OF SEWERS AND SKEWERS: The characterization of Kaua`i County government as an open cesspool has been more than appropriate for as long as we can remember. Sometime we feel like our function in life over the past few decades has been to observe the surface and provide commentary on the largest and smelliest of the visible and odoriferous of contents--the "turd de jour" if you will.
But there is one exemplary piece of excrement that seems to resurface with regularity: the gold-plated, iconic fecality of the re-re-re-roofing of the Kilauea Gym.
When we saw it on the county council agenda a few weeks back we assumed our recent cataract surgery had been a failure. Surely the leakiest roof in the west had been fixed "once and for all" the last time it was fixed "once and for all."
That was back in 2003 when, after at least two previous attempts at stopping the perennial waterfall that flooded the basketball court with every precipitation, the county hired an independent consultant to watch over the other consultants that watched over the buildings division that watched over the Public Works Department that watched over the contractor that built the roof that covered the house that built Jack-sh*t.
The first re-roofing was done after Hurricane `Iniki knocked off the original one- which we can remember leaking in the 70s. But that "new" roof stopped fulfilling it's function (if it ever "filled" it in the first place as some old-timers speculate) as soon as the FEMA warranty ran out after two years in 1999, Council Chair Jay Furfaro told the assembled last Wednesday. Attempts at fixing it, including first patching it followed by a brilliant scheme to build a roof covering the leaky roof, finally culminated in the county getting, well, Jacked-up, as we described above
Actually back when it had only been re-roofed twice it had become so archetypical of Department of Public Works' (DPW) incompetency that it was the key factor in various schemes by the council to "launch and investigation" into DPW under Charter section 3.17- the only provision in the guiding county document that allows the council to "interfere" in the functions of the administration.
The matter appeared on the council agenda repeatedly. This was during the "fog" years when a thick layer of snooze-inducing, mumbling whispers from DPW engineers and assorted functionaries routinely caused the council to react like Dorothy and her crew entering the poppy fields upon their first glimpse of Oz.
After hagglin' and stragglin'- mostly over how to proceed with an "investigation" thus allowing stonewalling by councilmembers, especially those who routinely addressed DPW officials as "my good friend"- it all culminated in a charter amendment setting up the Office of the County Auditor.
The Auditor, who serves at the pleasure and under the direction of the council, has actually completed an audit of the "re-roofing" of the Kilauea Gym. But it was published before the current leak was discovered during the recent big rains in March. And nobody really knows what it says because it doesn't seem to be posted at the Auditor's page on the county web site.
But guess what? The DPW- specifically the buildings division which is the place that building projects are overseen- has "handed off" the Kilauea Gym to the newly created Department of Parks and Recreation overseen by the usually stumblin' and bumblin' Lenny Rapozo, whose main qualification for the job was that he managed the campaign of Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. in the last election.
But never fear. Even though shovels of money have been poured into past efforts, the latest answer to the musical question, "Who'll Stop The Rain?" is "Lenny," who says he has $120,000 floating around in his budget to hire (drum roll please) another consultant--one who this time will certainly figure out what to do about the the fact that the old man has apparently been snoring while it's raining and pouring.
Oh yeah, we forgot, turns out the front door of the gym also leaks when it rains hard because not only was the entire gym designed improperly with the door facing windward (the direction from which rain usually comes) but there is no "awning" or "eave" over the door and apparently the door is not water tight either. So the rain comes through the door and the floor is now "cupping" where the rain has blown in and pooled.
Oh, and the "warranty" on the labor on the current roof? Wouldn't you know it, darn the luck. it's just run out because somehow, despite the fact that there had been nothing but problems with the leaky roof for decades, the county failed to obtain a "lifetime" warranty.
It would seem that if there is indeed another "design flaw" someone- perhaps the contractors and/or consultants- should be held responsible. But of course the county will most likely only be able to prove this if we hire outside attorneys, and that would probably cost ten times what a new roof would cost.
The council has instructed Rapozo to report back in July. That should give us plenty of time to get a new pair of binoculars and a set of top-of-the-line nose plugs. We'll leave it to the council to purchase diving equipment- that's why they get the big bucks.
Showing posts with label DPW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DPW. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2012
Monday, September 19, 2011
MRF-FREE'S LAW
MRF-FREE'S LAW: There's a sure way to get our blood boiling- mention solid waste and Kaua`i county government in the same sentence.
Back in the early-mid 90's, when the term "zero-waste" was just a'bornin', Dr. Ray Chuan, activist extraordinaire, used to walk into the council chambers each week with stacks of papers and during the interstitial periods, start pawing through them.
Of course we couldn't resist looking over his shoulder and so much to our amazement we and eventually the rest of the "nitpickers" became experts on the last thing in which we wanted to stick our noses- literally or figuratively... trash.
It didn't take a genius to see that the costliest- and stupidest- thing that could be done was to dig a hole in the ground and bury valuable materials rather than recycle them. The solution was- and is- to make it as easy for folks to separate them out of their yucky trash, pick them up curbside and bring them to a place to separate them for shipment, as many places on the mainland were already either doing or planning to do at the time.
Now more than 15 years later and three administrations later Kaua`i not only doesn't have a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) but, according to the local newspaper- albeit buried mid-way through an article- Mayor Bernard Carvalho has no real plans to build one, making recycling as haphazard and costly as possible.
It's not like the money to plan and build a MRF hasn't been appropriated by the council at least four time we can think of since the turn of the century. Every single bond float- and restructuring of bonds- has included money for the facility which needs to be the first thing that is done in either a "zero-waste" program or the "integrated solid waste" strategy the county has embraced.
It has also been included in almost every capital improvement budget since then to no avail. If we didn't know better we'd think there was no one who knew how to both build a large warehouse and kick back money to the Department of Public Works' Solid Waste Division and the various mayors.
The article is, as usual when penned by Leo Azambuja, fairly useless in explaining why the heck a MRF is not in Carvalho's budget this year, preferring to concentrate on the reasons why the council refused to waste money by continuing to pay our state senator's brother an exorbitant rate to separate a small amount of curbside recycled materials, recovered through a now-canceled "pilot project."
It's just another textbook example of the county's "ready, fire, aim" modus operandi.
But further, the article fails to point out the massive costs of dumping most of our recyclable goods in our overflowing landfill to the point where some have suggested "mining" the old cells, not just to recover the materials discarded over the years but to open up space so as to delay for as long as decades the need to site a new one that nobody wants in their backyard anyway.
Instead Carvalho is still adamant about siting the MRF in the area in which he is proposing to put the new landfill even though planning and permitting for the dump could be a decade away. That means that in Carvalho's mind we will keep on doing what's wrong as long as we can, falling further behind the rest of the world in solid waste management.
Meanwhile the cart is not just before the horse, it's rolling down an endless hill and gathering speed with no equine activity on the horizon.
Of course if the planning and design had been done years ago the county might have even had the whole shebang paid for by the federal government when the they were looking for "shovel ready" public works projects a couple of years back- as they may be doing again next year.
Carvalho seems to have no trouble acting on a dime when it comes to hiring another suck-up crony to fill another new administration position. But when it comes to capital improvement projects the bungling seems almost intentional.
The old "is it incompetence or is in malfeasance?" question was seemingly made for the last three mayors. But the more Carvalho's administrative skills are on display, the more we have to believe it's the latter more than the former.
Back in the early-mid 90's, when the term "zero-waste" was just a'bornin', Dr. Ray Chuan, activist extraordinaire, used to walk into the council chambers each week with stacks of papers and during the interstitial periods, start pawing through them.
Of course we couldn't resist looking over his shoulder and so much to our amazement we and eventually the rest of the "nitpickers" became experts on the last thing in which we wanted to stick our noses- literally or figuratively... trash.
It didn't take a genius to see that the costliest- and stupidest- thing that could be done was to dig a hole in the ground and bury valuable materials rather than recycle them. The solution was- and is- to make it as easy for folks to separate them out of their yucky trash, pick them up curbside and bring them to a place to separate them for shipment, as many places on the mainland were already either doing or planning to do at the time.
Now more than 15 years later and three administrations later Kaua`i not only doesn't have a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) but, according to the local newspaper- albeit buried mid-way through an article- Mayor Bernard Carvalho has no real plans to build one, making recycling as haphazard and costly as possible.
It's not like the money to plan and build a MRF hasn't been appropriated by the council at least four time we can think of since the turn of the century. Every single bond float- and restructuring of bonds- has included money for the facility which needs to be the first thing that is done in either a "zero-waste" program or the "integrated solid waste" strategy the county has embraced.
It has also been included in almost every capital improvement budget since then to no avail. If we didn't know better we'd think there was no one who knew how to both build a large warehouse and kick back money to the Department of Public Works' Solid Waste Division and the various mayors.
The article is, as usual when penned by Leo Azambuja, fairly useless in explaining why the heck a MRF is not in Carvalho's budget this year, preferring to concentrate on the reasons why the council refused to waste money by continuing to pay our state senator's brother an exorbitant rate to separate a small amount of curbside recycled materials, recovered through a now-canceled "pilot project."
It's just another textbook example of the county's "ready, fire, aim" modus operandi.
But further, the article fails to point out the massive costs of dumping most of our recyclable goods in our overflowing landfill to the point where some have suggested "mining" the old cells, not just to recover the materials discarded over the years but to open up space so as to delay for as long as decades the need to site a new one that nobody wants in their backyard anyway.
Instead Carvalho is still adamant about siting the MRF in the area in which he is proposing to put the new landfill even though planning and permitting for the dump could be a decade away. That means that in Carvalho's mind we will keep on doing what's wrong as long as we can, falling further behind the rest of the world in solid waste management.
Meanwhile the cart is not just before the horse, it's rolling down an endless hill and gathering speed with no equine activity on the horizon.
Of course if the planning and design had been done years ago the county might have even had the whole shebang paid for by the federal government when the they were looking for "shovel ready" public works projects a couple of years back- as they may be doing again next year.
Carvalho seems to have no trouble acting on a dime when it comes to hiring another suck-up crony to fill another new administration position. But when it comes to capital improvement projects the bungling seems almost intentional.
The old "is it incompetence or is in malfeasance?" question was seemingly made for the last three mayors. But the more Carvalho's administrative skills are on display, the more we have to believe it's the latter more than the former.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
HOOK, LINE AND STINKER
HOOK, LINE AND STINKER: During the last month we've used the bill (#2149) to allow camping at Lydgate Park as a kind of case study of the long-practiced and well-honed dance of the headless chickens used by the last three Kaua`i administrations- especially in the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the now spun-off Department of Parks and Recreation (DP&R)- to run out the clock on county council oversight of various and sundry mismanagement schhemes.
But the manner in which DP&R Director Lenny Rapozo's final "rope-a-dope" performance yielded a split decision in favor of the bill's passage last Wednesday, gave a whole meaning to "don't ask me- I'm only in charge here."
Of course Rapozo's use of "the fog" and the "I not here" method of administrative oversight could not have been accomplished without council allies willing to look the other way at the misrepresentations and outright lies as well as the lack of any semblance of competency of Rapozo and his underlings.
After months of non-answers to "the eight questions" that had been repeatedly asked, in writing, of Rapozo, the bill was moved out of committee to the full council where last Wednesday despite the fact that there were amendments pending and it was no where near ready for a vote... something that has inflamed Chair Jay Furfaro's hair on many an occasion in the past.
Rapozo appeared after handing in the alleged answers just that morning, claiming he never had the questions- many of which had been sent in writing months ago- until the previous Friday. And, much to Furfaro's chagrin, they hadn’t even been distributed to councilmembers yet.
The old bait and switch made an appearance too. Seems the originator of "the fog" himself, perennial county appointee Ian Costa who now serves as Rapozo's deputy, had unexpectedly shown up instead of Rapozo the week before with Rapozo conveniently on the mainland, allowing Rapozo to claim he had no idea what had happened the previous week.
As we've previously described, it's a classic move Costa developed during the year-long "Developers Gone Wild," grubbing and grading hearings before the council in the 90's which exposed the early misdeeds of Jimmy Pflueger preceding the deadly Ka Loko Dam break for which Pflueger is scheduled to stand trial for murder later this or next year.
The session began with Council Chair Jay Furfaro waving around what a real plan would look like, taken from a Virginia Beach Virginia campground saying "can you kokua me... this is what I'm looking for Lenny."
The questions dealt with almost everything imaginable from lack of a sufficient number of toilets to insufficient staffing for maintenance and security and were seemingly at least partially a result of there being no written plan to make sure the professed "work-class facility" would even be run in an organized and coherent manager.
But try as he might, Furfaro could not get a commitment from Rapozo to put together such a plan by the time camping was scheduled to begin, 60 days after the passage of the bill.
Finally after twenty minutes of trying to get such a commitment from Rapozo, Furfaro demonstrated the council's archetypical part in the avoidance scheme by declaring Rapozo's "no" to be a "yes."
Of course the run-around can't properly function without an administration shill. The role was made for Councilmember Tim Bynum whose "don't confuse me with the facts" rhetoric, previously honed on the issue of the bike path, consisted of declaring the questions to have been answered already- whether they were or not- and calling all criticism of the not-ready-for-prime-time "plan" to be too "meticulous."
This left an opening for Councilmember Mel Rapozo to perform one of his classic ape-like chest beating routines consisting of lines like "That's our job, to be meticulous... guilty as charged."
But perhaps the most Kafkaesque scene in the melodrama played out over the issue of the "fishermen" who have traditionally frequented the area since, well, forever.
As championed by Councilperson Kipukai Kuali`i the council went back and forth, working to make sure fishers could go to the campground and essentially camp out while fishing without really being official campers.
Of course the task was impossible on its face. How do you allow people to stay overnight in the campground, in their tents, as long as they leave their fishing poles stuck in the sand with the line in the water- as described by Kuali`i- and then distinguish who is actually camping without a permit and who is simply fishing.
The council has been asking Lenny Rapozo- and Costa- for the actual metes and bounds of the camping area rather than providing the cruddy little map with dotted lines that had been made part of the bill. Mel Rapozo- an ex-cop- described the absurdity of the prosecution going to court with such a map and how any good attorney could raise enough questions to make it unenforceable.
The answer apparently was simply, as stated by many, that the standard was "we know who is camping and who is fishing."
Oh great. The island isn't sufficiently wracked with charges of "reverse racism" by the increasing number of uptight, malahini mainlanders who can't distinguish between the word "haole" as used descriptively and the more provocative "stupid f-ing haole." Now we have an area where the line between campers and fishermen is going to be- at least in their eyes- as much a factor of the shade of their skin as anything else.
County Attorney Al Castillo didn't really help by hemming and hawing and finally maintaining that it didn't matter what the law said as long as there was "sufficient notice" in the form of signage to tell the users what made a fisherman a fisherman and what made a camper a camper.
As if.
Finally, the answer was to be as ambiguous as possible and the council inserted language that allows "fishermen" to "fish" any place in the campgrounds where there isn't an actual designated camp site.
However all this probably doesn't matter one whit because, it was revealed, the county's park rangers are never there between 10:30 p.m. and 4 a.m. leaving enforcement of the unenforceable provision an academic matter anyway.
The bill passed with Kuali`i and Mel Rapozo voting against it and now it's up to the DP&R to promulgate administrative rules- which promise to be as vague as the bill- in the next two months and decide which parts of the campground to "open for camping" with no real idea of what is going to happen, in a classic Kaua`i County "ready, fire, aim" manner.
But whatever happens you can bet dollars to donuts that we haven't heard the end of the seven-year saga, especially when the first "you're not fishing, you're camping- I can tell by the color of your skin" ticket is issued.
-------
Note- We're working with a new editor whose schedule is malleable so, although we intend to keep to the 1 p.m. press time, there may be days when it is decidedly later.
But the manner in which DP&R Director Lenny Rapozo's final "rope-a-dope" performance yielded a split decision in favor of the bill's passage last Wednesday, gave a whole meaning to "don't ask me- I'm only in charge here."
Of course Rapozo's use of "the fog" and the "I not here" method of administrative oversight could not have been accomplished without council allies willing to look the other way at the misrepresentations and outright lies as well as the lack of any semblance of competency of Rapozo and his underlings.
After months of non-answers to "the eight questions" that had been repeatedly asked, in writing, of Rapozo, the bill was moved out of committee to the full council where last Wednesday despite the fact that there were amendments pending and it was no where near ready for a vote... something that has inflamed Chair Jay Furfaro's hair on many an occasion in the past.
Rapozo appeared after handing in the alleged answers just that morning, claiming he never had the questions- many of which had been sent in writing months ago- until the previous Friday. And, much to Furfaro's chagrin, they hadn’t even been distributed to councilmembers yet.
The old bait and switch made an appearance too. Seems the originator of "the fog" himself, perennial county appointee Ian Costa who now serves as Rapozo's deputy, had unexpectedly shown up instead of Rapozo the week before with Rapozo conveniently on the mainland, allowing Rapozo to claim he had no idea what had happened the previous week.
As we've previously described, it's a classic move Costa developed during the year-long "Developers Gone Wild," grubbing and grading hearings before the council in the 90's which exposed the early misdeeds of Jimmy Pflueger preceding the deadly Ka Loko Dam break for which Pflueger is scheduled to stand trial for murder later this or next year.
