I went to Rep. Denny Coffman’s talk story meeting this morning.The topics raised were certainly very enlightening. The best suggestion I heard was giving large incentives for tourists to visit here. In turn that money would be given to the tourists on a debit card on arrival.Which could only be spent in the State of Hawaii.
I also gave my thoughts about state of Hawaii’s broadband infrastructure, Sandwich Isles Communications proposal to buy Hawaiian Telcom and about splitting Hawaii County into two counties.
The decision where to build the Thirty Meter Telescope will happen sometime this week.It will be huge loss for the Big Island (and ultimately the State of Hawaii) if this project is built in Chile instead of Mauna Kea.On top of that, it will start to raise further questions about the future of astronomy on Mauna Kea.
The latter scenario would probably make the anti-astronomy activists very happy. However their opposition is extremely shortsighted. We need to diversify Hawaii’s economy away from its current unsustainable economic base. Astronomy is excellent first step to reach this goal.
I was thrilled to read that the Hawaii County Council will likely not go into executive session on Wednesday to discuss WHT’s lawsuit trying to reverse the recent Hawaii County Council coup.
Lastly, the proposed closure of three Big Island libraries has been deferred for the time being.
