We deserve better
I don’t live in the Lono Kona subdivision slated for a sewer connection upgrade, but I’ve followed the bidding process for this project.
The Jan. 29 bid opening had four contractors submit bids. Isemoto Contracting was lowest at $7.728 million and Goodfellow Brothers was highest at $10.726 million.
The Jan. 29 bids were subsequently discarded because they exceeded the funding available, and the 10 percent overage threshold ($4,024,800 for a USDA RUS grant, $2,437,000 for a USDA RUS loan). It was decided to rebid the project with the hope the bids would come in lower.
That didn’t happen when the revised bids were opened March 29. There were only two contractors that decided to bid on this project on the second go-around. Nan Inc. was the lowest bidder at $8.522 million, and Jas Glover was the highest bidder at $9.579 million. Nan’s low bid is about $794,203 higher than Isemoto’s low bid Jan. 29.
It also is $1.414 million more than the funding available, plus 10 percent overage. Isemoto’s bid was only about $620,447 higher than the latter.
It would’ve made much more sense to seek additional USDA grant funding to cover Isemoto’s low bid, instead of discarding all the bids and starting from scratch.
As it stands, the project’s future is now in a much more precarious position than where it was in January. The residents of Lono Kona subdivision, and Hawaii County taxpayers, deserve better.
Aaron Stene
Kailua-Kona
Lacking safeguards
Gov. David Ige has signed an assisted suicide law that fails to safeguard the interests of the vulnerable and elderly from malicious people who would gain from their death.
Moreover, it provides a legal avenue for concealing such crimes from any discovery and investigation.
Paragraph 14 of House Bill 2739 mandates: “Information collected pursuant to this section by the department shall not be disclosed, discoverable or compelled to be produced in any civil, criminal, administrative, or other proceeding.”
Should any questions or doubts reading the death arise, this law makes future investigation impossible. No one will ever find out exactly what happened.
The law opens the door for future gross injustices.
A. Stephen Woo Jr.
Hilo