‘No regulation’
It was probably a decade ago when Brenda Ford called me up and asked me to go sit in on a Planning Department meeting at the Pahoa Community Center. Planning Director Chris Yuen was going to be talking about grading-and-grubbing permits. He said they were only going to be required for lots larger than 1 acre.
Several people got up and spoke about various issues, but I guess I was the only person from Hawaiian Paradise Park.
So I said: You are essentially saying that all of HPP’s 8,800 lots need no permit to grade? NO REGULATION? NO OVERSIGHT — so any cowboy with a barely working, leaking D-9 can come in and push a lot’s worth of albizias onto the surrounding undeveloped lots? That’s OK?
He had no answer. Which meant … yeah. Guess so.
So that is what has been going on for decades. First come, first get to dump on a neighbor’s lot.
Civil case? Who knows they’re doing it except the people who live on the block and pass by? The owner might be in Switzerland or Japan. Too bad, eh?
Call the Planning Department. They’ll say call Engineering, but permits they issue are signed off by Planning.
No regulation — that’s why these people get away with committing property crimes, year after year. It makes me sick to see these yahoos rape the ‘aina and then just trash the land surrounding the parking lot they are making.
Pave Paradise (Park) — “put up a parking lot.”
Peter Frost
Keaau
It’s laziness
Graffiti is horrible to look at, and it sends a message to tourists that we are low class and do not care.
I routinely take my large spray gun and rattle cans to cover up gang-style graffiti and other nonartistic paint nuisances throughout Hilo. The city cannot possibly do it all the time, so I take the initiative.
The faster you cover over graffiti, the less likely it pops up.
Thankfully, I have more time and money than any graffiti artist ever does, so I see results, and they have a harder time keeping up with me.
Building owners need to step it up if they want to be seen as good for the community. Accepting graffiti as something we should just have to deal with is just laziness and very mainland in its scope.
I moved here years ago and began painting free murals here because I thought people really cared about this island. Show me you do. I will always try.
Don’t let the taggers dictate your visuals.
Allen Russell
Hilo