There’s a link at the end of the HNN story for a survey.  The survey is not all multiple choice, you can enter specific concerns.  Let them know we in Puna have concerns.

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/03/05...tion-plan/

So, I came across this news article, and quite frankly, I don't know how to feel about this issue.

On one hand, judging by the pictures contained in the article, it looks like a new Jeep Car Dealership, which clearly means that tourism and rental car business on the Big Island is doing very well.

On the other hand, those same pictures are showing 10 plus people/vehicles for very 1 person/car intended, which, as the title of the article states, has created quite the traffic snarl. 

Add into all the "sacredness" of Mauna Kea concerns, and I just can't quite come up with a good or bad feeling about this.

Anyone care to opine?

Significant sunset snarl happening atop Mauna Kea : Big Island Now

The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands wants to start up a modular housing factory on Oahu to produce homes more quickly and at less cost for beneficiaries.

DHHL is exploring the initiative in an effort to be more innovative in trying to fulfill its main mission to return Native Hawaiians to ancestral lands, which historically has been slow, expensive and resulted in 29,543 beneficiaries on a waitlist for homesteads.

Typically, the agency produces homestead lots and arranges for private developers to build and sell homes to beneficiaries or allows beneficiaries to build their own homes.

Kali Watson, who became DHHL’s director in 2023 and more than two decades ago tried to produce factory-­built homes for Hawaiians in partnership with the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs, is seeking help from Hawaii lawmakers to acquire a World War II-era airplane hangar at Kalaeloa Airport for the new endeavor.

“It’s ridiculously high — the cost of housing in Hawaii — and so we got to look for ways to get the price down, and this is our attempt,” Watson told the Senate Committee on Hawaiian Affairs during a Feb. 4 hearing on Senate Bill 1553.
SB 1553 proposes to force the University of Hawaii to sell the hangar site to DHHL and to provide an unspecified appropriation for the purchase.

The city for property tax purposes values the property at $4.4 million, and Watson told the Senate committee that he estimates it would cost at least $4.8 million initially to make necessary improvements to the building.
Watson told the committee that DHHL is interested in collaborating with Colorado-based modular housing company Fading West to establish the envisioned factory in Kalaeloa that could produce 40 homes per month, with possible additional units delivered from the company’s Colorado factory.

Fading West, according to Watson, is producing some homes for a DHHL project on Maui with Habitat for Humanity, and could ship units from Colorado for more DHHL projects until a local factory can be established.

Homestead backlog

Over the past century, about 10,000 homesteads have been created, or 100 per year on average, under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act created in 1921 by Congress and administered by the state since 1959.

Under the homestead program, DHHL beneficiaries, who must be at least 50% Hawaiian, can receive residential, agricultural or pastoral land leases from the agency for $1 a year.

At least 2,100 DHHL beneficiaries have died while on the agency’s waitlist.

In 2023, DHHL received $600 million from the Legislature mainly to accelerate production of homestead lots, and the agency currently is seeking an additional $600 million appropriation. With $1.2 billion, Watson has estimated that DHHL could produce 6,000 lots.

Watson said at the initial hearing on SB 1553 that the local construction industry’s labor constraints have drawn out some DHHL development projects. A modular housing factory, he said, could speed up housing construction and produce high-quality homes at a lower cost.

“It may be kind of our go-to approach if we find that the savings are tremendous,” he told the committee.
Watson did not describe expected cost savings to the committee, and DHHL was not able to provide such information in response to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser request.
Fading West did not respond to requests for cost estimates and other information about supplying DHHL with factory-built homes.

The company last year produced 82 homes for a 167-unit Maui wildfire relief housing project called Kilohana for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA said one-bedroom units with 480 square feet of living space cost $164,938 while three-bedroom units with 980 square feet of living space cost $227,396. Some additional work on site was necessary, including partial roof installation and construction of foundations, decks and stairs.

According to a Feb. 21 article in the Ark Valley Voice, a Colorado online news publication, Fading West is producing homes for a project in that state at prices starting at $280,000 for a one-­bedroom unit with 650 square feet of living space and about $410,000 for a three-bedroom unit with 1,264 square feet of living space.

Prior endeavor

More than two decades ago, Watson pursued a similar endeavor without success after serving as DHHL’s director from 1995 to 1998.

In 2002, as CEO of the nonprofit development firm Hawaiian Community Development Board, Watson helped start Quality Homes of the Pacific in partnership with experienced mainland modular home producer Karsten Co. and a $500,000 investment from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

The company leased a Kalaeloa Airport hangar from the state Department of Transportation and planned to produce and sell 100 homes over an initial 18-month period, including 45 homes for a DHHL project in Kapolei.

However, Quality Homes of the Pacific encountered difficulties with production financing and finding lenders willing to issue mortgages to buyers of such homes. The mortgage issue was overcome, but funding for construction faltered and the company in 2003 liquidated assets in bankruptcy after selling three homes to an affiliated developer for an average of $50,000 each.
Following last month’s hearing, the Senate Hawaiian Affairs Committee voted 4-1 to advance the hangar acquisition bill. The dissenting vote was from Sen. Samantha DeCorte (R, Nanakuli-Waianae-Makaha), who questioned whether DHHL beneficiaries want to buy factory-built homes.

“Is this something that the beneficiaries want?” she asked Watson.

Watson said there has been no beneficiary consultation to size up demand but emphasized that many beneficiaries can’t afford traditional homes and, thus, cannot accept lot lease awards.

