APEC Conference Leads to Demise of Wahiawa Veterans’ Day Parade
The Wahiawa Veterans’ Day Parade has been cancelled because there are no special duty police officers available to direct traffic that day.
The reason? The police will all be working at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, which is scheduled on Oahu from November 7 to November 13. The parade is normally scheduled for Veterans Day, November 11, 2011.
Local police will be busy guarding world leaders and President Barack Obama and cannot direct traffic for the Wahiawa Lions Club event.
The community group cannot get a city permit without police presence.
This is the first time in 60 years that the annual parade honoring America’s veterans has been canceled.
Honolulu resident Brenda Reichel said she is outraged about the cancellation.
Reichel’s father served in Vietnam and spent and 20 years in the Army. She followed in her father’s footsteps also serving in the Army.
She said everyone who has ever served in any military branch should be embarrassed that the Wahiawa Veterans’ Day Parade has been canceled.
And she maintains that our Veterans should be insulted by going unrecognized for their service. In addition, local residents should acknowledge the lives that have been given up for our freedom and the freedom of others.
She and other supporters want the parade held that day anyway so the 60-year tradition remains unbroken.
Must See Hawaii Reporter TV
Former Judge and Honolulu City Council Chair Walter Heen and Honolulu Transportation Expert and Businessman Cliff Slater spent a half hour with Hawaii Reporter editor Malia Zimmerman reviewing the many problems they have identified with the city’s planned $5.3 billion elevated steel on steel rail system.
Heen and Slater are two of several plaintiffs that teamed up to challenge the city and federal government in a federal lawsuit over the legitimacy of the city’s Environmental Impact Statement.
Filed against the city and Federal Transit Administration earlier this year, other plaintiffs include former Gov. Benjamin Cayetano, University of Hawaii Law Professor Randall Roth, Dr. Michael Uechi and a number of community groups including Hawaii’s Thousand Friends and Small Business Hawaii Foundation. Their federal lawsuit claims there are less costly and more environmentally friendly alternatives to improve Oahu’s traffic congestion.
“Federal environmental laws require the City to perform a full historic resources survey of the entire corridor from Kapolei to UH, including locating native Hawaiian burial sites, before choosing a route. They didn’t do it,” Slater said. “Second, federal law also required the City to “rigorously” study the various alternative transportation technologies to see which one, and on which route, would provide adequate transit service with the least impact on the historic properties and burial sites in the corridor. They didn’t do it. Instead, the City picked elevated rail, the alternative with the worst negative impacts.”
The group, organized through HonoluluTraffic.com, has hired one of the nation’s top environmental attorneys, Nicolas Yost of the San Francisco- based law firm SNRDenton.
The talk show focused on the impact on the environment and the historical and cultural features of Oahu’s landscape that will be scarred by the 20-mile project, which is set to go from Kapolei through Chinatown and Downtown Honolulu to Ala Moana Center.
City Council Member Tom Berg, who opposes the steel on steel elevated rail project, also made an appearance on Hawaii Reporter TV to talk about his ideas for bettering transportation in Honolulu.
See both shows here: https://www.youtube.com/hawaiireporter
FBI Arrests an Alleged Ponzi Schemer on Maui
On Thursday, November 3, FBI Special Agents and Maui Police arrested Maui resident Jedidah Duarosan, 37, on charges related to her alleged operation of an investment fraud scheme that targeted fellow island residents.
Duarosan, who was apprehended without incident at her home in Kula, was indicted on November 2 by a Federal Grand Jury in Honolulu.
FBI Special Agent Tom Simon said that the indictment remains sealed by the court until her initial appearance on Wednesday at 1:30 pm before federal Magistrate Judge Puglisi.
As always, Simon said “the public is reminded that an indictment and arrest are not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.”