‘Empty Homes Tax’ Drives Rent up 37%
SF Judge Rules 'Empty Homes Tax’ Unconstitutional
Maui County Officials Plot to Eliminate Front Street
MN: … Schneider, a Hawaiian whose buildings housed 15 seaside businesses, said she’s hopeful her family will be able to help to rebuild the waterfront town, which served as the first capital of Hawaiian royalty and as a leading visitor attraction that generated close to a billion dollars a year in revenue.
“I think the county understands the town needs to be rebuilt,” said Schneider, part of the Front Street Recovery Group with more than 70 member merchants.
Talks have been ongoing between merchants and Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen’s administration, with some planning officials worried about climate change and rising sea levels. However, the merchants note that it was a fire that destroyed the town, not the ocean.
Town merchants said they were upset when, at one of the meetings, the administration offered to relocate businesses seaside of Front Street to an industrial area near the Pioneer Mill smokestack a quarter mile away.
“The county wants to change what Lahaina looks like,” said Keoki Freeland, former head of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.
Maui County Planning Director Kate Blystone said Wednesday that officials are developing a “Rebuild Lahaina Plan” and are having meetings with merchants and residents before completing it.
Freeland said that because of its location and fringing reef, the town of Lahaina has never had major ocean damage….
The Front Street Recovery Group also wants the county to lift shoreline management rules and other measures that might hold back rebuilding stores and restaurants seaside of Front Street, and to speed up the permitting process to allow businesses to redevelop as they were prior to the wildfire but with safety precautions….
While some environmentalists point to the startling rise in ocean levels on the United States’ eastern seaboard — predicting sea level rise of 3 to 6 feet in some places in the next 50 years — a 2013 Sea Grant study shows the sea rise on Maui, Oahu and Kauai has been considerably less than some other areas because of its active volcanoes.
The islands sit on a lithosphere, a layer that is the coolest and most rigid part of the earth, and the rate of sea level rise varies based on its distance from Hawaii island’s volcanoes.
The Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Maui’s Shoreline study was based on tide gauges in Kahului Harbor and found the rate of sea level rise on Maui in a century was 9 inches. The same study said the rate of sea level rise in a century was about 6 inches on Oahu and Kauai….
(TRANSLATION: Sea level rise is not a threat. You have been lied to.)
Schneider said the majority of the property owners in the group are descendants of local families who live in Hawaii, including herself, a great-grandchild of Lucy Napela who was a teacher at King Kamehameha III School.
“These are Hawaiian lands and they’re in Hawaii hands,” she said.
read … Lahaina merchants want to rebuild town as it was before fire
Tulsi Gabbard Through The Years: What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
CB: … “For as long as I have known Tulsi Gabbard, I now understand I have never known her and probably never will,” Fawcett’s column begins. “So much of what she does seems to make sense only to her.”…
Civil Beat columnist Neal Milner shrugged off Gabbard’s presidential campaign. “Tulsi Gabbard Has Become Irrelevant To Hawaii,” he argued in the spring of 2020.
“Who cares why Tulsi Gabbard is still running for president?,” Milner asked readers. ” I know I don’t. And neither should you.”
“Time to quit wondering, complaining, or caring about Gabbard. It’s time to see her as the isolate and as the irrelevant, minor political figure she has become. We need to quit wasting time trying to figure her out. That cheapens our politics by making her a celebrity.” …
“Tulsi Gabbard Reveals She’s Been Tulsi Gabbard The Whole Time,” read the headline to a piece by Civil Beat columnist Lee Cataluna in December 2020.
“But really, this is classic Gabbard,” Cataluna wrote. “She’s leaving Congress, dropping all pretenses, and leaning hard into the headline-grabbing crackpottery that has been her stock in trade all along.”…
read … Tulsi Gabbard Through The Years: What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
Kennedy nomination could place our keiki’s access to vaccines in jeopardy
CB: … Hawaii should be prepared to allocate funding for childhood vaccines in our state if federal funding is cut….
read … Kennedy nomination could place our keiki’s access to vaccines in jeopardy
Newly Elected? Here's How Not To Be Corrupted
CB: … Say, for example, that a pedestrian bridge in your district is in severe disrepair. You could do the usual approach and ask for money for the bridge, send strongly worded letters to various departments, get emotional in committees when the amount you ask for gets zeroed out, and do press conferences in front of the bridge talking about why it’s important. But, everyone does that, and it’s become such a common occurrence that this is less “representation” and more ceremonialism of incumbency.
A better approach would be to find out exactly why the bridge is in disrepair….
read … Danny De Gracia: Newly Elected? Here's How Not To Be Corrupted - Honolulu Civil Beat
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