Kaaawa News

Morning accident next to Kaaawa School

By ilind | July 2, 2009

Friends of ours who live next to Kaaawa School got a surprise guest early yesterday morning.

A young woman lost control of her car and ended up going through the wall in front of their house. Twice. Apparently coming and going, leaving quite a trail of debris.

It’s the second time a car has crashed into their yard in about a year.

Luckily, there were no injuries. Unless you count the mailbox, wall, and car.

Topics: General, Photos | No Comments »

Tuesday morning in Kaaawa

By ilind | June 30, 2009

We were out of the house a little early this morning, in time to get this view as we walked past Swanzy Beach Park.

Don’t you wish you were there, too?

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Crime Alert! Early a.m. thefts from cars reported

By ilind | June 23, 2009

We were stopped early this morning by a resident of Huamalani Road in Kaaawa, which runs towards the mountains back behind the fire station. He said that at about 3 a.m., a white or light-colored pickup was observed driving to the end of Huamalani and then turning around and stopping. The passenger got out with a flashlight and looked into cars parked in front of the house, apparently looking for things to steal. They were seen from inside the house and police were called.

Then when we returned from our early morning walk, we learned that one of our neighbor’s had her car broken into. The back window had been broken and her wallet stolen.

So be alert, especially in the early morning hours. Lock your cars and don’t leave valuables in the car.

Topics: Crime | No Comments »

Kaaawa “Road Association” hit with lawsuit

By ilind | June 12, 2009

The owner of a new house along Lihimauna Road has filed a lawsuit against the Kaaawa Beach Owners Association (the road association) and its directors alleging that they caused a buyer to withdraw from a deal to buy the house for $820,000.

Named defendants, in addition to the road association, are current and former directors and officers of the association: Socrates Bratakos, Gerald “Gino” Palermo, Guillermo “Willy” Geldermann, Greg Barbour, James Woolsey, Ronald Obrey, and John Morgan.

In his complaint, Mark Reynolds said he was the owner of the lot behind the Post Office running up from Kekio Road, on the lower side, to Lihimauna Road on the upper end, and created a condominium property regime in order to build two homes on the property.

Reynolds says he is still the owner of the home on the upper section of the lot. The house was the subject of much neighborhood speculation when it was built because of the extremely steep slope of its driveway, located just feet from the corner where Olohu Road runs into Lihimauna.

Reynolds claims that it was “necessary” to access the residence by building the driveway up to Lihimauna, and that he had obtained permission from the road association to complete the driveway. However, according to the complaint, the road association later refused to provide a letter approving the driveway because of the addition of a retaining wall extending into the roadway owned by the association.

In December 2007, Reynolds agreed to sell the house for $820,000 and the deal went into escrow.

However, the road association president contacted the real estate agent “informing the agent that the KBOA did not approve of the Retaining Wall, that KBOA would not accept the Retaining Wall, and that KBOA would not approve the Subject Parcel’s vehicular access to Lihimauna Road as constructed.”

In light of the dispute, the buyer withdrew. Reynolds now claims the road association is responsible and should compensate him for his losses.

However, the claim appears to hinge on Reynolds claim that it was necessary to access the house from above, off of Lihimauna, rather than from the driveway that ran from Kekio up to the house, which could have been accomplished easily. This appears to have been a design choice rather than the necessary way to access the property.

The current president of the road association, Gerald “Gino” Palermo, declined to comment further on the case.

The association is represented by the Honolulu law firm of Brooks Tom Porter & Quitiquit.

Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Urge Gov. Lingle not to approve proposed Board of Education rule

By ilind | June 11, 2009

The following is from Brian Walsh, who chairs the Kaaawa School Community Council

Friends of Kaaawa Elementary School,

The BOE has approved the changes to Chapter38 requested by Randy Moore and Pat Hamamoto of the DOE. These changes remove the need in the future to have a Task Force such as we have now investigating the proposed consolidation of Kaaawa Elementary School. This will make it much easier for the Superintendent to close schools in the future with only minimal community comments. This is despite testimony against the change by several members of the public including: Creighton Mattoon, Ian Lind, Brian Walsh, Howe Stidger, Andrea Anixt and Peter Krape.

Here are links to the BOE newsletter announcing the approval of the changes,
Lind and Stidger testimony submitted online, and
Krape, Walsh, Anixt and Mattoon testimony presented at the public hearing held at King Middle School.

The email address for requesting Linda Lingle to reject the change to Chapter 38 is governor.lingle@hawaii.gov
the phone number is (808) 586 0034 and ask for the policy office ….they tally these rejection requests and give it to Lingle.

