Why gather input? ADVERTISING Why gather input? It has been the most amazing thing to watch the development of the Pahoa park project. The master plan design published in Friday’s paper looks little like the original plan presented to the
Why gather input?
It has been the most amazing thing to watch the development of the Pahoa park project. The master plan design published in Friday’s paper looks little like the original plan presented to the community several years ago, and it totally disregards the expressed input of many members of the Puna community in the meeting we attended.
One really wonders why Hawaii County bothers to have these meetings or, for that matter, why it bothers to have the community development plans at all.
The Pahoa park project will be a young person’s sports wet dream, with extra parking. The rest of us will remain “underserved.”
All the requests for safe biking, walking, gardens and adult entertainment will be ignored in favor of sports we cannot do and were never interested in.
The Department of Park &Recreation’s idea of developing a park for one use and boxing it in with a massive fence shows little understanding of how to develop an integrated town plan. The sad fact that $54 million will be spent on such a narrow view of planning leaves Pahoa and Puna without so many of the things it truly needs.
Most of our community did not ask for a sports center, but special interests are prevailing and holding hands with the dreams of Parks &Recreation. It is unfortunate that just before the election, the rest of us must sit and watch this expensive boondoggle unfold.
So, build it, and we will NOT come.
Toby S. Hazel
Pahoa Park Committee
Take this simple test
Try this measure of how good or poor the economy is doing, regardless of columnist Paul Krugman’s analysis and the so-called experts.
Do your dollars buy more or less groceries than they did, say, four or five years ago? Can you fill your gas tank or pay you utility bill for more or less than you did four or five years ago? How many of the people in your neighborhood are now living in poverty, as compared to eight or 10 years ago, or even two or three? How many of our keiki who are ready to enter the school year have to go without adequate supplies because their parents can’t afford to purchase those needed supplies?
Along with this, the Department of Education and our governor (and Legislature) should see that those supplies are provided at no cost if they are truly interested in educating our keiki, because they are our future and should be able to learn mathematics.
Yeah, the economy is so good that maybe we should all retire and live on what we have got — or what the government doles out to us!
Ron Baptista
Mountain View
