Entries from April 2008 ↓

Aloha Airlines closed down. ATA Airlines closed down. Now, Aloha Airlines Cargo closed down. The cargo group has had 85-percent of the island’s air cargo and ends up worth nothing to anyone except customers, and a few remaining employees.

How bad was the management at Aloha?

Most of what Hawaii needs in goods is imported, and most of that comes by container ship. The rest arrives via air cargo, and Aloha Airlines Cargo had the larger-than-lions share of that business.

What happened?

Whatever it was it doesn’t matter much to Matson or Hawaiian Air or United or Delta who will swoop in to pick up the pieces of air cargo to and between the islands.

Aloha Airlines was so well run it ended up being worth next to nothing by everyone except customers and employees. If creditors don’t think much of your business it doesn’t matter what customers and employees think.

The only poetic justice in the whole Aloha Airlines mess is that the executives who flew the airline into the ground are also unemployed.

I’m sure Honolulu elected a new Mayor a few years ago. Since Waikiki spilled all that raw sewage in the Ala Wai Canal we haven’t seen much of the city’s Mayor.

That stands in stark contrast to the high profile of Honolulu’s last two Mayors of note; Frank Fasi and Jeremy Harris, both of who were on the evening news nightly pandering to voters, spending money like drunken sailors while the city’s sewers, streets, and services went unattended.

I remember his name now. He was in the news recently telling the City Council to squat out, it’s steel or no deal. Poor Mufi Hanneman. I think that’s his name. We don’t hear much from Mufi these days.

Most voters hope he’s busy figuring out ways to fix the streets, repair and replace the dilapidated sewer system, and undo the damage caused by his neglectful predecessors.

What a job. Being Mayor of Honolulu was once glamorous. These days it appears to be an exercise in futility.

This is an idea whose time has come. Let the public decide whether to spend money on steel rail mass transit or not. The Stop Rail Now organization wants to put the issue of ‘to rail or not to rail’ on the ballot to let Oahu’s voters decide the issue.

Think about the advantages such a platform would give to voters. True, Hawaii’s voters cast their ballots for men and women to run their cities and the state. Why not cut out the middle man and just vote for each issue?

Let’s say you got a traffic ticket. Instead of going to court, let’s have a vote to see if you’re guilty or not.

So we have financial problems in our public schools. Let’s vote to see how much money the schools would be allowed to spend.

Carry this great idea to another level. Sure, we vote the governor or mayor in for a four year term, but let’s have a vote once a year, sort of a ‘confidence’ builder. If the elected official loses two ‘confidence’ votes in a row, he or she is kicked out of office.

This is an idea with endless possibilities.

Laura Brown asks, “Is Hawaii’s Government as Smart as a Fifth Grader?“ Before you answer the question yourself, consider the situation.

There’s math and there’s logic, and sometimes the two don’t fit well together. It’s something like Mark Twain’s ‘Lies, damned lies, and statistics.’

State legislators may cut per-pupil charter school funding, but it’s a lump sum cut, not a per-pupil cut. Steve Hirakami, as principal of the Hawaii Academy of Arts & Sciences went to a charter school rally at the state Capitol and demonstrated what his 5th graders knew about math.

Based on current funding, how much do charter schools have to spend per student enrolled? The students came up with about $8,000. With a new proposed budget, how much per student? The students came up with about $7,000 per student, $1,000 less, per student, than the current year.

It’s math, right? Not quite. The math used by Principal Hirakami and the students displays averages from a total, rather than actual money spent, or not spent. It’s math, but it’s not necessarily accurate.

How so? Assume that each charter school classroom has 20 students. Assume that the budget for charter school funding is cut by 10-percent. Do the schools only have enough money to teach 18 students per classroom? What would happen if the charter schools put 22 students in each classroom? All things considered, and somewhat equal, the average cost per classroom of students would be the same even after a 10-percent budget cut. See? It’s math.

Hirakami is quoted as saying, “Our legislators are choosing not to educate 1 in 8 children.” Yet, his math is as faulty as his reasoning. The state is not choosing not to educate 1 in 8 children, they’re choosing a smaller budget for charter schools. The charter schools are required to figure out how to educate the same number of children (or, a larger number, accounting for annual growth), on less money per child, not necessarily per classroom.

Put more students into a classroom and the whole problem is solved, right? Logically, yes. In reality, no. Or, at least, not quite. Either way, nothing got fixed.

Hopefully, students will learn the various nuances and shades of ‘math‘ and be able to take a different perspective when looking at the problems schools face. The solution to a problem isn’t always money. Some in the legislature have figured that out.

It’s always interesting to see where the state spends money. New laws usually mean money out the door in the form of appropriations.

Governor Linda Lingle signed a bill which appropriated $38-million for the expenses of state government. A month later she signed a bill, an emergency appropriation at that, for $270,000 to pay for electricity, sewer, and insurance for The Aloha Stadium.

Non-appropriation laws include granting automated teller machine owners to charge a transaction fee to international cardholders. That bill was so important that Governor Lingle didn’t sign it, granting Lt. Governor Duke Aiona something to do.

Curiously, another law changed the name of the Board of Medical Examiners to the Hawaii Medical Board.

Legislators engage in all kinds of activity, and occasionally, some accomplishment. That Medical Examiner name has bothered me for years.

Hawaii’s charter schools are about to receive a smaller slice of the state’s budget pie, and they’re not happy about it.

Who could blame them.

Governor Lingle’s budget, approved by legislators, cuts funding of Charter School students by an estimated $400 to $900 per student, per year. Before you stand up and yell out, ‘Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war‘ and scurry toward the state capitol building to protest, or click to another site with more photos of Paris and news of Britney, hear me out. I have some questions.

