Unrelated to Nautical Matters but...It Still Pisses Me Off

I feel strongly enough about this (having had recent dealings with this Town for this very reason) to write about it. I hope the alleged offender wins his case.

By BILL DIPAOLO
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

JUNO BEACH — A lawsuit alleging the white van used to issue citations is illegal has been filed on behalf of a motorist who was cited for speeding on U.S. 1.
The suit, filed in Palm Beach Circuit Civil Court on Tuesday, alleges the citations are illegal because they are issued to the owner of the vehicle. The town is presuming the owner of the vehicle is guilty before proving the owner was driving, according to the lawsuit.

"They are finding you guilty before you have a chance to prove you are innocent," said Attorney Jason Weisser, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of William Zoeller, who July 11 received a $125 citation in the mail.

The lawsuit seeks a refund of the $125 and damages in excess of $15,000. The suit also asks that the town stop using the van to issue more citations.
The lawsuit is also filed against LaserCraft, the Georgia-based firm that supplied and maintains the van, and other companies involved in the process.
Councilman Jim Lyons said the town's defense will be that the citation is a civil penalty and does not go against the driver's record.

Since the van was first used in March, about 4,000 citations have been issued. Motorists moving at least 9 mph faster than the posted speed limit are mailed a $125 citation for the first offense. Second offenders - there have been about 120 - are issued a $250 penalty.
The citations are sent to the owner of the vehicle when the van takes a photograph of the license plate.

Motorists can pay a $50 fee and file an appeal.

The driver's license is not suspended if the driver does not pay after 60 days, and a collection agency is notified to collect the fine.

This is a picture I took of the van parked along the road in Juno Beach the day after I got my notice, which I paid with little consideration of the legal implications. This article leads me to believe that I could have possibly avoided my pocket getting $125 lighter that day. I could use that extra buck and a quarter on our vacation.

USS HAWAII Arrives at New Homeport - Pearl Harbor

Reported in Undersea Enterprise News Daily

The Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, USS HAWAII (SSN-776) arrived at her new homeport of Pearl Harbor on July 23rd, greeted by family and friends of the crew, Navy officials and state dignitaries.

HAWAII is the third Virginia-class submarine constructed and the first submarine to bear the name of the Aloha state. HAWAII is capable of supporting a multitude of missions, including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike, naval special warfare involving special operations forces, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, irregular warfare, and mine warfare. USS HAWAII's official motto is "Kūpale ‘Āina," translated from Hawaiian, "Defending the Land."


Previous US Navy ships bearing names associated with Hawaii include the Los Angeles-class ex-USS HONOLULU (SSN-718) (now decommissioned and placed in the Navy's submarine recycling program), the Benjamin Franklin-class ballistic missile submarine ex-USS KAMEHAMEHA (SSBN-642) (same fate as SSN-718), and the World War II-era light cruiser, ex-USS HONOLULU (CL-48), recipient of eight battle stars for WWII service and a major player in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, disposed of in 1949 after 11 years service.

A Blogger account of HAWAII's voyage from the mainland to her new MIDPAC homeport is chronicled here by her Commanding Officer, CDR Ed Herrington, US Navy - a most interesting read.

USS HAWAII SSN-776

Mahalo nui loa, CDR Herrington, Officers and Crew of USS HAWAII for your dedicated service and for safely bringing this most capable addition to the Fleet to Kō Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina.

Aloha!

US Navy photos by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class N. Brett Morton/Released

COMSAMLANT UNIT SITREP 041600Z JULY 09

First, let me dust the cobwebs out of here...

Ok, better now.

POSIT: 19° 35N 154° 56' W

The reason my blog has gone idle for so long is because I have been trying to resist the urge to discuss our progress toward buying our land, from fear of jinxing the effort in any way. Sailors are known to be somewhat superstitious, and until we closed escrow I had a concern, real or imagined - it doesn't matter, that something would go wrong and cause our deal to fall apart if I talked about it prematurely.

Today's post serves as my official announcement that effective 30 June, we are legal owners of an acre of Big Island property that will one day be our retirement home. From the half-dozen properties on the list that I brought home from my April visit to Hilo, and after many hours of comparison and detailed research, we selected a lot 6 streets from the coast in the Hawaiian Paradise Park subdivision in Upper Puna, nearest landmark being Kaloli Point about 12 miles southeast of Hilo.

As the frigate bird flies, the property is about 1100 yards from the ocean, and when I was last there tromping around in the trees, brush and wait-a-minute vines I believe that I could hear the waves crashing on the cliffs at the end of the road. At an elevation of between 80' and 85' above sea level, there is also a possibility that it will command a view of the blue horizon to our east to observe sunrises over the Pacific Ocean, with the right architecture and placement of a house. Looking toward the mauka direction we will see the often snow covered summit of Mauna Kea, measured from its base on the sea floor at 33,476' - technically, the world's tallest mountain.

Although the property is currently densely overgrown and fairly challenging to navigate through the number of non-native, invasive species of trees, bushes, vines and other plants that we will remove in their entirety, it also features a fair count of younger ʻŌhiʻa trees that I noticed during my April visit were in partial bloom with it's colorful Lehua flowers. This tree, like many other things in Hawai'i has a mythological tale that ties it and it's flower to the fire goddess Pele.

Our aim is to clear and maintain our property in a way that best supports the native species and permits our house to fit in with and coexist with the natural environment to the greatest extent possible. To qualify that, since we have an intense interest in landscaping and gardening we will plant ornamentals and specimens not native but are nonetheless "friendly" to the local surroundings and pleasing to the eye. We plan also to engage in small-scale fruit and vegetable gardening to pass our time as well as to put food on our table. It's a compromise that we feel will enhance, rather than detract from the land and our one day home.

