#Legislature

Education at Linekona stretches back 180 years By Robert M. Fox and David Cheever March 01, 2015   Honolulu Star Advertiser ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT M. FOX The Linekona building was founded as a school to teach English to Hawaii’s native children. Let's say you went to Lincoln Elementary School — next to Thomas Square — in the early 1950s. By the time you reached the sixth grade, you had had Lincoln's Gettysburg Address drilled into you so often that you can recite it probably even today. More than that, the school put on a play about Abraham Lincoln and his family on Lincoln's birthday each February, and it was akin to being picked as prom king and queen in high school to be chosen to play Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in sixth grade. The play included Lincoln-era costumes like the tall, silk stovepipe hat plus stiff, formal dress suit for him and tight-laced, heavy fabric long dress with shawl and bonnet for her. These were local kids in the '50s, so can you imagine these 12-year-olds in period costume on the school stage barefoot? Lincoln School was quite a place in its heyday, educating such luminaries as former Honolulu Advertiser owner and philanthropist Thurston Twigg-Smith and Claire Olsen Johnson, former president and longtime member of the board of trustees of Punahou School. Other notable alums were Alexander & Baldwin's dynamic leader Bobbie Pfeiffer, Maui's jocular and popular Mayor Hannibal Tavares, and real estate mogul and community leader Sheridan Ing (the latter three are deceased). It was fun hearing Claire reminisce about playing Mrs. Lincoln in sixth grade with Alex Jamile as Mr. Lincoln. Alex became a top executive at Bankoh and his brother Clinton, who played [...]

Here's a status update as we enter the half-way mark for the 2015 legislative session.  Dear Members and Friends, We are pleased to share with you a status update on historic preservation-related bills at the State Legislature. The session is at the half-way mark, when the initial flurry of bills has been reduced to a more manageable number. At the start of the legislative session in January, over 70 bills were introduced that affected historic preservation. Historic Hawai‘i Foundation participates in the legislative process by tracking and responding to bills and resolutions with the potential to affect historic sites and buildings, including measures related to incentives for preservation, regulations to protect historic properties, and more general measures related to planning, permitting, environmental review, arts and culture. By the mid-point of the session, when bills cross between the Senate and the House, there were about 20 bills still active. Of those, four have the most direct effect on protection of historic resources. As each measure moves through the legislative process, it is amended and revised in ways that are not always predictable. Our testimony and position on the bills also changes as the contents shift, so the comments are relevant to current draft. Two of the bills (SB877 and HB830) attempt to limit the applicability of the state historic preservation program to exclude residences, except for those that are designated on the register of historic places. The bills’ proponents—led by the Building Industry Association—proposed redefining “historic property” to exclude single-family residences, claiming that houses cannot and should not be considered historically significant unless they are among the small percentage designated by the state. Historic Hawai‘i Foundation opposes these measures as currently drafted. The relevant issue is [...]