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Public Policy Center > 2004 Annual Conference > Open Space Reports

Report: Issues Identified and Discussed from the 2004 Annual Conference

Panel

 

1)  ISSUE: JOB DEVELOPMENT FOR FAMILY SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Leaders and Participants:

Highest hopes (vision):

  • To provide “pride” in the work a person is doing—make work more interesting than welfare

What we need to do to accomplish the vision:

  • Provide resources for “gap” funding between one-person business and small business with multiple employees – health care insurance and affordable housing
  • Take away regulatory penalties for growing a business in Hawai‘i
  • Create more jobs that allow for self-sufficiency—technical and professional jobs, rather than tourism jobs—state provides $60 million per year to Hawaii Tourism Authority, but only $1 million to High Technology Development Corporation (HTDC)

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • Invest more of the state's funding in “future” industries rather than “current” industries like tourism
  • Sunset all regulations so that they are assessed at regular intervals
  • Combine state and county agencies with similar regulatory oversight so that businesses have fewer agencies/forums to deal with
  • Create “benefit pools” to allow smaller businesses to get rates of big businesses
  • Improve vocational and technical training opportunities

Next Steps:

  • Intermediate career counseling – for training and to assist students to determine aptitude and career choices

Ongoing Discussion

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2. ISSUE: OVERPOPULATION

Leaders and Participants:

Highest hopes (vision):

  • To establish “local control” over population to foster a desirable economy, human and natural environment, and functional cultural pluralism

What we need to do to accomplish the vision:

  • There needs to be a broader discussion and understanding in the general community of the goals of Native Hawaiian sovereignty and the strategic benefits to the society at large. This will require strong, persevering, and dedicated leadership from all segments of our island society.

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  •   Set up small leadership groups broadly representative of the community
  • Explore sovereignty as the foundation for resolving issues relating to overpopulation, tourism, alternative energy sources, and food security

  Next Steps:

  • Meet in June —5:30 pm

Ongoing Discussion

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3. ISSUE:  CLEAN ELECTIONS (VOTER OWNED ELECTIONS)

Leaders and Participants:

Highest hopes (vision):

  • Eliminate $$$ influencing elections and policies

What we need to do to accomplish the vision (action plan/strategic plan):

  • Professionally staffed organizations to move from volunteerism to effective action
  • Public needs to hear what clean elections is
  • “Building Industry”/Designers/ARCHS/Construction—needs to be involved (“pay-to-play” victims)
  • Publicize information from experts—knowledgeable inside-the system on how to fix contracting system.

           

Next Steps:

  • Ira will contact two other members to bring more groups into “education” about changing pay to play company and system

Ongoing Discussion

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Work Group 4

4. ISSUE: AFFORDABLE HOUSING (RENTAL & HOMELESS/GAP GROUP)

Leaders and Participants:

Highest hopes:

  • Adequate (enough, safe, affordable—35% of income, but in Hawaii, it is often 50% of income)
  • Near jobs

What we need to do to accomplish the vision:

  • Incentives for landlords to rent
  • Vacant, not being rented
  • Research paper not widely available
  • City policy of selling rentals
  • Stock of city and state rental decreasing
  • Federal government is also selling
  • Need to make this a public policy issue
  • Market will not supply
  • Homeless population growing

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • HR to request task force for affordable housing
  • Housing & Community Development Corporation of Hawaii (HCDCH)
  • County
  • Weinberg homes
  • Funding necessary—being cut back
  • Transitional centers not funded
  • Build good places

Next Steps:

  • Rep. Mike Kahikina—his issue next session
  • Affordable housing alliance
  • Aloha United Way
  • Hawaii Community Foundation—Kelvin Taketa
  • Partners in Care—homeless service group
  • Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE)
  • HCDCH
  • Cliff Cisco will find a leader/ convener

Ongoing Discussion

 

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5.   ISSUE:  YOUTH INCLUSION/ENGAGEMENT

Leaders and Participants:

Highest hopes:

  • Youth (HS/post-HS) will be present—not just invited—to participate in future conversations about vision, policy change, community building, etc.

