Your Views for April 14

Fiscal mismanagement

County Councilwoman Valerie Poindexter, our indicted Mayor Billy Kenoi and other county officials seem to be carelessly spending taxpayers’ money while at the same time misleading residents of Kukuihaele.

The community repeatedly has asked for more time to come up with a park renovation plan that better suits our small village, but apparently the county has a “just say no” policy. They have pretended to take into account our concerns about everything but the ballpark, which, according to recent surveys, most residents do not want.

The fencing and the ballpark remain the main issues because the design includes an 18-foot backstop, dugouts and bleachers in the middle of the park, effectively taking away most of the beautiful open space view that can be found nowhere else on the Hamakua Coast.

These proposed changes effectively will stop the use of the park in ways that residents have come to appreciate and love. Poindexter has said the county will not be able to keep the park open unless fences are put in, even if there is to be no baseball field.

She also was heard saying to a resident before the last county-sponsored meeting Jan. 10 that she would go with “whatever the community wanted,” yet the bids already had been sent out with the original park plan that the county designed. This means the county sent out requests for bids long before that meeting and repeatedly refused to give even a little more time to come up with a plan the majority of us can support. It seemed like that meeting and the others were conducted only to pay lip service to the community’s wishes and concerns.

The worst part is that county officials said if bids came back more than the $2.5 million allotted for the project, cuts could be made, including the ballfield, dugouts and bleachers — the most objectionable part of the plan. A contract was awarded for more than $5 million, which is double the initial cost, and yet nothing has been done to amend the plan that clearly the county cannot afford, the community doesn’t want as it is and which is part of the nearly $100 million bond that will raise our taxes.

I’m afraid we all will be paying more than 19 percent interest until 2035 (as reported by both Big Island newspapers recently) on the loans the county takes to fund their projects during just the Kenoi administration! This is not good fiscal management to me, especially when it moves ahead with a project where bids are coming in two to nearly three times higher than expected — before the ubiquitous change orders of which the county is so fond.

Poindexter insisted this project must be finished during Kenoi’s administration. Why is that? Does our indicted mayor have some stake in this? Does Poindexter? Will the oversight bodies in our government that caught Kenoi also be good enough to investigate and stop the fiscal mismanagement?

People are expected to live within their means and so should the government, and not put their bloated, overbudget projects on the backs of taxpayers.

Daniel Warner

Kukuihaele