Tag Archives: Honolulu

Honolulu 311 report gets prompt action from the city

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Waialae Beach ParkCredit where credit is due….

While on our early morning walk back on February 9, we noticed a bunch of new graffiti at the Waialae Beach Park. This was on the side of the bridge where Kahala Avenue crosses the stream. There was more on the footbridge closer to the ocean. We grumbled about it.

Then I remembered Honolulu 311, the smartphone app that lets you report such problems to the city. I don’t think I’ve ever used it before, although I periodically look through the complaints to get a sense of the kinds of issues reported.

So I took the photo with my iPhone and uploaded it, with other requested info, to Honolulu 311. I figured that “someday” it might get a reply.

I have to report the the response came far sooner than I expected.

First, I quickly received a call letting me know that the problem had been referred to Parks and Recreation for follow-up. So far, so good.

And then I don’t think it was much more than a week later that I received another call from the city. This time it was a parks staffer letting me know that the graffiti had been painted out. And three or four days later, another person called with the same message, just to make sure I had gotten the news.

In this case, the system worked well. The city responded promptly and solved the problem.

I want to thank the folks at the Department of Parks and Recreation for their good work on this and for their excellent communication.

I’ve done my share of criticizing the city and the parks department for certain things, so I want to give them all credit for demonstrating that they do get things right.

Cayetano questions city rail contracts, plus more on mayor’s plan to raid the Clean Water & Natural Lands Fund

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Good story by Sean Hao in today’s Advertiser concerning a complaint about procurement practices at the city filed on behalf of former Gov. Ben Cayetano and others.

If you’re interested in reading more, here’s the link to the pending complaint, which once again wasn’t included in the story.

Political note: Gov. Cayetano and his wife are backing Ed Case in the 1st Congressional race, and hosted an April 27 fundraiser for Case at the Mandalay Restaurant.

Here’s a little follow-up to the recent entry concerning Mayor Hannemann’s plan to divert money from the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund into the city’s rail project.

An April 16, 2010 letter from attorney Bruce L. Lamon to the director of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting alerted me to the fact that the city is pretty far down the path of raiding the Clean Water fund.

Lamon, representing Leeward Land Company, Ltd., takes issue with a city application to add a park onto the Waianae Public Infrastructure Map. Land for the proposed Waianae Regional Park would, according to the city’s application, be purchased using the $3 million from the CWNL Fund that is included in the pending city budget. Leeward is the owner of the land at issue.

Lamon’s letter addresses several policy and legal issues, including the CWNL Fund use restrictions of the City Charter and implementing ordinance:

Use of money from the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund (“Fund”) would be bad public policy, usurp the proper role of the City Council in prioritizing expenditures from the Fund and illegal.

The letter addresses the questionable legality of using the Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund for this purpose, beginning at the top of page 4 and continuing to page 5.

The [Clean Water and Natural Lands] Commission has labored admirably to develop objective ranking criteria, to facilitate public input and access to its deliberations and to “create a public process that sets a bar of excellence for how this new fund is used for the benefit of the City and all of its citizens.” By proposing this PIM revision with the intent to finance acquisition from the Fund, the Department is not only proposing to violate the law and bypass the Council’s control over the disposition of the Fund, but to circumvent the Commission and make a mockery of its efforts and proceedings, and of all those who in good faith have submitted funding applications and helped evaluate them.

Of course, the landowner has its own interests in this situation, but its assessment of the legal issues surrounding use of the CWNL Fund reinforces the analysis presented here.

Another strange twist in the tale of the city’s “disclosure” of personal services contracts

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Hold on to your seats! Here we go on the latest round in the sunshine saga of how the city handles disclosure of a quarterly report of personal services contracts required since a 1997 city council resolution was adopted..

Document missingThe latest twist. The personal services contracts listing for the October-December 2009 period was released earlier this month, on schedule. It appears in the Docushare system under Department Communications for 2010. Well, actually, it doesn’t appear. The transmittal letter accompanying the listing is logged into the system as Dept. Com. 30, but the document itself is not included. No public viewing via Docushare, although virtually all other city documents of this kind are readily available. Instead, the transmittal letter bears a new and highly unusual stamp: “Document(s) on file with clerk’s office.”

Meaning: “Yeah, you win. It’s a public record. But we’re not going to roll over and make it easy for the public to actually see it. You’ll have to come and get it.”

And I’m guessing that when I show up at the City Clerk’s office, they’ll make me pay to get a copy.

Now, a review of the background on this issue.

Last summer, during my brief period of employment at City Hall, I noticed a discrepancy between the version of this contracts list that was sent to the city council and distributed to council offices, and the version that was made public via the city’s online Docushare system.

