Offer storage lockers for the homeless
Most people can tell by just looking at the homeless that they cherish what little they carry in their shopping carts or their rolled up possessions. It’s their entire life. It’s cruel to take away what little they possess. Most of them don’t want a permanent roof over their heads but would rather hang out under the stars.
Why can’t we just allocate lockers or some sort of place where they can store their possessions when they don’t need them? Many of the homeless are veterans and a few may also be mentally impaired.
I think we can do better by them by providing them a safe haven rather than confiscate their belongings.
Colleen Miyose-Wallis
Kailua-Kona
Why buy land when we can’t maintain parks?
The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and the state control more than a million acres on Hawaii Island.
Living here and seeing that much of a million-plus acres are not open to the public it doesn’t excite me to hear the county is using taxpayer money — again — to purchase another 1,200 acres that will likely have limited public access. Anyone living on our island who takes the time to venture out can see the sorry maintenance of our public parks, both county and state, and should be asking: Why not spend this money on fixing up the parks we have first, then, if money is available, buy more land the public won’t be able to use?
Our county is “shooting us in the foot” and we are grinning and shaking our heads as we say, how cool, we are “preserving the land and stopping development.”
Great plan: less land available, less development, less taxes, less growth, less jobs, people still depending on the government to survive. Just what our state legislators want.
Frank Dickinson
Kailua-Kona