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Hawai'i Skies

Today's Hawai'i Skies was captured by Cindy Evans in South Kohala, Hawai’i Island. "

Magical Moment. I felt blessed to witness a gift from the sky."

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25 11 6 Cindy Evans

<title>Hawai'i Skies: A gift from the sky</title>

Today's Hawai'i Skies was captured by Cindy Evans in South Kohala, Hawai’i Island.

Hawai'i Skies: A gift from the sky

Today's Hawai'i Skies was captured by Cindy Evans in South Kohala, Hawai’i Island. "Magical Moment. I felt blessed to witness a gift from the sky." To submit your Hawai'i Skies photo, visit us online or email: general@alohastatedaily.com For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Four Hawaiian Airlines flights are cancelled Friday as federally mandated air travel cuts take effect.

 Wednesday that, as air traffic controllers continue to go unpaid during the weeks-long shutdown of the federal government, flights to 40 major air hubs will be reduced by 10%.

A preliminary list of those hubs was released Thursday, according to Associated Press 

. On that list was Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.

Hawaiian Airlines spokeswoman Tara Shimooka told Aloha State Daily that four of the airline’s 150 Neighbor Island flights on Friday will be cancelled: a roundtrip between Honolulu and Maui and another between Honolulu and Kona.

“We know how much our residents and visitors rely on our Neighbor Island service, and we will continue to operate a robust schedule with 20 Honolulu-Maui roundtrips, and 15 Honolulu-Kona roundtrips, in addition to our regularly scheduled flights to and from Līhu‘e and Hilo,” Shimooka said via email. “We are notifying impacted guests with the option to be accommodated on the next available flights or receive a full refund. Hawaiian and Alaska airlines flights between Hawai‘i and the continental U.S., as well as our international routes, are not impacted.”

As of Thursday afternoon, the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation had not received guidance from the FAA about the proposed cuts. But Director Ed Sniffen sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urging him to exclude the Honolulu airport from the plan.

“Hawai‘i is uniquely vulnerable as the nation's most isolated population center, with no viable alternative to air travel for commerce, health care, or national security needs,” the letter read in part.

Sniffen wrote that the state “stands ready to immediately advance full salaries and benefits for all FAA air traffic controllers … assigned to Hawai‘i facilities for the duration” of the shutdown, and that those moneys can be available via emergency agreements within 24 hours.

“Granting this targeted waiver — conditioned on Hawaii's direct funding of these essential personnel — would maintain full flight schedules, protect public safety, and prevent unnecessary damage to a state that contributes disproportionately to America's strategic interests,” Sniffen concluded.

Honolulu airport

<title>DOT offers to pay flight controllers' salaries to avoid FAA cuts</title>

Four Hawaiian Airlines flights will be cancelled tomorrow as FAA rolls out air travel cuts.

DOT offers to pay flight controllers' salaries to avoid FAA cuts

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

Columnists

I’ve been to any number of Neighborhood Board meetings over the years at which people vent their frustrations over the often worrisome, sometimes disgusting, sometimes terrifying behaviors of homeless people only to be met with silence by government officials. People say they don’t feel safe. Awkward silence. People ask when they’ll get their parks and sidewalks back. Silence. People ask, why isn’t anything happening. At most they get variations of, “It’s really hard. It’s really complicated. You see, the problem is really complex.”

But I’ve never seen that disconnect revealed so sharply as at the recent McCully-Mō

ili Neighborhood Board meeting in late October. You can watch the entire meeting for yourself 

, let me just show you some of the highlights here, to the call out the reality of the situation, as well as the gulf between what people say and the official non-answers they get. 

