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Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"When your jam comes on and everyone knows what's about to go down..."}]

Smile 26 6 25

<title>Daily Smile: Thursday, June 25, 2026</title>

When your jam comes on and everyone knows what's about to go down...

Daily Smile: Thursday, June 25, 2026

 When your jam comes on and everyone knows what&#039;s about to go down...

[{"type":"text","text":"Your history professor said no dogs allowed in the class…."}]

Smile 26 6 24

<title>Daily Smile: Wednesday, June 24, 2026</title>

Your history professor said no dogs allowed in the class….

Daily Smile: Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Saving for a house? A proposed City and County program might be able to help.

For more than a year, the Honolulu City Council has been fine-tuning 

, a measure that would establish a “down payment loan assistance revolving fund,” which would allow qualifying first-time homebuyers to apply for a loan from the county to help make a down payment on a home.

As currently proposed in the bill’s latest draft, people eligible to apply for a loan through the fund would need to have an annual household income no higher than 140% of the city’s area median income and would need to be able to put up at least 5% of the home’s purchase price toward the down payment or closing costs. Borrowers would also need to be approved by a mortgage lender to prove they could cover the mortgage.

All loans through the fund would be secured by a mortgage and their size would be limited by the borrower’s income: for buyers with an annual income below 120% of the area median income, the loan could be no more than 10% of the total purchase price. For those making above 120%, the loan is capped at 7% of the total price.

The bill currently does not specify how much money would be available in the fund, but the council also has a while to figure that out: on Tuesday, the council’s Budget Committee voted to amend the measure to take effect on July 1, 2027.

Andrew Kawano, director of the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services, told the committee Tuesday that the county’s budget for the 2027 fiscal year — which begins this July and ends June 30, 2027 — is already tightly constrained, and he supported putting off the program until the 2028 fiscal year.

“Initial seed funding for this kind of program, I don’t know where it’s going to come from,” Kawano said.

Kawano added that his office needs to further review the measure and determine if the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services would need to implement any new departmental rules to administer the program.

‘Ewa Beach Councilwoman Andria Tupola, co-introducer of the measure, admonished Kawano, telling him his department has had plenty of time to review the bill since its introduction in February 2025.

“You guys will need to respond to emails and give us more feedback,” Tupola said.

But Kawano’s feedback on Tuesday was that the program needs more time in the oven. He compared it to the Transit Construction Mitigation Fund, a grant program by the county providing support for businesses impacted by rail construction on Dillingham Boulevard, a program which Kawano said underperformed following its launch, but was still more developed than Bill 20 currently is.

Anton Krucky, director of the County Department of Community Services, added that he is unsure how effective Bill 20 will be at helping lower-income households buy homes: “We’re talking about a population that doesn’t qualify for loans, or they would have been getting loans.”

Nonetheless, Tupola said the proposal has had considerable support throughout its year of development. While nobody testified in support of the measure in person Tuesday, 35 people and organizations submitted written remarks urging its passage.

“I regularly hear the concerns of young families who are working hard, doing everything ‘right,’ and still finding homeownership increasingly out of reach,” wrote reverend Mark Haworth. “Many are raising children here, serving in our schools, churches, businesses, and local organizations, yet continue to face rising rents and housing instability with little opportunity to build long-term security.

“Families receive assistance, but remain trapped in rental situations where costs continue to rise faster than wages,” Haworth’s letter continued. “They are forced to return again and again seeking additional help simply to remain housed. That cycle is not sustainable for families, nor for our community as a whole.”

The committee voted unanimously Tuesday to forward the bill to the full council for third reading.

[{"type":"text","text":"Aloha State Daily reached out to Tupola for comment."}]

Honolulu Hale 05262025

<title>City loan program for first-time homebuyers nears passage</title>

A Honolulu City Council committee discussed a long-gestating program that would allow prospective homebuyers to apply for a loan from the city to help cover a down payment on a home.

City loan program for first-time homebuyers nears passage

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

A multi-billion-dollar corporation has been stalled by an insect the size of a grain of rice.

The company is Host Hotels, based in Maryland. It wants to build a 375-room resort on the North Shore of Oʻahu, at Turtle Bay. The insect is the Hawaiian yellow-faced bee. On July 2, a court takes up whether an out-of-date environmental impact study forces the developer to start over. That process can take one to three years.

 was fitted to this coastline long before any of us arrived. It forages the native shoreline plants and asks nothing of anyone. It has held on in the few pockets of habitat we left it. There is a quiet dignity in a creature so suited to its place.

But the bee is not really the point of the lawsuit. The people bringing it would mostly agree. The point is to stall the development, and their lever is 

a 13-year-old environmental impact statement

 they say is out of date. The city’s own attorneys contend that nothing is being built where the bees actually live. The bee is the sympathetic face on a procedural fight, and the fight is about delay.

Delay is a strong tool here because we have built such a fine machine for making it. Before anyone pours a foundation near the water, a project must clear a Special Management Area permit, satisfy the Coastal Zone Management law, honor shoreline setbacks, pass historic and archaeological review, and complete an environmental impact statement. Once a species is listed as endangered, the federal government joins the table too.