The session began with Council Chair Jay Furfaro waving around what a real plan would look like, taken from a Virginia Beach Virginia campground saying "can you kokua me... this is what I'm looking for Lenny."
The questions dealt with almost everything imaginable from lack of a sufficient number of toilets to insufficient staffing for maintenance and security and were seemingly at least partially a result of there being no written plan to make sure the professed "work-class facility" would even be run in an organized and coherent manager.
But try as he might, Furfaro could not get a commitment from Rapozo to put together such a plan by the time camping was scheduled to begin, 60 days after the passage of the bill.
Finally after twenty minutes of trying to get such a commitment from Rapozo, Furfaro demonstrated the council's archetypical part in the avoidance scheme by declaring Rapozo's "no" to be a "yes."
Of course the run-around can't properly function without an administration shill. The role was made for Councilmember Tim Bynum whose "don't confuse me with the facts" rhetoric, previously honed on the issue of the bike path, consisted of declaring the questions to have been answered already- whether they were or not- and calling all criticism of the not-ready-for-prime-time "plan" to be too "meticulous."
This left an opening for Councilmember Mel Rapozo to perform one of his classic ape-like chest beating routines consisting of lines like "That's our job, to be meticulous... guilty as charged."
But perhaps the most Kafkaesque scene in the melodrama played out over the issue of the "fishermen" who have traditionally frequented the area since, well, forever.
As championed by Councilperson Kipukai Kuali`i the council went back and forth, working to make sure fishers could go to the campground and essentially camp out while fishing without really being official campers.
Of course the task was impossible on its face. How do you allow people to stay overnight in the campground, in their tents, as long as they leave their fishing poles stuck in the sand with the line in the water- as described by Kuali`i- and then distinguish who is actually camping without a permit and who is simply fishing.
The council has been asking Lenny Rapozo- and Costa- for the actual metes and bounds of the camping area rather than providing the cruddy little map with dotted lines that had been made part of the bill. Mel Rapozo- an ex-cop- described the absurdity of the prosecution going to court with such a map and how any good attorney could raise enough questions to make it unenforceable.
The answer apparently was simply, as stated by many, that the standard was "we know who is camping and who is fishing."
Oh great. The island isn't sufficiently wracked with charges of "reverse racism" by the increasing number of uptight, malahini mainlanders who can't distinguish between the word "haole" as used descriptively and the more provocative "stupid f-ing haole." Now we have an area where the line between campers and fishermen is going to be- at least in their eyes- as much a factor of the shade of their skin as anything else.
County Attorney Al Castillo didn't really help by hemming and hawing and finally maintaining that it didn't matter what the law said as long as there was "sufficient notice" in the form of signage to tell the users what made a fisherman a fisherman and what made a camper a camper.
As if.
Finally, the answer was to be as ambiguous as possible and the council inserted language that allows "fishermen" to "fish" any place in the campgrounds where there isn't an actual designated camp site.
However all this probably doesn't matter one whit because, it was revealed, the county's park rangers are never there between 10:30 p.m. and 4 a.m. leaving enforcement of the unenforceable provision an academic matter anyway.
The bill passed with Kuali`i and Mel Rapozo voting against it and now it's up to the DP&R to promulgate administrative rules- which promise to be as vague as the bill- in the next two months and decide which parts of the campground to "open for camping" with no real idea of what is going to happen, in a classic Kaua`i County "ready, fire, aim" manner.
But whatever happens you can bet dollars to donuts that we haven't heard the end of the seven-year saga, especially when the first "you're not fishing, you're camping- I can tell by the color of your skin" ticket is issued.
-------
Note- We're working with a new editor whose schedule is malleable so, although we intend to keep to the 1 p.m. press time, there may be days when it is decidedly later.
Monday, July 11, 2011
CRETINS FORM THE BLACK LAGOON
CRETINS FORM THE BLACK LAGOON: It doesn't take an engineer to know that the county's effort to dredge and restore the Morgan's Pond's at Lydgate has resulted in a mammoth mess of suspended silt permeating the once pristine pools.
Perhaps the fact that there wasn't one there at last Wednesday's meeting is why Kaua`i County Council members and administration officials took it upon themselves to decide to do nothing about it and kick the can down the road for at least four months.
But that's what happens when you appoint your otherwise-unqualified, former campaign manager to head up the Parks and Recreation Department- as Mayor Bernard Carvalho did with Lenny Rapozo- and then fail to consult the engineers in the Department of Public Works (DPW) on a project like this.
It's no wonder County Engineer Larry Dill wasn't the the one sent in response to the council's "request... for the Administration to provide the Council with a status report on the Lydgate Pond Restoration Project" and Rapozo showed up- because Dill, who is new to the county, might have told the truth- that the ponds could be screwed up for years due to county ineptitude and negligence in allowing the project to proceed the way it did.
Rapozo tried to paint a picture of a normal result of the project, telling the council that it will only take six months to get rid of the "turbidity"- a fancy word for the mud and muck suspended in the pool- if we "let mother nature take it's course" and do nothing.
But between Rapozo's "don't worry be happy" message he also described what actually happened.
Seems that the idea was to dredge the "sand" that had accumulated over the last almost 50 years and use it to replenish the beach. But instead what happened instead, and "surprised" the county according to Rapozo, was that the "sand" only went about three feet deep and below that was pure silt and muck.
Not only that but the sand itself was so full of trash and mixed with the silt that the state Department of Health won't let them use it on the beach so it sits in a pile now- replete with "coke cans" and "cigarette butts" according to testimony- with no one knowing quite what to do with the mess.
And, according to many who have actually been in the pond, anyone attempting to stand up in it will sink at a foot or more into the bottom "like quicksand," as it was described.
So in other words despite a decade-and-a-half of planning and obtaining the permits no one bothered to take a core sample to see what was there and just assumed it would all be pristine sand, not the garbage-strewn silt-sand mix that was actually present.
The real problem in fixing it is that when they dug up the giant boulders that had fallen into the pool from the barrier "wall" that created the ponds, and piled them back on it, it created a situation where all that 50 years of silt that had come from the adjacent Wailua River mouth and flowed into the ponds is now "sealed in."
And of course it will keep out any sand needed to cover the quicksand.
The Lydgate ponds are, of course, one of the "jewels" of the island- a must see attraction for tourists and a mainstay for local parents and their keiki. It also is- or was- one of the most recommended snorkeling locales in Kapa`a/Wailua where, according to many, the Kapa`a area snorkel rental outlets are still sending their customers.
As a matter of fact the whole mess has resulted in a new activity for many local people- standing around and watching what happens when the tourists- especially those with rented snorkels and fins- come out covered in muck after 30 second dip in the muddy mess.
Apparently the project was done without involvement of the DPW building and engineering divisions and may be one of the reasons why Carvalho has recently ordered all capital improvement projects be run through DPW.
But that won't change the past or clean up the mess at Lydgate, the perusal of which was deferred without action until November by the council.
Meanwhile, for those that claim there's nothing to do on Kaua`i, there's a new show down at Lydgate... watching the pissed-off, muck-caked tourists struggle to free themselves from the quicksand.
Perhaps the fact that there wasn't one there at last Wednesday's meeting is why Kaua`i County Council members and administration officials took it upon themselves to decide to do nothing about it and kick the can down the road for at least four months.
But that's what happens when you appoint your otherwise-unqualified, former campaign manager to head up the Parks and Recreation Department- as Mayor Bernard Carvalho did with Lenny Rapozo- and then fail to consult the engineers in the Department of Public Works (DPW) on a project like this.
It's no wonder County Engineer Larry Dill wasn't the the one sent in response to the council's "request... for the Administration to provide the Council with a status report on the Lydgate Pond Restoration Project" and Rapozo showed up- because Dill, who is new to the county, might have told the truth- that the ponds could be screwed up for years due to county ineptitude and negligence in allowing the project to proceed the way it did.
Rapozo tried to paint a picture of a normal result of the project, telling the council that it will only take six months to get rid of the "turbidity"- a fancy word for the mud and muck suspended in the pool- if we "let mother nature take it's course" and do nothing.
But between Rapozo's "don't worry be happy" message he also described what actually happened.
Seems that the idea was to dredge the "sand" that had accumulated over the last almost 50 years and use it to replenish the beach. But instead what happened instead, and "surprised" the county according to Rapozo, was that the "sand" only went about three feet deep and below that was pure silt and muck.
Not only that but the sand itself was so full of trash and mixed with the silt that the state Department of Health won't let them use it on the beach so it sits in a pile now- replete with "coke cans" and "cigarette butts" according to testimony- with no one knowing quite what to do with the mess.
And, according to many who have actually been in the pond, anyone attempting to stand up in it will sink at a foot or more into the bottom "like quicksand," as it was described.
So in other words despite a decade-and-a-half of planning and obtaining the permits no one bothered to take a core sample to see what was there and just assumed it would all be pristine sand, not the garbage-strewn silt-sand mix that was actually present.
The real problem in fixing it is that when they dug up the giant boulders that had fallen into the pool from the barrier "wall" that created the ponds, and piled them back on it, it created a situation where all that 50 years of silt that had come from the adjacent Wailua River mouth and flowed into the ponds is now "sealed in."
And of course it will keep out any sand needed to cover the quicksand.
The Lydgate ponds are, of course, one of the "jewels" of the island- a must see attraction for tourists and a mainstay for local parents and their keiki. It also is- or was- one of the most recommended snorkeling locales in Kapa`a/Wailua where, according to many, the Kapa`a area snorkel rental outlets are still sending their customers.
As a matter of fact the whole mess has resulted in a new activity for many local people- standing around and watching what happens when the tourists- especially those with rented snorkels and fins- come out covered in muck after 30 second dip in the muddy mess.
Apparently the project was done without involvement of the DPW building and engineering divisions and may be one of the reasons why Carvalho has recently ordered all capital improvement projects be run through DPW.
But that won't change the past or clean up the mess at Lydgate, the perusal of which was deferred without action until November by the council.
Meanwhile, for those that claim there's nothing to do on Kaua`i, there's a new show down at Lydgate... watching the pissed-off, muck-caked tourists struggle to free themselves from the quicksand.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
THIMK
THIMK: Not much happens news-wise on Kaua`i that isn't fairly predictable. But sometimes the level of incompetence and downright stupidity in county offices is so outrageous as to force its way into the headlines.
Their latest hair-brained action was to remove the congratulatory banners for high school graduates that hang on the fences at the ball parks this time of year, spurred by an alleged "complaint" supposedly based on the county's sign ordinance.
Of course the mindless Greek Chorus - with 40 comments and counting at press time- complained about the "exemption" to the ordinance for political signs, even though the allowance for them is derivative of a court ruling...
But not-so-oddly enough, if the Department of Public Works, (DPW- the seat of all things lunatic in administrative governance on the island) had bothered to ask the county attorney they might have discovered that the the same first amendment free speech rights that protect political signs apply to other non-commercial expressions of speech.
First of all the county's sign ordinance is isn't operative here since it doesn’t apply to temporary signs. That's why many of those ugly banners in Kapa`a are allowed to exist as long as they are not fixed to the ground.
The real controlling legislation comes from the state where even temporary signs are banned on state-funded roads like Kuhio Hwy and Olohena Rd where the Kapa`a signs were located.
While political speech receives the highest free-speech-rights protection other non-commercial speech is also given protection as we found out when, back in the 80's, the country- and the island- was visually polluted by the famous "yellow ribbons" during the Iran Hostage Crisis and Ronnie Ray-Guns feel-good mini-wars.
As a young anti-war journalist activist we checked out the state law, called the state Department of Transportation (DOT) and got a statement from them that the yellow ribbons did indeed violate state law and would have to be removed. However when we plastered the news on the front page of the Kaua`i Community College newspaper it wasn't long before the attorney general stepped in to say that expressions of free speech were exempt from the state law on signs on state-funded highways.
Had the peabrains at the DPW bothered to stop and think for a minute- or better stopped to check with anyone- they might have saved the administration another black eye.
But then what would we do for something to kvetch about on an otherwise newsless Thursday?
Their latest hair-brained action was to remove the congratulatory banners for high school graduates that hang on the fences at the ball parks this time of year, spurred by an alleged "complaint" supposedly based on the county's sign ordinance.
Of course the mindless Greek Chorus - with 40 comments and counting at press time- complained about the "exemption" to the ordinance for political signs, even though the allowance for them is derivative of a court ruling...
But not-so-oddly enough, if the Department of Public Works, (DPW- the seat of all things lunatic in administrative governance on the island) had bothered to ask the county attorney they might have discovered that the the same first amendment free speech rights that protect political signs apply to other non-commercial expressions of speech.
First of all the county's sign ordinance is isn't operative here since it doesn’t apply to temporary signs. That's why many of those ugly banners in Kapa`a are allowed to exist as long as they are not fixed to the ground.
The real controlling legislation comes from the state where even temporary signs are banned on state-funded roads like Kuhio Hwy and Olohena Rd where the Kapa`a signs were located.
While political speech receives the highest free-speech-rights protection other non-commercial speech is also given protection as we found out when, back in the 80's, the country- and the island- was visually polluted by the famous "yellow ribbons" during the Iran Hostage Crisis and Ronnie Ray-Guns feel-good mini-wars.
As a young anti-war journalist activist we checked out the state law, called the state Department of Transportation (DOT) and got a statement from them that the yellow ribbons did indeed violate state law and would have to be removed. However when we plastered the news on the front page of the Kaua`i Community College newspaper it wasn't long before the attorney general stepped in to say that expressions of free speech were exempt from the state law on signs on state-funded highways.
Had the peabrains at the DPW bothered to stop and think for a minute- or better stopped to check with anyone- they might have saved the administration another black eye.
But then what would we do for something to kvetch about on an otherwise newsless Thursday?
Thursday, April 7, 2011
UNSUFFOCATINGABLE
UNSUFFOCATINGABLE:Babooze-In-Chief Mel Rapozo's attempt to reverse the so-called "plastic bag ban" has gone down to its inevitable defeat but after sitting through hours- nay months- of yammering it was both refreshing and, at the same time, distressing to have seen those who weren't going to vote for a change in the first place just sit there and say nothing as disinformation flowed like a beer keg at a toga party.
Not once was the fact that we don't really have any "ban" on Kaua`i mentioned in debate.
As we wrote in February when the bill was first introduced
(Rapozo's) bill strikes the definition of a plastic checkout grocery bag that, in Ordinance 885 made for a “de facto” ban by requiring, not just that they are compostable or biodegradable but that they not contain any fossil fuel polymers, since no such bag currently exists. Unlike the outright ban on Maui our bill allows the bags if and when a bag that meets this requirement becomes available.
So the bill simply changes the definition removing the “fossil fuel polymers” part.
And, as we wrote the day before after an nation-wide investigation by our friend Brad Parsons- later confirmed by the Department of Public Works (DPW)- although material exist that would meet the standard no one is making bags out of it.
It was like sitting through one of those horror movies and wanting to scream "look out" as the knife wielding villain sneaks up on the protagonist from behind, as the plastic bag industry lobbyist- who failed to declare that fact in each of his appearances despite council rules requiring that disclosure- told the council that the only problem with the bill was that silly inconsequential "no fossil fuel polymers" provision, which he asked to be removed so his "new science" plastic could be sold.
Of course this had nothing to do with "food safety" as Rapozo claimed was the sole purpose of the bill. As a matter of fact the words "food safety" barely left anyone’s lips after the first couple of times the bill was on the council's agenda.
Also unmentioned was the fact that any allowance for establishments that purveyed hot food would have allowed any supermarket with a deli- which includes almost every one on the island- to again provide plastic bags.
The expected attempt from "the compromiser," rookie Councilperson Nadine Nakamura to amend the bill also reflected facts missing from the week upon week long gab-fest.
Although we're reluctant to accept as fact anything written by Leo Azumbuja in the local newspaper he wrote
Nakamura introduced an amendment Wednesday in an attempt to offer a compromise between an “outright ban on biodegradable bags” and Rapozo’s proposal.
She said her amendment, which tightened the broad definition of “biodegradable bags” in Rapozo’s amendment, would have required ready-to-eat food establishments to use compostable bags that meet specifications of the American Society of Testing and Materials Standard Specification for Compostable Plastics D6400.
“Progressive cities like San Francisco and Santa Monica use this standard in defining biodegradable bags,” she said.
The problem is that these bags don't really biodegrade like organic materials but rather break into itsy-bitsy little pieces which still litter the roads, are swallowed by birds and turtles and generally don’t break down into their component chemicals for a bazillion years.
Unbelievably, rather than spend all that time asking those we identified in February as having materials that are made without fossil fuel polymers to produce plastic bags that fulfill our unique ordinance, councilmembers all sat there like bumps on a log and allowed Rapozo to hijack the staff, the viewing public and the public access camera time for a self-aggrandizing appeal to idiocy filling the room and everyone's ears with utter bullsh*t.
And when one did do some "research" she came up with a totally unacceptable change.
Yes Rapozo is a boob. But to allow him to spout his drivel without any corrections for almost three months doesn't speak well of the others who had already decided how they would vote the day the bill hit the table.
Not once was the fact that we don't really have any "ban" on Kaua`i mentioned in debate.