The first notable moment, interestingly, came during a presentation of Ala Wai area park improvements, given by Tara Hirohata, East Honolulu district manager for the City & County of Honolulu Department of Parks & Recreation. Describing improvements to the comfort stations, she mentioned a need for new flooring and looked to a team member to confirm if the city would contract that work out or would do itself. That man — I didn't hear a name for him — comes to the microphone and says:

“We have to try to see if we can do it in-house. The problem is, I guess, the people who use it, sometimes they have to be mindful of when we do renovations ’cause they make all of our hard work look like rubbish. So, you know, in this case, we just renovated this probably like last year and it’s already trashed.”

A theme of the meeting is already emerging. He doesn’t have to specify who trashed the new renovations, everyone knows.

Questions and comments are taken after the city wraps up the presentation. A woman comes up from the audience, says she’s Angie, with an adult 7-a-side soccer league that uses the park. She is, overall, grateful for the planned improvements but has one concern she hasn’t heard addressed yet.

“My other concern with this park is the lighting. We play at 6:30, 7:30, and I find it really dark and a little bit dangerous for a single person just walking to and from my car. I’m always on my phone with my husband and he’s like, ‘Call me when you get out of your car and call me when you go back.’ … I think it should be a little bit more well-lit and safer for us walking to and from [the parking lot.]”

The shared frustrations and anxieties are escalating. First, the facilities are getting wrecked and nothing can be done, it just keeps happening. Now, a woman has stood up to say she feels unsafe in Honolulu and hasn’t heard that concern addressed.

Then we get to the centerpiece presentation of the meeting, a roughly 12-minute presentation by Roy Miyahira, the city’s Director of Homeless Solutions, appointed by Mayor Rick Blangiardi in February and commonly referred to as “the homeless czar.”

He spoke about the Homeless Outreach and Navigation for Unsheltered Persons (HONU) program at Old Stadium Park, a park long plagued by illegal camping and large numbers of homeless. The HONU program had previously been in Kapolei where “we had a lot of success in getting folks who are on the street … and placing at least almost half of these people into next-step type of housing.”

[{"type":"text","text":"But the going is tougher in McCully-Mo‘ili‘ili."}]

“I think the population is more transient, because they’re coming from the Waikīkī area. ... We’re finding folks who are from Mo‘ili‘ili and maybe Kaimukī and maybe as far away as Wai‘anae in some cases but we’re finding a lot of folks who are just from the Mainland. We’re not successfully finding them a place to go because most of these folks just want to stay in place. … There are some folks of course who just don’t want rules, who love their lifestyle out on the street and that is fine for this brief moment and so we’re losing about — maybe 40% of those go back to the streets. But so far at the Old Stadium has been successful. … One of the activities there is that we’re trying to get folks in Waikīkī bussed over to do a bit of a tour to see what sheltering does look like. Then we’re taking them to our Iwilei areas where we have IHS, our service provider. We’re having them take a look at what we have to offer.”

Let’s stop and unpack that for a moment. When the homeless czar says my neighborhood’s homeless are coming from Waikīkī, he’s describing the pattern we’ve all seen of the city’s homeless policies simply chasing people from neighborhood to neighborhood. Barely half of the people they’ve touched get off the streets. HONU drives people around to look at the shelters like realtors showing homes for sale and gets few takers.

He described this, nevertheless, as success. The city, he says, is “attacking” the problem with “comprehensive solutions.”

He spoke in an odd mix of buzzwords: “Market segmentation,” from the business world. “Bed utilization,” from the jargon of healthcare. He had a PowerPoint presentation, and discussed numbers in blue boxes and green boxes, described ever-more precise varieties of “beds.” Emergency beds. Detox beds. Transitional housing beds. Mental respite beds. Affordable housing beds.

Pressed by the board to state what all these bed utilization rates really mean, and what the city’s definition of success is, he doesn’t really have an answer.

“Our continuum of care organization, HMIS tracks [bed use],” he says. “As for your question, what defines success — there aren’t too many standards out there that measure success. ... I think measuring homelessness is almost as complex as the people who are homeless. Everyone’s trying to find the right way of measuring it but from my standpoint if someone tells me only 20% move on to next-level or we get 50%, I’d say it’s successful. Maybe not wildly, but it is successful.”

