Kona Community Aquatic Center continues to close the pool whenever they wish. It is now closed on weekends, in the middle of the day for an hour and a half. Now that the county has stopped furlough days, the Kona
Why is the pool
closed so often?
Kona Community Aquatic Center continues to close the pool whenever they wish. It is now closed on weekends, in the middle of the day for an hour and a half. Now that the county has stopped furlough days, the Kona pool manager has decided to close the pool once a month for what he calls maintenance day.
No other county pools do this: nor did this pool do this until a few years ago. These closures must stop. The pool is rapidly falling into disrepair. There is no concern for being proactive and not only maintaining the most heavily used county pool, but to continue to upgrade those repairs immediately.
The Pahoa pool, which is the same size as Kona’s, just had $1.5 million dollars in repairs. It is inexcusable to have a facility get that bad. A new pool could have been built for that amount. Or the second pool that was promised to be built at KCAC when funds became available.
Where are my tax dollars going here? Please help keep the pool open.
Wendy DeWeese
Kona
Speak up and
save our reefs
Over the past 25 years, I’ve seen the demise of Oahu’s reefs. I’ve seen areas on the Big Island that used to have choke fish where now there are only a few. I have friends and neighbors who talk about “how it used to be.”
Finally, we have another chance (the last one was 1998) to do something about the declining state of our reefs: We can go to the community meeting this Thursday at Kealakehe Intermediate School at 5:30 p.m. and tell Gov. Neil Abercrombie that we care. We can tell him that he needs to stand up for what he claims to believe in: community-based management and the ocean.
Why he appointed a former fish collector to run the Department of Land and Natural Resources doesn’t make sense to me. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house. Regardless, here we are. We can choose to attend this meeting — even though it’s scheduled near dinner time — and make sure that the governor hears us or we can stay home and let Honolulu tell us what is best for them and their guys. Thursday is our last chance to get more control over the health of our reef and its inhabitants. I hope that you consider attending. It’s important.
Lorraine Newport
Ocean View