What we need to do to accomplish this vision:

  • Leadership—personal, individual, organizational, agency and collective action to include youth from the planning to assessment phases
  • Inclusiveness—forge and develop authentic relationships with many different youth groups
  • Planning—convene gatherings at times, dates, and locations when “youth” can be present more conveniently; involve youth in planning
  • Deliberative—put “topic” of youth engagement and inclusion on all formal agendas as part of the process of implementation, as well as an outcome

 

Ongoing Discussion

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6. ISSUE:  WAR IN IRAQ

 

Leaders and Participants:

What we need to accomplish the vision:

  • Everyone is mad but what to do?
  • Alternatives? Premeditated dehumanizing of “others”; Legislature need to re-debate the issue through body politic; Hawaii initiated a bill in March?
  • Lack of funding for other legislative priorities
  • Discuss how war impacts all social policies and budget!
  • Lingle dragging Hawaii into Mid-East War; only seeing one side
  • Violated international law from the beginning was Inouye's central position; he's well-respected but does the public support this?
  • Anti-Patriot Act in Hawaii
  • States are virtually bankrupt so that is an important handle, but population doesn't see this fiscal crisis coming!

WorkGroup6

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):    

  • Accountability for government
  • Immigration restriction affecting Hawaii economy relative to world's
  • Hawaii's unique position:   being attacked, military economy, international focus (can do what's right for US?)
  • Inouye has not come out strongly against the war
  • War depresses the dialogue on domestic policy
  • RE: Influencing Inouye??
  • Find growing discontent within military (subcontractors, mercenaries)
  • To uphold military code of justice?!
  • Hawaii has knowledge and expertise re: Asia / SE Asia
  • Research -- need to measure the effects of military economy on domestic social policy
  • Linking to Kerry's position? Would he be the right person?
  • Ed Case has an online survey on how he should vote re: Rumsfeld
  • Ann Wright, U.S. State Department official who resigned in response to the war, has moved here to Hawaii

Next Steps:

  • Find ways to deal with terrorism better (e.g. France)
  • Public Policy Center can take this on as an issue
  • Craft a message
  • We should ask our Congressional representatives why they aren't polling us on Rumsfeld
  • Does current Foreign Policy work for Hawaii?
  • Inouye says newer threats coming from Indonesia and SE Asia
  • Invite Howard Dean to a Policy Center event
  • See what other groups—Friends of Sabile --   host a group, eg. with Ann Wright? Other military speakers? Credibility?
  • Write stories on the issue

Ongoing Discussion

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7.   ISSUE:  PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM REFORMWorkGroup7

Leaders and Participants:

What we need to do to accomplish this vision:

  • Identify core and margins
  • Implementing margins—see below:
  • obsolete in some ways in this new information age; need a transformative process vs. reform/fix.
  • What can we learn from the successful schools in Hawaii? Learn from private schools?
  • Provide new environment for kids to enable them to succeed e.g. Hale Oulu.
  • Why aren't successful schools being funded?
  • Why aren't successful programs emulated in other settings?
  • What types of evaluation procedures are in place?
  • 10 years ago, Brookings study showed that private schools are doing well—One leader of school—high accountability
  • Building bridges between “structural reform groups” and   “what do you do in the classroom thinkers” has to   happen from both directions; e.g. Chicago moving toward business managerial leadership
  • Making schools work” study—Responsibility and funding in hands of principal, performance based standards, weighted student formula
  • Private school—continuity of education; less faculty turnover; integrated curriculum
  • Ability to get rid of ineffective teachers (nonprofit schools)
  • Engagement of families is critical
  • Filipino/Hawaiian kids make up half of students here—lower income
  • Can you find a sense of community on campuses? If not, kids are being lost (Farrington)
  • Creating non-negotiable set of principles—“Visa card model”
  • Where are elementary schools in Hawaii Kai and Waianae similar? Parental involvement; not enough resources to meet the needs of the kids who don't fit on the pre-determined curriculum box; old textbooks teach to middle ground
  • Report card is developed by schools, not DOE
  • Who has access and who is listened to
  • We don't want school property tax—will differentiate schools even more
  • If charter schools are the model—let's figure out how to apply the benefits charter schools provide
  • Alternative schools were working w/ “creative fringes.” Would it work w/ the “norm”?
  • Incentives to keep administration and teachers rejuvenated

Ongoing Discussion

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8.  ISSUE: GET OFF OIL

Leaders and Participants:

 

Highest hopes:

  • Hawaii needs to decrease its use of fossil fuels.

