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Kokua Line
June Watanabe
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Disabled driver can get extra parking placard
Question: I just renewed my disabled parking placard for four years. While filling out the form, I mistakenly checked off the request for two placards. When the satellite city hall worker gave me two cards, I told her I misunderstood what two placards meant and tried to return one. She said to keep it because it was already entered into the computer. What would a disabled driver do with two placards when they can only operate one vehicle at a time? Can you please explain the city's policy on this?
Answer: State law provides for a second placard, if requested, said Jeff Coelho, director of the city Department of Customer Services.
"Our satellite city hall staff should have collected the second placard, if in fact the person really had requested it in error and had offered to turn it in," he added, however.
Coelho pointed to Section 291-52 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes as saying, "Each county shall issue one removable windshield placard and a second removable windshield placard to each applicant who so requests and presents a certificate of disability that verifies that the applicant's disability is expected to last for at least four years."
Coelho explained that the law initially provided for only one placard to be issued to an applicant.
"Persons with a disability complained that there are bona fide instances when they need a second placard," he said.
Examples he gave: Caregivers might have two different vehicles and could forget to switch the placard from one vehicle to the other, or a disabled person going on a trip parks a vehicle in a disabled parking stall at the airport but needs a second one to use with their rental car at their destination.
"The second placard was added by the state Legislature as an added convenience," Coelho said.
Q: Wilikina Drive, from the H-2 freeway to Kunia Road, is disintegrating before my eyes. Day by day, the ruts are getting deeper, although crews come and throw down some asphalt occasionally. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the roadbed, which seems to be slowly collapsing. The rate of deterioration is increasing, which means it's going to cost more and take longer to make a correct and long-lasting repair. I hope there is a plan to do a major repaving of this heavily traveled road in the near future. What is the plan for this essential link between H-2, Schofield Barracks, Kunia and the North Shore?
A: Because of fiscal constraints, no resurfacing projects are planned for Wilikina Drive "in the short term," said Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
Transportation crews recently inspected that stretch of roadway and "found it to be structurally sound," he said. "A five-week-cycle pothole program is what we have for the moment at this location."
Meanwhile, repaving is scheduled to begin in the fall along a nearby stretch of Kamehameha Highway -- between Wahiawa and Mililani -- that Ishikawa said "really does need shoring up."
Got a question or complaint? Call 529-4773, fax 529-4750, or write to Kokua Line, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu 96813. As many as possible will be answered. E-mail to
kokualine@starbulletin.com.
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