At this point, the house is only in discussion of ideas, but we have begun scouring for information to give us ideas about what our house will be. We do have a few ideas in their infancy, or cocktail napkin sketch phase, and from these we hope to develop a design that meets our requirements, desires, and budget from which drawings can be developed and our home built. For now however, we have not planned anything resembling a time schedule, as we continue to assess our setback in the aftermath of the economic crisis most of us have endured. We are very hopeful that our economic future will improve and help us reach our end goal.


I would be remiss if I failed to mention our newly acquainted yet already very good friends Wes and Devany, as catalysts in our achieving this milestone; Devany for her spot-on recommendation of her husband Wes to represent us in the realty transaction, and to Wes for his sound advice, generous, bordering on charitable effort, and patience in putting up with me during our seemingly unsatisfiable search for property, data collection and representation at the bargaining table and closing. Beyond that, both of them have won our longlasting friendship and we feel fortunate to consider them among our short list of friends.
I can't say that this step gives me back the Kama'aina feeling that I had when I left Hawai'i at the end of 1992 after 8 years in Pearl Harbor, we do feel like we now have one foot firmly planted in the place that we know we belong since the first time each of us saw Kō Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina.

Malama pono.

UNIT SITREP 071500Z MAY 09

Aloha, Makamaka...Long time no post.

Busy times afoot both here in homeport and deployed, the last several weeks having me in Seattle for a week on a work trip followed by a side trip to Hilo for as much property searching I could fit in during six days.

I was greeted at the Hilo airport with ceremony in Bristol fashion and in the Island tradition with leis after the hop from Honolulu by my very good Shipmate and friend Lee, whose gracious generosity and Aloha, and that of his entire Ohana demonstrated with crystal clarity how genuinely kind and welcoming local people are. They welcomed me into their home making me feel immediately like a member of their Ohana, with an open invitation to stay with them as well as unlimited use of a pickup truck with which to explore the properties on my list. Lee's family is nothing short of delightful. Mahalo nui to all members of every generation whom I met and with whom I made instant friends.

Wes, my realtor and new found makamaka and his charming better half Devany were equally generous and welcoming by hosting me in their home for an evening of engaging company, great food and drink, the intoxicating view of Hilo Bay from their lanai overlooking the cliffs, and expert, thorough support in my property search during my week on the Island.

The end reult of the expedition was my return to Florida with a short list of six properties of interest, the first on the list being far ahead of the next one in terms of ranking. That meets my criteria for calling the trip a success, and the time I shared with my friends, old and new talking story I consider a big bonus, making my visit seem much less arduous than originally expected and truly the highlight of my latest visit to the Big Island.

A summary of the property search effort:

Having spent six months on only marginally effective research of the Puna properties listed from here in Florida, I had narrowed my sights on Hawaiian Acres, the large subdivision of mostly 3 acre agriculturally-zoned parcels south of Kurtistown known for its relative isolation, sparse population and limited extent of development. The last part of that is my polite way to characterize HA as sort of 'wild, wild west-like;' principal reasons for that assessment being (a) poor road conditions, largely unlevel land with a good deal of evidence of flash flooding, and (c) most vacant properties extremely overgrown with vegetation that prevented adequately close inspection.

After 2 days of looking at 85% or so of the lots on the list I brought with me, Wes and I redirected our efforts to Hawaiian Paradise Park, southeast of Keaau where I quickly experienced a paradigm shift from 3 acres being my goal to smaller 1 acre lots in an environment where I found conditions much more acceptable for people like us whose sense of adventure does not quite meet that recommended for living in the boonies of an area more remote and less developed.

All in all, we looked at about 40 properties and came away, as I said with six 'possibles.' Lee volunteered to visit those on the short list last weekend to give me his evaluation of each from his thorough knowledge of the land (He was born and raised in the pineapple plantation camps around the Big Island's East Side and knows what to look for or what to stay away from). He and Patty made a trip down to Puna on Sunday and made a close inspection of the first three, their discoveries validating that my #1 choice was center target.

The property is just over 1100 yards from the ocean at an elevation of 80' to 85'- from there you can hear the waves breaking on the rock cliffs and I have a notion that with the right architectural design a glimpse of the Pacific on the eastern horizon might be possible from there as well. During their visit to Puna on my behalf Lee and Patty made the acquaintance of one of the next door neighbors whom he tells me is a most amiable sort, and who described the people on the other side as 'good neighbors.' His neighbor on the far side is also retired Navy which, if the planets align and we move to that neighborhood, the USN (Ret) population will effectively double, and provide opportunities for spinning yarns as old Sailors have been known to do since men began going down to the sea in ships, and perhaps even an occasional game of cribbage, acey ducey, or Ship, Captain, Crew. (My dice cup is a nautical artifact of exceedingly great importance).

With all information collected and analyzed to date, I feel that its time to put an offer on the table for my #1 choice. That effort is in progress as we speak, and I have fingers, toes, eyeballs crossed for good luck to bring us a quick agreement of terms with the party offering the property for sale. The only other thing I hope for is the good graces of King Neptune and Kanaloa, (Hawai'ian God of the Ocean) to look favorably upon us in our quest for our little piece of Paradise.

Funny how a Sailor spends his entire career making every effort to avoid land...in the maritime professions considered a navigational hazard, yet now I find myself looking for a place to set the navigation detail and drop anchor for the final time, to go ashore, and stay ashore.

More to come as the story develops.

A hui hou,

SW