Each of these has its acronym, and each acronym feeds a profession. We have raised up a whole guild of planners, engineers, archaeologists, and cultural consultants. They each demand a fee from the developer. He trusts them to navigate the thicket of regulations.

The thicket is built to slow development. A single environmental study can run from a quarter-million to two million dollars and add years to a project. And time is the one thing a developer cannot buy back. He has taken money from investors or bought the land on credit. He loses money every day the work does not start.

A developer who must survive years of delay needs enough margin to justify the risk. The modest project cannot carry those costs. The luxury project can. So a system meant to restrain development does not stop the mansions — it selects for them. It clears the field of everyone else.

A few miles down the coast from Turtle Bay, another developer is already building homes that start at $5.9 million each. That project is not affected by the lawsuit. The activist fighting the resort and the seller of the luxury home are working the same machine from opposite ends, and it rewards them both.

The same pattern is visible from the stalled rebuilding of Lahaina to the Neighbor Islands. There, the only people still willing to build are the ones who can afford to wait. It is the same machinery that strangles the affordable housing everyone claims to want, though that is an argument for another day.

The bee’s fit to its coast was authored. It is a small instance of a world that was made, and made well. The thicket answers to no such wisdom. It was authored by no one in particular and is accountable to no one at all. It is a heap of law upon court ruling upon administrative rule, each layer added in good conscience. But it is always added to, never refined. One of these is design. The other is accumulation.

None of this argues for tearing the rules down. Development without restraint would be a sin of its own. The ground was given to us to keep, not to strip. The coast and its creatures are real goods, not obstacles in the way of profit. The man who treats untouched nature as the highest thing and the man who treats his return on capital as the highest thing have made the same error pointed in opposite directions. Both have set something small in the place of God.

We cannot redesign the bee, and we have no business trying. The thicket is the one thing here we did make — and what we have made, we can unmake.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Hawaiian bee

<title>Turtle Bay Resort vs. a bee: Why the rules keep choosing luxury</title>

An endangered bee could stall a Turtle Bay resort, writes ASD columnist Sterling Higa. A few miles down the coast, homes that start at $5.9 million are going up untouched.

Turtle Bay Resort vs. a bee: Why the rules keep choosing luxury

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

[{"type":"text","text":"One misdelivered present last Christmas went a long way."}]

Lila Bermudes and Kamealani Carvalho — co-owners of 

 in Kāneʻohe — that’s how they first met.

“This all started when a package was delivered incorrectly to my new home, which was Kamealani’s old home,” Lila Bermudes says. “[Before this], all the neighbors had told me how great of a baker Kamealani was.”

Bermudes reached out to Carvalho — whose contact information was on the package — to see if she wanted to pick up the package.

“When she came [to get it], we got to talking, and we immediately clicked,” Bermudes says.

“A two-minute conversation turned into 30 minutes,” echoes Carvalho.

During their conversation, Bermudes asked Carvalho if she ever considered opening a farm stand in front of her house on Kukane Street.

“It would be so convenient for everyone that’s passing,” Bermudes says. “You can stop on the side, grab your coffee and baked goods, then you can go to work. My goal was to provide a peaceful place that was convenient.”

Little did Bermudes know that Carvalho and her husband already ran a farm stand, located in Hauʻula.

“We live in Kāneʻohe, but I’m from Hauʻula,” Carvalho says. “We started it there, but it [the commute] was too far.”

Carvalho talked with her husband, Nalu, about the idea — and the duo immediately started working on the business concept. Carvalho credits her husband for building the bake stand that customers see on Kukane Street today.

“I put a lot of work into designing it, but my husband built it,” Carvalho says. “He did such a good job.”

“We just went on faith and everything came together,” Bermudes says.

 officially opened in February. While the address isn’t listed on the business’s Instagram page, Bermudes says that customers can usually find it if they use Google Maps to search for the street name.

“You know this area — the back road — if you live in Kāneʻohe,” she says. “There’s a lot of people that pass by here.”

The business’s current name did not come up right away. 

originally referred to the biz as Kukane Farm Stand, but they went back and forth on it.

“We didn’t like it; we tabled it for a little bit,” 

 remembers. “We thought, ‘Let’s just called it ‘Kukane Street Stand’ and change it later, but everyone kept calling it that, so it stuck. It’s good for location purposes.”

The bake stand is usually open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 6 a.m. until sold out, according to Bermudes. She features specialty lattes that available for pre-orders, while Carvalho supplies the stand with a variety of baked goods.

“We only do the pre-orders for the lattes, but we make them in a certified kitchen,” explains Bermudes, who says previous latte flavors included blueberry, cinnamon roll and chocolate haupia.

The bake stand has been known to sell out by 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to Carvalho.

“That’s why everyone’s here at 6 a.m.,” she says. “They’re waiting.”

All the other baked goods at the stand are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The selection can range from bagels and lemon bars to scones. Carvalho’s cinnamon rolls, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies have been customer favorites.

