Lack of action led to lawsuit
I was surprised when I saw the July 18 edition of the Tribune-Herald and read about the lawsuit Ted Hong has recently filed for me.
The inaccurate version of my encounters with Assistant Chief Kenneth Quiocho is understandable since it comes from Quiocho’s Board of Ethics complaint that he filed against me last year.
A more accurate account of what has transpired between the two of us will eventually come out. However, I want to make it clear that it was never my intention nor did I think my complaint that I filed with the Hawaii County Police’s Office of Professional Standards would ever lead to a lawsuit.
When the police chief did not make any attempt to keep me informed about the OPS investigation result, I wrote a letter to Mayor Mitch Roth and met with him requesting that he at least call the chief to ask about my case.
The mayor never informed me of anything he would do to fix my problem, so I was forced to act outside of the system. I quote from my Feb. 25 letter to him:
“I want to give you and the chief the opportunity to handle this problem. I have tried to work within the system that so far I feel the system has not been working with me.”
I have been completely open to anyone willing to listen to my story that it seems as though those in authority thought I would eventually go away. But that is not how I operate — if I feel a wrong has been done, I try to fix it.
The whole experience leaves me wondering how many other people have had had similar problems but did not know what to do or lacked the time and resources to try correcting the wrong.
Tony Sur
Hilo
Mahalo for work along Banyan Drive
Banyan Drive and its historic trees has long been a place of pride for island citizens, and a wonderful attraction for visitors. It has been painful to watch its decline in recent years.
Recently, however, the county has funded a contractor to remove invasive growth from and around the trees, and on behalf of The Friends of Historic Banyan Drive, I would like to thank those responsible for this long-awaited effort: Mayor Mitch Roth, Hawaii County Department of Public Works (Steve Pause, director), and the Highways Division (Neil Azevedo, division chief).
Our organization would like to request that the county sustain its current efforts to care for our precious historical resource by taking two simple additional steps: (1) repair and replace the missing or degraded informational signs for the trees, as the county has done in the past, and (2) install trash receptacles along the street between Lili‘uokalani Park and Gardens and Reeds Bay Park.
Jane Hoff
Hilo