Aloha,

Brian Walsh

=================================================================================

p.s. For example, here are the emails sent to the Governor by Dee Dee and by me:

===================================

Dear Governor Lingle:

I respectfully request that you veto the changes proposed to Chapter 38 concerning the removal of a community task force from the process of school consolidation.

Meaningful community input is key to this process as information is often not accurate in a DOE process - for example the first letter from the Superintendent regarding the consolidation of Ka`a`awa School had a two story classroom building on the campus which the school does not have and sighted as one of the major concerns no mauka access to the campus causing all students to use Kamehameha Highway. A mauka access was developed for the safety of the students by DOE in the late 80s early 90s. These and many other relevant facts only came to light when a task force was convened.

Please do not take the important community voice out of this process.

Sincerely

Dee Dee Letts

===================================

Re: Please reject BOE changes to HAR 8-38

Dear Governor Lingle,

The BOE has approved DOE proposed revisions to HAR Chapter 38 that remove the requirement for community participation in the process of consolidating schools. These changes have been sent to you for your approval.

I urge you to please reject these changes.

The top levels of the DOE do not have access to sufficiently accurate information about our schools to be able to make rational decisions about closing them. If it had been up to the Superintendent under the proposed revisions, Kaaawa Elementary School would already have been closed on the basis of very faulty information which was only corrected once the DOE started having meetings with the community and the Kaaawa School Task Force.

If you would like specific examples of these, I would be happy to provide them to you or to your staff. I have provided testimony to the BOE and to the City Council on this matter.

Sincerely,

Brian Walsh

(Kaaawa resident and Chairperson of the Kaaawa School Community Council)

===================================

Topics: Politics, School | No Comments »

Kaaawa School cesspool removal and drainage project update

By ilind | June 11, 2009

The Kaaawa Elementary School cesspool removal and drainage improvement project has been given the go-ahead by the DOE. They intend to have it completed by the end of September 2009 to comply with the Federal mandate to get rid of “large capacity” cesspools.

At the KCA meeting on June 9, the DOE planner and project manager came and presented information about the cesspool/drainage improvement project at the school. Here is my summary of what they said in my own words. They brought a huge (4ft x 3ft) drawing that shows existing features and planned changes. It also has detailed existing elevation contours marked on it, showing the height above sea level all over the campus. They left the drawing which can be seen in the school office.

Drainage improvement:

They will construct a swale that will run from the mauka NW corner (near the back gate) all along 2 sides of the property to the Kaneohe side corner by the highway and empty into the existing culvert under the road. This swale will be about 3 ft deep, grassed, about 20 ft wide with gently sloping sides. It will not have “banks”, meaning it will not block water from flowing onto the school from adjacent properties. The new swale will improve drainage flowing to the existing DOT culvert. There is a total drop of about 3.5 feet across the campus. This swale should encourage flood waters to flow to the ocean instead of pooling on the property. There will be some filling in of low spots on the campus to help prevent pooling of standing water and to encourage it to flow into the swale. No buildings will be raised, so there may still be some pooling of water under buildings after the improvement. To my untrained eye, this looks like a good plan.

Cesspool:

They will place a biologically active tank (aerobic treatment unit) behind and to the side of the 3rd grade portable classroom. Sewage will be routed (gravity & pumped) from the bathrooms to the tank. The tank will be mostly buried, but might protrude a few feet above ground. It will have a tall vent (above roof level) with a filter to minimize odor release. Think of this as a sort of “super septic tank”. This tank will produce fairly clean (R2) effluent which will be pumped into the existing cesspools, using them as “seepage pits”. Ordinarily this effluent would be sent to a “leach field”, but in our case that would be impractical because they would need to build up a berm for the leach field because of the high level of the water table under the property. The system will require regular inspections to make sure that it is functioning correctly.

Survey:

They currently have some workers on the campus engaged in a survey which includes looking for Iwi (with an Archeologist present) by digging in several places (they know about the existing sites on campus where Iwi were found in the past). Provided that the survey goes well and the relevant authorities approve the results, they are hoping to accelerate the start of the project to August or perhaps even July.

Aloha,

Brian Walsh

Topics: School | No Comments »

Community Association Meeting Tuesday Night, June 9

By ilind | June 7, 2009

The Kaaawa Community Association will be meeting at the school at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9.

Topics on the agenda include an update on the work of the school consolidation task force, a report on the school’s septic tank and drainage project, as well as the new post office hours to go into effect soon.

Click here for the agenda.

Topics: General | No Comments »

Photos from Furl Medeiros’ Graduation Party

By ilind | June 5, 2009

The Medeiros family and several hundred friends celebrated Furl’s high school graduation last night at their home in Kaaawa. Great party. Really. And the photos are ready! Just click on this photo to view the whole batch.