It used to stand for something
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Enough said.
David Hirt
Waikoloa Village
Mayor Kim is shades of Trump
Mayor Kim says if his demands aren’t met he is going to cut services and lay off employees.
Wow. Who who does that sound like? Really? Does he not read/hear/watch the news?
Maybe we need a “Nancy Pelosi!”
Claudia F. Steffen
Captain Cook
Stand up or step down
What will it take? Who will stand up? When is enough? Over and over the story goes. Every week we read another sad story about not enough money for this and not enough for that! I wonder why we keep voting in fools to represent us?
Harry Kim has been our mayor for the second time in the last 20 years and his second run is every bit as bad as his first. I have been on this island for two decades and I remember his lack of leadership during his first 8 year run. He could not stand up to the burial council during the Alii Highway issue and we lost the best chance we will ever get to put that road in. He said that the $28 million was not lost that it was just diverted to the Saddle road. The Feds were already picking up that tab, so how did that make any sense?
If you consider Mr. Kim’s age and health issues, maybe he does not really have the heart to stand his ground against any opposition, especially given the amount of heart attacks he has suffered while in office. While we sit in daily gridlock on the Queen K Highway going through Kona, people should be thanking our public officials for all their help!
Also during his first run as mayor, the infrastructure issues concerning cesspools were very much on the immediate horizon and because of Hawaii bureaucratic foot-dragging by both State and county officials, the EPA came down heavy on those of us that had multifamily dwellings, costing many of us citizens millions of dollars to comply. I flew to San Francisco to meet directly with the EPA as I was one of the unfortunate ones they were going to hammer to get Hawaii’s attention. This came down during the Kenoi’s first term, but if you think about it he was second in command during Mayor Kim’s term, and just a continuation of the same bad leadership.
I met with Mr. Kenoi just prior to going to San Francisco and Mr. Kenoi said directly to my face that my issue was not even in their 20-year plan. Now we see in the paper that $800 million needs to be spent complying with the EPA mandate for the rest of the island. I remember writing an article in the paper afterward, warning of this upcoming issue and here it is! Our county’s lack of planning is about to cost everyone on this island a bundle! The rest of Hawaii is facing similar issues and is in even worse shape as Oahu faces a $4 billion sewer problem but instead of dealing with that they decided to fund a worthless rail system to the tune of more than $8 billion (Yes, partly financed by the Feds ). This rail system will solve one half of one percent of their traffic issues! The cost overruns would have been enough to take care of the EPA mandate for the entire island chain! How about that for smart leadership!
On a not so nice side note, this island is on the hook for some of this rail cost! Thank you Oahu.
The discussions are now taking place on how and who to rob to cover their stupid decisions. Property tax, anyone? Those of us who already complied will not stand still while our government decides that we need to help cover them.
Bringing us back to today’s regular news cycle of our government officials asking for more and more but never taking responsibility. Our government is totally responsible for all of the bad decisions they have made for self-serving reasons. These are the people who either never held jobs in the private sector, or if they did were failures and ran to government work because of the security of not ever getting fired. It’s time to start firing them.
Is this enough for people to stand up?
Robert Johnson
Kailua-Kona
