Question: Is Mayor Kirk Caldwell going to increase the days and hours of operation at the Koko Head Shooting Complex? Currently, weekday hours are only Wednesday to Friday from noon to 3 p.m. This is woefully inadequate. With only three hours of operation, one shooting bench will serve only one shooter for the whole three hours of operation. Some of us come from as far away as Makaha, Kahuku and elsewhere, only to find that no benches open until closing time.
Answer: The good news this Good Friday: You’ll not only have an extra one hour to shoot on weekdays and two more hours on weekends, but the shooting range also will be open on holidays. The new schedule takes effect Wednesday.
Essentially, Caldwell is restoring the hours of operation that were cut in 2010 because of budget limitations. Funding will come from the Department of Parks and Recreation’s operating budget.
The new hours will be noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The range is closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
“We’ve been extremely busy the past several years. … We’re doing probably 100 percent more (users) than we did a couple of years ago,” said Mike Muramoto, shooting complex manager.
On weekends, because of demand for the 39 shooting positions at the rifle range, he said, people show up at “zero dark thirty” — about 4 or 4:30 a.m. — to make sure they get a spot when the range opens at 9 a.m.
The average daily number of range users is 200.
Muramoto attributes the demand simply to “new gun owners.”
Question: A few months ago the state did a much-needed and good job of resurfacing Likelike Highway. However, there are sections in each direction a few hundred yards long that it didn’t resurface, despite being as bad as the other sections. Why?
Answer: The state Department of Transportation determined that parts of Likelike Highway near Emmeline Place were in such bad condition that they should be fixed now instead of waiting until the next comprehensive repaving project, which will not be done until 2015 at the earliest.
Because of limited funding, those untouched stretches you see were deemed to not need immediate repairs. But even the newly paved sections of Likelike are meant to be only a temporary fix.
The portion of Likelike Highway that was fixed was deteriorating badly and had underlying problems with shifting soil, DOT spokeswoman Caroline Sluyter said. It “needed to be taken care of as quickly as we could do it,” she said.
Because of limited funds, crews made the emergency repairs with a “surface-type pavement preservation technique,” which is a shallow repave in which only an inch and a half of pavement is replaced, she said.
“In this way the roadway can be usable until funding is available for a more extensive and expensive repaving which will replace several more inches of asphalt and possibly deal with strengthening the underlying foundation of the roadway, if necessary,” Sluyter said. “A more comprehensive repaving project for Likelike Highway is in the pipeline and is tentatively scheduled for 2015.”
MAHALO
To Capt. Bill Melemai and members of his crew from the Honolulu Fire Department’s Nuuanu Engine 25. Last month, with winds blowing and gusts over 50 mph, our patio roof suddenly blew off, and one of its crossbeams broke. We didn’t know what to do. My frantic wife called 911 and told the operator that it was not an emergency, but explained what happened. HFD came to the rescue, shoring up and supporting the beams with whatever lumber we had laying around until the next day, when we had a contractor repair the roof. Mahalo to Capt. Melemai and his crew for their swift response and expertise. — Martin, Alewa Drive
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