Report: Hawaii Health Insurance Jumps by Avg of $341
Hawaii Congressional Delegation How They Voted September 18, 2017
Shelter? Most of Hawaii ‘On Their Own’ to Deal with Nuke Fallout
KITV: On Friday, Rep. Ward spoke with business organizations about how safe Hawaii is. Ward says if missiles are directed toward the islands, it would cripple the state's tourism industry. With limited bomb shelter space, most people would be on their own to fend off a nuclear fallout.
read … Fallout
DoI Recommends Opening Some Pacific Monuments to Fishing
AP:: The Associated Press obtained a copy of the 19-page memo, which was submitted to the White House last month and has not been officially released.
Two marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean also would be reduced under Zinke’s memo, and a third monument off the Massachusetts coast would be modified to allow commercial fishing. Commercial fishing also would be allowed at two Pacific sites, west of Hawaii and near American Samoa….
read … Fishing Saved
These Big Oahu Schools Got Bigger
CB: Even as total enrollment in Hawaii’s public schools dipped slightly, some of Oahu’s biggest and already overcrowded high schools continue to grow.
Campbell High School remains the largest in the state, enrolling 3,110 students this year, the fourth-straight year its student body has exceeded 3,000.
Waipahu High School grew past 2,500, Mililani High School continued to grow past 2,500 and Farrington High School and Kapolei High School student enrollment again exceeded 2,000.
Meanwhile, other Oahu high schools continued seeing declines as part of long-term trend.
Enrollment at Aiea High School in the Central District dipped below 1,000 students this year, compared to nearly 1,500 two decades ago. Moanalua High School, which 15 years ago had seen enrollment of more than 2,000, came below that number for the fourth straight year. Kaimuki High School, a Honolulu District school, only enrolled 703 students this year, a more than 50 percent decline from two decades ago….
read … Bigger
Hawaii Co Police struggle with overtime, vacancies
HTH: Police described to commissioners during the Police Commission’s monthly meeting held Friday of the struggles they face in filling vacancies on the force as well as dispatch. Two months into the 2017-18 fiscal year, officers are already predicting a deficit in its overtime budget….
Assistant Chief Marshall K. Kanehailua with the Administrative Services Bureau told commissioners there are 11 vacancies right now and they anticipate retirements at the end of the month.
Maj. Samuel Thomas said that more than 55 officers have enough time on the force where they can retire.
Kanehailua described for commissioners the application process for new recruits. While the last class had 458 applicants, he said, after the written and first initial agility test only about 150 passed.
Once in the recruitment class, Kanehailua said, some can’t keep up academically and some can’t keep up physically.
The 85th recruitment class started with 14 and is down to four. Those four are nearly ready to be out on their own.
The 86th recruitment class started May 16 and is currently in classroom training. It started with 17 recruits and is down to 13…..
CB: Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth From The HPD?
read … Police struggle with overtime, vacancies
Wait For Drug Treatment On Big Island Can Stretch Months
CB: “We were never going to solve our problems just by locking people up,” Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth told Civil Beat in July, noting that Hawaii’s prison system was already operating at capacity.
But if incarceration is not the answer to crime, what is?
Many criminals in the county’s jails and state prison system have substance abuse problems — if they didn’t commit crimes in order to get drugs or aren’t incarcerated for possession, then the drugs may have impaired their judgment. Getting them off drugs could help.
The good news is that Hawaii County has several good programs to help addicts kick their habits. The bad news: Like the prison system, they’re also overcrowded — especially residential programs that can get addicts off the street and into a 24-hour supportive environment….
A variety of organizations offer addiction therapy programs on the island. The largest is the Big Island Substance Abuse Council, whose substance abuse and mental health programs include about a thousand patients annually, according to Dr. Hanna Preston-Pita, BISAC’s CEO. (1000 x $$$ each every month to collect ‘clean’ urine samples)
About 60 percent of those clients, she says, are ordered into treatment by the courts. (And they stay in treatment longer if the treatment center doesn’t catch them violating.)
The courts also refer offenders diagnosed with drug problems to other organizations, including Lokahi Treatment Centers, Access Capabilities, McKenna Recovery Center, and West Hawaii Community Health Centers. Many of these organizations also take voluntary clients….
The route into such treatment is often through a judge. If someone’s already convicted of a crime, the courts can, and commonly do, make regular drug testing a condition of parole. Those who fail a drug test can be ordered into treatment or back to prison.
On the Big Island, as elsewhere in the state, treatment for parolees is often supervised by Drug Court, a system that claims very good results.
In a written response, John Laurence, the public information specialist for the Big Island Drug Court noted, “more than 253 people have graduated from the program and found success in their efforts to improve their lives. Statistics on recidivism (measured by criminal acts that resulted in re-arrest, reconviction, or return to prison with or without a new sentence) show that more than 90 percent have not been convicted of new felonies for up to three years after graduation from the program.” …
The three Big Island drug courts—in Hilo, Kona and South Kohala—have places for a total of 140 adult and 24 juvenile offenders….
Those who do get into the program are offered more than just support to get clean and sober.
According to Laurence, Drug Court participants get an integrated program that provides them with mental and medical follow-up and intense court supervision. It even makes sure that the program’s graduates get “reliable transportation,” acquire the equivalent of a high school diploma, find employment and work on improving family relationships….
Providing an integrated package of supports is one of the goals of goals of Going Home Hawaii. ….
The coalition runs one of the island’s few residential programs: a safe place to stay while former prisoners seek employment and put their lives back together. In Kona, it contracts for beds with Hawaii Sober Living, and in Hilo, it has its own house leased from a faith-based organization.
The program is tiny, with only four beds on the Hilo side, but Estrella says they “hope to expand that.”
The group puts a heavy emphasis on jobs—another tough hurdle for both ex-cons and ex-addicts….
read … Wait For Drug Treatment On Big Island Can Stretch Months
State Caregiver Aid Program Takes Shape—How Much will FACE Get?
CB: …“I was driving myself crazy, I was gaining weight and my diabetes was going out of control,” said Rodrigues, who works part-time as a grant writer for Faith Action for Community Equity ($$$$$)….
During the last session of the Hawaii Legislature, Rodrigues testified twice in support of the Kupuna Caregivers Act to provide assistance to people like her.
In July, Gov. David Ige signed the legislation, which appropriated $600,000 to help some of the more than 150,000 family caregivers in Hawaii like Rodrigues take care of their kupuna while remaining in the workforce…..
read … Shape
Shipping companies’ expansion in isles could go bust for some
SA: …If Pasha adds two ships and TOTE launches four, that would represent a roughly 24 percent increase in the number of ships, including Matson’s, serving Honolulu from the West Coast — to 21 from 17.
Mike Hansen, a local shipping industry observer who heads a group called the Hawaii Shippers Council, said historical annual cargo volume growth rates around 2 percent don’t support all the planned ship additions that increase tonnage, or cargo capacity.
“The likely outcome of this scenario would be overtonnaging in the domestic Hawaii trade, deteriorating freight rates and the withdrawal of one of the carriers,” he said in an email.
Hansen also noted that the six new ships ordered by Matson and Pasha have bigger capacities than their existing ships and that the resulting capacity gain including four ships from TOTE would be closer to 50 percent.….
read … Over tonnage
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