Entries from March 2008 ↓

On most weekdays I drop my wife off at work in downtown Honolulu. I tell people that I work at home but have a 90-minute commute. Both are true. I pick her up from work, too.

Each afternoon there’s a local woman polishing a brass knob which opens an automatic door for people who need wheel chair access to a building downtown. I vary the time I’m downtown by 20 to 30 minutes, yet, there she is, day after day, polishing that brass knob.

Assume that the woman’s job costs some company about $15 an hour, including hourly salary, insurance, taxes, social security, vacations, and so on. Also assume that she devotes only 30-minutes a day to knob polishing. Keeping that brass knob polished results in some staggering numbers over the years.

Maintenance for the knob polishing is $38 a week. On average, $165 a month, and almost $2,000 a year. If the same knob has been in use in the building for only 10 years, the maintenance cost is now $20,000.

That’s $20,000 to polish a knob on a building door, and doesn’t include the rags or polishing cream costs.

Extend that same kind of math to mowing the lawn and trimming weeds around a state building in Honolulu. Assume the building’s lawn area requires four hours of lawn care– mower, trimming, fertilizer, and whatever else is needed– each week, and the maintenance worker costs the state $25 an hour. That’s $100 a week, $5,200 a year, or $52,000 over a 10 year period, and doesn’t include materials costs, or equipment.

It’s likely that some of our government buildings in downtown Honolulu have lawn care every week and it’s been that way for many decades. Maintenance costs may not be much of a total annual budget, but it never ceases. I’m all in favor of grassy areas and shiny knobs, but I wonder if anyone pays attention to the costs of such glitter.

Now we find out that the University of Hawaii athletics department was losing money the past few years. What a surprise. What? The department doesn’t want another independent audit of their financials? What a surprise.

New Athletic Director Jim Donovan was required to apologize for the lack of transparency regarding the University’s athletic financial condition. In the meantime, he gets to use one of his nine lives early in his tenure as the AD who followed the deposed Herman Frazier.

Frazier had already used his nine lives, so he left. That’s how it works. You only get nine. Evan Dobelle used up his as President of UH. When the UH Board of Regents did a Nine Lives Audit, they found Dobelle at the maximum already, so they canned him and restarted the Nine Lives Clock on new President, David McClain.

Looking back, Herman Frazier probably wasted two or three of his nine lives just with the June Jones contract fiasco. New AD Jim Donovan gets to use the New Guy life, which is usually the first of the Nine Lives to go. It can’t be used again, but he still has eight.

How will they be used? Upgrading UH facilities will cost Donovan at least two or three lives. Those money fights drag on for years. June Jones was so popular in Hawaii that he could have been elected Governor, yet he wasn’t able to get facilities upgraded. What chance does Donovan have?

Once the nine lives are gone, officials are required to hit the road. The really smart officials start looking for a new job when they’re at five or six lives, and make a jump before they hit number eight.

I had to laugh when I read Malia Zimmerman’s article about following the money trail at Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

A few years ago Hawaii Reporter wanted to know where OHA’s money went. After all, it is public money. Does the public not have a right to know how the money is spent?

Apparently not.

At first, and as would  be expected by anyone with lots of money who doesn’t want others to know where it gets spent, their requests for financial information were ignored by the OHA powers that be. Or, were.

With a little legal pressure, OHA blinked. Sort of. It could have been a blink. Was it a blink or a wink? Under pressure, OHA was willing to provide the information for a price. $11,000. OHA representatives have promised, in public, to provide requested financial information. To date, they have not.

Why not?

Because. Because that’s what greedy money hoarders do. They connive to get money. Then they hoard the money they keep. Then then spend the money in ways they should not. Then they become indignant when someone asks for even a little accountability. Politicians do it. Embezzlers do it. Bishop Estate trustees did it. Now OHA trustees are doing it.

If you want to get to the Emerald City of Truth, all one needs to do is follow the Yellow Brick Money Trail. It may not be easy, but it is always an adventure.

Oh, take notes along the way. It’ll make for a good story, just like Broken Trust. As Dickie Wong is probably thinking, “These are not good days to be an OHA trustee.“

Uh oh. Insurance rates are about to go up again. Why? Because that’s what they do. In the age of computer efficiency and worldwide interconnected networking, large bureaucracies have figured out how to parlay technological efficiency into more profits.

Make no mistake. HMSA, Hawaii’s leading HMO, is a bureaucracy. Despite legislation and seemingly altruistic motives, they’re in business to do one thing– perpetuate money making.

Some may say that HMSA loses money from time to time, right? Right. But did executives take a pay cut, trim salaries, cut expenses, or get a pay raise with a bonus? Did they layoff a few hundred employees?

Uh uh. See?

When things get tight, they just raise their rates. Think of HMSA and other HMOs as public utilities for health care.

To say that Aloha Airlines is struggling is to say that beer is an acquired taste. Both take a little time to get used to, but too much of either leaves you feeling worse off.

In a competitive inter island airline market, Aloha can’t seem to do anything but spend money. They’re losing it faster than Ed Case moves toward political oblivion. Ed who? See?

I sympathize with Aloha’s investors and employees. It can’t be fun watching the airline spend your hard-earned investment money faster than it can be replaced. It can’t be fun working for an airline that claims to be the On Time Airline but can’t pay bills on time.

Aloha blames little go! airlines for their financial woes. I blame common sense. Aloha’s investors have the common sense to recognize that there’s something else amiss besides go!’s lower-than-cost competition. After all, Hawaiian Airlines didn’t file for bankruptcy. What is Hawaiian doing that Aloha can’t do?