UH position

The University of Hawaii has declined to say whether it is willing to sell the hangar property, which it received from the federal Department of Education in 2000, a year after the Navy closed Barbers Point Naval Air Station and began transferring parts of the former roughly 3,700-acre base largely to state and city agencies along with a private developer that renovated housing projects for the Navy in return.

UH turned the 105,000-­ ­square-foot Hangar 111 into the Pacific Aerospace Training Center where Honolulu Community College ran flight and maintenance training programs for more than a decade until 2016.

The hangar later spent several years empty, in part due to a federal condition limiting use of the property to education and research purposes. In 2020, UH paid the federal government $11.2 million to excise the condition.
Currently, UH is leasing the hangar to the Honolulu Police Department and the Honolulu Fire Department for helicopter parking and crew housing. Watson told the Senate committee that HPD and HFD uses are temporary until they move into hangars in the Honolulu airport area.

On Feb. 19, the Senate Ways and Means Committee overseeing budget appropriations voted 13-0 to advance SB 1553. The full 25-member Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill Tuesday, and if it gets passed it would be delivered to the state House of Representatives for consideration.

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/202...-projects/

My dentist can't seem to keep hygenists on staff.  In the almost 20 years I've been going there, I can recall only once when I got the same one twice in a row.  When they leave, it throws the schedule off, and sometimes it's a month or more before they can get me back in.  It doesn't help that they are often part timers.  My dentist is OK, but I would switch if there are others who can keep to a schedule.

Is this common with other Hilo dentists?  I know there are shortages of health professionals, but this guy can't seem to keep one once he hires them.

What does it cost to have a large albizzia tree removed these days?  Yes, stump and all.  Does it make sense to have it ground up for garden mulch?

Thanks,

Ccat

Auction is live now for assets of folks arrested (yet sometimes not convicted) of crimes…

https://ag.hawaii.gov/afp/home/auction-items/

When we moved here in the late nineties I was informed to watch out for any signs of mj cultivation on our our 6 acre Opihikao property since illegal growers were at the risk of having their property confiscated if caught growing on it and had switched to growing on other properties. And a day later I saw my first helicopter hovering over the property across the street from us (less than 30 meters from the road) lowering the spray canister for a while and exiting to do the same a kilometer or so up by Brysons makai pit on 130 near Leilani.

The guy I had briefly hired to work with me on our new property, threw down his t-post rammer and swore up a storm. Turns out he was sure that one of _his_ grows was being sprayed. I couldn’t see how he could be so sure from so far away, but turned out he was right.

Anyway, I went across the street and took a look and sure enough, there were 20 some plants with red dye all over them. I then had near weekly helicopter visits where they would come and check out my pimply butt while I installed pigtails on the propane or pounded t-posts on the mostly freshly dozed six acres…which of course exposed clearly that there was nothing but some ohia and Mac trees left growing, not pot plants. The hovers eventually abated, but I found out that the previous owner of our property was a grower. “The rippers got most of his stuff,” joked the worker. So I guess the folks in copters were making sure I didn’t have the same evil intentions. Who knows?

Probably that’s a too-long winded way of saying asset forfeiture has been going on for a long time hereabouts.

I was always in awe of this actually happening. Taking property of folks arrested before conviction!?! And truth told, it seemed to be a pretty sketchy idea even after conviction (especially for growing weed). Regardless of its apparent unconstitutionality, I guess the federal courts supported it somehow.

Found out about this in national media, but haven’t seen anything in the local press.

https://reason.com/2025/02/18/hawaii-can...cting-you/

I hope the legislation described below is approved.

https://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/20...-loophole/

I am curious what the defense of asset forfeiture is, especially before conviction. (It was the rare topic around a recent poker table that everyone agreed on, that is was absurd. Probably a rare thing in large part because I was at the poker table and am an outlier in most opinion realms ).

Cheers,
Kirt

I need to regravel my driveway.  I dont want the red cinder that I am seeing lots of people use.  It stains.

Can you get gray or black driveway gravel these days, from where?

Thanks,

Ccat

The state is rolling out a test program to use digital agriculture forms when we fly into Hawaii.  If successful it will replace the old paper forms.  I think the question all of us are asking, in addition to declaring fruit, vegetables, or critters, will there be a space for robot grown products?  To really bring us into the 21st century?

https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/the-co...n-hawaii?a

Larry Ellison of Oracle software bought Lanai for $300 million. He spent $500 million on an AI robot greenhouse farming venture. Lots of problems, but they did manage to grow a few cherry tomatoes. Nowhere near $500 million worth.

Ellison’s vision was clear: employ artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize crop production, automate processes with robots, and create eco-friendly farming systems that could feed the world.

https://www.finance-monthly.com/2025/02/...riculture/

I can’t understand why he didn’t spend a million or two, find out the project needed adjustments, make changes, as many times as necessary to get it right. Unfortunately being rich, and successful in one area doesn’t mean you’re a genius at everything you attempt. When you do make a mistake however, your money can create a mistake of epic, historic proportions because you’re too smart to notice your plan isn’t working, or to listen to anyone who might have advice that could correct the errors.

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/02/15...s-layoffs/
I am worried about workers who moved here to start new jobs, as well as those impacted by Federal layoffs, either as longer term workers, or those who are dependent on Federal support. Those without income, or who have insufficient income, may not have the money to pay for their mortgages, food, medicine, etc. Will the banks provide forbearance to borrowers? How will the state government pressure those who have issues paying income tax, property tax, or permit fees? Where is the nearest food bank around Pahoa, and will those who can afford it, donate food or household supplies? Life would be simpler if there were a Costco in Hilo.