I inquired with Hawaii County Fire Chief Darryl Oliveira today regarding why they haven’t sought federal stimulus money to build the future Makalei fire station. This is the response I received from Mr. Oliveira below :
Good afternoon Aaron,
We have applied for approx. $5million for Makalei and are currently awaiting approval/award via the Fire Station Construction Grant under a FEMA program which is stimulus funds. I am hopeful and will keep you and everyone else posted once we hear of our award status.
Thanks,
Darryl
It boggles my mind why didn’t Susan McGeachy just ask directly Mr. Oliveira before ranting about the county’s apparent failure to seek federal funding in this recent letter to the editor.
Brennon Morioka informed me today why the oral arguments has been delayed for the HDOT’s Queen Kaahumanu highway widening appeal.The judge handling this case extremely busy and declined to hear HDOT’s new evidence (the favorable July OAH decision) until November.
I found out today that since Hawaiian Telcom’s dry DSL service is a de-regulated service the only additional tax is the State of Hawaii’s GET.
Richard Ha had a interesting blog entry here regarding why local produce costs more than imported produce.
Hat tip to Andrew Cooper for blogging about the upcoming open house meetings for the Mauna Kea Comprehensive Plan four subset plans that will complete this document.
Happy birthday to Robert Thomas’s inversecondemnation.com blog. I’m quite surprised that he’s only been blogging for three years. That being said, congratulations Robert for reaching the three year blogging milestone.
Lastly, mahalo to Robert Thomas for pointing out this excellent article about Hawaii’s hidden racism problems.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:13 AM
Susan McGeachy has been asking about the roads and fire station for YEARS.
We actually had $900,000.00 for design back when Curtis Tyler was our County Council. During the 7 1/2 years that I worked on the Kona Coastview water system we were so close to getting the fire station. If we don’t stand up and fight then we won’t ever get anything. After all North Kona pays over 10 million in property taxes. (hawaii county data book 9.12pdf)
Perhaps you didn’t read the stimulus distribution and notice that we were left in the dust. We get the mid-level road if and that is IF the County can get it together and presented by Oct. 1 or the monies go back to the State coffers and the West side of Hawaii gets NOTHING. (per Denny Coffman- you can read his letter on my blog.)
Susan speaks up when others just sit back or blog it away.
Aaron- It seems you’ve been asking the wrong people about your concerns.I wrote a simple e-mail to the fire chief and found out that they’ve applied for stimulus funding for the Makalei station. They are awaiting a final decision on that request.You did the complete opposite and wrote a inflammatory letter to the editor.
On that note, your rants and instigative attitude do little to help Kona one bit.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 AM
The only reason they are applying for the grant is due to the letter I wrote to the editor, and the over whelming responses they had back. Ask Bobby Command the Mayors west side rep. The Fire Cheif doesn’t have any authority to sign for federal grant monies. Neither did the Water Department when we were doing the water improvement district. The Mayor is the only source to forward and apply for the grant money. Look at the times of your email. The Mayor’s office had already responded back to me from my inquiry on Sunday.
Aaron-That is an incorrect assumption on your part that your letter caused the the county to apply for this grant. I spoke to someone who has knowledge in this matter today. He spoke to the fire chief two months ago about this.The chief told him that they applied for this grant already. On top of that, it is foolhardy to think that the county suddenly applied for this grant within the past few days just because of your letter.
I forwarded Bobby Command the SAME e-mail from the chief that I forwarded to YOU.