Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Question: On Kamaile Street, between Piikoi and Pensacola, a white Mitsubishi has been parked across from 1132 Kamaile for three months. We called police and nothing has been done. Same old parked
car? Keep calling,
they do checkQ: I would like to report an abandoned vehicle at 1803 Keeaumoku St. I have been trying to contact the city's abandoned vehicle section, but every time I call, all I get is a recording that says press 250 and then asks me for a pass code. What's the pass code? The car is a black Chevy sedan that's been parked there for over a month and a half.
Answer: Kokua Line gets countless complaints about abandoned vehicles and generally pass them on to the city's abandoned vehicles staff.
This might be a good time to repeat some information.
Call 733-2530 to report an abandoned vehicle.
Be sure to include the location (at least the nearest street address), the make and color of the vehicle, and, if available, a license plate number, said Dennis Kamimura, the city's motor vehicle and licensing administrator.
Armed with that information, inspectors can conduct an investigation, he said.
"What we don't want to do is mistake a vehicle that is really not abandoned," he said.
The problem is a staff shortage.
So, even if it is proven that a vehicle is abandoned, it may take awhile to get it removed, Kamimura said. "It's not that nothing is happening," he said.
It's just that "we don't remove vehicles in one week anymore. However, we get to it as fast as we can."
The snag is in doing research and on-site checks to verify that a vehicle is indeed abandoned -- "that's where we have the staff shortage," Kamimura said.
In a majority of cases, a vehicle is not abandoned, just parked too long on a public street.
In most of those cases, "Once someone knows someone is complaining about his vehicle not moving for 24 hours, they move the vehicle," Kamimura said.
As for the abandoned vehicle number, there is no pass code that's required, Kamimura said, and you do get to speak to a person. That was the situation the two times we called.
Q: When I took some laundry, as well as dry cleaning, to Al Phillips in Hawaii Kai recently, I was quite surprised when the clerk said, "We don't take women's laundry. We only take men's laundry." When I asked why, I was told to talk to management. Isn't this in violation of any state discrimination law? Does Al Phillips feel men need more help than women with their laundry?
A: There apparently was some misunderstanding between you and the clerk.
There is no distinction made between men's and women's garments nor is there a difference in pricing between men's and women's clothing, said Roy Miyamoto, the company's director of finance.
However, certain garments cannot simply be done on the laundry side and might need to be "finished on the dry cleaning side," he said.
Many of these are women's garments, because, for example, they tend to have more beads or decorative items, he said.
Your garments may not have been accepted for laundering, "not because it's ladies or men's, but because of the fabric or what's on the fabric," Miyamoto said. Otherwise, "a three-piece suit is a three-piece suit."
Need help with problems? Call Kokua Line at 525-8686,
fax 525-6711, or write to P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu 96802.
Email to kokualine@starbulletin.com