As we wrote in February when the bill was first introduced
(Rapozo's) bill strikes the definition of a plastic checkout grocery bag that, in Ordinance 885 made for a “de facto” ban by requiring, not just that they are compostable or biodegradable but that they not contain any fossil fuel polymers, since no such bag currently exists. Unlike the outright ban on Maui our bill allows the bags if and when a bag that meets this requirement becomes available.
So the bill simply changes the definition removing the “fossil fuel polymers” part.
And, as we wrote the day before after an nation-wide investigation by our friend Brad Parsons- later confirmed by the Department of Public Works (DPW)- although material exist that would meet the standard no one is making bags out of it.
It was like sitting through one of those horror movies and wanting to scream "look out" as the knife wielding villain sneaks up on the protagonist from behind, as the plastic bag industry lobbyist- who failed to declare that fact in each of his appearances despite council rules requiring that disclosure- told the council that the only problem with the bill was that silly inconsequential "no fossil fuel polymers" provision, which he asked to be removed so his "new science" plastic could be sold.
Of course this had nothing to do with "food safety" as Rapozo claimed was the sole purpose of the bill. As a matter of fact the words "food safety" barely left anyone’s lips after the first couple of times the bill was on the council's agenda.
Also unmentioned was the fact that any allowance for establishments that purveyed hot food would have allowed any supermarket with a deli- which includes almost every one on the island- to again provide plastic bags.
The expected attempt from "the compromiser," rookie Councilperson Nadine Nakamura to amend the bill also reflected facts missing from the week upon week long gab-fest.
Although we're reluctant to accept as fact anything written by Leo Azumbuja in the local newspaper he wrote
Nakamura introduced an amendment Wednesday in an attempt to offer a compromise between an “outright ban on biodegradable bags” and Rapozo’s proposal.
She said her amendment, which tightened the broad definition of “biodegradable bags” in Rapozo’s amendment, would have required ready-to-eat food establishments to use compostable bags that meet specifications of the American Society of Testing and Materials Standard Specification for Compostable Plastics D6400.
“Progressive cities like San Francisco and Santa Monica use this standard in defining biodegradable bags,” she said.
The problem is that these bags don't really biodegrade like organic materials but rather break into itsy-bitsy little pieces which still litter the roads, are swallowed by birds and turtles and generally don’t break down into their component chemicals for a bazillion years.
Unbelievably, rather than spend all that time asking those we identified in February as having materials that are made without fossil fuel polymers to produce plastic bags that fulfill our unique ordinance, councilmembers all sat there like bumps on a log and allowed Rapozo to hijack the staff, the viewing public and the public access camera time for a self-aggrandizing appeal to idiocy filling the room and everyone's ears with utter bullsh*t.
And when one did do some "research" she came up with a totally unacceptable change.
Yes Rapozo is a boob. But to allow him to spout his drivel without any corrections for almost three months doesn't speak well of the others who had already decided how they would vote the day the bill hit the table.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE
YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE: If drivers on county roads have had an easy time of it for the past few years with seemingly no delays there's a reason for it.
Because, as revealed at a couple of recent council meetings, the county has failed to do any of it's regular road repaving for at least the past three financial three years, possibly longer.
That's what new County Engineer Larry Dill reluctantly admitted to the council last Wednesday after councilmembers finally examined the budget and found that the monies they appropriated over the last two-plus budget years went unspent, including a "extra" almost two million dollars so that we could "catch up" on the routine maintenance that extends the life of roads.
It all started at the February 23 council meeting with an agenda item asking Department of Public Works (DPW) to discuss road resurfacing.
Our regular readers might remember that, as we wrote in August of 2009, something has been fishy with the contracts for road resurfacing for many years. But at least it was getting done.
According to Council Chair Jay Furfaro there is still $7.9 million sitting there that was supposed to be used for resurfacing to keep county owned roads- as opposed to the state roads- from deteriorating to the point where it would cost many times that amount to fix them.
But the preventive maintenance hasn't been performed in years although no one will quite admit to why.
Dill claims he's too "new" to be able to say what happened after he replaced former County Engineer Donald Fujimoto earlier this year. And long time DPW engineer Ed Renaud, who is now in charge of road resurfacing, was his ever-evasive self, repeating that he "can't" or "won't" answer the council's questions regarding why.
All the council could get out of Dill and Renaud is that a new era is at hand- again- and that all problems will be solved through the purchase of an expensive piece of software called "Micropaver" which will track what roads have been resurfaced and when and what condition all the county's 300 some odd miles of roads are in.
Always quite the character, Renaud claimed he was also "new" although he was apparently able to answer many questions in excruciating detail about how county crews have been doing the actual road resurfacing over the years in conjunction with the contract awardees.
Of course the council wasn't interested in going back and finding out why we were being short changed on the road resurfacing contracts for many years as council watchdog Glenn Mickens has pointed out for the last 15-odd years.
As we wrote in 2009 in describing his research:
To try to be brief, a few years back- make that more than a decade ago- council “nitpicker” Glen Mickens began to notice that, as he took his daily walks pieces of broken off pavement sat by the side of the road which upon measurement were apparently thinner than the standard and required 1 ½ inches thick.
He made it his quest- one that, despite detailed presentation to the council no one so far seems to want to hear- to inform the council about how not only is the county paying for 1 ½ inch paving and not getting it but that, for some reason no one can adequately explain, on Kaua`i the standard of 90 sq. ft. of asphalt per ton is used while the national standard is 120 sq. ft. per ton to get that 1 ½”.
That means that, if anything, we should be getting roads that are 33% thicker than 1 ½” or 2” thick.
The question is, where is the extra asphalt going- a question the Public Works Department has been unable to answer.
You can also read Mickens' more detailed account contained in the same post.
Supposedly a contract for a good portion of the money available- $5.4 million- has gone out to bid and will be awarded by the summer according to Dill and Renaud. But as far as accountability for the past we'll have to wait and see what County Auditor Ernie Pasion comes up with in his performance audit of the road resurfacing program that's due later this year.
Because, as revealed at a couple of recent council meetings, the county has failed to do any of it's regular road repaving for at least the past three financial three years, possibly longer.
That's what new County Engineer Larry Dill reluctantly admitted to the council last Wednesday after councilmembers finally examined the budget and found that the monies they appropriated over the last two-plus budget years went unspent, including a "extra" almost two million dollars so that we could "catch up" on the routine maintenance that extends the life of roads.
It all started at the February 23 council meeting with an agenda item asking Department of Public Works (DPW) to discuss road resurfacing.
Our regular readers might remember that, as we wrote in August of 2009, something has been fishy with the contracts for road resurfacing for many years. But at least it was getting done.
According to Council Chair Jay Furfaro there is still $7.9 million sitting there that was supposed to be used for resurfacing to keep county owned roads- as opposed to the state roads- from deteriorating to the point where it would cost many times that amount to fix them.
But the preventive maintenance hasn't been performed in years although no one will quite admit to why.
Dill claims he's too "new" to be able to say what happened after he replaced former County Engineer Donald Fujimoto earlier this year. And long time DPW engineer Ed Renaud, who is now in charge of road resurfacing, was his ever-evasive self, repeating that he "can't" or "won't" answer the council's questions regarding why.
All the council could get out of Dill and Renaud is that a new era is at hand- again- and that all problems will be solved through the purchase of an expensive piece of software called "Micropaver" which will track what roads have been resurfaced and when and what condition all the county's 300 some odd miles of roads are in.
Always quite the character, Renaud claimed he was also "new" although he was apparently able to answer many questions in excruciating detail about how county crews have been doing the actual road resurfacing over the years in conjunction with the contract awardees.
Of course the council wasn't interested in going back and finding out why we were being short changed on the road resurfacing contracts for many years as council watchdog Glenn Mickens has pointed out for the last 15-odd years.
As we wrote in 2009 in describing his research:
To try to be brief, a few years back- make that more than a decade ago- council “nitpicker” Glen Mickens began to notice that, as he took his daily walks pieces of broken off pavement sat by the side of the road which upon measurement were apparently thinner than the standard and required 1 ½ inches thick.
He made it his quest- one that, despite detailed presentation to the council no one so far seems to want to hear- to inform the council about how not only is the county paying for 1 ½ inch paving and not getting it but that, for some reason no one can adequately explain, on Kaua`i the standard of 90 sq. ft. of asphalt per ton is used while the national standard is 120 sq. ft. per ton to get that 1 ½”.
That means that, if anything, we should be getting roads that are 33% thicker than 1 ½” or 2” thick.
The question is, where is the extra asphalt going- a question the Public Works Department has been unable to answer.
You can also read Mickens' more detailed account contained in the same post.
Supposedly a contract for a good portion of the money available- $5.4 million- has gone out to bid and will be awarded by the summer according to Dill and Renaud. But as far as accountability for the past we'll have to wait and see what County Auditor Ernie Pasion comes up with in his performance audit of the road resurfacing program that's due later this year.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE TO LIE
CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE TO LIE: To no one's surprise the yes-it-happened, no-it-didn't, I-ain't-sayin', alleged $250,000 payoff to the Kekaha shrimp farm by the Solid Waste Division of the Kaua`i Department of Public Works Department will most likely fade into the perpetual darkness of the labyrinth after Council Chair Jay Furfaro refused to adhere to his own schedule for releasing information on the matter.
For those who haven't been following (here and here) the now-you-see-it. now-you-don't payment, it all started with a blurb in some paperwork for an appropriation of $417,000 in Bill #2397 that said:
The Shrimp Farm extracted approximately $250,000 to provide assurance that the white spot syndrome would be mitigated flying trash within there (sic) property and laying (sic) in their ponds that could potentially lead to the spread of the disease. The cost of mitigation beyond the settlement is questionable as well as the negative publicity that could have a direct impact on our future landfill siting efforts (emphases added).
That elicited a promise by Furfaro that he would look into it and let council watchers Ken Taylor and Glenn Mickens know what the heck that meant and whether, in fact, the county paid the shrimp farm that's adjacent to the Kekaha landfill a quarter million dollars.
He first promised to reveal the info when the bill came back on the agenda "in seven days".
But in seven days he distributed copies of three past agenda items for executive sessions that didn't mention anything about any claim or settlement. Then he promised an answer in 10 days, conveniently three days after the bill was scheduled to pass final reading and disappear forever from public purview- at least at council meetings.
And sure enough, seven days after the "10 days" promise Wednesday, when badgered by Taylor and Mickens, Furfaro said of the three days left for him to fulfill his promise to reveal what really happened, "If I don't fulfill it in three days, I don't fulfill it in three days" telling Taylor and Mickens to see staff attorney Peter Morimoto who would help him fill out a public document request.
And of course the three days have passed and guess what- shockingly (for the impossibly naive) no info has been forthcoming from Furfaro.
Mickens says he still hasn't filed anything because he hasn't quite figured out what he is asking for- executive session minutes? settlement documents? administration communications? Not filing is apparently the sign of someone who has experience with the runaround given when the council and their clerk are committed to keeping information under wraps.
The only new thing revealed last Wednesday about those executive sessions is that the stated purpose on those agenda's back in 2009- on Sept. 23rd , Oct. 7th and Oct. 14th- was "relating to the expansion of the landfill and related matters."
The Office of Information Practices (OIP) which administrates the sunshine law says that agenda items must be specific in listing the purposes for matters discussed, which quite obviously would make these agenda items insufficient were a $250,000 claim settlement been discussed.
The one clue came from Councilperson Tim Bynum who said that he was "concerned about the secrecy" at the time and that "I put it in writing and I'm trying to get permission to share (it)."
Mickens says he's perplexed and wary of council staff which he says is apparently very eager for him to file for the information. He says he still intends to file for the documents but is trying to make sure that he covers all the bases so that if there is information or are documents that are allowed to be released his request will cover them.
In the past this kind of "put it in writing" demand for requests for documents has led to stonewalling and eventual denials with lengthy appeals to OIP which have on occasion resulted in an OIP demand to release the documents and the county's refusal to do so.
Meet the new minotaur- same as the old minotaur.
For those who haven't been following (here and here) the now-you-see-it. now-you-don't payment, it all started with a blurb in some paperwork for an appropriation of $417,000 in Bill #2397 that said:
The Shrimp Farm extracted approximately $250,000 to provide assurance that the white spot syndrome would be mitigated flying trash within there (sic) property and laying (sic) in their ponds that could potentially lead to the spread of the disease. The cost of mitigation beyond the settlement is questionable as well as the negative publicity that could have a direct impact on our future landfill siting efforts (emphases added).
That elicited a promise by Furfaro that he would look into it and let council watchers Ken Taylor and Glenn Mickens know what the heck that meant and whether, in fact, the county paid the shrimp farm that's adjacent to the Kekaha landfill a quarter million dollars.
He first promised to reveal the info when the bill came back on the agenda "in seven days".
But in seven days he distributed copies of three past agenda items for executive sessions that didn't mention anything about any claim or settlement. Then he promised an answer in 10 days, conveniently three days after the bill was scheduled to pass final reading and disappear forever from public purview- at least at council meetings.
And sure enough, seven days after the "10 days" promise Wednesday, when badgered by Taylor and Mickens, Furfaro said of the three days left for him to fulfill his promise to reveal what really happened, "If I don't fulfill it in three days, I don't fulfill it in three days" telling Taylor and Mickens to see staff attorney Peter Morimoto who would help him fill out a public document request.
And of course the three days have passed and guess what- shockingly (for the impossibly naive) no info has been forthcoming from Furfaro.
Mickens says he still hasn't filed anything because he hasn't quite figured out what he is asking for- executive session minutes? settlement documents? administration communications? Not filing is apparently the sign of someone who has experience with the runaround given when the council and their clerk are committed to keeping information under wraps.
The only new thing revealed last Wednesday about those executive sessions is that the stated purpose on those agenda's back in 2009- on Sept. 23rd , Oct. 7th and Oct. 14th- was "relating to the expansion of the landfill and related matters."
The Office of Information Practices (OIP) which administrates the sunshine law says that agenda items must be specific in listing the purposes for matters discussed, which quite obviously would make these agenda items insufficient were a $250,000 claim settlement been discussed.
The one clue came from Councilperson Tim Bynum who said that he was "concerned about the secrecy" at the time and that "I put it in writing and I'm trying to get permission to share (it)."
Mickens says he's perplexed and wary of council staff which he says is apparently very eager for him to file for the information. He says he still intends to file for the documents but is trying to make sure that he covers all the bases so that if there is information or are documents that are allowed to be released his request will cover them.
In the past this kind of "put it in writing" demand for requests for documents has led to stonewalling and eventual denials with lengthy appeals to OIP which have on occasion resulted in an OIP demand to release the documents and the county's refusal to do so.
Meet the new minotaur- same as the old minotaur.
Monday, October 11, 2010
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTIONS
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTIONS: We fully expected the brief, clueless presentation by the Department of Public Works (DPW) at last Wednesday’s council Public Works and Energy Committee meeting on the plastic bag ban ordinance 885 which we predicted over the past two weeks.
But the council’s equally befuddled response to both the lack of due diligence by the DPW and the incompetence of County Attorney (CA) Al Castillo in maintaining his quest to hold the legally required public hearing on the administrative rules after the ban takes effect, was both predictable and incomprehensibly blind to irregularities and outright chicanery.
The always incompetent DPW Solid Waste Division Director Troy Tanegawa’s “Power Point” presentation contained exactly one sentence in claiming that in fact there were no bags that meet the standards for use but offered no evidence that he had even checked with anyone, nor did he present any report on the subject.
The fact is that according to researcher Brad Parsons- who as we said last week spent a few days looking into the subject- although no one is presently making bags that are both “compostable” and “contain no fossil fuel polymers” there are companies that make material that could be used to manufacture them if there was a demand for them.
That of course means that if Tanigawa and his division had bothered to look into it as the official government representative of a jurisdiction that wanted bags to fit our unique ordinance - and do so when the ordinance was passed last October- they might have them available by now.
But we would have been shocked to actually find him doing his job at this point in time- he hasn’t shown any ability or initiative in the past 15 years so why would he start now?
And the fact that the council just sat there and bought his brief claim to have looked and found nothing isn’t much of a surprise either- why would they start actually doing their oversight job now?
But the real outrage was this absurdity- courtesy of CA Castillo- of holding the official public hearing on January 11, 2011 the date the ban goes into effect- and, even worse, the way the council went along with it.
Castillo first went into his “say no more-I can say no more” routine regarding the reason claiming it had something to do with a provision in the Hawai`i Revised Statues Chapter 91 which governs administrative (ad) rules, apparently trying to say that he couldn’t have the hearing until the law want into effect but not citing any provision.... perhaps because there isn’t one.
This of course despite the fact that the Maui plastic bag ban law’s ad rules have already gone through their public hearing in August for an ordinance with an effective date of, not so coincidentally, January 11, 2011.
But the real debacle was the fact that the “informational meetings” that the county has announced they will hold on Oct 25 and Nov. 5th & 8th from 10-11 a.m. are apparently being offered in lieu of the legally required official public hearings.
And of course no one on the council had any problem with that.
So why should you?
Maybe its because there’s nothing required of “informational meetings”- where Tanigawa assured the council they would “take testimony”- while there are 1767 words in §91-3 alone regarding “Procedure for adoption, amendment, or repeal of rules”.
Whereas nothing has to occur at an “informational meeting”- and no information obtained must be considered- under an official Chapter 91 public hearing on ad rules.
