Leadership change needed in Planning
I find the lack of the Leeward Planning Commission meetings in 2023 and 2024 troubling for several reasons.
— This is the second cancellation this year due to a lack of quorum, and the third cancellation in 2024; the LPC was cancelled five times in 2023, with two of those cancellations due to a lack of quorum.
— Items don’t get heard and must be postponed for future meetings. Professional developers can better absorb the cost and time when meetings are cancelled; not so for local business or property owners.
— There is no transparency from the Planning Department on why these meetings continue to be cancelled.
— The cancelled meetings could have been the perfect venue to have the draft General Plan presented, discussed by the LPC and gather public comments about this important document (reviewing the online version was a joke!).
— It feels like the members of the LPC are ill-prepared for being on the commission. If they don’t get training, they should. Is that why the planning director sits on the dais with the commission? It feels like there’s undue influence by the director when he sits with either commission.
Here’s a solution: The mayor should conduct an audit of the Planning Department to determine how this department can operate more effectively and be more transparent with the public.
Better yet, if the mayor wants to demonstrate concern for the constituents, he should change the leadership in the Planning Department — before the election in November. I would consider voting for him if this kind of needed change occurs.
The mayor and the Planning Department need to do better — now.
Elizabeth Dunn
Kailua Kona
Justices show their lack of ethics
In view of the nonrecusal of Justice Samuel Alito for the display of questionable flags at his two homes, and Justice Clarence Thomas for the involvement of his wife in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol, on cases about related issues before the U. S. Supreme Court, we, the congregants of the Unitarian Universalists of Puna — relying on our second principle, “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations,” and our seventh principle, “The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all” — wish to register our objection to their lack of ethics.
Margaret Drake
President of the Board of Directors,
Unitarian Universalists