Question: We drove past Honolulu Hale over the weekend and noticed that those ugly metal arches left over from Honolulu City Lights are still up. When will they be taken away? The City Lights celebration was way back in December, and the regular, beautiful ground decorations followed Shaka Santa and Tutu Mele to their warehouse home long ago. Also, is there any timetable for finishing up construction in and around the other buildings adjacent to the hale and behind the “black wall” barriers? If I recall, that’s where the preschool will relocate while repairs are made in the parking garage, over which the preschool now operates.
Answer: “The remaining arches will be transported off the property on Saturday. The additional lights from Show Aloha Land used for Honolulu City Lights this year for the first time made disassembly a bit more challenging,” Scott Humber, a spokesperson for Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, said in an email.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the annual holiday celebration on Civic Center grounds, Mike Gangloff of Show Aloha Land and his sponsors donated 250 feet of lighted tunnels, 50 illuminated trees and festive motifs throughout the grounds, supplementing the city’s usual outdoor displays, including Shaka Santa, Tutu Mele, the Snow Family, the Mele Kalikimaka blocks and more. Honolulu City Lights kicked off Dec. 7 with a block party, electric light parade and tree-lighting ceremony and ended Jan. 3, when all the outdoor displays went dark.
As for your second question, Humber said that “construction on the buildings adjacent to Honolulu Hale is expected to be completed by July.”
Q: Regarding the 9/11 license plate, is the whole thing red, white and blue? I don’t think I’ve seen one of these on the road.
A: No, only the decal to the left of the license plate’s letter and number sequence is red, white and blue, with a stars-and-stripes design and the phrase “America United. Sept. 11, 2001.” Most of the plate is white, with a rainbow over the top, like a standard Hawaii license plate.
Amid a shortage of standard Hawaii license plates, Honolulu’s Department of Customer Services is informing motorists who need new license plates that organization decal license plates are available; they support various causes or nonprofit organizations. The shortage of regular plates is expected to last until May.
Organization decal license plates are the same size as standard Hawaii license plates, but the letter and number sequence is shorter, leaving room for a decal promoting the organization.
The America United 9/11 decal license plate is the only one of 15 available organization decal license plates that costs the same as a standard Hawaii license plate and carries no additional annual fee. It was first issued October 2001, to honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to declare U.S. solidarity.
Q: Auwe! Rather than throwing away millions of COVID-19 tests, they should have let us order more than four free tests at a time on covidtests.gov. I tried to order more Tuesday after hearing the news, but it said my household already got its allotment. Wasteful! We have elderly family members and we take respiratory illnesses seriously. A lot of people do! Just go to a store and you’ll see plenty people still wear masks. We would use those tests.
A: Several news outlets reported Tuesday, following an initial report in the Washington Post, that officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were considering destroying about 160 million at-home COVID-19 tests that the government has in storage and shutting down the website through which U.S. households ordered them for free. However, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday that the plan had been nixed for now and that the website would remain online until further updates.
Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 2-200, Honolulu, HI 96813; call 808-529-4773; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