(2) Afford all interested persons opportunity to submit data, views, or arguments, orally or in writing. The agency shall fully consider all written and oral submissions respecting the proposed rule. The agency may make its decision at the public hearing or announce then the date when it intends to make its decision. Upon adoption, amendment, or repeal of a rule, the agency, if requested to do so by an interested person, shall issue a concise statement of the principal reasons for and against its determination.(emphasis added).
Not only that but while the county can just plop a “notice” of an unofficial informational meeting on their web site in order to give the notice for a public hearing the agency promulgating the rules must
(1) Give at least thirty days' notice for a public hearing. The notice shall include:
(A) A statement of the topic of the proposed rule adoption, amendment, or repeal or a general description of the subjects involved; and
(B) A statement that a copy of the proposed rule to be adopted, the proposed rule amendment, or the rule proposed to be repealed will be mailed to any interested person who requests a copy, pays the required fees for the copy and the postage, if any, together with a description of where and how the requests may be made;
(C) A statement of when, where, and during what times the proposed rule to be adopted, the proposed rule amendment, or the rule proposed to be repealed may be reviewed in person; and
(D The date, time, and place where the public hearing will be held and where interested persons may be heard on the proposed rule adoption, amendment, or repeal.
But here’s the kicker:
The notice shall be mailed to all persons who have made a timely written request of the agency for advance notice of its rulemaking proceedings, given at least once statewide for state agencies and in the county for county agencies. Proposed state agency rules shall also be posted on the Internet as provided in section 91-2.6
The whole purpose of this process is to allow the greatest public input and scrutiny possible to these “rules” which, after all, have the effect of law. What’s supposed to happen is that since they are required to “fully consider all written and oral submissions respecting the proposed rule”- and of course demonstrate that they have- once that input is given, if it is substantive they are supposed to go back and rewrite the rules.
If that happens, according to the case note 50 H. 156, 434 P.2d 516 on §91-3:
Changes may be made in a rule between the original proposed and presented at a public hearing and as finally adopted. Substantial change in a rule after a public hearing may require another public hearing.
But leave it to a befuddled DPW, a twit of a CA, an Ainokea council and an administration that is so addicted to secrecy and dedicated to keeping incompetent appointees that they would rather ignore the laws in favor of minimizing public participation in public processes, to think their little mid-morning hour-long schmooze session can suffice for official state procedures, as expressed in law.
This whole business is of course a result of the way the council went about “banning” plastic bags in the first place.
Rather than just ban them outright as Maui and other jurisdictions have done, they decided to kiss the butts of the stores that insist on packing our landfill and polluting our roads and waters with these poison products by trying to carve out an “allowable” plastic bag... and then depend on the administration to actually do it’s due diligence in creating a set of rules for the two prong test they set out.
Because there are so few places with bans, in the first to set a reasonable standard that assures petroleum-free biodegradability, the Kaua`i standard would be able to be used by other jurisdictions when manufacturers actually produced them because there was now a market for them.
But our lazy DPW dunderheads had a year to work with manufacturers to use available materials to actually produce the type of bag that local merchants would buy- or at least attempt to do so- and instead sat on their collective `okole protecting their clicking and dialing fingers to they could show us all the middle one.
Then, to make this an archetypical tale of Kaua`i-style incompetence and illegalities, they have decided to supplant the rule making process with a secretive process designed to make sure the public has the least input into the rules possible.
The one mistake the council made was thinking Kaua`i could ever do anything innovative or even new.
And that might have caused Castillo’s, Tanegawa’s and Mayor Carvalho’s heads to explode.... not that that would make any difference...
But the council’s equally befuddled response to both the lack of due diligence by the DPW and the incompetence of County Attorney (CA) Al Castillo in maintaining his quest to hold the legally required public hearing on the administrative rules after the ban takes effect, was both predictable and incomprehensibly blind to irregularities and outright chicanery.
The always incompetent DPW Solid Waste Division Director Troy Tanegawa’s “Power Point” presentation contained exactly one sentence in claiming that in fact there were no bags that meet the standards for use but offered no evidence that he had even checked with anyone, nor did he present any report on the subject.
The fact is that according to researcher Brad Parsons- who as we said last week spent a few days looking into the subject- although no one is presently making bags that are both “compostable” and “contain no fossil fuel polymers” there are companies that make material that could be used to manufacture them if there was a demand for them.
That of course means that if Tanigawa and his division had bothered to look into it as the official government representative of a jurisdiction that wanted bags to fit our unique ordinance - and do so when the ordinance was passed last October- they might have them available by now.
But we would have been shocked to actually find him doing his job at this point in time- he hasn’t shown any ability or initiative in the past 15 years so why would he start now?
And the fact that the council just sat there and bought his brief claim to have looked and found nothing isn’t much of a surprise either- why would they start actually doing their oversight job now?
But the real outrage was this absurdity- courtesy of CA Castillo- of holding the official public hearing on January 11, 2011 the date the ban goes into effect- and, even worse, the way the council went along with it.
Castillo first went into his “say no more-I can say no more” routine regarding the reason claiming it had something to do with a provision in the Hawai`i Revised Statues Chapter 91 which governs administrative (ad) rules, apparently trying to say that he couldn’t have the hearing until the law want into effect but not citing any provision.... perhaps because there isn’t one.
This of course despite the fact that the Maui plastic bag ban law’s ad rules have already gone through their public hearing in August for an ordinance with an effective date of, not so coincidentally, January 11, 2011.
But the real debacle was the fact that the “informational meetings” that the county has announced they will hold on Oct 25 and Nov. 5th & 8th from 10-11 a.m. are apparently being offered in lieu of the legally required official public hearings.
And of course no one on the council had any problem with that.
So why should you?
Maybe its because there’s nothing required of “informational meetings”- where Tanigawa assured the council they would “take testimony”- while there are 1767 words in §91-3 alone regarding “Procedure for adoption, amendment, or repeal of rules”.
Whereas nothing has to occur at an “informational meeting”- and no information obtained must be considered- under an official Chapter 91 public hearing on ad rules.
(2) Afford all interested persons opportunity to submit data, views, or arguments, orally or in writing. The agency shall fully consider all written and oral submissions respecting the proposed rule. The agency may make its decision at the public hearing or announce then the date when it intends to make its decision. Upon adoption, amendment, or repeal of a rule, the agency, if requested to do so by an interested person, shall issue a concise statement of the principal reasons for and against its determination.(emphasis added).
Not only that but while the county can just plop a “notice” of an unofficial informational meeting on their web site in order to give the notice for a public hearing the agency promulgating the rules must
(1) Give at least thirty days' notice for a public hearing. The notice shall include:
(A) A statement of the topic of the proposed rule adoption, amendment, or repeal or a general description of the subjects involved; and
(B) A statement that a copy of the proposed rule to be adopted, the proposed rule amendment, or the rule proposed to be repealed will be mailed to any interested person who requests a copy, pays the required fees for the copy and the postage, if any, together with a description of where and how the requests may be made;
(C) A statement of when, where, and during what times the proposed rule to be adopted, the proposed rule amendment, or the rule proposed to be repealed may be reviewed in person; and
(D The date, time, and place where the public hearing will be held and where interested persons may be heard on the proposed rule adoption, amendment, or repeal.
But here’s the kicker:
The notice shall be mailed to all persons who have made a timely written request of the agency for advance notice of its rulemaking proceedings, given at least once statewide for state agencies and in the county for county agencies. Proposed state agency rules shall also be posted on the Internet as provided in section 91-2.6
The whole purpose of this process is to allow the greatest public input and scrutiny possible to these “rules” which, after all, have the effect of law. What’s supposed to happen is that since they are required to “fully consider all written and oral submissions respecting the proposed rule”- and of course demonstrate that they have- once that input is given, if it is substantive they are supposed to go back and rewrite the rules.
If that happens, according to the case note 50 H. 156, 434 P.2d 516 on §91-3:
Changes may be made in a rule between the original proposed and presented at a public hearing and as finally adopted. Substantial change in a rule after a public hearing may require another public hearing.
But leave it to a befuddled DPW, a twit of a CA, an Ainokea council and an administration that is so addicted to secrecy and dedicated to keeping incompetent appointees that they would rather ignore the laws in favor of minimizing public participation in public processes, to think their little mid-morning hour-long schmooze session can suffice for official state procedures, as expressed in law.
This whole business is of course a result of the way the council went about “banning” plastic bags in the first place.
Rather than just ban them outright as Maui and other jurisdictions have done, they decided to kiss the butts of the stores that insist on packing our landfill and polluting our roads and waters with these poison products by trying to carve out an “allowable” plastic bag... and then depend on the administration to actually do it’s due diligence in creating a set of rules for the two prong test they set out.
Because there are so few places with bans, in the first to set a reasonable standard that assures petroleum-free biodegradability, the Kaua`i standard would be able to be used by other jurisdictions when manufacturers actually produced them because there was now a market for them.
But our lazy DPW dunderheads had a year to work with manufacturers to use available materials to actually produce the type of bag that local merchants would buy- or at least attempt to do so- and instead sat on their collective `okole protecting their clicking and dialing fingers to they could show us all the middle one.
Then, to make this an archetypical tale of Kaua`i-style incompetence and illegalities, they have decided to supplant the rule making process with a secretive process designed to make sure the public has the least input into the rules possible.
The one mistake the council made was thinking Kaua`i could ever do anything innovative or even new.
And that might have caused Castillo’s, Tanegawa’s and Mayor Carvalho’s heads to explode.... not that that would make any difference...
Monday, October 4, 2010
PANTS ON FIRE
PANTS ON FIRE: In the wake of County Attorney Al Castillo’s performance in requesting the council go into executive session to discuss the ordinance banning plastic bags last Wednesday things have became curiouser and curiouser over the weekend.
As we noted last week on Wednesday and Friday Castillo told the council that, despite the fact that the ordinance had been passed about a year ago, the Department of Public Works (DPW) had not even begun to promulgate Chapter 91 administrative rules (ad rules) because they- and he- were confused about the “intent” of the ordinance.
He also told them apparently after doing their due diligence the DPW found there were no bags in existence that fit the requirements that “no fossil fuel polymers” be used in manufacturing them.
But late Friday, an email showed up in the inbox of one of those most active in the passage of the bill with a brand new informational county web page containing a draft of those very rules which were supposedly nonexistent.
Brad Parson, who worked diligently with others to pass the bill last year, said he had run into Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s assistant Beth Tokioka after the council meeting and asked about the rules and apparently, in response, she sent him a link to the brand new country web page containing a copy of the ordinance, the ad rules and the public hearing notice for the bill.
The rules were either done in one night by Menehunes or more likely existed despite Castillo’s assurance they didn’t exist.
The rules do contain a “list” of acceptable plastic bags under which is printed the word “none”. They also have a section describing a process for submission by merchants of bags for testing to see if they comply.
But the contention that there are no bags being made today that do not contain fossil fuel polymers and in fact that they had checked, seemed a little too pat an answer for Parsons who got busy over the weekend to see if it was true.
It didn’t take him long to find at least one called the “Naturtech Nature Bag” from Northern Technologies Industrial Corp (NTIC) out of Minnesota that thus far appears meets the standard in addition to others that may.
Parsons, a meticulous researcher, is still on the case today to verify the claims made by NTIC as well as others.
But one thing was becoming apparent to Parsons as he did his inquiry- that no one else had asked questions of these manufacturers that he found on-line.
As anyone who has done any research knows- especially in the on-line age- when you start nosing around you will find the fingerprints of anyone who did the same research before you. But Parsons says that so far he seems to be asking questions of the various manufacturers that haven’t been asked before, possibly due to the unique nature of the Kaua`i ordinance.
Another problem with the administration’s whole approach to the implementation is that the notice of public hearing for the rules is being held the very day Ordinance 885 goes into effect, January 11, 2011. That apparently “builds in” a delay in implementation between when the old bags become illegal and when stores can know what bags to use, if any- or even worse, submit one for testing and wait until the results come back- and then order and receive them.
And, in typical “fire ready aim” county manner, they have scheduled a series of three “public information meetings” on October 25 and November 4 and 8, however they are all being held from 10:00 am to 11:00 am for some reason.
The answer to the question as to what “information” is to be disseminated if the rules have yet to be finalized through a public hearing isn’t apparent... unless of course the public hearing is actually superfluous and it doesn’t really matter to them what the public says.
The whole thing is up for discussion this Wednesday at the meeting of the council’s Public Works and Energy Committee where Chair Tim Bynum is “requesting the Administration's presence to discuss Ordinance No. 885, relating to Plastic Bag Reduction.”
In addition there is another request on the agenda from Castillo to go behind closed doors to discuss some kind of “liability” with the council.
Whatever the outcome, one extremely troublesome issue with Castillo’s approach is in his contention that without knowing the council’s “intent” it is impossible to know what to put into the ad rules.
This isn’t the first time that Kaua`i CAs have decided that they need to “interpret” ordinances rather than relying on the plain reading of the law. The same has happened in the Board of Ethics brouhaha over the plain reading of the charter and how it conflicts with the rules of the BOE because someone decided to “interpret” the plain meaning of the charter... interpreting the plain reading out of existence, as it were.
The ordinance is plain- if a bag that meets the criteria exists, it is permissible, If not it isn’t and people must use paper or preferable reusable canvas bags, as is stated in the “purpose” section of the bill that became Ordinance 885.
The reality is that there are only 18 jurisdictions that have any plastic bag bills and the one on Kaua`i is unique in allowing only those that contain no petroleum products. In doing so we are leading the way in providing the industry with the impetus to manufacture them so that other jurisdictions will be able follow in our steps.
But apparently there are bags that meet out standards if the DPW gets off their butts and looks for them.
As we noted last week on Wednesday and Friday Castillo told the council that, despite the fact that the ordinance had been passed about a year ago, the Department of Public Works (DPW) had not even begun to promulgate Chapter 91 administrative rules (ad rules) because they- and he- were confused about the “intent” of the ordinance.
He also told them apparently after doing their due diligence the DPW found there were no bags in existence that fit the requirements that “no fossil fuel polymers” be used in manufacturing them.
But late Friday, an email showed up in the inbox of one of those most active in the passage of the bill with a brand new informational county web page containing a draft of those very rules which were supposedly nonexistent.
Brad Parson, who worked diligently with others to pass the bill last year, said he had run into Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s assistant Beth Tokioka after the council meeting and asked about the rules and apparently, in response, she sent him a link to the brand new country web page containing a copy of the ordinance, the ad rules and the public hearing notice for the bill.
The rules were either done in one night by Menehunes or more likely existed despite Castillo’s assurance they didn’t exist.
The rules do contain a “list” of acceptable plastic bags under which is printed the word “none”. They also have a section describing a process for submission by merchants of bags for testing to see if they comply.
But the contention that there are no bags being made today that do not contain fossil fuel polymers and in fact that they had checked, seemed a little too pat an answer for Parsons who got busy over the weekend to see if it was true.
It didn’t take him long to find at least one called the “Naturtech Nature Bag” from Northern Technologies Industrial Corp (NTIC) out of Minnesota that thus far appears meets the standard in addition to others that may.
Parsons, a meticulous researcher, is still on the case today to verify the claims made by NTIC as well as others.
But one thing was becoming apparent to Parsons as he did his inquiry- that no one else had asked questions of these manufacturers that he found on-line.
As anyone who has done any research knows- especially in the on-line age- when you start nosing around you will find the fingerprints of anyone who did the same research before you. But Parsons says that so far he seems to be asking questions of the various manufacturers that haven’t been asked before, possibly due to the unique nature of the Kaua`i ordinance.
Another problem with the administration’s whole approach to the implementation is that the notice of public hearing for the rules is being held the very day Ordinance 885 goes into effect, January 11, 2011. That apparently “builds in” a delay in implementation between when the old bags become illegal and when stores can know what bags to use, if any- or even worse, submit one for testing and wait until the results come back- and then order and receive them.
And, in typical “fire ready aim” county manner, they have scheduled a series of three “public information meetings” on October 25 and November 4 and 8, however they are all being held from 10:00 am to 11:00 am for some reason.
The answer to the question as to what “information” is to be disseminated if the rules have yet to be finalized through a public hearing isn’t apparent... unless of course the public hearing is actually superfluous and it doesn’t really matter to them what the public says.
The whole thing is up for discussion this Wednesday at the meeting of the council’s Public Works and Energy Committee where Chair Tim Bynum is “requesting the Administration's presence to discuss Ordinance No. 885, relating to Plastic Bag Reduction.”
In addition there is another request on the agenda from Castillo to go behind closed doors to discuss some kind of “liability” with the council.
Whatever the outcome, one extremely troublesome issue with Castillo’s approach is in his contention that without knowing the council’s “intent” it is impossible to know what to put into the ad rules.
This isn’t the first time that Kaua`i CAs have decided that they need to “interpret” ordinances rather than relying on the plain reading of the law. The same has happened in the Board of Ethics brouhaha over the plain reading of the charter and how it conflicts with the rules of the BOE because someone decided to “interpret” the plain meaning of the charter... interpreting the plain reading out of existence, as it were.
The ordinance is plain- if a bag that meets the criteria exists, it is permissible, If not it isn’t and people must use paper or preferable reusable canvas bags, as is stated in the “purpose” section of the bill that became Ordinance 885.
