Enough is enough
I was taught a man is only as good as his word. The residents at Kamakana Villages are waiting for developer Stanford Carr to keep his.
Have you seen the mess on lower Manawalea and Ka’eka streets? Abandon cars, piles of junk, homeless camps and a constant stream of drug dealing. This is all within close range to Lei Kupuna senior housing.
Kona Community Policing was notified and placed several calls to Stanford Carr for months before getting a reply. Hope Services was called to offer help to the homeless. Yet this problem has gotten worse. True, the pandemic has slowed everything down, but you can’t keep using that as an excuse. It’s been more than enough time to take action.
In fact, it’s been a year since Stanford Carr’s representative announced at our community meeting that the abandon cars and junk on their property across the street will be removed in 15 days. That never happened.
Homeless squatters are causing problems at Lei Kupuna. They are walking right onto our property to break into the office, sleep in our laundry rooms and deal drugs. Why? Because they know we have no security. Maybe Stanford Carr and our owner, The Michaels Organization, should join forces and hire security.
An incident this past week topped it all. A runaway car from the homeless camp on Ka’eka Street crashed into a vehicle parked at the entrance of Lei Kupuna. That car could have hit a senior or a resident’s visiting grandchildren. Enough is enough. Residents at Lei Kupuna need Stanford Carr to keep his word and clean up his development then keep it clean.
Carrie Borge
Kailua-Kona
What does it take?
In response to West Hawaii Today’s Friday headline “An Absolute No-Brainer,” I’d like to ask what does it take for a 94-year-old WWII and Korean War veteran to receive a COVID-19 vaccination? I’ve called the Kona Community Hospital’s published phone number hundreds of times, spent countless hours on the phone only to receive a voicemail box that’s full and unable to take messages. I’ve gone to the VA, only to be turned down due to the paperwork bureaucracy, called my doctor’s office, and finally out of a total lack of progress I drove to the hospital to volunteer to help them answer their phone. The nurses were kind to let me fill out a form and said “someone will call you to make an appointment.” Well, I’m still waiting.
Jack Ross
Kailua-Kona
The unity inaugural
While watching the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, several unexpected ideas came to mind. Where were the protesters? Where were the anarchists? Where were the Fascists? Why are the Republican-elected officials, who only two weeks ago bitterly insisted that the election was a fraud, participating in the transfer of power? The only exception was yesterday’s dishonored and uncloaked dissembler Donald Trump.
The protesters, the anarchists, the Fascists? Were they scared off by the troops? Were they just giving us a break? Did they learn a lesson from Jan. 6? Or are they just, in Sarah Palin’s words, reloading. Time will reveal the truth.
What about the Republican officials? There were Sens. Roy Blunt, Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell as well as Reps. Kein McCarthy and Steve Scalise. Had they experienced a sudden change of heart? Were they simply gritting their teeth and forcing themselves to go through the motions of the ritual? Were they just pretending they had no part in the attempted insurrection a mere fortnight ago? Time will tell.
At least for this brief moment, we must cherish the delicious hint of the unity that is still possible for us all.
John Sucke
Waimea
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