Protecting OHA from Corruption
Navy Proposing Red Hill Closure Plan That Allows For Potential Reuse of Tanks
Housing for Hawaii's Future
Sue and Settle: Bird Lights Now Part of Grand Wailea Marketing Plan
Hawaii Christian Coalition Targets Republicans who Support Abortion and Marijuana
Report: Consultant, Rail Engineer At Odds Over Station Cracking
CB: … After their initial review of the cracks forming on rail’s hammerhead piers, city-hired consultants and the engineers who designed those large station supports did not hold the same view on just how bad the problem was, according to newly released documents.
Wiss Janney Elstner Associates, which was hired by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, initially determined that the shear cracks “did not pose an imminent concern,” according to the latest federal oversight report on rail that’s been made publicly available.
Patching and sealing would sufficiently address the cracks, that engineering firm concluded.
At the same time, however, HNTB – the engineer of record that designed those station piers – still had concerns about the cracks, according to the report from the rail’s project oversight contractor, Hill International. The company opted to “do more analysis of the load-bearing capacity of the piers.”
“HNTB believes that it should have included more rebar (reinforcing bars) in the piers in the areas that the cracks occurred,” the Hill report says. HNTB planned to keep evaluating “the appropriate remedy” and then deliver its final report to HART by the end of September.
That final report still hadn’t arrived as of Oct. 22, however, and the status of HNTB’s evaluation into the appropriate remedy is unclear.…
read … Report: Consultant, Rail Engineer At Odds Over Station Cracking
N.Shore Homeowners Call for Bulldozers to Push Sand, Want to Exclude Public from Beaches, Demand Multi-Million Dollar buyouts
HNN: … Denise Antolini has fond memories of living of her family’s Sunset Beach home in the 1990s. Today, the law professor is partnering with a working group to come up with proposals to save the coastline and its homes.
(Translation: The homeowners are trying to save their homes. They are politically connected.)
The group, led by the Surfrider Foundation’s Oahu Chapter, has identified three coastal erosion hotspots….
(Translation: They control Surfrider.)
They include the stretch near Sunset Beach, the area near Laniakea and Chuns as well as Mokuleia….
(Translation: This is where they live.)
The working group’s 34-page report details a number phases of a plan forward over the next few decades.
The first, which could happen immediately, includes (bulldozers) pushing sand from low lying areas of the beach back toward the shoreline, adding vegetation to restore dunes and limiting sandbags and other emergency barriers….
(Translation: Allowing sandbags and other barriers.)
The second phase, which could happen in five years, recommends limiting access points to discourage walking on the beach, which the group said pushes sand into the ocean.
(Translation: They want to kick you off ‘their’ beach.)
From 5 to 25 years, the group says building policies should change to require that new homes are elevated..
(‘5-25 years’ = ‘When pigs fly.’)
Eventually, the group is calling for a “managed retreat” after 25 years. That would entail moving homes and portions of Kamehameha highway away from the ocean. That might be achieved with tax incentives and government buy outs….
(Then the government will give them millions of dollars.)
Totally Related: Cocaine News Update: Is Council District 2 Reserved for Crime Families?
read … ‘Unmanaged retreat’: Report calls for swift action to tackle North Shore erosion
Hawaii’s high court hears arguments tied to Mauna Kea
SA: … A legal challenge to the University of Hawaii’s administrative rules governing uses and activities on Mauna Kea took a detour to the Hawaii Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The justices heard arguments on the question of whether, in this case, it is the government that must prove its rules are reasonable and do not unduly limit the rights conferred by the state Constitution, or whether the burden is on the challenger to prove the opposite.
The question was sent to the Supreme Court by Kona Circuit Judge Robert D.S. Kim, who put the case’s planned trial on hold while exercising a rare legal procedure to gain more clarity on how the matter should proceed….
Gov. David Ige signed the administrative rules into law at the beginning of 2020, saying they were designed to offer a new layer of protection for land and natural resources managed by UH on Mauna Kea.
The wide-ranging rules — which survived two rounds of public hearings and underwent numerous revisions over a two-year period — prohibit a number of activities including such things as littering, speeding, causing noise disturbances, setting fires, using drugs or alcohol, operating drones, snow play and camping. The rules also regulate commercial activities, tours and motorized traffic, including off-road driving.
The proposal generated much controversy in the Hawaiian community. Three months before Ige gave his approval, the UH Board of Regents adopted the rules following a lengthy meeting at the UH Hilo campus featuring the testimony of 99 people, most of whom criticized the proposal for being too restrictive of Native Hawaiians and cultural practitioners. Some even said the effort was aimed at those who were protesting construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope….
read … Hawaii’s high court hears arguments tied to Mauna Kea
Hawaii County Gun carry permits granted; police raise concerns over training
HTH: … With 19 licenses to carry a concealed firearm issued and another 58 pending approval in Hawaii County, some Hawaii Island police officers are concerned they haven’t received proper training on encountering permit holders.
Hawaii County’s first concealed carry license was issued on Oct. 4, according to Hawaii Police Department Acting Chief Kenneth Bugado. That followed the department in late August revising rules to conform with a June 23 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down as unconstitutional New York’s concealed carry law that required an individual to prove “proper cause” existed before a license would be issued.
