Supreme Court gives Hawaii until Tuesday to answer Trump travel ban motion
Giving Rail Credit Where it Isn't Due
Can American Samoa Break Hawaiian Airlines Monopoly?
Private Scholarships Offer Micronesians Access to Opportunity
How to Lower the Cost of Health Care and Bring Doctors Back to Hawaii
State Releases Follow Up Audit of the Management of Mauna Kea
While Rail Hangs in Balance, Caldwell Plans to Splurge $500M on Blaisdell
KITV: …"We plan to retain the arena and significantly rehabilitate it, and do the same thing with the concert hall, but do a complete makeover of the middle part of the campus," director of Department of Enterprise Services, Guy Kaulukukui said.
Preliminary site designs revealed at Thursday's meeting, showed plans for a newly developed Exhibition Hall, with the addition of a small performance hall attached, a Halau/Arts ensemble, a sports pavilion, added water features, and more parking.
"Parking is always an issue and I see that constantly from where I live. That when they have multiple events here, it's hard to put all that together," Danner said. "A lot of the other areas around here-parking areas- the spaces are starting to be used up for other purposes such as housing.. and high rises.. and so we have to have a master plan that takes all things into effect."
With approximately 800,000 visits per year to the Blaisdell Center, the proposed plan would increase parking capacity from about 1,500 to 3,000 stalls.
But the estimated cost to revamp the Blaisdell Center?
"Our initial very, very high level estimate is in the range of about $400 million to $500 million," Kaulukukui said….
(Better Idea: Leave Blaisdell alone and pay for Rail.)
read … Proposed Blaisdell Center facelift could come with $500M price tag
Rejected by Honolulu Judge, Assisted Suicide Lawsuit Fails to Legalize Manslaughter
BIVN: …They failed at the legislature this year, and now a court dismissed a lawsuit….
An Oahu circuit judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit asking the court to prevent existing Hawaii criminal laws from being applied to medical aid in dying practices.
In its decision, the court relied upon state legal precedent that prohibited it from issuing such relief, the state attorney general said in a media release. The attorney general opposed the suit, filing the successful motion to dismiss…..
Related: Meet the Insurance Executive Behind Assisted Suicide in Hawaii
read … Medical Aid In Dying Dealt Another Blow In Hawaii
The Economist: 100% Renewable Goal ‘A Green Red Herring’
TE: …California is proposing to reach 60% renewable energy by 2030; 176 countries have clean-energy goals. Hawaii, America’s most oil-dependent state, has pledged to be 100% renewable by the middle of the century. So have 48 poor countries vulnerable to climate change. This week the number of multinationals making a commitment to running their operations on 100% renewable energy rose to 100….
But not every target is helpful. To see why, consider that goal of 100% renewable energy. It makes solving climate change seem deceptively easy. In fact, though wind and solar can generate all a country’s electricity on some days, renewables still account for less than 8% of the world’s total power output. Moreover, cleaning up electricity is only part of the battle. Even though gas-fired heating and cooking can be at least as big a source of greenhouse-gas emissions, renewable heating gets minuscule attention. Transport policy is erratic, too. Carmakers may hit their goal of annual sales of 10m electric vehicles in a decade, but battery-powered road haulage, shipping and aviation are dreams. A much-quoted claim that America could rely on wind, solar and hydro alone for its electricity has recently been witheringly criticised by a group of respected academics (see article)….
IM: Life of the Land Advocating Greenhouse Gas and Electronic Legislation
read … Withering
Sprinklers Could Have Been Installed at $4,305 Per Unit
SA: …$4,305.-- That was the estimated per-unit cost to install a fire sprinkler system in the Marco Polo Apartments tower in 2005. But the extra expense, for many condo owners in the building, wasn’t deemed worthy or affordable — and that’s a scenario confronting residents in a few hundred Honolulu residential high-rises that lack automatic fire suppression systems.
The Marco Polo was built four years before Honolulu officials required such systems in new residential high-rises….
read … Prohibitive?
Jury finds former jail guard guilty of sexual assault
MN: …A 2nd Circuit Court jury returned verdicts finding James Siugpiyemal guilty of second-degree sexual assault and two counts of third-degree sexual assault.
The jury found Siugpiyemal, 44, not guilty of two other charges of second-degree sexual assault.
The inmate, a 36-year-old Kihei woman, reported that Siugpiyemal had threatened to have her work furlough privileges taken away after he saw a photo of her wearing a bikini that she had posted on Facebook. He called her and the two exchanged text messages before she reported having sexual contact with Siugpiyemal on July 31, 2014, and Aug. 11, 2014, in her car at Maui Tropical Plantation in Waikapu.
During the second incident, she turned on a camera in her car to record a video, which was played during the trial…..
read … Jury finds former jail guard guilty of sexual assault
Hawaii: Bureaucracy So Thick You Could Go Bankrupt Trying to Sell Marijuana
SA: …Hawaii’s first medical marijuana dispensaries were allowed to open exactly one year ago today, but the industry has still not been able to get off the ground.
Of the eight dispensary licensees, all but two have received state approval to begin growing cannabis, and at least three have marijuana ready to sell.
The dispensaries haven’t opened because the state Department of Health hasn’t certified any of the three laboratories — PharmLabs Hawaii, Clinical Laboratories of Hawaii and Steep Hill Labs — that will test the marijuana’s potency and purity. The DOH said it is still conducting validation studies with the labs and expects to certify them this summer….
“If the delays continue for much longer, this industry may not have a fair chance of flourishing. If this goes on for a few more months, the financial hole that we’re in may be too deep for us to recover from.”
Meanwhile: Chopper sweeps over Ocean View looking for Marijuana
read … Yearlong delay frustrates local medical marijuana industry
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