So now let’s unpack that: the city doesn’t have a goal. Not one the homeless czar can confidently and succinctly assert. Instead, he wings it, and off-the-cuff describes success as something like anywhere from half to most of the problem not going away.

Then we get to the most important thing said during the entire meeting. After the city’s homelessness presentation, a petite and soft-spoken woman comes up to the mic.

She says she is Jenny Suzuki and she has been working in Mo‘ili‘ili since 2008. She asks if something can be done about these sweeps that just move the homeless from neighborhood to neighborhood where they end up in the parking lot where she works. Why this concern?

“So this gentleman scratched up my car,”

 she says, holding up a photo of car damaged far beyond merely scratched. 

“I went out to go to my car and he was scratching it and when I was out there, he asked me if I had money, I said no. So I left my car, I just walked away, and then he asked me if this was my car and he proceeded to tell me that he was going to put me in my car and rape me.”

She says she filed a police report. She says she knows these problems aren’t easy to fix. “It sounds like you’re working really hard but sometimes, you know, they’re still left in the community for us to wonder how we can help and how we can protect ourselves and our property.”

Hold this in your mind. A woman just stood up say she was threatened with rape by a homeless man.

[{"type":"text","text":"Here is what the homeless czar had to say about that:"}]

“I think everyone knows that if there’s a situation where there’s a threat that you will all call 911 and an officer should be right there. In fact, where we are at Honu there are two officers there 24 hours a day. Two different shifts, so if you can’t yell out to them across the street, they’ll find officers to come there, a community police team to be there. What we are also have is CORE which people might not know, it’s a Crisis Outreach and Engagement type of team, they’re part of our emergency services team — the folks in the ambulances — but these folks are more equipped to take care of the homeless individuals where there might be a medical aid situation, but now most importantly outreach. So they can be called between 7 and 3 o’clock, Monday through Friday and the phone number is 768-CORE.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Woman: A homeless man wrecked my car and threatened to rape me."}]

City: Call 911. Now let me tell you more about our compassionate outreach to … the homeless.

Oblivious. Absolutely oblivious. No acknowledgement of her fear. No empathy. No sense whatsoever that he feels any duty to her as he rushes to elaborate on the sensitive Crisis Outreach Teams standing by to help, not threatened women, but the homeless.

I wish I could say the meeting erupted in outrage at that point, but no, it carried on in the usual formal, borderline boring mode of such meeting, as if nothing particularly important had been revealed. As if an enormous distress signal had not just been sent out in the room. Are we numb? Do we no longer care? Have we given up on expecting any better?

In a very real sense, Jenny Suzuki has no rights, none that are being defended, not by anyone in the room. And I don’t see the ACLU rushing to take her side.

There is a precept in systems thinking, one I’ve mentioned before, that the function of a system is what it 

. Not what it’s called. Not what its managers say it does. What it actually does, its real-world activities and outcomes.

— up from last year’s $14 million — and spend it tolerating, enabling, and subsidizing the very behaviors we told them we want stopped.

Since the homeless czar himself had to improvise a definition of success on the spot, allow me to restate, in writing, some pretty obvious metrics of success the people have been begging for, for years:

[{"type":"text","text":"Zero instances of human feces on the sidewalks."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Zero trashed public restrooms."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Zero fear of walking in the park at dinnertime."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And zero, absolutely zero, threats of rape from deranged homeless men."}]

The gap between that, and what the city says and does, should be a wake-up call for you.

[{"type":"text","text":"City leaders get to feel compassionate."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"We get to feel fear."}]

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team. He can be reached at 

Honolulu Hale 020525

<title>Pipikaula Corner: How the City keeps Honolulu afraid</title>

On the issue of homelessness, it's as if the people and their government live on different planets. As an exchange at a recent Neighborhood Board meeting shows, everyday people are expressing real fear that goes unacknowledged by officials spouting jargon.