What we need to do to accomplish the vision/

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • •  We need to develop a coalition of diverse interests (hotels, businesses, those who would win from increasing the use of renewable, environmental, native Hawaiian groups).
  • •  Form a coalition

Next Steps:

  • Set up a meeting

Ongoing Discussion

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9.   ISSUE: VISION OF HAWAII

Leaders and Participants:

  • Collin Childs  
  • Laura Maeshiro(lmaeshirocochawaii.gov)
  • Henry Chong
  •   Marina Piscolish(mappingchange@hawaii.rr.com)
  • John Flanagan( jflanagan@hcsc-hawaii.org )
  • Judy Rantala (jrantwriter1@aol.com)
  • Becky Kendro( rakendro@phrihawaii.org )
  • Richard Rowland(grassroot@hawaii.rr.com)       
  • Stephanie Kim
  • Ted Sakai (ted.i.sakai@hawaii.gov)       
  • Kem Lowry ( lowry@hawaii.edu )
  • Abby Shaw (Leader)
  • Denise Mills ( denisemi@hawaii.edu )
  •                   (ashaw@co.honolulu.hi.us)             
  • Debbie Shimizu ( info@naswhi.org

 

Highest hopes:

  • A united vision for Hawaii.  
  • A vision could reflect values, like honoring the environment or environmental restoration.   The North Shore has developed to a point where sea turtles, for example, have few places to land.
  •   Define an approach or process that reflects our values.   A collective sense that Hawaii has so much that is special, and a concept of a holistic approach or process.

 

What we need to do to accomplish this vision:

  • Take personal responsibility.   Do not depend too much on government to do this.  
  • Be inclusive and supportive of all views.   It used to feel neighborly here.   Now we're jammed into a small space, and someone else is making decisions for us without regard to what may be important to us.  
  • Collective imagination by all members.   We expect planning to be a rational process.   The most difficult thing is articulating a vision, because words are not the best way to describe it.   The arts are very good at describing values, making visioning an intuitive process.   What we should look for in a vision is something that we share, a common life experience that prompts emotions, feelings that we've all shared (e.g., the Vietnam War).
  • Neighborhood board meetings.   What's not happening for people in those visioning exercises that causes us to have this hunger that somehow those processes aren't working?   
  • Looking forward.   Visioning should look to the future, not backward and trying to find how we can get back the past.   We have to go forward, looking at where we want to be and maybe recapturing the values we wish we still had.      
  • Have a problem-solving orientation.   Planning, creativity, and involvement can solve some of the issues of our future.   Recognize that as we age, we have some benefit of hindsight – what works and what hasn't worked.  
  • We still lack housing. It takes an hour to drive in from Kailua.   Why do we still have these problems?   We had a plan for mass transit, but it's not happening.  
  • The problems are more than political, they're not legislative and not just government.   We need solutions to major problems – moving people back and forth, reliable water supplies, good water quality.
  • City & County of Honolulu (C&C of Honolulu) and State processes need to be linked better.   Find a way for the C&C of Honolulu to do what they do well, then address schools, roads, and other issues that need to be dealt with at the state level.  

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • Get engagement that is safe for people and productive.   Finding a way to engage that is tough on problems but soft on people.   It's worthwhile to define a vision about how we engage with one another.   It can't be challenging one another.   We do a lot of back room dealing; instead, we should engage each other so we're tough on the problem and soft on each other, so we're inventive and creative about how to change our future.
  • Always search for processes to deal with problems more effectively.   We tend to not deal with problems well, and we're forced to deal with problems when they become crises.   We deal with crises not problems.  
  • Identify the forum(s) or processes for people to come together to discuss issues.   Include the elderly and youth populations in forums.   Ask for support from the governor or mayors to anoint the processes or formalize in some other way.   Get issues out of those who are running for office, get them to commit their support.  

