attendance and watched this fiasco with bewilderment. “Why did you have to go home,” you ask? Thursday and Friday were designated “furlough” days and therefore unpaid. I have never been paid for attending any AP conference. I have only been reimbursed for some of my expenses “per diem.”
Fiscal irresponsibility, thy name is Abercrombie.
Dawn Gambone
Captain Cook
Building permits
What purpose
do they serve?
Just what is the purpose of building permits? To ensure taxes are maximized? To ensure suppliers sell lots of unnecessarily expensive hardware and materials? To ensure only licensed (taxed, politically connected) contractors are able to build? To force neighbors to upgrade and thus increase the comparable value of your own property? Or is it just the self-aggrandizing motivation that affects so many bureaucrats, the lurking suspicion someone somewhere might be doing something without obtaining their permission?
The net result seems to be preventing affordable housing by driving out anything under $150 a square foot.
Ken Obenski
Kaohe