Pipikaula Corner: How the City keeps Honolulu afraid

Katie Helland Headshot

Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

Aloha Spirit

s is hosting its first Battle of the Bands and Comedians. The fourth round of competition takes place at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 9, at 

. Aloha State Daily is the media sponsor for the series.

Over the past few weeks, a panel of judges have been selecting one band and one comedian from each round to advance directly to the finals. On Nov. 21, five bands and five comedians will compete in the finals at The Gatsby in Kakaʻako.

The second-place finishers for each of the first four rounds of competition get a chance to qualify for the finals as a wildcard, if they are voted in by fans. Their names will be listed on the 

 from Nov. 10 -16. During that time, fans can vote for the band and comedian they want to see compete in the finals.

The third round took place on Saturday, Nov. 1, at Lava Sports Bar & Grill in Kailua

. The comedians were Ian Shippen, Kanoa Morse and Pepper Lamb. Tehani and Ian Shippen advanced to the finals.

bands in the fourth round on Sunday, Nov. 9, include 

Cajun Peaches, The Issentials and Take One

. The comedians include Mutiyaa Vision, Andrew Joyce and Jack Schwab.

Tehani

<title>Battle of the Bands and Comedians: tickets on sale for next round</title>

HI93 FM Hawaiʻi’s Local Hits is hosting a battle of the bands and comedians. The fourth round of competition is this Sunday, Nov. 9.  In just a few weeks, five bands and five comedians will come together for the finals of the competition, held Friday, Nov. 21, at The Gatsby in Kakaʻako.

Battle of the Bands and Comedians: tickets on sale for next round

Reports of an impending strike by Honolulu bus drivers have been greatly exaggerated, say union representatives.

On Monday, O‘ahu Transit Services, the nonprofit company contracted to operate TheBus for the City and County of Honolulu, advised riders that TheBus employees could go on strike in the near future.

A statement by OTS claimed that the company has been in negotiations with the Hawai‘i Teamsters Local 996, which represents TheBus employees, for a new contract since June. After four months of negotiating, the two sides have not come to an agreement, leaving OTS to urge bus riders to consider alternative transportation plans in case of a potential strike.

But the Local 996 has stated that the union has made no such plans for a strike. On Monday, the union released a statement accusing OTS of acting in bad faith amid protracted negotiations.

“OTS is telling half-truths and using scare tactics to undermine the union,” said Hawai‘i Teamsters President Kevin Holu in a statement Monday.

The union has called for improved wages and pension contributions, medical coverage that includes dental and vision benefits and COVID-related hazard pay that has still not been paid out, Holu stated.

Holu claimed in statements throughout the week that OTS had cancelled three bargaining sessions scheduled to take place this week. But on Wednesday, he stated that OTS returned to the bargaining table on Tuesday night, following, he claimed, “an outpouring of support from our TheBus ‘ohana, our brothers and sisters at other local unions and the public at large.”

OTS has disputed this. Robert Yu, OTS President, said in a statement Wednesday, “It is important to note that at no time did we cancel any of our scheduled meetings with the union.”

Both the Local 996 and OTS are scheduled to continue bargaining into next week, Holu claimed. Yu’s statement Wednesday claimed that OTS has proposed that an independent third-party mediator step in during future bargaining sessions.

According to TheBus’ website, OTS employs nearly 1,500 people to operate or maintain TheBus system. The contract that is currently being negotiated covers about 1,400 employees and includes drivers, mechanics and office and administrative staff.

[{"type":"text","text":"OTS touts an average weekday ridership of more than 214,000 passengers."}]

Hawai'i Skies: A gift from the sky

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Hawai'i Skies: A gift from the sky

Authors

ASD Staff

More in Hawai'i Skies

Hawai'i Skies: Keeping positive

Hawai'i Skies: No filter needed

Hawai'i Skies: No two sunsets are ever the same

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