“I’ve been baking since I was eight years old,” Carvalho says. “I started with brownies, then it was rolls and manapuas; then it went to cakes; then I did wedding cakes; then sugar cookies; and then it went to chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon rolls. It just built over the years.”

The bake stand also features desserts from other bakers across Oʻahu. Customers can refer some of their favorite bakers, and some have reached out to the business directly through Instagram.

"When we made the stand, it just allowed us to incorporate what we already loved doing — supporting local,” Bermudes says. “We feature other local bakers that are up and coming, or they don’t have a platform or a place to sell their items. People can give us their name and we reach out.”

Bermudes confirms that she and Carvalho make sure the featured bakers have their food handler’s license or bake in a support kitchen that’s approved by the State of Hawaiʻi, and that their products are a good fit for the stand.

“We make sure the pricing is right; our items only run from $3 to $7,” Bermudes says. “We want to keep it affordable for everyone.

“In order to come and sell at our stand — if you’re going to be a featured baker — it has to be homemade,” she adds. “We want it to be homemade, like you’re baking it for your kids. I like to say, ‘It’s from oven to stand.’”

Items at the stand need to fall under Hawaiʻi’s cottage food law, which allows home producers to sell shelf-stable foods. Allowable items include cookies, biscuits and breads, according to Bermudes.

Customers pay for their baked goods or lattes by using an honor system. 

They can pay for the baked goods by using Venmo or leaving cash in designated envelopes at the stand. There are instructions to follow.

Carvalho says. “People tipped, especially during the first month [we were open]. This is a really great town to do this in, because people like stuff like this. People will stop for it.”

Carvalho describes having a bake stand as a “full-circle moment,” and is grateful for the support from the community.

“We were here for five years; I did bake sales, but never to this extent,” Carvalho says. “I used to do bake sales from this driveway.”

“Our goal is just to serve our community; that’s what we’re here for,” Bermudes adds. “We didn’t expect what we got; we’re blown away [by the support]. It’s just so humbling and I’m so grateful. We’re having a great time.”

Open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 6 a.m. until sold out

Kukane St Stand owners 050826

<title>Kukane Street Stand is a new bake stand in Kāneʻohe</title>

The neighborhood bake stand offers a rotating selection of desserts and specialty lattes. Baked goods are available on a first-come, first-served basis; the bake stand is usually open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Kukane Street Stand is a new bake stand in Kāneʻohe

A proposal to build the Thirty Meter Telescope on the former site of another observatory is “feasible,” said a TMT project leader last week.

Last October, Gov. Josh Green and all four of the state’s Congressional delegates signed 

 urging leaders of the TMT project to consider shifting the construction of the controversial observatory to another site on Mauna Kea’s summit.

The letter cited “the Hawai‘i community’s request” to instead build TMT on the site of a decommissioned observatory, rather than disturbing a previously untouched piece of summit land, as the plan has been so far. The letter’s signatories assured that they would work with the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority and the University of Hawai‘i to develop a process for securing the permits necessary for such a shift.

, TMT project manager Fengchuan Liu told the board that the project could still work if it was shifted to the former site of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, which was fully dismantled in 2024. The CSO, first activated in 1986, was selected for decommissioning as part of the terms for TMT to receive a permit; the University of Hawai‘i needed to commit to close five existing telescopes by 2033.

“We on the project have taken a preliminary look at this issue from the technical side, scientifically, engineering-wise, and we believe it is feasible to build on the CSO site,” Liu said.

Liu said there are size differences between TMT and CSO: TMT’s 

, including the observatory dome, support buildings and parking area is roughly five acres, while CSO 

Nonetheless, Liu reiterated that moving the site to the former CSO location could conceivably be done. He suggested that the observatory’s support facility — used to recoat the TMT’s primary mirror segments — could be moved off the mountain to a location at sea level. Liu said this would introduce a logistical burden to the telescope’s operation, but would reduce the observatory’s footprint.

However, the logistics of such a move are still unclear, Liu said. He told the board he does not know whether the process would require new conservation district use permits or new environmental impact studies, and said the TMT’s own board would also need to sign off on the change.

Liu added that the change in site would also introduce minor variances in the observatory’s functionality: he said the CSO location is in a valley lower than most other summit observatories, causing different wind patterns that could impact the telescope’s imaging, although he believes those impacts can be mitigated.

By the same token, Liu said the lower site would also make the facility less visible from around the island than its proposed higher-elevation site.

While there was no public testimony on the matter at last week’s meeting, the board’s discussion last November of Green’s letter drew hundreds of pages of testimony, largely in opposition to the TMT project in general, relocated or otherwise.

One way or another, the future of the project remains unclear. The National Science Foundation announced in 2024 that it could only realistically fund one of two proposed telescopes as part of a “U.S. Extremely Large Telescope” project — either TMT or the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile.

 last year that it had removed TMT from consideration — punching a $1.6 billion hole in the observatory’s budget — Congress passed 

 last month stipulating that the NSF advance both projects into final design review, although with no additional funding granted to either telescope.

 For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Daily Smile: Thursday, June 25, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Thursday, June 25, 2026

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