The U.S. is heading into what appears to be a full-on recession. Cruise ships are leaving the islands. That does not bode well for the tourist industry in Hawaii, and can’t make for an attractive future for Aloha Airlines.

There are plans afoot for the state to bail out Aloha however possible; tax reductions, loan guarantees, a resolution of support, or whatever. The loss of a few thousand jobs as a large local airline goes bust will resonate far longer than the news headlines. Fortunately for Aloha, politicians have short memories.

Remember Hamakua Sugar? How’s that bail out plan working?

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. Sometimes the competition is just better. Either do what the competition does or find something else to do. Aloha couldn’t do either and will end up closing the doors unless a suitable sucker investor is found. Perhaps Governor Lingle would consider becoming Aloha’s savior and come up with a plan for the state to buy Aloha. Why not? She wants the state to get into the hotel and resort business.

What’s wrong with a state owned airline?

Hawaii lawmakers are working on a bill to curb domestic violence. That’s a good thing, right? Not so fast. How do we define domestic violence?

My mother and fathers spanked me. Sometimes it was deserved, sometimes not so much. Would mom and dad be criminals in Hawaii?

House Bill 3379 covers domestic violence, and creates a new crime (if that’s really possible; we have so many). This one is called third degree family abuse, a petty misdemeanor. Spanking your child could get you arrested.

Could your mother or father be arrested? The proposed bill states, “‘Physical abuse’ means striking, shoving, or kicking a person in an offensive manner, or subjecting a person to offensive physical contact with the intent to harass, annoy, or alarm.”

I don’t recall my parents ever kicking me, but there were more than a few instances of offensive physical contact with intent to harass and annoy. Apparently I managed to overcome those childhood tragedies and become a somewhat normal citizen despite the scars of abuse from my fair share of lickings.

If the bill passes and becomes law, I wonder if  a statue of limitations will apply? Otherwise, my parents could get arrested at the airport the next time the fly to Hawaii.

I promise to visit them in jail.

I find it difficult to believe that no one saw this coming. Molokai Ranch will close their doors. Over 120 people on Molokai will lose their jobs. Hundreds more will suffer from the economic fallout as fewer tourists will visit the once but no longer ‘friendly isle.’

What happened? Residents of Molokai refused to allow Molokai Ranch’s owners the opportunity to develop property elsewhere on the island to offset financial losses. Faced with mounting red ink from Molokai Ranch, and with no ability to turn a profit from previous investments on the island, the developer decided to shut the doors.

What goes around, comes around.

As much as friendly isle locals may love their laid back lifestyle, mostly unchanged for decades, what they haven’t figured out is how to peacefully coexist with dictates of progress. In one form or another, change is inevitable. Even now the change of economic hardship will affect hundreds and hundreds of Molokai residents. Some will leave the island. Many more will feel the economic change in a very personal way.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

As Hawaii’s population ages, our desire to relive bits and pieces of days gone by seems to increase. Welcome back, Primo beer.

Starting today, Honolulu retailers will get their first bottled taste of one of Hawaii’s best known, and sometimes loved, local beers. The draft Primo has been available at some local restaurants since December.

Primo Brewing & Malting Company is rolling out the new bottled version of Primo to a handful of specialty beer and wine shops. The original Primo beer was brewed first in 1898 by Honolulu Brewing & Malting Company. These days the brand is owned by Pabst Brewing Company and bottled in California.

No matter how you look at it, bottled Primo is imported beer. Just like Heineken. The real question is, ‘Does today’s Primo beer taste like yesterday’s Primo beer?’

I’ve tried the draft Primo and I can tell you what it tastes like. It tastes like Pabst. I suspect the bottled Primo will taste like Pabst. Pabst is the chickenized rattlesnake meat of beers. Rattlesnake meat tastes like chicken. Nostalgia beer tastes like Pabst.

Making way for much needed construction jobs is the death of the Varsity Theaters on University Avenue, due to disappear from the neighborhood this week.

With few exceptions, old theater buildings just don’t last. It has nothing to do with construction. Many old theater buildings could last for over 100 years. Their death has more to do with math in the form of revenue per square foot.

A movie theater doesn’t have much going for it except plenty of square feet and even more cubic feet. It’s a lot of space for very little money, and fewer paying customers. As a sign of the times, most theaters in Honolulu have congregated together in movie complexes, like a herd of elephants waiting for the final attack.

I saw movies at the Varsity Theater. My kids saw movies at the Varsity Theater. I even had a couple of UH classes at the Varsity Theater. You know you’re getting older when places you once frequented end their days in a pile of concrete rubble and they call it progress.

Of course, Klum Gym fell to a similar fate, and I considered that to be progress. And, I haven’t forgotten, either.

Honolulu’s most populous bird is the ubiquitous crane. From Waikiki to Pearl City, the skyline is dotted with crane after crane. If the building boom is easing on Oahu, you can’t tell from the sky birds.

Another crane will go up on Kalakaua Avenue across from the Hawaii Convention Center and amid the glassy shadow of the Century Center. Cranes mean buildings and this one will be a 16 story residential condominium which borders on affordable.

Affordable? At $750 a square foot? These condos will come in the standard studio, one and two bedroom styles, from about 400 to just over 700 square feet. The starting price? $292,000.

That’s considered affordable at about $750 per square foot.  I’m serious. That’s considered affordable.

Such affordability comes with a pool, a spa, a restaurant, and a fitness center. I’ll admit that the location is more than convenient with bus routes all over the place, and within walking distance of Ala Moana Center, the beach, and KFC. What more could a person want for $750 a square foot?

Parking?