Though licenses were being issued on Hawaii Island, active duty personnel within the department said training was lacking for law enforcement personnel on encountering these permit holders. After hearing concerns from numerous officers, West Hawaii Today reached out to Bugado on Oct. 25 to respond to the training protocol in place.
“A training curriculum was developed by our Training Section to train our officers on encountering citizens legally carrying a concealed firearm. This is in addition to, and does not change the training that our officers have received in other weapons training, such as high-risk weapons training and traffic stops,” Bugado said in an emailed response.
In a follow-up email, Bugado said the training was implemented the same day West Hawaii Today made the initial inquiry.…
HIFICO: Opposition testimonies are needed again for this Wednesday's Hawaii County Council hearing on Bill 220 "Sensitive Locations" regarding CCW is banned locations.
read … Gun carry permits granted; police raise concerns over training
Struggles Of Micronesian Students Point To ‘Significant Issues’ In Hawaii School System
CB: … In the 2020-2021 school year, roughly 59% of Micronesian students received failing grades in math, compared to 14% of students statewide. The most recent data available, for the first quarter of the 2021-22 school year, showed 26% of Micronesian high school students receiving a failing grade in math compared to 10% of the student body….
Nearly half — 48% — of Micronesian high school students failed English in 2020-21, compared to 17% of all students. That same year, 58% of Micronesian high school students received a failing grade in math.
Micronesian students in middle school appear to have struggled less than high school students during the pandemic. For example, 24% of Micronesians in middle school received a failing grade in math in the 2020-2021 school year, compared to over 16% in the 2019-2020 school year….
read … Struggles Of Micronesian Students Point To ‘Significant Issues’ In Hawaii School System
COVID Criminals Released Early Couldn’t Find any Tourists--So they robbed you
CB: … Data made public recently by the state Department of Public Safety shows Hawaii reduced its inmate populations in 2020 by more than most people realized at the time, and state crime statistics show Honolulu’s crime rates actually dropped that year….
(Translation: No tourists to rob.)
But Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm cautions it is difficult to draw conclusions about what happened in 2020 because it was such a unique year for both crime and punishment.
(Translation: The figures don’t lie but the soft-on-crime crowd sure can figure.)
Kauai saw an even more dramatic reduction in its crime rates in 2020, and Maui County also had a reduction. Hawaii island saw a small increase in overall index crimes, but had a significant 68% increase in reports of violent crimes….
Nadamoto argued his earlier warnings against the court’s efforts to reduce the jail population “have proven to be well-founded, as demonstrated by the dozens of inmates who have been released pursuant to COVID-19, only to be re-arrested shortly thereafter.”…
“While some of these re-arrests were because of technical violations and failures to abide by their conditions of release, others have committed new and serious crimes that might have been preventable with greater scrutiny of potential inmate releases,” Nadamoto wrote in his filing with the court.
Alm also argued against Covid-related releases later that year, and in spring of 2021 he publicly flagged a case in which an inmate was repeatedly released only to reoffend by allegedly groping women downtown. The Supreme Court essentially discontinued its pandemic-related efforts to expedite inmate releases in a ruling in the fall of 2021.
Alm said in a recent interview it is interesting to try to sort through what the incarceration and crime statistics during the pandemic might mean, but he believes “crime dropped because the state kind of ground to a halt in many ways for a while.”…
“Back then my sense of why crime dropped was because for a lot of that time businesses were closed, so opportunities for shoplifting were not there, and people were at home a lot … so that would lead people to have fewer burglaries,” he said.
Theft offenses in particular helped drive the overall reduction in Honolulu crime statistics in 2020, Alm said, and he noted Honolulu police statistics show theft, auto theft and burglary cases increased again in 2021 as the state economy recovered and the tourists returned….
(Translation; Soft on crime crowd caught lying again.)
read … Hawaii Corrections By The Numbers: Incarceration Declined In 2020, And So Did Crime Rates
Cap Parks: Parks over freeways in the works for Hawaii?
KHON: … Sen. Rhoads says one of the possible Cap Park locations is above the H-1 Freeway between Queen Emma Street and the Nuuanu Stream….An application for a federal planning grant was submitted by HDOT on Oct. 13….
read … Cap Parks: Parks over freeways in the works for Hawaii
Bill aims to provide tool to revitalize downtown Hilo
HTH: … A bill that would create a business improvement district to revitalize downtown Hilo has been resurrected.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the Hawaii County Council’s Finance Committee, Hilo Councilman Aaron Chung introduced Bill 230, a recreation of a bill he introduced in 2020 that would have allowed member businesses in a downtown Hilo Business Improvement District to finance upgrades to the area’s infrastructure and other services….
read … Bill aims to provide tool to revitalize downtown Hilo
Trannies in a Bathroom: Three Fired, Get $25K each from Non-Profit Health Center
CB: … Two of the three employees fired identify as transgender, and all three lost their jobs a week after raising concerns about the nonprofit limiting access to a single-sex restroom….
Taylor doesn’t plan to return to Waikiki Health. Instead she plans to put her settlement check toward launching a new permanent hair removal school that she hopes will help the transgender community….
The Waikiki Health case started when Woods and Rios were told they’d both have to stop using the only unisex restroom in the building.
Woods, Rios and Taylor said they brought their concerns to Dendle, the CEO, who told them plumbing issues prompted the nonprofit to limit access …
read … Waikiki Health Employees Fired After Protesting Bathroom Limits Get Back Wages
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