Ongoing Discussion

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10.   ISSUE:   HEALTH CARE REFORM

  • Universal access to health care
  • Financing health care
  • Managing Demand for Health Care Services (Consumption

 

Participants:

  WorkGroup3

Highest hopes:

  • A health care system with lower costs, greater health benefits, higher quality, and greater coverage of the population than would have occurred otherwise.
  • A healthy population and improved human well-being

What we need to do to accomplish this vision:

  • Better understand the cost drivers of health care -new modalities/technology; demand/consumption
  • Improve access to health care
  • Alternatives to insurance
  • Community health centers/discount programs
  • Coverage is not affordable—reduce benefits to reduce costs; preventive care increase in co-payments
  • Health care reform
  • Prepaid Health Care Act of 1974 (PHCA) reform
  • Universal coverage
  • Financing the system– who should bear the cost (government and private sector); who should bear costs in the private sector
  • PHCA—legal avoidance

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • Maximize participation in existing health care insurance programs (public and private)
  • Dialogue and education regarding requirements of PHCA
  • Participate in the work of the Hawaii Uninsured Project (HUP) - a collaboration of community representatives convened to develop policy options that will enhance access to health care for the uninsured in Hawaii. For more information, contact Laurel Johnston at ljohnston@hipaonline.com.

Ongoing Discussion

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11. ISSUE: LONG TERM CARE AND FINANCING FOR THE ELDERLY (AND SUPPORT FOR CAREGIVERS)

Participants

Highest hopes:

  • Dedicated revenue stream to support quality of life/services for elderly and disabled; and more support by volunteers and through civic engagement by community(ies)

What we need to do to accomplish the vision:

  • Invest in infrastructure (e.g. family support center at community colleges or other facilities in neighborhoods)
  • Adequate training for professionals and paraprofessionals
  • Mobilize non-profit organizations, churches, neighborhood groups to develop creative ways to support the elderly and disabled
  • Public education on problem and need

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • Work with groups to mobilize grassroots and    educate/work with/promote issues with policymakers

 

Next Steps:

  • Add long term care issues on Public Policy Center website

Ongoing Discussion

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12. ISSUE: CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AND INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC POLICY

Leaders and Participants:

Highest Hopes :

  • Creation of deliberative body
  • Creation of economic system
  • Hawaii can define a sustainable economic system that will benefit Hawaii's residents to actively benefit and participate in a rich and meaningful quality of life.
  • To engage citizens to be agents of change in a process where their voices are heard and their input is valued and reflected in the outcomes.

WorkGroup5

What we need to do to accomplish the vision:

  • A stable economic environment with affordable housing promoting homeownership, living wages, good health, and educational systems, while promoting environmental stewardship
  • Tempering capitalism with environmental and social responsibility—the basis of sustainable policies
  • Develop a bottom-up process starting with defining our vision and values
  • Define issues where we CAN make real change
  • Select issue
  • Educate the community (resource people, urls, research)
  • Build framework for change
  • Develop Plan
  • Family support system
  • Create deliberative bodies where people feel the stakes
  • Establish an economic system whereby people can earn a living wage with ONE job—not live paycheck-to-paycheck—so they can have time and energy to participate in community activities
  • Find entrepreneurs who will start new businesses where community members will find employment
  • Improve people's skills through education
  • Loss of sense of community; community lost touch with their resources. Is it related to the sense of lack of public participation?
  • Decrease in participation numbers
  • Culture and economic development, administration for public policy to create continuous dialogue
  • Redesigning system to be more conducive for public policy; how to participate in the new wave
  • Vibrant democracy needs public policy; less participation because agenda was setup before they talked to the public, learn from the reality
  • Use technology to empower public policy
  • Alternative to economic globalization   to connect local and global through multitude process (lots of them are excluded in global monetary system); global system is an exclusive not inclusive system, ways to do things differently
  • System change to address current system excluding- the affected group
  • With the advances of the internet citizen involvement is shifting from geographic to internet-based
  • Leadership holds the key to change the system
  • Everybody has a place at the table
  • Hawaii participation in globalization-- how to participate but at the same time to hold local identity

How we're going to do it (action plan/strategies):

  • Dedicated and educated leadership
  • Community get-together
  • Job creation
  • Pride in being local
  • Change codes so sense of Hawaii is not lost
  • Try to recreate ahupua'a system
  • Builders should create housing that reflects Hawaii, not walled mansions which restrict views and do not take advantage of trade winds, etc.

 

Ongoing Discussion

 

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