Monthly Archives: November 2017

State procurement database gets a facelift

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I routinely make periodic checks of contract information available through the State Procurement Office website, often picking up interesting bits of information.

The website has been revamped to make it easier to search through the large amounts of data relating to contract solicitations, contract awards, exemptions from routine procurement procedures for emergencies or sole source contracts, etc.

Check out HANDS, the Hawaii Awards & Notices Data System.

According to the website: “HANDS gathers information from multiple state and county procurement platforms and displays it all in one place.”

There’s no cost to view or search the contract database, which is open to the general public.

I usually find interesting things, although not necessary newsworthy.

For example, the Department of Land and Natural Resources has awarded a $60,000 contract to a California company, Conservation Metrics, Inc., to analyze over 1,000 hours of field recordings of bird calls in the Kahikinui area of Maui. Several of the company’s staff have extensive research experience in Hawaii.

Conservation Metrics has a huge database of Hawaiian seabird calls and uses a proprietary algorithm to analyze the presence and activity of specific species. This contract aims to track the activity level and population size of Hawaiian petrel, Newell’s shearwater, Bandrumped storm petrel, and the common barn owl.

Another request for approval of emergency contracts details damage to buildings at Kapiolani Community College during an unexpectedly intense storm in February 2017.

“Another On Saturday February 11, 2017 at approximately 11:30 a.m., Kapiolani Community College was severely hit by hurricane force winds and engulfed by rain. After the fact readings would reveal that winds reached upward of 75mph and flash flooding occurred throughout the island of Oahu…for 5-10 minutes the campus was engulfed by hurricane winds and torrential rains. At the time of the storm, nearly 4,000 people, many of whom were children under the age of 13, were present at the KCC campus for the weekly Farmer’s Market and the annual Honolulu District DOE Science Fair.”

During the storm, “water rose to about three feet deep along the back” of the Kalia Building. When the parent of a student attending the science fair opened the back door to check the flood conditions, water rushed in, flooding most of the first floor an average of four to seven inches. Two large computer labs and classrooms, and about 15,000 square feet of administrative space and officers, were affected.

It cost more than $81,000 to clean up the water and mud, then repair the flood damage by disinfecting the area and testing to prevent mold, cleaning behind and within walls, removing and replacing damaged drywall, etc.

The request for approval contains a number of pictures of the storm damage. Quite an eye opener!

In any case, I recommend bookmarking the HANDS database for future reference.

 

 

Not a storybook ending

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Caution…another cat blog entry.

Our long goodbye with Toby, our 15-year old orange and white cat rescued when he was just a couple of weeks old, is coming to an end.

We’ve always believed in providing good veterinary care for our cats as long as they still have that spark of life. But when soldiering on obviously gets to be a burden for them, we don’t believe in prolonging their lives for our own sake.

And now, on our return from six days on the mainland, despite excellent medical care during our brief absence, Toby is clearly at that point.

For us, these endings are always very sad. But the worst is when you have to decide whether or not to intervene and provide a painless exit. Today there’s no more uncertainty, and in some ways that’s a relief.

Actually, last Sunday, the day before we were scheduled to leave on this trip for Meda’s major professional association meeting of the year, I was worried. I had to struggle to get Toby to eat, offering tempting food by hand, and trying different treats a number of times over several hours until he managed to eat enough to get by.

I thought that perhaps the time for us to make the decision had come. I toyed with trying to squeeze an appointment with our vet sometime during the day of our departure, and letting Toby go before the trip. But then he perked up just enough to eat a little more, and by Monday morning it seemed like he was back on an even keel.

Since we could count on our cat sitter to provide the best possible care, with backup from our regular vet, it felt like a mistake to rush to judgement. So our last minute call was to proceed with the trip as scheduled, and hope that Toby would continue to hold his own.

Instead, it seems, he continued to slide downhill. A couple of okay days, but otherwise sliding down. He took a mid-week trip to the vet, and some adjustments were made, but none that reversed the slide.

Now we have to arrange for him to exit gracefully and without further suffering. That’s my early morning job. It’s complicated because this is our regular vet’s scheduled day off, so working out the human logistics of this is a little trickier than it might otherwise be.

In the meantime, here are a few photos taken during Toby’s early days with us back in the end of 2002. What happy memories!

Returning today from Philadelphia

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By the time this is posted, we will probably be in Denver waiting for our flight back to Honolulu after most of the week in Philadelphia.

Philly was the site for this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, which is Meda’s primary professional association. At this meeting, she officially became the association’s president-elect, and will start a one-year term as president in November 2018.

Things being what they are, we didn’t have any time for sightseeing or even just wandering around downtown Philly. I made a couple of forays out walking on my own, but that unfortunately was about it for this trip.

Here are two sets of photos taken on those walkabouts. That’s about all of the Philadelphia flavor I can offer.

We’ll definitely be glad to get home.

Philadelphia Visit, Day 1

Reading Terminal Market

Trump Tower in Waikiki pays fees to Donald Trump

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I took a small dip this morning into the information pool on the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Waikik Beach Walk.

Two bits of information. First, the Waikiki project, like other Trump-branded buildings, does indeed pay licensing fees to President Donald J. Trump, according to the condominium report on file with the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

If you don’t want to wade through the whole thing looking for the Trump licensing info, I’ve pulled out the two pages with the relevant information.

The actual amount of the licensing payments is not reported.

Then I thought it would be interesting to see who owns the units in Honolulu’s Trump Tower.

I’ve printed a summary of the owners list, based on state real estate records, which shows the name of the reported owner, county or city/state where the tax bill is addressed, and the tax assessed value of each unit.

You can see that there are probably a lot of foreign corporations which are registered in Hawaii and are listed at Hawaii addresses.

Hopefully those quick links will work. If not, please let me know.

I hope that some of you will browse the owners list and share your thoughts.