Parking lot not the right spot for Hele-On hub
I have never sent a letter to the editor in 21 years. But I just submitted my opinion to www.konahub.info (the website for review of the new in-town Hele-On hub) about some of their choices.
Please do not consider one of only two in-town public parking lots as a viable solution. While it has been kind of available during this pandemic, with the tourists coming back, there are already no parking spaces — around and around you go, waiting for a spot. What do you do? Go to Hualalai and Kuakini? Not on a market day. Go to King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel and Pay? Park at Long’s, Sack N Save, Firestone and walk? Park at Coconut Grove and really, really walk? Even the choice across from Huggo’s is currently used for parking. We do need an in-town Hele hub. But we do not need to lose any parking.
Charles Mayfield
Kailua-Kona
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Enlist for Kona
Why again can’t it be done? Why can’t we put together a volunteer crew that resembles the Ironman, without the shirts. Ironman has taught us that like minded people can come together to build anything. It’s the people that make it happen.
Would it be possible to put together a group of professional volunteers? A volunteer army of carpenters, electricians, masons, plumbers etc. Could these folks come together using their own equipment, their own time to fix and repair OUR parks, beaches and walkways?
Why do we have to wait years for our Government to fix our things? That’s the reason we have a government, right? To fix our things, repair things, make things right, why can’t we just fix it ourselves?
Hapuna has no water and stinky bathrooms, Kahalu’u is a mess with the world’s best oceanside table fenced off, Old Kona Airport Park is worse. Plenty guys and gals willing to put in a half days labor, just ask.
Let’s get together and form an “Aloha Army” of concerned kama’aina. Willing to get it done right, right now, for the right reason.
Our park restrooms are disgusting, they stink and they’re not well-designed. A volunteer architect could find flaws and make suggestions instead of making the same mistakes over and over again.
Kind of like that patch of weed on the Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway. You know, I think we could get a mower and work that patch and make it look nice for the future too.
Do you think it’s possible? I do.
If I was in charge, I would retire all upper county management that has anything to do with fixing things.
It’s time for new blood and a new attitude.
“If you want a job done right, then learn to do it yourself.”
David O. Baldwin
Kealakekua
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An attempt to legalize voter bribery
I don’t know where Marian Hughes in her Thursday letter to the editor gets the idea from my letter on March 16 that I am a Republican or that I didn’t strongly disapprove of Trump’s tax breaks. My point was that Congress and two presidents are attempting to legalize voter bribery with gifts to people (more than 90%) who didn’t even lose jobs because of the pandemic. If an extremely wealthy politician were to give such personal checks to the masses he/she would surely be accused of voter bribery, but these people are doing it, not with their own money, not with money in the Federal Reserve, but with loans, which they expect our grandchildren and great grandchildren to pay off.
Her suggestion to give the money to a worthy cause is a good one, but I suspect that more than a few recipients will just keep the checks and vote for Trump in 2024 because his $1,200 and $600 bribes are bigger than Biden’s $1,400 bribe.
Burt Masters
Kailua-Kona
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