{"id":675,"date":"2014-05-25T12:50:43","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T22:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?p=675"},"modified":"2016-07-29T17:00:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T03:00:57","slug":"honolulu-mayor-kirk-caldwell-displays-little-democratic-party-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?p=675","title":{"rendered":"Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell Displays Little Democratic Party Values"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"16848-950221d4ad080c85d688e4229b4f722d06234e80ce106aae257ec951_w-240_px\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Photo by Dr. Chad Blair, Civil Beat<\/p>\n

Civil Beat’s article by Marsha Rose Joyner \u00a0about the hard-fought values of the Democratic Party included the\u00a0above photo with Kirk Caldwell taking center stage at the 2012 Hawaii Democratic Party Convention.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry to say but\u00a0Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s governance style at City Hall is\u00a0an affront to basic democratic values. The Democratic Party prides itself in being a voice for the unprivileged and underserved. \u00a0Caldwell is doing the opposite.<\/p>\n

Here are a few\u00a0of my reasons:<\/p>\n

While the Mayor talks a lot about homelessness and wants to spend millions of dollars addressing it, \u00a0he does not talk about aggravating\u00a0homelessness<\/a>\u00a0in Kahuku, Ko’olauloa.<\/p>\n

It makes no sense\u00a0to spend millions of dollars to\u00a0create new housing programs for homelessness in one area and turn around to create more homelessness in another.<\/p>\n

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About 31 Kahuku Plantation Camp families<\/a> are being evicted because Caldwell refuses\u00a0to collaborate with the Honolulu City Council. \u00a0Generally, landlord-tenant issues are private but there are long-standing obligations and promises made to these plantation workers. Caldwell’s cope-out excuse was that \u00a0the land owner Continental Pacific LLC <\/a>( CP) was a ‘private owner’.<\/p>\n

It’s important to note that the decision to fund monies to create a solution for\u00a0the Kahuku Plantation Camp controversy was approved, by an\u00a0unanimous City Council vote.\u00a0 Mayor Caldwell dismissed the Council’s\u00a0efforts. Residents continue to be of the mind that the Mayor refused to help because the attorney, Lex Smith, representing CP was his former campaign chair. The Mayor\u00a0denied any undue\u00a0influence or conflict of interests.<\/p>\n

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The \u00a0evicted Salanoa family\u00a0dwelling above has been\u00a0promptly sold\u00a0to a new cash buyer. \u00a0It has since been stripped to bare bones and will be renovated. The Kahuku plantation families are scrambling. Their families and friends are bending backwards to\u00a0provide temporary shelter.\u00a0Gentrification<\/a> – where the more affluent is pushing out the less affluent – is happening quickly at the Kahuku Plantation Camp.<\/p>\n

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The Mayor is also known for his relentless raiding of homeless tents in Honolulu. \u00a0The photo above shows a \u00a0Honolulu homeless woman who had to travel all the way to the Halawa Maintenance Yard to collect her seized items with a borrowed truck. It cost her $200 to reclaim her items. Homeless citizens have been methodically chased from the beaches, parks and pushed\u00a0onto sidewalks and highway ducts. Some\u00a0homeless people\u00a0have taken to the forests and less open places.<\/p>\n

The Mayor’s \u00a0incessant raids on the homeless included odd hours like 3\u00a0o’clock in the morning. A\u00a0Mayor’s representative once\u00a0explained his\u00a0compassion by saying that they usually\u00a0raided tents late at night. \u00a0\u00a0I suppose that\u00a03:00 am is not late at night!\u00a0It’s simply\u00a0during the time period where most people enjoy\u00a0the deepest sleep.<\/p>\n

It’s been estimated that about $1M has been expended to play cat-and-mouse raiding on the tents around Thomas Square with the De-Occupy group. This group’s goal was to\u00a0 focus\u00a0attention on\u00a0homelessness solutions. \u00a0Ironically, the Mayor’s solution to the sidewalk blockage by those tents was to\u00a0install\u00a0planter boxes<\/a> that also blocked the same sidewalk.\u00a0A willingness to sit at the conversation table with the De-Occupy group would probably have saved the city significant amount of expenses.<\/p>\n

Persecuting the homeless and raiding of tents is not a long-term approach. It’s time to give up status quo approaches\u00a0by collaborating with\u00a0independent voices to help work out solutions rather than relentlessly persecuting the most vulnerable in society with no viable solution in hand.<\/p>\n

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Adding to his disjointed policies, the Mayor also dispatched the Halawa Maintenance crew of about a dozen city workers, six policemen, a front-end loader and a commercial dump truck \u00a0to our property in Hauula in May and October of 2013.<\/p>\n

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The Mission<\/a> – to raid our free speech signs and installed the above posting\u00a0to shut down our private business with Reynolds Recycling\u00a0in\u00a0October 2014. \u00a0It was a retaliatory show of force and intimidation in our ongoing eminent domain case on this\u00a0parcel, of which we’re still the fee owners.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Consequently, the Reynolds Recycling in Hauula on our Lot was shut down because of the retaliatory <\/a>posted sign at 54-282 Kamehameha Highway, Hauula, 96717 . The photo above showed a Hauula homeless man walking his recyclables to the next nearest \u00a0Kahuku recycling site\u00a0(about a six-mile distance) on the day the recycling\u00a0center was shut down by Caldwell.<\/p>\n

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Many called Caldwell’s office to protest. He quickly requested the Reynolds Recycling to return but this time on the city-owned Lot next door.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0\u00a0the Mayor did not disclose that his\u00a0was a temporary measure. Should the Mayor\u00a0be allowed to build his Neiman Marcus Fire Station replacement in rural Hauula, the last two commercial-zoned lots with recycling \u00a0and other small business opportunities will be gone forever!<\/p>\n

Many homeless people in Hauula collect recycle items daily to afford a daily hot meal at the grocery stores. Others\u00a0are also hoping for inexpensive commercial-zoned spots\u00a0for country stores and entrepreneurial ideas. Yet, the Mayor refuses to explore other alternative sites for the firehouse relocation when\u00a0the past Mayor Peter Carlisle was willing to do.<\/p>\n

Affected\u00a0Residents<\/a> were denied due process. \u00a0Residents complained that if they were in Kahala, they would not receive this shoddy treatment. They were never informed and consulted up to today about the controversial Hauula Fire Station relocation <\/a>proposal. They continued to be ignored despite over 1,200 signatures opposing the process. The Mayor’s spokesman continued to disperse disinformation about the owners being uncooperative. The truth is even if the owners DONATED the land to the city, due process to the affected residents still had to be provided.<\/p>\n

Despite vigorous protests against the project, Caldwell has hired an experienced litigator to vigorously pursue the eminent domain case in court. The obligatory costs to the city to the defendants are presently at least\u00a0700%\u00a0more than was represented to the City Council by Land Chief Thomas Miyata.<\/p>\n

The Mayor\u00a0has also included two extra city litigators to his free speech violations court case.<\/p>\n

The above are a few selected reasons\u00a0\u00a0why I believe Mayor Kirk Caldwell is an affront to basic values of the Democratic Party. It’s unsettling\u00a0to see\u00a0Caldwell in the center stage of \u00a0Hawaii Democratic Party whose touted pride includes being a champion\u00a0of the little people.<\/p>\n

The Mayor’s behavior at City Hall engenders injustice that none of us can be proud of. His behavior cannot be ignored, for if we’re neutral in situations of injustice, we become\u00a0the enablers.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Photo by Dr. Chad Blair, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":856,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}