The problem: The original version produced by the city’s Department of Human Resources and circulated within the city council lists out each contract, the name of the person receiving the contract, and information about the position, duration, etc. But the names of those holding contracts were stripped out of the version made available to the public. It was as if they didn’t exist.

There really shouldn’t be any problem. The underlying personal services contracts themselves must be publicly disclosed since state law specifically makes all government contracts a matter of public record.

When I dug into the archive, I found the reports done from 1997 up until Mayor Hannemann’s election in 2004 made public properly, complete with names. But beginning with the first report issued after Hannemann’s election, the names went missing.

There was no response from the city after I first raised the question. When the next report was made public without names, I requested a copy of the original from Human Resources. It was produced, names intact, but, once again, the version of the same document that was made public via Docushare was altered to remove the names.

I noted that the situation raises legal questions:

State law (Section 710-1017 HRS) defines the offense of tampering to include:

(a) The person knowingly and falsely makes, completes, or alters, or knowingly makes a false entry in, a written instrument which is or purports to be a government record or a true copy thereof;

As the legal commentary to the statute notes:

This section is intended to penalize conduct which undermines confidence in the accuracy of public records. The accuracy of public records is essential to efficient public administration and, beyond the immediate context of public administration, the government has an interest in protecting public confidence in its records.

Apparently worried about the “altering a government record” problem, the city–or someone in the city–is now simply holding this document behind the counter, like stores used to do with adult magazines. But unlilke adult magazines, this listing is required to be a public record.

And still unknown: Why is this happening? Is the fact that it started as soon as Mayor Hannemann took office simply a coincidence?

Stay tuned.

Torn plastic wrapping on bales of Honolulu trash waiting to be shipped to Oregon signal problems

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As bales of compacted garbage continue to stack up at Hawaii Waste Systems in Leeward Oahu awaiting shipping to a landfill in Oregon, it’s beginning to look like the company could have problems meeting the requirements imposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The company was selected to send Honolulu’s refuse for burial in an Oregon landfill, part of the plan for extending the life of Oahu’s current landfill operation.

Just last week, the Honolulu Advertiser reported the first barge-load of Honolulu trash would sail for the mainland before the end of the year. Today, a follow-up story reports that date has been moved back until February 2010.

In the meantime, the stacks of baled garbage continue to grow, as do the problems of meeting strict federal requirements.

These requirements include a maximum time of 75 days between baling of sorted garbage in Honolulu and burial in the Oregon landfill, a deadline which has already been temporarily waved to accommodate the company’s start-up problems.

The following are among the detailed requirements spelled out in the Compliance Agreement between Hawaii Waste Systems and the US Department of Agriculture for baling, wrapping, and handling of garbage to be shipped to the mainland.

Bales are to be wrapped with “a minimum of 4 layers of pre-stretched, mastic-backed polyethylene plastic, of at least 16 micrometers thickness….”

At various stages of processing, the agreement requires bales to be rewrapped if the plastic wrap is torn or damaged. That requirement extends to a final inspection as as bales are loaded onto the barge, and they must be returned for rewrapping if damage is seen.

“HWS will examine each wrapped bale to ensure the air tight integrity and proper wrapping. Any bales that are punctured, ruptured, or torn will be re-wrapped by HWS.”

The company is required to maintain records of “ruptures, punctures or tears to include the date, name of inspecting personnel, action taken and names of personnel completing action.”

“The bales must be permanently marked with the words “REGULATED GARBAGE,” printed in a contrasting color to the wrap.”

“Bales that have been punctured, ruptured, or torn enroute to the (staging area) site shall be marked with colored tape and set aside for re-wrapping and returned to a wrapping area.”

“The landfilled bales must be completely buried under a minimum of 7 feet of material in the Roosevelt Regional Landfill within 75 days of being staged in Hawaii.”

[text]The bottom line is that bales of garbage must be well wrapped and not have any leaks, but bales stacked and stored at Hawaii Waste Systems can been easily seen to be damaged, punctured and torn. None of these damaged bales appeared to be marked with colored tape as required by the Compliance Agreement.

Click on the photo to see more of the compacted, baled, and stored trash.

Moving the damaged bales back to be rewrapped and then returned to the storage area and eventually transferred to the dock will clearly drive up expenses for the operation, and the process has to be repeated any time the plastic wrapping is found to be punctured or ripped. Some industry insiders were already questioning whether Hawaii Waste Systems’ low bid can generate enough revenue to keep the trash-shipping project afloat, and this appears to put more pressure on the company.