MINUTES for 2020-12-08 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes December 8, 2020 Page 4 Parks & Rec wants to handle this. I did check to see if the families are notified of the rules and they do sign a form before the family member is interred but they probably don't remember that. Some of this has been going on for a while, but they just figure that's the way it's supposed to be. It's partly education and I don't know if there's anything I can do but I just wanted people to know that there is an issue. Now that Mr. Messina and Brittany are back with the department, I don't know how you'd like to handle it, is there something we can do to help. Director Messina: Hi Marica, yeah so what I'll do is I'll check with Park Maintenance first thing and speak with these guys and see that all the rules are being followed, it's that simple for us. Minoru Hanato: May I say something? In Kona, they cut the grass on Thursday so on the Wednesday, they take away everything. Then they cut the grass and they put all the flower vases that belongs there. It looks real good. The rules are pretty clear, it's on the gate. I don't know about the Hilo one, but the rules are on the gate. We tell people to bring flowers the day after the cutting so it can stay there a week. Then the families won't get mad when they bring the flowers and then they cut the grass. That's what we do in Kona. Chair Doolittle: I think the standard for society is 10% of the people never get the word, 50% of the people know it but don't abide by it and the rest of the people abide by it. I think it's an ongoing problem that we'll always have to deal with. I agree that the rules should be posted somewhere for everyone to see. Most people don't pay attention to signs anyways. I don't know how you satisfy someone that gets angry when they see a rule being violated. Enforcing the rules sometimes is a never-ending job, so I don't know what to do and I believe Parks & Rec does the best they can do with the manpower they have. I'm always appreciative of the maintenance we do get. It's also that they care and concern by the people who do the maintenance. They're motivated by the best intentions. You just can't get everybody to follow the rules. Lewis: I'd like to bring up another topic about the cemeteries, but first of all, I wasn't on when we congratulated Moe and Brittany for coming back to us, yay! Thank you! Congratulations to you both. The cemetery stones, I don't think they've been cleaned for a year and half now. The Korean War Veterans and 3875 used to clean them at cemeteries one and two. That's a boat load of cemetery stones. I don't know if there's a plan, Moe for trying to work on that, but I think that group is aging out. I'm not sure, but maybe there's another group. Chair Doolittle: yeah, that's Emile's group and they've done a terrific job over the years. There are 8500 headstones from what I understand. That's a lot of work, that's two, three days of work. They've always done a magnificent job and I don't know who you're going to get to step up and do it because that's a monumental task. That's something we need to keep a focus on, because yeah, we're all getting older. Anybody else got a suggestion or comment related to that?