Getting Kids to School in Kihei
Let’s start with a simple proposition. Taxpayers pay our government to get things done. Taxpayers don’t pay our government agencies to fight each other so that nothing gets done. We focus this week on Kihei, Maui, where our Department of Education (DOE) has been trying to open a new, $245 million, high school primarily for Kihei. It’s called Kulanihakoi High School. It’s built, and has been built for some time, but it can’t open. Why? Lots of families live makai of Piilani Highway (which is a busy, four lane highway) around Kulanihakoi Street. The school was built mauka of Piilani Highway. To get to the school, kids now have to cross the highway. Concerns about the safety of having kids compete with cars here prompted the State Land Use Commission to conclude, ten years ago, that a “grade-separated crossing,” like an overpass or an underpass, needed to be built. Over the years, DOE appeared to go along with the requirement. In early 2020, when it approached Maui County for permits, it said that the design of the pedestrian overpass was already started and projected for it to be built in 2022 and 2023. But in 2021, DOE did an about-face. Instead, it went back to the Land Use Commission to ask it to change its previous order to allow it to open the school without a pedestrian crossing, citing studies (paid for by guess who) presumably showing that the pedestrian crossing was not needed. This attracted objections and demonstrations from the public, and the Commission denied the DOE’s request. At the same time, the DOE and the Department of Transportation spent $16 million on a four-lane roundabout with flashing lights in front of the school to slow traffic down and thereby eliminate (in DOE’s mind, perhaps) the need for an overpass. County officials were skeptical and arranged a meeting in late August 2022 with council members and other community members. No one from the DOE showed up to the meeting, however. In February 2023, DOE seemed to accede to the overpass, presenting some rough sketches to the community. The agency said it would ask the Legislature for emergency funding to build the overpass. Sen. Angus McKelvey, who represents the area, said that he added $15 million for the project in the Senate’s draft of the plan, but that funding didn’t make it into the state budget. It isn’t clear why the funding request was deleted; perhaps it was because that wouldn’t be enough. The Governor’s Office issued a release saying that its construction would cost more than $25 million. In March, Gov. Green announced that the state and county governments had reached a deal allowing the school to open in exchange for requiring the DOE to implement a temporary pedestrian safety plan, including shuttles for students walking to and from school, until the new pedestrian overpass is completed. The school is now slated to open in August. Let me now ask this question: If the DOE had listened to the Land Use Commission ten years ago and had not put tons of resources into studies and legal briefs trying to get the Commission to change its mind, how many millions of taxpayer dollars could have been saved – by the DOE, the Department Transportation, Maui County government, and even the Governor’s Office?
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Study the Empty Homes Tax Again?
One concept that has popped up again, more often than the little animals in a Whack-a-Mole game, is the prospect of an “Empty Homes Tax.” Simply put, if someone owns property here but doesn’t live in it for, say, six months out of the year, then we charge that someone a hefty real property tax surcharge. Why? Because that someone has removed a housing unit from circulation in a place where we really, really need housing units. Just last year, for example, the Honolulu City Council was considering a bill (Bill 9 of 2022) that would have set the tax at 3% of the property value, per year. Last year, when we wrote about this development, we pointed out that there would be lots of devils in the details. How does one hope to enforce such a tax without running roughshod over people’s privacy (which is constitutionally protected in this State)? Do we simply require everyone to file a form, every year, saying that “1234 Aloha Drive is my home, and I have lived in it for more than six months this year,” assume that the folks who haven’t sent the form in have vacant property, and then throw them to the wolves in the City’s tax collection agency? How would we deal with the resulting flood of people who (1) never heard about the new law, form, or tax, (2) figured out that there was a tax and a form, but for whatever reason filed the form too late, or (3) had good reasons for not living in the house, such as being hospitalized for a substantial part of the year? This year, the City & County of Honolulu is trying again. They are on the path toward commissioning a study, projected to go out for bid in August, that seeks to determine “why so many homes are vacant, and how a vacant homes tax could benefit Honolulu’s many residents who lack suitable housing. Benefits to be explored should include contributions to a housing fund, discouraging the ‘hoarding’ of empty properties and encouraging owners to rent these properties to Hawaii households.” The Star-Advertiser appears to be on board with this idea, as it stated in an editorial on July 14th. City officials say that the study will be paid for with federal pandemic relief money, so residents don’t have to worry about its cost. First, am I the only one wondering what in the world a vacant homes tax has to do with the COVID-19 pandemic so as to justify funding this study with pandemic relief funds? Second, what about the study done by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs that the City had done in 2021? Is this new study going to cover the same ground, and if it does, why are we taxpayers getting hit for another one? So that two independent consultants, when the City asks, “Can we, pretty please, impose this tax?”, reply with, “Yeah, we suppose so”? If we can’t get out of that second study, we should at least have it address new developments, such as a paper put out by the Grassroot Institute saying, in effect, “Vacant homes don’t cause obscene housing prices, but a screwed-up building permitting system sure does!” Folks on the Neighbor Islands: Don’t laugh. You might be next! How Not to Cool the Schools
Imagine Hawaii’s keiki sitting in hot classrooms. That has been an issue for our public schools for many years, with then-Governor Ige signing several bills, such as Act 47 of 2016 that appropriated $100 million toward heat abatement upgrades, and Act 260 of 2022 that appropriated another $10 million. At the time, people in the communities involved were ready and willing to donate air conditioners for the classrooms. Some did, and to their dismay, found out that the existing circuits in the school simply didn’t have the capacity to handle the unit. The Department of Education (DOE) found “circuits are blown for a couple of classrooms or even whole wings of campuses. With that comes a potential fire hazard.” Following that revelation, facilities geniuses at our DOE came up with the idea of using solar powered air conditioners. They managed to install them in 880 classrooms and spent $122 million in the process, according to reporting from Hawaii News Now. This translated into a cost of more than $138,000 per classroom. Regular air conditioners could be bought for $2,000 per classroom, according to former HSTA president and Campbell High School teacher Corey Rosenlee. Then came the real kicker: The solar-powered air conditioners conked out midway through the school day. They were designed to operate for less than five hours per day. “We got schooled on that, right, because classrooms operate more than four and a half hours,” Randall Tanaka, assistant superintendent for the DOE’s Office of Facilities and Operations, is quoted as saying. At that point, the real geniuses in the world stepped up to resolve the issue. They noted that many of the lights in the classrooms used incandescent lights and other inefficient (by today’s standards) fixtures. They retrofitted many of the schools with LED lights and other energy-efficient lighting. As an example, a common light bulb on the market today, an LED bulb designed to replace a 100-watt incandescent, only uses 15 watts of power. After the lights were replaced, lo and behold, the energy consumption of the lights plummeted. The schools then found that they could disconnect their pricey solar air conditioners from the solar power circuits and simply plug them in to the regular power circuits without blowing them out because the lighting retrofit freed up capacity in the system. Problem solved! Except that $136,000 per classroom, perhaps $120 million in total, was basically wasted. Obviously, the DOE has a different take on the matter. Now, they are touting a “new process designed to more quickly deploy air conditioning units in buildings that can accommodate the increased energy use.” It’s simply up to the school to get an electrical assessment from the facilities folks, which will use up no additional money, and then the school will “have a range of options to move forward, including starting to budget for the project, partnering with community groups for equipment donations, engaging area lawmakers, or seeking funds through the Department’s legislative budget request.” But can we get a refund on that $120 million they overspent? For a goof this big, a simple “Oops” isn’t nearly enough. |
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