Is that a lot of money?

Some estimates put the state’s Department of Education spending at over $11,000 a year per student in public education. I read it in the paper so it must be true. Assume that Charter Schools spend a comparable amount on each student. The cut represents a drop of about 4-percent to 8-percent. In a classroom of 20 students, that’s not even one additional student.

A better question to ask is, ‘What’s happening to all that money?’ At $11,000 (or, $8,000; estimates vary) per student, and 20 to 30 students per classroom, that’s $220,000 to $330,000 per classroom each year.

Assume the teacher gets an $80,000 cut of that total (salary, benefits, insurance, etc.). What happened to the other $140,000 per classroom? It can’t be the annual cost of the classroom itself, can it? Have you seen a classroom recently?

It appears that the state’s education pie has an awful lot of slicers, and the slices are getting thin.

I received an email from Kevin Chang who said he enjoys reading Hawaii Blogger. Even my mom hasn’t said that.

Kevin works for The Trust for Public Land. They acquire land for conservation, with the goal of reconnecting people with the land; whatever that means.

As you might suspect, Kevin’s organization is supporting the Campaign to Protect Turtle Bay. Turtle Bay is considered Oahu’s last slice of country; beaches, surfing, landscapes (are those windmills still up there on the North Shore?), habitat of endangered species (turtles, seals, and land developers), local agriculture, and Hawaiian ancestral burial grounds.

Governor Linda Lingle and many others want to buy the Turtle Bay resort and surrounding property, about 850 acres, to preserve it for the future. No one is doing much with the land these days, though the Turtle Bay owner has plans. Everyone has plans for developing something.

I am curious, though, and curiosity begets questions.

What will happen to the land if the state buys it from the current owners? If the developers have their way, North Shore residents will have more jobs available and a much shorter commute to the jobs they have now. I can’t imagine how traffic on the North Shore could get worse.

Will a few additional resort buildings on the owner’s property harm the seals and turtles and Hawaiian burial places? If the state buys the land will Hawaii residents still be able to use the land? If so, how?

Another question that I haven’t heard answered is, ‘If you owned the land, what would you do with it?‘ How would you feel if you were told you could not do with your land what you planned, and was legal when you bought it?

A typical house on Oahu costs about $600,000. A typical condo goes for almost $400,000. After enduring a few decades of rising property costs, people are clamoring for affordable housing.

At prices like that, who can blame people for clamoring. It’s what they do when things don’t go as they want.

What can the state do to provide affordable housing? Change the definition of what is ‘affordable.’

If you can’t afford what’s considered affordable by the state’s definition, then the deficiency is your own fault. Earn more. Somehow or another, affordable means about $450,000 to $550,000. Think about how much money a family must earn to afford a monthly mortgage, even with 10-percent down payment.

But, hey. It’s affordable.

There’s a condominium conversion down the street with prices in the $300,000 range. The building is closer to what used to be called ‘the projects’ or ‘low income housing.’ It’s a very old apartment building that was converted to become a condominium.

For many buyers, it’s also affordable. So, why isn’t it selling like hotcakes? Even those who can afford $300,000 aren’t buying because the building still looks like ‘the projects’ or ‘low income housing’, therefore, appreciation isn’t likely to occur.

But it’s affordable.

Renewable energy. That’s what bio-fuels like ethanol promise. Unlike petroleum, which is rather finite, sits in the ground until pumped, then disappears into pollution and landfills, bio-fuels can be grown again and again. Right?

Right. Mostly.

Somewhere there’s a spreadsheet that started it all, and convinced the powers that be that growing fuel was less expensive than pumping it from the ground. So, let’s blame the spreadsheet for what has happened to the price of oil and the price of corn. Both are at record levels. Farmers, corn growers in the midwest, are profiting as never before in a rapidly growing bio-fuel economy that has just begun to take root and grow, so to speak.

I had the pleasure of using one of the first spreadsheets on a personal computer well over 25 years ago. A spreadsheet is a wonderful tool to track information, sort information, display information. Modern spreadsheets are so go that numbers can be manipulated to show anything is possible, and people will believe it because that’s what the numbers say. Uh huh. See the problem?

If anyone comes across the spreadsheet that started it all, that moved the country down the bio-fuel path, please send me a copy. I simply want to know how it is that a gallon of something that costs money to grow is less expensive than a gallon of something that costs nothing to grow.

If you haven’t noticed, the Honolulu Advertiser has re-designed their web site. At first, I didn’t like. It was difficult to find what I wanted because everything moved.

In the past week I’ve become more accustomed to the new design, and my initial impression needs to be withdrawn. The NEW Advertiser online has entered the 21st century with a new face, new features, more graphics and video, and more reader involvement– all the prerequisites of success for a newspaper in the 21st century.

There’s video reports. There’s blogs (the same thing as HawaiiBlogger but the writers actually get paid). There’s photo galleries.

Even more important, there’s Forums and Comments sections. That means readers can become somewhat involved in creating additional content for the online newspaper. The Advertiser site does one thing that used to be taboo, but is the norm these days– it requires a web browser user to scroll down to find more information.

The Calendar of Events is excellent, providing a point and click to what’s happening and when. Highlighted home page articles get their own photos, usually three at a time (I’d prefer more), and a quick link to the rest of the story.

All in all, well done. There’s only one thing missing. Charlie Memminger. He writes for the rival paper, the Star-Bulletin. Their web site is not as attractive or modern, though it loads into the web browser faster. I read the Star-Bulletin because of Charlie Memminger.