Kokua Line
Kokua Line
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Contract talks
postpone pickups
of abandoned carsQuestion: We have a problem with cars parking for a week or more in front of our house in Salt Lake, which is causing problems with garbage pickup. I called especially about one car, which has not moved for several weeks. The police and abandoned vehicle inspectors came and even marked the tires, but the car is still sitting there. When I called again to ask what was happening, I was told that it would be another couple of weeks before the car could be towed because the city didn't have a towing contractor. Why did the city allow this to happen? I am so frustrated.
Answer: It took awhile to get an answer from the city Department of Customer Services because of ongoing negotiations for a new abandoned vehicle towing contract, but the vehicle should be picked up soon, if not by now.
The city's purchasing administrator, on June 26, made arrangements with Abe's Auto Recyclers Inc. to begin picking up abandoned vehicles, working 24 hours a day, on a purchase order, said Carol Costa, director of customer services.
At last count, about 90 vehicles had been investigated and marked for removal as abandoned, she said. As of Friday morning, 39 of those had been towed. In the meantime, the city also was negotiating a short-term contract with Abe's to continue picking up abandoned vehicles, Costa said.
Within three or four months, the city expects to put a permanent bid out to contract to run for two or more years.
The problem was that the old three-year contract ended April 30 and the only one new bid the city received "was too high," Costa said.
The old contract called for abandoned vehicles to be picked up for $50 each over a 48-hour period. The only bid the city received for a new three-year contract, under the same terms, was for $375 per vehicle, Costa said.
While the city explored other options, she said abandoned vehicle inspectors continued to follow up on complaints. Sixty percent, she noted, are parking-related disputes between neighbors that do not involve abandoned vehicles. The ones found to be truly abandoned were tagged for removal.
Salt Lake will be one of the first areas to be serviced because of limited parking space.
In 2001, a total of 1,285 abandoned vehicles were picked up, down 7 percent from 2000, Costa said. Interestingly, the number of derelict and abandoned vehicles has decreased over the years because people are choosing to donate their vehicles to charity, she said.
In the meantime, there is a separate contract for removal of derelict vehicles. (Derelicts are vehicles that are obviously inoperable and a hazard. Inspectors don't need to go through a set procedure, as with possibly abandoned vehicles, to notify an owner and can call for derelicts to be immediately towed away.)
Depending on the location, the derelict contractor is paid $156 to $172 per vehicle and has five days to pick up a vehicle after being informed by the city.
In 2001, the derelict contractor picked up a total of 4,446 vehicles.
Costa noted there is no need to just "junk" a vehicle. Owners can go to a satellite city hall and follow a a process that will result in their vehicles being picked up at no charge.
Owners "must bring in the title, license plates and emblem, complete a form to record their vehicle as junked," she explained. "They will be given a special notice to place on the front seat of the vehicle so that the car will not be cited while awaiting pick-up by the tow company. It's that simple."
Between July 1, 2001 and the end of this month, more than 2,800 vehicles were cited for being left unattended or derelict. The owners who could be traced faced a maximum fine of $1,000. Some owners could not be found because there was no vehicle identification number or license plate.
Haruemon Miyashita Update
We haven't heard from any descendants of Haruemon Miyashita, who came to Hawaii to work in the sugarcane fields more than 100 years ago, but stumbled into a mystery.In the June 12 Kokua Line, we had an item about someone finding an immigration document allowing Haruemon Miyashita and his wife "Soyi" into Hawaii as sugarcane workers while going through the belongings of his late mother. The contract with Olaa Sugar Company was dated Jan. 11, 1900.
Raymond Yang said he didn't know how his mother obtained the document but wanted to pass it on to the Miyashita family. He asked for help in finding the family. Yang, who grew up in Kaimuki, is a child psychologist who has been teaching at Colorado State University for the past 13 years.
In her files, state archivist Jolyn Tamura found a bit more information: Mrs. Miyashita's first name actually was Riyo and that the Miyashitas were both 34 when they arrived from Niigata ken, Japan, on Jan. 9, 1900. He was listed as a farmer.
After that column ran, Hajime Kuwada, a retired school teacher who lives in Mililani, contacted Kokua Line, saying that a few months earlier, a former schoolmate now living in Cedar Falls, Iowa, sent him a "Memorandum of Agreement" for Haruemon Miyashita and his wife in hopes he could find a family member. He had deciphered Miyashita's wife's name as "Soyo."
His friend Teruo Mukai's wife, Karen, is a retired librarian who found the document in one of her books.
Yang compared the two-page document -- one page in English and one in Japanese --- that Kuwada sent Kokua Line and said they appeared to be identical to what he has.
"I especially compared the pen-brushed signature (?) that is written across items IV through VII of the contract," he wrote in an e-mail. "Down to the little squiggles, the signatures are identical. Somehow, that Iowa librarian has a copy of what I'm almost certain is the contract that I have."
Short of finding any Miyashita descendants, we advised Yang and Kuwada to contact the University of Hawaii Library, which inherited the archives of the old Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association. The library accepts donations of certain types of material.
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