The reality is that there are only 18 jurisdictions that have any plastic bag bills and the one on Kaua`i is unique in allowing only those that contain no petroleum products. In doing so we are leading the way in providing the industry with the impetus to manufacture them so that other jurisdictions will be able follow in our steps.
But apparently there are bags that meet out standards if the DPW gets off their butts and looks for them.
Friday, October 1, 2010
SNIPE HUNT
SNIPE HUNT: When it comes to playing the middle ground in the old “corruption vs. incompetence” game, the Kaua`i Department of Public Works (DPW) has had years of practical experience in befuddling the naturally befuddled county council.
If we had a dollar every time we had to ask of the county engineer and his underlings “are you crooked or just stupid” we’d be able to afford a new computer to replace the 2001 dinosaur on which we do our daily hunt and peck.
So it comes as no surprise that request for the scheduled executive session (ES) on the plastic bag ban ordinance that we wrote about Wednesday was a result of the usual inability of the DPW to do their job.
Although County Attorney (CA) Al Castillo was his usual cryptic self Wednesday in requesting an ES to tell the council about some sort of imagined liability contained in the current ordinance, the council, amazingly enough- refused to go behind closed doors to discuss what most called pubic policy.
But through questioning the reason Castillo was there in the first place became obvious- despite having a year and a half to promulgate Chapter 91 administrative rules to flesh out the details of the ban, the DPW hadn’t even begun the process and were now arguing about what the “intent” of the bill was instead of just reading and implementing it.
Actually, as member of the public pointed out, the intent of the ordinance was actually written into the bill which say it’s designed to move people to use cloth bags.
The council ended up “requesting the presence” of a DPW representative at next week’s pubic works committee meeting to explain why they haven’t begun the process that usually takes a few months, considering that the ordinance takes effect next January.
Part of the problem comes from the fact that rather than banning plastic bags entirely the ordinance was designed allow “biodegradable” plastic bags specifically banning ones that contain “polymers derived from fossil fuels”.
But, in fact, as it stands today nobody makes plastic bags that don’t contain fossil fuel polymers. And there is no standard as to what a “biodegradable plastic bag” is anyway which is why the council came up with their own definition of what they were banning.
We suspect that Castillo’s “liability” problem is that while the bill allows the use of certain plastic bags it makes it impossible to obtain bags that meet the standard.
It would be like allowing the use of cell phones while driving but only if they were made on the moon. Although someday there may be some moon-manufactured cell phone it ain’t gonna happen an time soon.
We also suspect that this was precisely why the supermarkets and the Chamber of Commerce lobbied so hard- and successfully- to allow for “biodegradable plastic”, knowing that there was no such thing and that they could come back close to the deadline and threaten a lawsuit with a CA that’s always doing everything he can to influence pubic policy when someone comes up with some cockamamie legal argument.
But, as we said, the fault really lies with the DPW which has shunned promulgating “ad rules” for years... sometimes decades.
We’re still waiting for the regulations for the infamous grubbing and grading (G&G) rules to flesh out the way they handle violations of the ordinance that was passed following the extensive “Developers Gone Wild” hearings in the late 90’s and early ’00’s.
At the time it became apparent to an astonished council that there was no official process for enforcing G&G violations and decisions were being made arbitrarily and capriciously... or not at all.
One of the problems in that was that DPW officials claimed they were unable to check out complaints of violations of the ordinance that was in place at the time. That conveniently allowed them to ignore violations at the instructions of then Mayor Maryann Kusaka who has been extensively alleged to have instructed the DPW to ignore violations by the likes of “friends of Maryanne” Jimmy Pflueger and Tom McCloskey.
Of course that led to the Ka Loko dam break and the county’s multi-million dollar settlement apparently for ignoring violations that led to it.
But guess what? Although the council included many things in the G&G bill itself that would normally be done through administrative rules they couldn’t really be expected to do it all,
They got guarantees from DPW that the rules would be done in six months from passage. And the last time we checked there still aren’t any.
The DPW was actually scheduled for a management audit more than once. In fact prior to that there was an aborted attempt at a charter section 3.17 council official investigation of the massive department.
Those half-hearted efforts- done only in response to public political pressure- eventually led to the establishment of the new Office of the County Auditor where, many hoped, the first order of business would be to look into the incompetence (or is it corruption?) of the DPW.
But as yet, it doesn’t even seem to appear on the radar screen of former Deputy County clerk and now Auditor, Ernie Passion.
The problem seems to come down to this attitude on the council that once they pass a new law they not only expect but are confident that the administration will, actually enforce it.
The fact that that is rarely the case has gotta make you ask whether the council too is corrupt or just incompetent in their administrative oversight role.
Either way it’s the public that has to suffer through it.
If we had a dollar every time we had to ask of the county engineer and his underlings “are you crooked or just stupid” we’d be able to afford a new computer to replace the 2001 dinosaur on which we do our daily hunt and peck.
So it comes as no surprise that request for the scheduled executive session (ES) on the plastic bag ban ordinance that we wrote about Wednesday was a result of the usual inability of the DPW to do their job.
Although County Attorney (CA) Al Castillo was his usual cryptic self Wednesday in requesting an ES to tell the council about some sort of imagined liability contained in the current ordinance, the council, amazingly enough- refused to go behind closed doors to discuss what most called pubic policy.
But through questioning the reason Castillo was there in the first place became obvious- despite having a year and a half to promulgate Chapter 91 administrative rules to flesh out the details of the ban, the DPW hadn’t even begun the process and were now arguing about what the “intent” of the bill was instead of just reading and implementing it.
Actually, as member of the public pointed out, the intent of the ordinance was actually written into the bill which say it’s designed to move people to use cloth bags.
The council ended up “requesting the presence” of a DPW representative at next week’s pubic works committee meeting to explain why they haven’t begun the process that usually takes a few months, considering that the ordinance takes effect next January.
Part of the problem comes from the fact that rather than banning plastic bags entirely the ordinance was designed allow “biodegradable” plastic bags specifically banning ones that contain “polymers derived from fossil fuels”.
But, in fact, as it stands today nobody makes plastic bags that don’t contain fossil fuel polymers. And there is no standard as to what a “biodegradable plastic bag” is anyway which is why the council came up with their own definition of what they were banning.
We suspect that Castillo’s “liability” problem is that while the bill allows the use of certain plastic bags it makes it impossible to obtain bags that meet the standard.
It would be like allowing the use of cell phones while driving but only if they were made on the moon. Although someday there may be some moon-manufactured cell phone it ain’t gonna happen an time soon.
We also suspect that this was precisely why the supermarkets and the Chamber of Commerce lobbied so hard- and successfully- to allow for “biodegradable plastic”, knowing that there was no such thing and that they could come back close to the deadline and threaten a lawsuit with a CA that’s always doing everything he can to influence pubic policy when someone comes up with some cockamamie legal argument.
But, as we said, the fault really lies with the DPW which has shunned promulgating “ad rules” for years... sometimes decades.
We’re still waiting for the regulations for the infamous grubbing and grading (G&G) rules to flesh out the way they handle violations of the ordinance that was passed following the extensive “Developers Gone Wild” hearings in the late 90’s and early ’00’s.
At the time it became apparent to an astonished council that there was no official process for enforcing G&G violations and decisions were being made arbitrarily and capriciously... or not at all.
One of the problems in that was that DPW officials claimed they were unable to check out complaints of violations of the ordinance that was in place at the time. That conveniently allowed them to ignore violations at the instructions of then Mayor Maryann Kusaka who has been extensively alleged to have instructed the DPW to ignore violations by the likes of “friends of Maryanne” Jimmy Pflueger and Tom McCloskey.
Of course that led to the Ka Loko dam break and the county’s multi-million dollar settlement apparently for ignoring violations that led to it.
But guess what? Although the council included many things in the G&G bill itself that would normally be done through administrative rules they couldn’t really be expected to do it all,
They got guarantees from DPW that the rules would be done in six months from passage. And the last time we checked there still aren’t any.
The DPW was actually scheduled for a management audit more than once. In fact prior to that there was an aborted attempt at a charter section 3.17 council official investigation of the massive department.
Those half-hearted efforts- done only in response to public political pressure- eventually led to the establishment of the new Office of the County Auditor where, many hoped, the first order of business would be to look into the incompetence (or is it corruption?) of the DPW.
But as yet, it doesn’t even seem to appear on the radar screen of former Deputy County clerk and now Auditor, Ernie Passion.
The problem seems to come down to this attitude on the council that once they pass a new law they not only expect but are confident that the administration will, actually enforce it.
The fact that that is rarely the case has gotta make you ask whether the council too is corrupt or just incompetent in their administrative oversight role.
Either way it’s the public that has to suffer through it.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
GIVE HIM A BISCUIT AD MAYBE HE WON’T BITE YA
GIVE HIM A BISCUIT AD MAYBE HE WON’T BITE YA: Often when people criticize the actions of government they end their rant with the phrase “they must think we’re stupid”.
But that kind of statement implies a falsehood- the proposition that in fact that “we” aren’t... stupid that is. And there’s nothing that makes people stupider than money
And so the town of Kekaha met last night to decide what to do with the bribe that the administration and council came up with to get people on the far Westside to let them expand the landfill by paying them off with about a third of a million dollars “for the community”.
And the residents did what any group of people would do when given a big pile of money- they started squabbling over it.
What’s really going on here is a not-so-hair-brained scheme that assumes- probably rightly- that it’s going to be possible to do what otherwise has been impossible for the last 20 years due to individual community opposition putting a landfill in any neighborhood.
This trial balloon bestows taxpayer money upon Kekaha and according to at least one person in attendance, though the smelly site and rumbling trucks on the highway were unbearably and disgustingly objectionable just last year, now apparently money changes everything.
It seems that no one at the meeting- called to decide how to spend the money- now objects to the landfill anymore. But they do however object to being told how to spend the money.
Because County Engineer Donald Fujimoto revealed the attached strings last night by telling people that the county is forming a “citizen’s advisory board” to decide and the board will contain five members of the county administration and “eight community members” all of whom will be selected not by the community but by the mayor.
“That’s nonsense” says former mayoral candidate Rolf Bieber. “How is that a community process when the people are all selected by the mayor?”
Bieber described another of those PowerPoint presentations we talked about yesterday- a fancy name for 14 pages of big print containing outline subject headings, projected like a slide show on a screen with about enough content to fill one side of a sheet of paper.
In it Fujimoto told the crowd the parameters as to how the people were to be allowed to bicker over how to spend the cash.
Bieber also asked, as many at the meeting did, just what “the Kekaha community” is?
According to residents the worst part of the existence of the landfill in Kekaha is the trucks that rumble through town on their way to the dump. But unaddressed by the county is the fact that everyone along the highway all over the island has four wheels and flies rumbling by in an inversely proportionally diminishing number as the distance from the dump increases.
“So where’s the cash for those living right on the highway in Kekaha” asked residents, failing of course to ask that the money also be distributed to those on the highway outside of Kekaha, although some Waimea people in attendance weren’t happy they weren’t considered part of Kekaha and so not getting any of the new-found riches.
But this whole payoff to Kekaha is really just a way to try to deal with the fact that, though “everyone” wants a new landfill on Kaua`i no one wants it in their backyard.
That’s been the bugaboo for the last 20 years. in which time each attempt to site a new dump has met with such fierce opposition from the “host community” that the county council’s already pathetic lack of political will was diminished seven times over.
The answer to the questions “how dumb do they think we are” may not have a strict quantitative bottom but whatever the level of stupidity is, it apparently increases in direct proportion to the amount of money people are paid to be idiots.
So the plan is obviously to pick a community and pay off those who are on the other side of town so they’ll come out and actually support the siting of a new landfill even though their neighbors don’t want it in their back yard.
Knowing how self absorbed and greedy people are it’s not that bad of a “wool over the eyes" plan.
Suppose they want to put a new dump where the old one was in Kapa`a. You can bet anyone who lives in the area within 1000 yards of it won’t care how much money is thrown at the town- they won’t want it.
And in the past all else being equal their neighbors – even those five miles away- supported them and maybe even turned out en masse at a council meeting and threatened the pols with political oblivion if they put a dump in Kapa`a.
But if Kekaha is any example once there’s cold currency on the table the amount people who care if a dump is placed “in Kapa`a” is inversely proportional to how far away they live- the greater the distance, the less the concern. Someone in Kapahi or Wailua Homesteads or Houselots will probably take their bribe and shut up about it.
Is this how we want our cash-strapped county’s money spent- dividing and conquering our communities by paying them off with a new neighborhood center or swimming pool?
This actually goes back to the question of why the heck we are siting a new landfill in the first place instead of looking at a Zero-Waste program.
The answer, as we described in June, is that the money for another bogus study from favorite consultant RW Beck was recently spent for the third time and so we’re stuck throwing good money after bad for the next 50 years according to the incumbent councilpeople and many of their flummoxed newbie wannabe sycophants in this year’s election like Derik Kawakami, Dickie Chang and Ron Agor.
And its supported by both mayoral candidates.
The real solution- as we’ve said to no avail before- is to ship our trash back where it came from- the mainland.
Landfills in the northwest are fighting over the chance to take the last dribs and drabs of waste that cannot be recycled, reused and composted- and then even burned, if the Beck recommendations are implemented.
But the largess for the companies who run the current system is so great that the pols, who get their campaign cash from them, are bound to kow-tow.
And for more pressure look only as far as the county workers who irrationally fear they will lose jobs- irrationally because the jobs will just be switched over to loading the stuff on a barge rather than trucking it to a landfill.
Though the claim is made that it would be more expensive to ship it back, that contention- made going back to the beginning of the Kusaka administration- is not just shibai but has never been shown to be true in any of the numerous consultant studies. That’s because they have refused to actually quantify it in the Beck reports, despite promises from mayors and councilpeople to study the option.
And if we are going to be paying yearly hush money to a town to accept a new dump, the cost of landfilling is only going up.
Not only that but we now know that the price of the landfill is going to be twice of what the early guesstimates were and are increasing all the time, along with the number and types of expensive EPA requirements for opening maintaining and closing them.
When Honolulu recently started shipping it’s trash back - although only partially and supposedly temporarily- their announced total costs were even less than our current Kaua`i landfill “tipping fee” and that doesn’t include all the extra and hidden costs of the process.
And it doesn’t include the Beck proposed tipping fee increases since the fee doesn’t cover costs now.
And in an ecological sense shipping it back make perfect sense. Once you remove the greenwaste, 100% of our trash came from off island to begin with,. Does it make more sense to use our tiny island area and throw all the stuff we bring in into a hole or to send it back to where it came from where land is 1/100th the price and 100 times more available?
But instead of doing something that makes sense and is ecologically sound – and arguably would cost less money- we still act like the Minotaur- we “will do what’s wrong as long as we can”.
How stupid do they think we are? We’re not sure why but somehow the words to the following Bobby Dylan seem appropriate.
On The Road Again
Well, I wake up in the morning
There's frogs inside my socks
Your mama, she's a-hidin'
Inside the icebox
Your daddy walks in wearin'
A Napoleon Bonarparte mask
Then you ask why I don't live here
Honey, do you have to ask ?
Well, I go to pet your monkey
I get a face full of claws
I ask who's in the fireplace
And you tell me Santa Claus
The milkman comes in
He's wearing a derby hat
And you ask why I don't live here
Honey, how come you have to ask me that ?
Well, I asked for something to eat
I'm hungry as a hog
So I get brown rice, seaweed
And a dirty hot dog
I've got a hole
Where my stomach disappeared
Then you ask why I don't live here
Honey, I gotta think you're really weird.
Your grandpa's cane
It turns into a sword
Your grandma prays to pictures
That are pasted on a board
Everything inside my pockets
Your uncle steals
And you ask me why I don't live here
Honey, I can't believe that you're for real.
Well, there's fist fight in the kitchen
They're enough to make me cry
The mailman comes in
Even he's gotta take a side
Even the butler
He's got something to prove
Then you ask me why I don't live here
Honey, how come you don't move ?
But that kind of statement implies a falsehood- the proposition that in fact that “we” aren’t... stupid that is. And there’s nothing that makes people stupider than money
And so the town of Kekaha met last night to decide what to do with the bribe that the administration and council came up with to get people on the far Westside to let them expand the landfill by paying them off with about a third of a million dollars “for the community”.
And the residents did what any group of people would do when given a big pile of money- they started squabbling over it.
What’s really going on here is a not-so-hair-brained scheme that assumes- probably rightly- that it’s going to be possible to do what otherwise has been impossible for the last 20 years due to individual community opposition putting a landfill in any neighborhood.
This trial balloon bestows taxpayer money upon Kekaha and according to at least one person in attendance, though the smelly site and rumbling trucks on the highway were unbearably and disgustingly objectionable just last year, now apparently money changes everything.
It seems that no one at the meeting- called to decide how to spend the money- now objects to the landfill anymore. But they do however object to being told how to spend the money.
Because County Engineer Donald Fujimoto revealed the attached strings last night by telling people that the county is forming a “citizen’s advisory board” to decide and the board will contain five members of the county administration and “eight community members” all of whom will be selected not by the community but by the mayor.
“That’s nonsense” says former mayoral candidate Rolf Bieber. “How is that a community process when the people are all selected by the mayor?”
