DEM appointment
DEM appointment
Appointment is
a plus for county
Mayor Billy Kenoi’s appointment of Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, or BJ as her friends call her, to heading the Department of Environment Management is a plus for the county. It is true that an engineering degree may be helpful in dealing with the job but that same degree can be a hindrance when it comes to listening to other suggestions and making the best choice. Our county is in the position where we cannot wait for the solution to our waste management to come knocking on our door.
To require an engineering degree for the position is just as ludicrous as to require that a councilmember have Hawaiian blood to serve. It sounds to me that Councilwoman Brenda Ford’s insistence on the degree may have a personal bearing rather than a practical one.
Comparing the positions of being head of the DEM without a degree but with comparable experience and a councilman without Hawaiian blood but with related experience. We know that BJ does not have an engineering degree. We know that Ms. Ford does not have Hawaiian blood.
I personally know that BJ will listen to suggestions made by others. I also know from experience that she is aware that she does not know everything and that there are others who are better qualified to elaborate on certain subject matters. Having served on the County Council with her for six years, I came to realize that she has the unique ability to glean relevant and applicable information from multiple presentations, then compile that information into something more functional than the individual presentations. In the world of environmental management, the expertise is out there, the challenge is to segregate what is applicable to our particular need and then bring together the parts to make it functional. I think that BJ does have the drive and expertise to do what is needed to meet the challenge.
Maybe requiring that councilmembers have some Hawaiian blood or at least be born in Hawaii may be of benefit in promoting the aloha spirit, but that’s another subject.
Leningrad Elarionoff
Waimea
DEM appointment
Engineering degree important — follow law
In all the county’s wisdom, why do they assume the former head of the Planning Department will follow and enforce environmental laws? The community development plan also had laws, but according to the Planning Department the laws did not apply to them.
There is a lot of similarity to the CDP and laws that govern the Department of Environmental Management. They are in place to protect the environment. How and why should we taxpayers expect that Ms. Leithead Todd will perform her duties in her new-old position with any more diligence than she did as head of the Planning Department? She is not an environmental engineer. Therefore, her education does not comply with the qualifications for this position regardless of what she had held in the past.
The county must follow the laws that have been enacted. Or, is there something that I, as a taxpayer who pays their salaries, is not privy to?
Mayor Kenoi, an engineering degree is important, and is required by law.
Leilani Clark
Kaohe Ranch