The ‘scourge’ of roadside vendors
Mahalo to the Hawaii County Council for finally doing something about an insidious threat to public health and safety: the plague of unlicensed roadside fruit stands.
Thousands of lives will be improved when we regulate these out-of-control vendors and stop them from selling food that has not been duly inspected or approved by the Department of Health.
We simply can not allow folks to slow down and pull over willy-nilly for ice cold coconuts, homemade laulau or dried aku. Every day, these roadside fruit stands back up traffic for miles, cause hundreds of accidents, and create an uncounted number of potholes.
We must get rid of the hazardous huts which violate all the building codes. All the rusty cars and moldy pop-up tents with their scrawled cardboard signage that litter the “Belt Road” must go.
And we must protect the children! We can’t allow keiki lemonade stands to crop up like weeds. It might give kids ideas on how to take unfair advantage of loopholes in the law to reduce small business operating costs, relieve the tax burden, and avoid the soul-crushing regulations faced by licensed mom-and-pop shops.
I’m confident the increased tax revenue from fully regulated fruit stands will pay for the additional law enforcement required to cite and prosecute offenders.
Once we rid Big Island of the scourge of roadside fruit stands, I hope the County Council will be able to find even more ways to solve problems we don’t have.
Sylvia Dahlby
Hilo
Labor Day Drags a huge success
Congratulations to the directors of the Big Island Auto Club. The 50th running of your annual Labor Day Drags was a huge success! Over 1,000 spectators came out to watch 90-plus racers compete during the three-day and two-night event.
Though totally exhausted, the organizers celebrated early Sunday evening at the completion of the spectacular show!
Special recognition goes out to Waiki‘i’s James Takamine, who thrilled the crowd Saturday night with a record-breaking 248 mph run in his Dodge Nitro Funny Car.
Geoffrey Lauer
Hilo