Bieber described another of those PowerPoint presentations we talked about yesterday- a fancy name for 14 pages of big print containing outline subject headings, projected like a slide show on a screen with about enough content to fill one side of a sheet of paper.
In it Fujimoto told the crowd the parameters as to how the people were to be allowed to bicker over how to spend the cash.
Bieber also asked, as many at the meeting did, just what “the Kekaha community” is?
According to residents the worst part of the existence of the landfill in Kekaha is the trucks that rumble through town on their way to the dump. But unaddressed by the county is the fact that everyone along the highway all over the island has four wheels and flies rumbling by in an inversely proportionally diminishing number as the distance from the dump increases.
“So where’s the cash for those living right on the highway in Kekaha” asked residents, failing of course to ask that the money also be distributed to those on the highway outside of Kekaha, although some Waimea people in attendance weren’t happy they weren’t considered part of Kekaha and so not getting any of the new-found riches.
But this whole payoff to Kekaha is really just a way to try to deal with the fact that, though “everyone” wants a new landfill on Kaua`i no one wants it in their backyard.
That’s been the bugaboo for the last 20 years. in which time each attempt to site a new dump has met with such fierce opposition from the “host community” that the county council’s already pathetic lack of political will was diminished seven times over.
The answer to the questions “how dumb do they think we are” may not have a strict quantitative bottom but whatever the level of stupidity is, it apparently increases in direct proportion to the amount of money people are paid to be idiots.
So the plan is obviously to pick a community and pay off those who are on the other side of town so they’ll come out and actually support the siting of a new landfill even though their neighbors don’t want it in their back yard.
Knowing how self absorbed and greedy people are it’s not that bad of a “wool over the eyes" plan.
Suppose they want to put a new dump where the old one was in Kapa`a. You can bet anyone who lives in the area within 1000 yards of it won’t care how much money is thrown at the town- they won’t want it.
And in the past all else being equal their neighbors – even those five miles away- supported them and maybe even turned out en masse at a council meeting and threatened the pols with political oblivion if they put a dump in Kapa`a.
But if Kekaha is any example once there’s cold currency on the table the amount people who care if a dump is placed “in Kapa`a” is inversely proportional to how far away they live- the greater the distance, the less the concern. Someone in Kapahi or Wailua Homesteads or Houselots will probably take their bribe and shut up about it.
Is this how we want our cash-strapped county’s money spent- dividing and conquering our communities by paying them off with a new neighborhood center or swimming pool?
This actually goes back to the question of why the heck we are siting a new landfill in the first place instead of looking at a Zero-Waste program.
The answer, as we described in June, is that the money for another bogus study from favorite consultant RW Beck was recently spent for the third time and so we’re stuck throwing good money after bad for the next 50 years according to the incumbent councilpeople and many of their flummoxed newbie wannabe sycophants in this year’s election like Derik Kawakami, Dickie Chang and Ron Agor.
And its supported by both mayoral candidates.
The real solution- as we’ve said to no avail before- is to ship our trash back where it came from- the mainland.
Landfills in the northwest are fighting over the chance to take the last dribs and drabs of waste that cannot be recycled, reused and composted- and then even burned, if the Beck recommendations are implemented.
But the largess for the companies who run the current system is so great that the pols, who get their campaign cash from them, are bound to kow-tow.
And for more pressure look only as far as the county workers who irrationally fear they will lose jobs- irrationally because the jobs will just be switched over to loading the stuff on a barge rather than trucking it to a landfill.
Though the claim is made that it would be more expensive to ship it back, that contention- made going back to the beginning of the Kusaka administration- is not just shibai but has never been shown to be true in any of the numerous consultant studies. That’s because they have refused to actually quantify it in the Beck reports, despite promises from mayors and councilpeople to study the option.
And if we are going to be paying yearly hush money to a town to accept a new dump, the cost of landfilling is only going up.
Not only that but we now know that the price of the landfill is going to be twice of what the early guesstimates were and are increasing all the time, along with the number and types of expensive EPA requirements for opening maintaining and closing them.
When Honolulu recently started shipping it’s trash back - although only partially and supposedly temporarily- their announced total costs were even less than our current Kaua`i landfill “tipping fee” and that doesn’t include all the extra and hidden costs of the process.
And it doesn’t include the Beck proposed tipping fee increases since the fee doesn’t cover costs now.
And in an ecological sense shipping it back make perfect sense. Once you remove the greenwaste, 100% of our trash came from off island to begin with,. Does it make more sense to use our tiny island area and throw all the stuff we bring in into a hole or to send it back to where it came from where land is 1/100th the price and 100 times more available?
But instead of doing something that makes sense and is ecologically sound – and arguably would cost less money- we still act like the Minotaur- we “will do what’s wrong as long as we can”.
How stupid do they think we are? We’re not sure why but somehow the words to the following Bobby Dylan seem appropriate.
On The Road Again
Well, I wake up in the morning
There's frogs inside my socks
Your mama, she's a-hidin'
Inside the icebox
Your daddy walks in wearin'
A Napoleon Bonarparte mask
Then you ask why I don't live here
Honey, do you have to ask ?
Well, I go to pet your monkey
I get a face full of claws
I ask who's in the fireplace
And you tell me Santa Claus
The milkman comes in
He's wearing a derby hat
And you ask why I don't live here
Honey, how come you have to ask me that ?
Well, I asked for something to eat
I'm hungry as a hog
So I get brown rice, seaweed
And a dirty hot dog
I've got a hole
Where my stomach disappeared
Then you ask why I don't live here
Honey, I gotta think you're really weird.
Your grandpa's cane
It turns into a sword
Your grandma prays to pictures
That are pasted on a board
Everything inside my pockets
Your uncle steals
And you ask me why I don't live here
Honey, I can't believe that you're for real.
Well, there's fist fight in the kitchen
They're enough to make me cry
The mailman comes in
Even he's gotta take a side
Even the butler
He's got something to prove
Then you ask me why I don't live here
Honey, how come you don't move ?
Monday, October 6, 2008
SAME KENNEL, NEW DOG
SAME KENNEL, NEW DOG: After eight years of rule by the village idiot it appears the presidency will go to someone who has at least a modicum of pia mater although if it somehow is John McCain it will be neurons that are addled by a combination of mindless militarism, post traumatic stress disorder and creeping crotchety-old-man syndrome.
But though the country might escape a continuation our recent fate, as promulgated by the ultimate application of The Peter Principle, the county isn’t so lucky.
Because unless JoAnn Yukimura suddenly grows a pair and delineates his fraudulency, Bernard Carvalho, she will lose to the dumbest man ever elected to pubic office on Kaua`i... and that’s saying a lot.
Seemingly it’s a well kept secret that not only is Carvalho vapidly mindless in his campaign, he has spent the last six years being the lack of brains behind the insipidly destructive Bryan Baptiste administration.
Though it boggles the mind of outside observers that Kaua`i voters continually vote for the least competent mayoral candidate every fours years, apparently Kaua`i voters’ complaints over our crumbling infrastructure, lack of housing, decrepit and often disgusting parks and recreational facilities are forgotten when they step into the voting booth.
Because when you look down the list of the worst of our problems and the lack of government response over the last six years you’ll see one name in charge of almost all of them- Barnard Carvalho.
A little recent history. As soon as Batiste was elected he immediately took all the “agencies” in the county- those not created by the County Charter- and smushed together all these “loose end departments” that were created as a loophole of unaccountability from past administrations.
It was called the Community Assistance “Department” (CAD) although technically it wasn’t a department at all.
It encompassed those administrative functions that had answered directly to the mayor’s office under former Mayor Marianne Kusaka in order to make sure power was enhanced in her office.
Unfortunately that also added accountability and that was one thing Baptiste would never stand for.
Now when Baptiste took over he needed to reward one of his chief campaign supporters, his buddy from hamabada days (little kid time for all you malahini) Carvalho and also isolate himself from blame for screwing up when it came time for reelection.
And as luck would have it - and perhaps not so strangely because they were subject to lessened accountability and transparency- some the worst problems on Kaua`i were regulated by those agencies.
The CAD was created as an added layer of bureaucracy and combined the Agency on Elderly Affairs, the Housing Agency and the Transportation Agency.
And for good measure, because Carvalho wasn’t qualified for those- or any- areas of oversight, the Division of Parks & Recreation from the Public Works Department. was added.
Carvalho was Kusaka’s politically appointed recreation chief at the time but his having never been an administrator before didn’t seem to phase Baptiste. The Mayor actually left some park functions in the DPW, creating the typical split-function nightmare of dual administration.
And Carvalho proceeded to take the already orphan and neglected areas of executive management and run them into the ground.
It’s not a secret that there was- and is and will be for a quite a while- a housing crisis on Kaua`i. It was a crisis in the 2002 election when Baptiste was first elected and after Carvalho’s reign it has become an un-addressed calamity.
Not only has the county failed to provide housing but it took six years just to develop a policy and the policy was developed through the first of Carvalho’s infamous “tasks forces”.
These task forces were generally groups of county employees, revolving-door-connected business honchos and assorted good old boys who held closed door meetings, never took public input and presented thin gruel to the council for approval when they were done.
The results of Carvalho’s housing efforts are self apparent- Kaua`i is still the only county that has no public housing and the whole effort has been comprised of trying to allow developers to not comply with zoning, planning and permitting.
And perhaps worst of all it was solely designed to create for-sale “affordable” housing that even the housing chief acknowledged to the council wasn’t affordable- or even appropriate- especially for those who needed it most.
There is an even worse result of this- the feds have had the housing agency on a short leash because they are not serving the people who they’re supposed to serve- those who need rental housing and make less than 50% of the median income.
There is some for-sale so-called “affordable” housing “ that’s been created- all by developers, not the county, although some was required during development and subdivision.
But the only people who can afford it are those making more than 120%, many times even 160% of the median income although it’s really supposed to serve those making 100% or less, preferably 80% by law.
But it’s set up so that no one at the lower levels can get a loan for the price of these “affordable” houses so they go to those who make more.
And of course the Baptiste administration with Carvalho in charge of the Housing Agency did not create, start to finish, one unit of rental housing, the greatest need of all on Kaua`i.
But every time the council- which is certainly not blameless- called in Carvalho to explain, when they eventually got him there he would bring some simplistic “PowerPoint presentation”.
These glorified slide shows would inevitably detail the bare bones of a future plan and try to hide what everyone knew already- we weren’t doing diddley-squat for anyone who needed it.
Carvalho has become the tongue-in-cheek “King of the PowerPoint”, proudly presenting his useless and uninspiring pages of large print banalities, usually bestowed after delaying any report to the council for months on end, only to not really answer any questions much less provide any info when the long awaited “answers” finally came.
Year after year it’s been the same, with the council asking “what have you done” and Carvalho answering “here’s what we are going to do.”
The conditions of our parks and county facilities is infamous across the world with newspaper and magazine articles and word of mouth disparagements that make tourism official cringe- all detailing our disgusting bathrooms, trash filled parks and other neglected facilities.
And with Carvalho in chare it’s only gotten worse.
But perhaps Carvalho’s biggest fiasco was his biggest project- the costly corruption-plagued boondoggle of the “Bike Path” project, the “jewel” in Baptiste’s tarnished crown.
From start to non-finish the path has been a plague of problems from wasted funds to un-permitted structures and a plethora of violations of county code and state and federal law, all detailed at county council meetings .
The “29 bike path questions” for Carvalho and his people that the county council asked years ago remain unanswered and apparently will since the ones who wouldn’t let the list die- Mel Rapozo and Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho- will no longer be on the council two months from now.
Again Bernard Carvalho’s answer to all the problems was to, after he delayed appearances and answers as long as he could, form another secretive “task force” which never did answer the questions.
Carvalho even managed to dodge and weave so long that Baptiste’s sycophant Councilmember Tim “don’t confuse me with the facts” Bynum- who was responsible for many of the bike path abuses as a civilian before being elected- got so impatient he seemed to have forgotten that the questions hadn’t already been answered, saying in fact they had been and using as evidence the fact that it had taken so long to get answers..... that and those magnificent PowerPoint presentations..
But the task force did help do one thing- they lent a hand in creating the dog walking ignominy by apparently getting Carvalho to implement a secret “declaration” of the path as a “linear park”, causing an uproar in the community and packed council chambers for months.
The secret bike path task force hasn’t said where the money is going to come from to finish the path- a path originally funded as a bike path but which now has somehow morphed into a “multi-use path”, in violation of the policy for distribution of the federal funding that declares the path must be “primarily for transportation (and) not recreation”.
That’s the reason that despite the fact that the original $40 million in federal funds is long gone- having in part been wasted on amenities along the path, many illegally constructed without permits or required shoreline certifications- they must complete the whole 16 miles to make true their “transportation” claim that got them the money in the first place.
It’s also the reason for the beach-side path’s mauka detour as described in the local paper Sunday.
The article says that “Phase III” is now ready for launch and in order to complete the segment the ocean-hugging path is now going to go through the parking lots of Safeway and Foodland and across the highway twice- once trough the busiest most congested intersection on Kaua`i, the focal point of the infamous Kapa`a traffic jumble..
Another part of the reason for that bit of insanity is that the “county matching” for the $40 million has been in the form of donated land and they’ve run out of land to be donated.
So they essentially eliminated most of a 30-year-old requirement that the two shopping centers build a bridge connecting them so they could get the bike path land in the parking lot to fulfill the rest of the “match”.
Perhaps the most striking of Carvalho’s idiocies was his creation of the Lydgate camping area were he cost the county big bucks by failing to ask anybody that mattered how to both do it and comply with the law.
Instead he and his again secret “task force” didn’t bother to comply with the minimal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and actually built the campground in violation of that and other laws before eventually having to tear it out and build it again..
It might have come to light in time to stop it but Carvalho’s penchant for secrecy made sure no one even knew about it before it was built... except for those in his secret group.
Transportation? Do you have to ask what Bernard is done? If so perhaps you haven’t driven in Kapa`a or tried to depend on the Kauai Bus which hasn’t “gone anywhere” in Carvalho’s years in charge.
And his Elderly Affairs Agency has decreased services such as meals on wheels and other programs under his tutelage.
And this is the front runner in our mayoral race. And that may be because Carvalho’s opponent seems to be happily skipping her way to a loss to this babooze without actually talking about his and the Baptiste administrations corruption and general incompetence.
In the year of the ”change” election she apparently refuses to allude to the need for it locally.
Even knowing that Carvalho will continue the policies – and more importantly retain the appointed personnel- of the Baptiste administration there’s not a word out JoAnn Yukimura about “cleaning house”, especially in the Planning Department where her nemesis Ian Costa has run a rubber stamp operation and where the word “planning” is not what they do but merely the name of the department.
Will JoAnn wake up and delineate the issues? Or will she just sit back and let Bernard coast into office.
Maybe the JoAnn of 20 years ago might have fought for the community she says she loves but don’t hold your breath nowadays.
According to some close to her campaign she wants others to criticize Bernard for her.
But no one in the mainstream media is going to repeat the rantings of a Kapa`a blogger or anyone else. If she’s going to play this game of letting others speak for her she’s most assuredly going to lose because that’s not the way the press works.
She’s got the only megaphone that matters. Because the media- and the voters for that matter- always need to hear it from the candidates themselves. And that goes double for Kaua`i where the press is a joke to begin with.
If she continues to snooze her way toward November 4 we’ll all be in for a rude awakening on December 1.
But though the country might escape a continuation our recent fate, as promulgated by the ultimate application of The Peter Principle, the county isn’t so lucky.
Because unless JoAnn Yukimura suddenly grows a pair and delineates his fraudulency, Bernard Carvalho, she will lose to the dumbest man ever elected to pubic office on Kaua`i... and that’s saying a lot.
Seemingly it’s a well kept secret that not only is Carvalho vapidly mindless in his campaign, he has spent the last six years being the lack of brains behind the insipidly destructive Bryan Baptiste administration.
Though it boggles the mind of outside observers that Kaua`i voters continually vote for the least competent mayoral candidate every fours years, apparently Kaua`i voters’ complaints over our crumbling infrastructure, lack of housing, decrepit and often disgusting parks and recreational facilities are forgotten when they step into the voting booth.
Because when you look down the list of the worst of our problems and the lack of government response over the last six years you’ll see one name in charge of almost all of them- Barnard Carvalho.
A little recent history. As soon as Batiste was elected he immediately took all the “agencies” in the county- those not created by the County Charter- and smushed together all these “loose end departments” that were created as a loophole of unaccountability from past administrations.
It was called the Community Assistance “Department” (CAD) although technically it wasn’t a department at all.
It encompassed those administrative functions that had answered directly to the mayor’s office under former Mayor Marianne Kusaka in order to make sure power was enhanced in her office.
Unfortunately that also added accountability and that was one thing Baptiste would never stand for.
Now when Baptiste took over he needed to reward one of his chief campaign supporters, his buddy from hamabada days (little kid time for all you malahini) Carvalho and also isolate himself from blame for screwing up when it came time for reelection.
And as luck would have it - and perhaps not so strangely because they were subject to lessened accountability and transparency- some the worst problems on Kaua`i were regulated by those agencies.
The CAD was created as an added layer of bureaucracy and combined the Agency on Elderly Affairs, the Housing Agency and the Transportation Agency.
