{"id":775,"date":"2016-04-17T23:47:41","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T09:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?p=775"},"modified":"2016-06-30T08:39:11","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T18:39:11","slug":"are-mayor-caldwells-pr-peeps-playing-games-with-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/?p=775","title":{"rendered":"Are Mayor Caldwell’s PR Peeps Playing Disinformation Games With the Public?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are Mayor Caldwell’s PR Peeps Playing Games With the Public?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Mayor<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the April 14, 2016 <\/a>\u00a0Ko’olauloa Neighborhood Board meeting at the Queen Liliuokalani Center in Punalu’u,\u00a0I asked Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s representative Mr.\u00a0Adam LeFebvre<\/span><\/strong> <\/a>why the Mayor continued to compete and steal scarce federal HUD’s Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) funds from non-profit organizations. (Note: According to Civil Beat<\/a>:\u00a0 LaFebvre is employed under a personal services contract. He is listed as an Informational Affairs Specialist with the Department of Customer Services, earning $57,720 a year, even though he works in the Mayor\u2019s Office. His contract began in October 2013 and so far has been extended through June 2015.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I was specifically asking why Mayor Caldwell was again – this\u00a0year – \u00a0stealing an additional $1Million from the Federal HUD CDBG funds for the\u00a0controversial Hauula Fire Station Relocation Project #2000068. An average fire station costs about $5 Million to build. In rural Hauula, the\u00a0Mayor wants DOUBLE the lot size and TRIPLE the costs at an estimated $13 Million!<\/p>\n

“Steal”\u00a0was a\u00a0strong word but I was quoting City Council Budget Chair Ann Kobayashi’s<\/strong> words to Director of Department of Budget and Fiscal Services<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0 Nelson H. Koyanagi, Jr.<\/strong> and\u00a0Director Gary T. Kurokawa<\/strong>, Deputy Director at the March 2016\u00a0Budget Committee Hearing at Honolulu Hale.\u00a0 Kobayashi also asked them if they were “proud of what they were doing.”\u00a0 Budget Chair Kobayashi\u00a0explained that the city usually financed its city projects through bonds and so forth. The non-profits that\u00a0serviced\u00a0programs like Homeless, Domestic Violence, Drug Rehabilitation or Women\/Infant did not have such financing options.<\/p>\n

Adam LaFebvre’s response to\u00a0my CDBG funding\u00a0question was it\u00a0had been asked before\u00a0but he would be happy to discuss this question\u00a0further with us\u00a0AFTER the meeting. In\u00a0other words, he did not want to\u00a0address the Mayor’s CDBG funds takings.<\/p>\n

The FEDERAL HUD Community Development Block Grants (CBDG) funds’ Objectives are clear:\u00a0<\/strong>“Projects that are funded in the CDBG program must address<\/strong> the CDBG program\u2019s primary objective, which is the “. . . development of viable urban communities, by providing decent <\/strong>housing and suitable living environments and expanding economic opportunities principally for <\/strong>persons of low- and moderate-income.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mayor<\/p>\n

The\u00a0CDBG\u00a0question\u00a0was certainly\u00a0not old or repetitive. We wanted an explanation to this Mayor’s rationale.<\/p>\n

Mr. Adam Lefebvre’s response\u00a0is disingenuous. The Honolulu City Council is now vetting the 2016-2017 Budget for the Executive<\/a> and Legislative Branches. Mayor Kirk Caldwell, again for this budget year, is stealing from the non-profit organizations.<\/p>\n

The<\/span> \u00a0February 11, 2016<\/a>\u00a0 Ko’olauloa Neighborhood Board\u00a0Meeting was obviously\u00a0too early to ask\u00a0about CDBG funds. The Mayor\u00a0had not submitted his Budget to the Honolulu City Council. The public did not know the Mayor was again going to steal another\u00a0$1Million from the CDBG funds for his extravagant pet project.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0March 10, 2016 <\/a>\u00a0Ko’olauloa Neighborhood Board\u00a0Meeting had no CDBG\u00a0question\u00a0posed. The Mayor’s Representative \u00a0Adam LaFebvre was absent. Instead,\u00a0LaFebvre\u00a0provided a memo for the record\u00a0that was read by a Neighborhood Board Member that included a propaganda item:\u00a0 “\u2022 Fire station \u2013 The Hauula fire station construction is projected to start in spring 2017 and be completed by summer 2018.”\u00a0 <\/span>Of course, he made no mentioned of the Hauula Kupuna’s pending lawsuit against the city at the federal court or the nefarious circumstances .\u00a0(The\u00a0 minutes\u00a0relating to our Neighborhood Board discussions are also often\u00a0questionable or inaccurate.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"EM<\/p>\n

For the record, Mayor Caldwell is asking for another $1 Million<\/strong> of CDBG funds <\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for this budget year 2016-2017. In addition, he’s also asking for $6.7M<\/strong> for Hauula Fire Station Relocation this year, \u00a0at the expense of other more compelling social services and needs.<\/p>\n

\n

So far, Mayor Caldwell has squandered on this particular controversial\u00a0project #2000064:<\/p>\n

$2.4 M<\/strong> CDBG funds used land acquisition ($1M “planning and design” without City\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Council’s knowledge in August 2014 till his Press Conference in November 2014))<\/p>\n

$100,000<\/strong> for “Planning and Design”<\/p>\n

$250,000<\/strong> to explore alternative sites for this fire station. We don’t know how this amount was expended in 2011.<\/p>\n

$1.0 M<\/strong> for “Planning & Design”\u00a0 2015-2016<\/p>\n

Caldwell is requesting from the City Council this year:<\/strong><\/p>\n

$6.7 M<\/strong> for Construction this budget year\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 2016-2017 ( REQUESTING)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

$1.0 M<\/strong> from CDBG funds\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2016-2017 (REQUESTING)<\/p>\n

\u00a0How much more will be requested for cost-overrun? Mayor Queen Antoinette Caldwell is forcing the people\u00a0to eat cake when they are asking for bread.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"em<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Have you seen this PR\u00a0stonewall\u00a0tactic used at other Neighborhood Board meetings?\u00a0Mayor Caldwell’s Representative ended up\u00a0not having to explain or provide a good answer to the public on April 14, 2016 Neighborhood Board Meeting.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
~ ~ ~<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are Mayor Caldwell’s PR Peeps Playing Games With the Public? At the April 14, 2016 \u00a0Ko’olauloa Neighborhood Board meeting at the Queen Liliuokalani Center in Punalu’u,\u00a0I asked Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s representative Mr.\u00a0Adam LeFebvre why the Mayor continued to compete and steal scarce federal HUD’s Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) funds from non-profit organizations. (Note: According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198,50,26,193,43,199],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adam-lefebvre","tag-hauula-fire-station-relocation","tag-honolulu-hale","tag-hud-cdbg-funds","tag-mayor-kirk-caldwell","tag-non-profits-funding"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/countrytalkstory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}