And for good measure, because Carvalho wasn’t qualified for those- or any- areas of oversight, the Division of Parks & Recreation from the Public Works Department. was added.
Carvalho was Kusaka’s politically appointed recreation chief at the time but his having never been an administrator before didn’t seem to phase Baptiste. The Mayor actually left some park functions in the DPW, creating the typical split-function nightmare of dual administration.
And Carvalho proceeded to take the already orphan and neglected areas of executive management and run them into the ground.
It’s not a secret that there was- and is and will be for a quite a while- a housing crisis on Kaua`i. It was a crisis in the 2002 election when Baptiste was first elected and after Carvalho’s reign it has become an un-addressed calamity.
Not only has the county failed to provide housing but it took six years just to develop a policy and the policy was developed through the first of Carvalho’s infamous “tasks forces”.
These task forces were generally groups of county employees, revolving-door-connected business honchos and assorted good old boys who held closed door meetings, never took public input and presented thin gruel to the council for approval when they were done.
The results of Carvalho’s housing efforts are self apparent- Kaua`i is still the only county that has no public housing and the whole effort has been comprised of trying to allow developers to not comply with zoning, planning and permitting.
And perhaps worst of all it was solely designed to create for-sale “affordable” housing that even the housing chief acknowledged to the council wasn’t affordable- or even appropriate- especially for those who needed it most.
There is an even worse result of this- the feds have had the housing agency on a short leash because they are not serving the people who they’re supposed to serve- those who need rental housing and make less than 50% of the median income.
There is some for-sale so-called “affordable” housing “ that’s been created- all by developers, not the county, although some was required during development and subdivision.
But the only people who can afford it are those making more than 120%, many times even 160% of the median income although it’s really supposed to serve those making 100% or less, preferably 80% by law.
But it’s set up so that no one at the lower levels can get a loan for the price of these “affordable” houses so they go to those who make more.
And of course the Baptiste administration with Carvalho in charge of the Housing Agency did not create, start to finish, one unit of rental housing, the greatest need of all on Kaua`i.
But every time the council- which is certainly not blameless- called in Carvalho to explain, when they eventually got him there he would bring some simplistic “PowerPoint presentation”.
These glorified slide shows would inevitably detail the bare bones of a future plan and try to hide what everyone knew already- we weren’t doing diddley-squat for anyone who needed it.
Carvalho has become the tongue-in-cheek “King of the PowerPoint”, proudly presenting his useless and uninspiring pages of large print banalities, usually bestowed after delaying any report to the council for months on end, only to not really answer any questions much less provide any info when the long awaited “answers” finally came.
Year after year it’s been the same, with the council asking “what have you done” and Carvalho answering “here’s what we are going to do.”
The conditions of our parks and county facilities is infamous across the world with newspaper and magazine articles and word of mouth disparagements that make tourism official cringe- all detailing our disgusting bathrooms, trash filled parks and other neglected facilities.
And with Carvalho in chare it’s only gotten worse.
But perhaps Carvalho’s biggest fiasco was his biggest project- the costly corruption-plagued boondoggle of the “Bike Path” project, the “jewel” in Baptiste’s tarnished crown.
From start to non-finish the path has been a plague of problems from wasted funds to un-permitted structures and a plethora of violations of county code and state and federal law, all detailed at county council meetings .
The “29 bike path questions” for Carvalho and his people that the county council asked years ago remain unanswered and apparently will since the ones who wouldn’t let the list die- Mel Rapozo and Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho- will no longer be on the council two months from now.
Again Bernard Carvalho’s answer to all the problems was to, after he delayed appearances and answers as long as he could, form another secretive “task force” which never did answer the questions.
Carvalho even managed to dodge and weave so long that Baptiste’s sycophant Councilmember Tim “don’t confuse me with the facts” Bynum- who was responsible for many of the bike path abuses as a civilian before being elected- got so impatient he seemed to have forgotten that the questions hadn’t already been answered, saying in fact they had been and using as evidence the fact that it had taken so long to get answers..... that and those magnificent PowerPoint presentations..
But the task force did help do one thing- they lent a hand in creating the dog walking ignominy by apparently getting Carvalho to implement a secret “declaration” of the path as a “linear park”, causing an uproar in the community and packed council chambers for months.
The secret bike path task force hasn’t said where the money is going to come from to finish the path- a path originally funded as a bike path but which now has somehow morphed into a “multi-use path”, in violation of the policy for distribution of the federal funding that declares the path must be “primarily for transportation (and) not recreation”.
That’s the reason that despite the fact that the original $40 million in federal funds is long gone- having in part been wasted on amenities along the path, many illegally constructed without permits or required shoreline certifications- they must complete the whole 16 miles to make true their “transportation” claim that got them the money in the first place.
It’s also the reason for the beach-side path’s mauka detour as described in the local paper Sunday.
The article says that “Phase III” is now ready for launch and in order to complete the segment the ocean-hugging path is now going to go through the parking lots of Safeway and Foodland and across the highway twice- once trough the busiest most congested intersection on Kaua`i, the focal point of the infamous Kapa`a traffic jumble..
Another part of the reason for that bit of insanity is that the “county matching” for the $40 million has been in the form of donated land and they’ve run out of land to be donated.
So they essentially eliminated most of a 30-year-old requirement that the two shopping centers build a bridge connecting them so they could get the bike path land in the parking lot to fulfill the rest of the “match”.
Perhaps the most striking of Carvalho’s idiocies was his creation of the Lydgate camping area were he cost the county big bucks by failing to ask anybody that mattered how to both do it and comply with the law.
Instead he and his again secret “task force” didn’t bother to comply with the minimal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and actually built the campground in violation of that and other laws before eventually having to tear it out and build it again..
It might have come to light in time to stop it but Carvalho’s penchant for secrecy made sure no one even knew about it before it was built... except for those in his secret group.
Transportation? Do you have to ask what Bernard is done? If so perhaps you haven’t driven in Kapa`a or tried to depend on the Kauai Bus which hasn’t “gone anywhere” in Carvalho’s years in charge.
And his Elderly Affairs Agency has decreased services such as meals on wheels and other programs under his tutelage.
And this is the front runner in our mayoral race. And that may be because Carvalho’s opponent seems to be happily skipping her way to a loss to this babooze without actually talking about his and the Baptiste administrations corruption and general incompetence.
In the year of the ”change” election she apparently refuses to allude to the need for it locally.
Even knowing that Carvalho will continue the policies – and more importantly retain the appointed personnel- of the Baptiste administration there’s not a word out JoAnn Yukimura about “cleaning house”, especially in the Planning Department where her nemesis Ian Costa has run a rubber stamp operation and where the word “planning” is not what they do but merely the name of the department.
Will JoAnn wake up and delineate the issues? Or will she just sit back and let Bernard coast into office.
Maybe the JoAnn of 20 years ago might have fought for the community she says she loves but don’t hold your breath nowadays.
According to some close to her campaign she wants others to criticize Bernard for her.
But no one in the mainstream media is going to repeat the rantings of a Kapa`a blogger or anyone else. If she’s going to play this game of letting others speak for her she’s most assuredly going to lose because that’s not the way the press works.
She’s got the only megaphone that matters. Because the media- and the voters for that matter- always need to hear it from the candidates themselves. And that goes double for Kaua`i where the press is a joke to begin with.
If she continues to snooze her way toward November 4 we’ll all be in for a rude awakening on December 1.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
SO IF WE DIDN’T STEP IN IT HOW COME I CAN STILL SMELL IT:
SO IF WE DIDN’T STEP IN IT HOW COME I CAN STILL SMELL IT: After taking blind stabs in the dark at Tim Bynum’s proposed “Yes we don’t not allow dogs on the bike path” law Bill #2265 yesterday we finally got a hold of the actual bill and if you enjoyed what we rightly ridiculed and revealed yesterday we’ve got more to whet your dog whistle.
First of all though the public notice explains the absurdity how the Council proposes to make something that’s legal stay legal by making it illegal and then creating an exemption for that illegality that may not be it’s primary effect if not purpose.
Turns out the whole bill may dead since it is apparently illegally posted and noticed
And that’s because no one let the public know that what the bill actually does is surreptitiously give the newly Charter-created “Department” of Parks And Recreation (DP&R) and its Director the responsibility for administration of the County’s parks, taking it away from the County Engineer and the Public Works Department where the old “Office” of Parks and Recreation resided.
It does this by apparently trying to change parts of the Definitions in Chapter 19 Section 19-1.3 although it is done so ineptly as to cause more confusion than it clears up, seemingly deleting the numbering system for some insane reason and deleting at least one references to the Public Works Department or DPW (19-1.3 [3]) but apparently leaving others in (19-1.3 [2]) referring to the County Engineer. It also allows references to the old Parks and Recreation Division of Public Works to remain (19-1.3 [5]) and deletes some words from provisions that were wrongly worded in the first place to refer to a “Department” of Parks and Recreation (19-1.3 [6]) when there was no such thing as a “Department” of P&R when the original ordinance was approved.
This has to be considered a major change of law contained in bill- changing control of all County parks from the DPW to the DP&R. Yet that information does not appear on the public notice filed with the Lieutenant Governor and submitted for publication, in violation of HRS 91 (Administrative Rules) and 92 (Sunshine/open meetings).
But midway exhibit aside, step right up and have your dollar ready – there’s more bizarro-world manipulations and big contortions under the side-show big-top.
We’ve been amused for weeks as County officials have been lying in saying that the bike path was, according to the newspaper “considered a linear park”.
The problem was that no one ever bothered to go through the legal processes to declare it such in just another one of those Henry VIII “I am the law” delusional propagations that supplant promulgations and are so typical of chest-pounding Kaua`i potentates
Yesterday- after reading the public notice for the public hearing next Wednesday- we reported that the new bill is apparently at least attempting to surreptitiously and retroactively declare the bike path to be a park.
But actually we were wrong- it is not going to be a “park” but a “recreational facility” because the part being amended doesn’t refer to parks. It appears in the definition of a “Recreational Facility” (19-1.3 [9]) prospectively adding a paragraph saying
“Shared Use Path shall mean the path surface, as area up to six (6) feet in each side of the surface, immediately adjacent rest areas, and direct access from parking areas.”
This would supposedly bring the path under Section 19-1.4 refers to “General Prohibitions applicable to all Parks and Recreational Facilities” and is where the specific prohibitions are listed.
But that isn’t really clear because it just may be a dangling definition and not part or 19-1.3 [9] at all- and if it is, the term doesn’t join “swimming pools, gymnasiums, community centers pavilions, (and) picnic tables” but just kind of sits there off in the corner... much like the dog turd it seeks to regulate.
But if indeed it is a “recreational facility” the problem is, as we have stated over and over and is documented by every county official directly involved in procuring the funding for this specific path, it is not a Shared Use Path, Multi-Use Path, Dog Path, Bridle path (or for that matter a Bridal Path) elephant path or anything else
No matter what Tim Bynum, Thomas Noyes or Mayor Baptiste- or for that matter that hilariously crazy “believe me not your lyin' eyes” anonymous troll who perpetuates the big lie on various blog entries on the subject- wish it were funded as. it is was and will always be funded as a “primarily for transportation”-use path.
Although recreational use was and is permitted by federal funding law for the specific appropriation for this specific project, the bike path has to be used “primarily for transportation, not recreation” by law and it still lacks the required signature of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation declaring that the County is abiding by the “primarily for transportation, not recreation” provision.
But Bynum, who apparently wrote the bill himself if we can judge by the lack of legal acumen and bill-writing skills is one of those “don’t confuse me with the facts” people.
And it’s no wonder since he actually rode the “it’s not a bike path it’s a multi-use path” bandwagon to elective office. That’s his and their story and he and they are sticking to it, even if they have to put it in a law that could jeopardize the funding and cause the feds who audit these projects to “de-obligate” the $40 million and take it out of the pockets not of the electeds who misrepresented the use but the taxpayers.
Until now it’s been public statements and newspaper articles that left the trail of bread crumbs to our make-believe gingerbread house of a multi-use path. But now it is due to be enshrined in the Kauai` County Code via an ordinance where no one can say they didn’t mean it when they said what a great “recreational” boondoggle it is.
Finally the bill does one more thing... sort of.
Remember a few years back when the Council was going to but didn’t ban all drinking in parks but added a provision banning alcohol in parks from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. if you didn’t have a camping permit?
Well what was not publicized much at the time was that the provision had a sunset date 18 months after it was enacted. This new Bill #2265 also deletes the section containing the 11-6 provision and the sunset date clause.
This could be considered a “housekeeping measure” but if anyone wants to bring up the ban and push for a new one or a re-upping of the sunsetted provision, this bill would give them an opportunity to bring it up at the public hearing and subsequent committee and council meetings under the State Sunshine Law since the section part is being changed.
We’re also starting a pool – guess the number of people who show up and how long the hearing goes and you win. Winner gets a scoop and a bag to pick up after their kangaroo.
I say 250 and six hours.
The Zoo opens at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Hysteric County Building. Bring any barnyard beasts you wish. As a matter of fact maybe you can walk them there via the path.
They’re all apparently welcome to compete with bicyclists who whip around the corner at 50 mph while commuting to and from work... gee- wonder who’s gonna be left holding the liability bag when the ones who are legally supposed to have priority come upon your chicks and geese and ducks as well as your fringed surrey that fail to scurry.
IRREGULAR APPENDIX: For any who missed all the news and concurrent documentation regarding the funding and requirements for the coastal bike path the paperwork is available through the Department of Public Works’ Buildings Division.
Ask for Doug... he’ll fix ya up with the files for the funding mechanism and compliance with its requirements for the “coastal bike path” project. They’re public information and you can examine them or even get copies.
.
But Glenn Mickens (he’s in the book) has copies of them and if you want copies yourself he’ll probably give you a kiss for caring and meet you at the copy place. I have a lot of them myself. Ask Glenn for the “Sweeny Brief” and attachments.
Then you’ll also know why our “coastal multi use path” runs through the Safeway-Foodland parking lots...and over a bridge that took 30 years to build at taxpayer expense instead of making SW and FL pay by honoring a 1978 zoning condition.
First of all though the public notice explains the absurdity how the Council proposes to make something that’s legal stay legal by making it illegal and then creating an exemption for that illegality that may not be it’s primary effect if not purpose.
Turns out the whole bill may dead since it is apparently illegally posted and noticed
And that’s because no one let the public know that what the bill actually does is surreptitiously give the newly Charter-created “Department” of Parks And Recreation (DP&R) and its Director the responsibility for administration of the County’s parks, taking it away from the County Engineer and the Public Works Department where the old “Office” of Parks and Recreation resided.
It does this by apparently trying to change parts of the Definitions in Chapter 19 Section 19-1.3 although it is done so ineptly as to cause more confusion than it clears up, seemingly deleting the numbering system for some insane reason and deleting at least one references to the Public Works Department or DPW (19-1.3 [3]) but apparently leaving others in (19-1.3 [2]) referring to the County Engineer. It also allows references to the old Parks and Recreation Division of Public Works to remain (19-1.3 [5]) and deletes some words from provisions that were wrongly worded in the first place to refer to a “Department” of Parks and Recreation (19-1.3 [6]) when there was no such thing as a “Department” of P&R when the original ordinance was approved.
This has to be considered a major change of law contained in bill- changing control of all County parks from the DPW to the DP&R. Yet that information does not appear on the public notice filed with the Lieutenant Governor and submitted for publication, in violation of HRS 91 (Administrative Rules) and 92 (Sunshine/open meetings).
But midway exhibit aside, step right up and have your dollar ready – there’s more bizarro-world manipulations and big contortions under the side-show big-top.
We’ve been amused for weeks as County officials have been lying in saying that the bike path was, according to the newspaper “considered a linear park”.
The problem was that no one ever bothered to go through the legal processes to declare it such in just another one of those Henry VIII “I am the law” delusional propagations that supplant promulgations and are so typical of chest-pounding Kaua`i potentates
Yesterday- after reading the public notice for the public hearing next Wednesday- we reported that the new bill is apparently at least attempting to surreptitiously and retroactively declare the bike path to be a park.
But actually we were wrong- it is not going to be a “park” but a “recreational facility” because the part being amended doesn’t refer to parks. It appears in the definition of a “Recreational Facility” (19-1.3 [9]) prospectively adding a paragraph saying
“Shared Use Path shall mean the path surface, as area up to six (6) feet in each side of the surface, immediately adjacent rest areas, and direct access from parking areas.”
This would supposedly bring the path under Section 19-1.4 refers to “General Prohibitions applicable to all Parks and Recreational Facilities” and is where the specific prohibitions are listed.
But that isn’t really clear because it just may be a dangling definition and not part or 19-1.3 [9] at all- and if it is, the term doesn’t join “swimming pools, gymnasiums, community centers pavilions, (and) picnic tables” but just kind of sits there off in the corner... much like the dog turd it seeks to regulate.
But if indeed it is a “recreational facility” the problem is, as we have stated over and over and is documented by every county official directly involved in procuring the funding for this specific path, it is not a Shared Use Path, Multi-Use Path, Dog Path, Bridle path (or for that matter a Bridal Path) elephant path or anything else
No matter what Tim Bynum, Thomas Noyes or Mayor Baptiste- or for that matter that hilariously crazy “believe me not your lyin' eyes” anonymous troll who perpetuates the big lie on various blog entries on the subject- wish it were funded as. it is was and will always be funded as a “primarily for transportation”-use path.
Although recreational use was and is permitted by federal funding law for the specific appropriation for this specific project, the bike path has to be used “primarily for transportation, not recreation” by law and it still lacks the required signature of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation declaring that the County is abiding by the “primarily for transportation, not recreation” provision.
But Bynum, who apparently wrote the bill himself if we can judge by the lack of legal acumen and bill-writing skills is one of those “don’t confuse me with the facts” people.
And it’s no wonder since he actually rode the “it’s not a bike path it’s a multi-use path” bandwagon to elective office. That’s his and their story and he and they are sticking to it, even if they have to put it in a law that could jeopardize the funding and cause the feds who audit these projects to “de-obligate” the $40 million and take it out of the pockets not of the electeds who misrepresented the use but the taxpayers.
Until now it’s been public statements and newspaper articles that left the trail of bread crumbs to our make-believe gingerbread house of a multi-use path. But now it is due to be enshrined in the Kauai` County Code via an ordinance where no one can say they didn’t mean it when they said what a great “recreational” boondoggle it is.
Finally the bill does one more thing... sort of.
Remember a few years back when the Council was going to but didn’t ban all drinking in parks but added a provision banning alcohol in parks from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. if you didn’t have a camping permit?
Well what was not publicized much at the time was that the provision had a sunset date 18 months after it was enacted. This new Bill #2265 also deletes the section containing the 11-6 provision and the sunset date clause.
This could be considered a “housekeeping measure” but if anyone wants to bring up the ban and push for a new one or a re-upping of the sunsetted provision, this bill would give them an opportunity to bring it up at the public hearing and subsequent committee and council meetings under the State Sunshine Law since the section part is being changed.
We’re also starting a pool – guess the number of people who show up and how long the hearing goes and you win. Winner gets a scoop and a bag to pick up after their kangaroo.
I say 250 and six hours.
The Zoo opens at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Hysteric County Building. Bring any barnyard beasts you wish. As a matter of fact maybe you can walk them there via the path.
They’re all apparently welcome to compete with bicyclists who whip around the corner at 50 mph while commuting to and from work... gee- wonder who’s gonna be left holding the liability bag when the ones who are legally supposed to have priority come upon your chicks and geese and ducks as well as your fringed surrey that fail to scurry.
IRREGULAR APPENDIX: For any who missed all the news and concurrent documentation regarding the funding and requirements for the coastal bike path the paperwork is available through the Department of Public Works’ Buildings Division.
Ask for Doug... he’ll fix ya up with the files for the funding mechanism and compliance with its requirements for the “coastal bike path” project. They’re public information and you can examine them or even get copies.
.
But Glenn Mickens (he’s in the book) has copies of them and if you want copies yourself he’ll probably give you a kiss for caring and meet you at the copy place. I have a lot of them myself. Ask Glenn for the “Sweeny Brief” and attachments.
Then you’ll also know why our “coastal multi use path” runs through the Safeway-Foodland parking lots...and over a bridge that took 30 years to build at taxpayer expense instead of making SW and FL pay by honoring a 1978 zoning condition.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
BURYING THE BONE OF CONTENTION
BURYING THE BONE OF CONTENTION:Dr. Ray Chuan used to say he probably knew more about garbage any other nuclear physicist because it’s the Rosetta Stone of incompetence and corruption in Kaua`i County government and the Department of Public Waste- er, Works- which, guided by the pols that ignore their scams, literally can’t seem to crap or get off the pot..
That was in the 90’s after years of yack-yack-yack- about the yuck yuck yuckiest of all subjects- solid waste.
At the time our landfill was full, we had paid for another useless R.W. Beck study on what to do with it all and people were proposing trash-to-energy projects, recycling and stream separation and the pressing need to open a new dump.
And 15 years later nothing has changed except that we have a third Beck report and Kekaha’s Mount `Opala is getting higher every day.
Beck is a company stuck in the middle ages of solid waste consulting. Their ideas always come down to incrementally more recycling and a new landfill- the latter being the words that strike fear in the hearts of politicians worldwide but especially on little tiny Kaua`i-. oh and maybe an incinerator.
But the national trend in solid waste across the nation is a concept called “Zero-Waste” (ZW) and we actually have a Zero Waste-Kaua`i (ZWK) group that sometimes feels like it’s talking to the wall- the wall resulting from a presentation to the Council from professional Zero-Waste consultants who had instituted ZW systems across the mainland. It was met with enthusiasm for all of five minutes before the Council went back to Beck for the same old same old.
As the consultants say ZW is really “almost” zero because even with a mandatory curbside recycling combined with a facility that sorts the rest of the trash stream into recyclables, reusables, green waste/compost and all the other components there is still going to be a small amount- some say 5-10%, some say even less is practically achievable - that is going to be an unsortable disgusting mess, although with developing technologies it can and will approach zero.
And even if we burn that last tiny amount in an incinerator (an unnecessary and costly process usually sold to the public as a waste-to-energy plant such as H-Power in Honolulu) we’d have to do something with the “ashes”.
If the Council and County had contracted with a Zero Waste consultant we could now have a useful plan. To be fair the Beck report does include many of the recycling and sorting proposals and some on the Council have stated that having a “MERF”- the sorting facility- is their top solid waste priority. But it is still the old “coordinated” or piecemeal approach that was popular in the 80’s but has seen it’s day.
So if we did go with the Zero Waste concepts we’d still have a little bit left and the question is what to do with that.
We really have two choices on what to do with it- bury it or send it back to where it came from.
Which is why it’s unfathomable that our top two protectors of the environment in Hawai`i are condemning the smartest and most sustainable plan for that last little bit – ship it out.
According to an article in Monday’s Honolulu Advertiser Director of the Hawai`i Sierra Club Jeff Mikulina apparently has it backward in saying "(s)hipping off trash is an absolute waste. There is this overarching environmental ethic about the trash that we produce. It's antithetical to ... taking care of our own to send our 'opala thousands of miles away. We have to deal with our problems here at home."
This argument ignores the one pertinent fact- 100% of the materials in our non-greenwaste and mined (such as gravel, sand or concrete materials, all of which is recyclable) waste stream originated elsewhere- most of it on the mainland.
Another tireless environmental defender Henry Curtis of Life of the Land apparently agrees saying in the article "(w)e have to support an intensive recycling program. If material has to be disposed of, Life of the Land strongly believes that it should be done in a way that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions. Exporting trash to a large and cheap Mainland landfill is not the answer."
Shipping it out is not an alternative to recycling and it’s a disingenuous straw man to argue such. As is the greenhouse gas argument. How much greenhouse gas is produced by the diesel trucks running back and forth to and over the current landfills Henry?
If the answer is not a cheap Mainland landfill is it a more expensive and energy wasteful bunch of local ones?
The article notes “(o)thers say that the exporting of trash to another state absolves citizens of the responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.”
Exactly what citizen responsibility is that? To import pre-disposal-stage waste and then dig a hole to throw it in? Does that sound responsible much less sustainable?
Government already wipes our figurative butts for us already- we’re just arguing about how many sheets of toilet paper it’s going to take.
The bigger bugaboo for the politicians and taxpayers has rightly or wrongly been cost. And that’s where shipping whatever isn’t usable to a central location –even if it’s to await the day when it has value if that’s what Mikulina is suggesting- is certainly a more economically viable alternative than paying the amount we pay now all else being equal. And if it’s efficiently coordinated statewide it is more environmentally sustainable and less damaging too.
The Article states that “(t)he plan assumes the cost to ship trash to the mainland will be between $70 and $75 per ton”, which is about the current “tipping fee” on Kaua`i- the amount paid to dump stuff at the dump. But that figure is widely admitted to be a low-end cost underestimate used for many years by our befuddled Pubic Works Department to charge commercial haulers.
Most estimates for actual costs are well over a hundred- $135 has recently been used in council discussions. And those estimates don’t count the costs of transport to the landfill site even before the price of oil went through the roof, nor things like the capital improvement costs to site, construct, monitor and close a new landfill (and keep an eye on it for the required 30 years after closing), estimated at $35-50 million or more just to open it... which also doesn’t include things like the recent half-a-million-dollar bribe for Kekaha to not complain about the current dump being there.
Oh and by the way, despite repeated requests and promises by the Council and administrations ever since Ray Chuan’s day the new Beck report does not evaluate the “shipping it out” option and it’s dismissed as unviable without any detailed examination.
The myriad hidden costs of landfilling aside, what Mikulina, Curtis and Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura have always tried do is argue is that shipping it back would be done in lieu of a zero-waste plan- or even the “good-enough” Beck approach- with no recycling, no diversion and no other plan other than bringing it to the docks and waving bye-bye.
It has been impossible to have a rational discussion of the matter because of these kinds of disingenuous arguments for many years, where they go back and forth between the straw men of the cost and responsibility that they created out of whole cloth.
The oddest thing is that even in Honolulu shipping it back is seen as a “temporary solution” although no one has ever addressed why that is. Is it because their whole system is unsustainable to begin with or something to do with the concept? We don’t know because no one will say but wonder if it could be because there are thousands of government jobs at stake in dealing with the trash inefficiently in burning and burying it after it’s picked up?
Mikulina, Curtis and Yukimura would all agree that our consumerist mainland-style lifestyle through the use of the products physically delivered here is essentially unsustainable all by itself. Yet those goods comprise most of what we need to “do something with” after we’ve taken out what we can use and re-use and they came from across the ocean in the first place.
If we’re thinking about sustainability how is it sustainable to keep importing and burying our “stuff” when we’re done with it? To take care of the rear end by burying it is the height of irresponsibility because if the front end is dealt with sustainably there would be no rear end to deal with.
To use the analogy we seem to rely upon way too often in “Ready-Fire-Aim” Hawai`i and Kaua`i, it’s the old story about people too busy taking the bodies out of the river- and in this case burying them- to go upstream and try to stop whomever is throwing the bodies in.
We’d certainly welcome hearing how keeping it here is more “responsible” or even “lower cost” (when all cost factors are factored in) then sending it back but all we’ve ever heard is skewed numbers and vague generalities- and that’s been going on for at least 20 years here on Kaua`i.
We’re talking the last remains of the day- that gook or even the ashes after burning it- and what we’re going to do with it. Sweep it under the rug or ship it back where it came from are the choices. From that perspective the “responsible” option should be clear.
That was in the 90’s after years of yack-yack-yack- about the yuck yuck yuckiest of all subjects- solid waste.
At the time our landfill was full, we had paid for another useless R.W. Beck study on what to do with it all and people were proposing trash-to-energy projects, recycling and stream separation and the pressing need to open a new dump.
And 15 years later nothing has changed except that we have a third Beck report and Kekaha’s Mount `Opala is getting higher every day.
Beck is a company stuck in the middle ages of solid waste consulting. Their ideas always come down to incrementally more recycling and a new landfill- the latter being the words that strike fear in the hearts of politicians worldwide but especially on little tiny Kaua`i-. oh and maybe an incinerator.
But the national trend in solid waste across the nation is a concept called “Zero-Waste” (ZW) and we actually have a Zero Waste-Kaua`i (ZWK) group that sometimes feels like it’s talking to the wall- the wall resulting from a presentation to the Council from professional Zero-Waste consultants who had instituted ZW systems across the mainland. It was met with enthusiasm for all of five minutes before the Council went back to Beck for the same old same old.
As the consultants say ZW is really “almost” zero because even with a mandatory curbside recycling combined with a facility that sorts the rest of the trash stream into recyclables, reusables, green waste/compost and all the other components there is still going to be a small amount- some say 5-10%, some say even less is practically achievable - that is going to be an unsortable disgusting mess, although with developing technologies it can and will approach zero.
And even if we burn that last tiny amount in an incinerator (an unnecessary and costly process usually sold to the public as a waste-to-energy plant such as H-Power in Honolulu) we’d have to do something with the “ashes”.
If the Council and County had contracted with a Zero Waste consultant we could now have a useful plan. To be fair the Beck report does include many of the recycling and sorting proposals and some on the Council have stated that having a “MERF”- the sorting facility- is their top solid waste priority. But it is still the old “coordinated” or piecemeal approach that was popular in the 80’s but has seen it’s day.
So if we did go with the Zero Waste concepts we’d still have a little bit left and the question is what to do with that.
We really have two choices on what to do with it- bury it or send it back to where it came from.
Which is why it’s unfathomable that our top two protectors of the environment in Hawai`i are condemning the smartest and most sustainable plan for that last little bit – ship it out.
According to an article in Monday’s Honolulu Advertiser Director of the Hawai`i Sierra Club Jeff Mikulina apparently has it backward in saying "(s)hipping off trash is an absolute waste. There is this overarching environmental ethic about the trash that we produce. It's antithetical to ... taking care of our own to send our 'opala thousands of miles away. We have to deal with our problems here at home."
This argument ignores the one pertinent fact- 100% of the materials in our non-greenwaste and mined (such as gravel, sand or concrete materials, all of which is recyclable) waste stream originated elsewhere- most of it on the mainland.
Another tireless environmental defender Henry Curtis of Life of the Land apparently agrees saying in the article "(w)e have to support an intensive recycling program. If material has to be disposed of, Life of the Land strongly believes that it should be done in a way that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions. Exporting trash to a large and cheap Mainland landfill is not the answer."
Shipping it out is not an alternative to recycling and it’s a disingenuous straw man to argue such. As is the greenhouse gas argument. How much greenhouse gas is produced by the diesel trucks running back and forth to and over the current landfills Henry?
If the answer is not a cheap Mainland landfill is it a more expensive and energy wasteful bunch of local ones?
The article notes “(o)thers say that the exporting of trash to another state absolves citizens of the responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.”
Exactly what citizen responsibility is that? To import pre-disposal-stage waste and then dig a hole to throw it in? Does that sound responsible much less sustainable?
Government already wipes our figurative butts for us already- we’re just arguing about how many sheets of toilet paper it’s going to take.
The bigger bugaboo for the politicians and taxpayers has rightly or wrongly been cost. And that’s where shipping whatever isn’t usable to a central location –even if it’s to await the day when it has value if that’s what Mikulina is suggesting- is certainly a more economically viable alternative than paying the amount we pay now all else being equal. And if it’s efficiently coordinated statewide it is more environmentally sustainable and less damaging too.
The Article states that “(t)he plan assumes the cost to ship trash to the mainland will be between $70 and $75 per ton”, which is about the current “tipping fee” on Kaua`i- the amount paid to dump stuff at the dump. But that figure is widely admitted to be a low-end cost underestimate used for many years by our befuddled Pubic Works Department to charge commercial haulers.
Most estimates for actual costs are well over a hundred- $135 has recently been used in council discussions. And those estimates don’t count the costs of transport to the landfill site even before the price of oil went through the roof, nor things like the capital improvement costs to site, construct, monitor and close a new landfill (and keep an eye on it for the required 30 years after closing), estimated at $35-50 million or more just to open it... which also doesn’t include things like the recent half-a-million-dollar bribe for Kekaha to not complain about the current dump being there.
Oh and by the way, despite repeated requests and promises by the Council and administrations ever since Ray Chuan’s day the new Beck report does not evaluate the “shipping it out” option and it’s dismissed as unviable without any detailed examination.
The myriad hidden costs of landfilling aside, what Mikulina, Curtis and Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura have always tried do is argue is that shipping it back would be done in lieu of a zero-waste plan- or even the “good-enough” Beck approach- with no recycling, no diversion and no other plan other than bringing it to the docks and waving bye-bye.
It has been impossible to have a rational discussion of the matter because of these kinds of disingenuous arguments for many years, where they go back and forth between the straw men of the cost and responsibility that they created out of whole cloth.
The oddest thing is that even in Honolulu shipping it back is seen as a “temporary solution” although no one has ever addressed why that is. Is it because their whole system is unsustainable to begin with or something to do with the concept? We don’t know because no one will say but wonder if it could be because there are thousands of government jobs at stake in dealing with the trash inefficiently in burning and burying it after it’s picked up?
Mikulina, Curtis and Yukimura would all agree that our consumerist mainland-style lifestyle through the use of the products physically delivered here is essentially unsustainable all by itself. Yet those goods comprise most of what we need to “do something with” after we’ve taken out what we can use and re-use and they came from across the ocean in the first place.
If we’re thinking about sustainability how is it sustainable to keep importing and burying our “stuff” when we’re done with it? To take care of the rear end by burying it is the height of irresponsibility because if the front end is dealt with sustainably there would be no rear end to deal with.
To use the analogy we seem to rely upon way too often in “Ready-Fire-Aim” Hawai`i and Kaua`i, it’s the old story about people too busy taking the bodies out of the river- and in this case burying them- to go upstream and try to stop whomever is throwing the bodies in.
We’d certainly welcome hearing how keeping it here is more “responsible” or even “lower cost” (when all cost factors are factored in) then sending it back but all we’ve ever heard is skewed numbers and vague generalities- and that’s been going on for at least 20 years here on Kaua`i.
We’re talking the last remains of the day- that gook or even the ashes after burning it- and what we’re going to do with it. Sweep it under the rug or ship it back where it came from are the choices. From that perspective the “responsible” option should be clear.
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