Don’t worry about cons and costs, Hawaii, just be happy

The salvo of reports detailing the state of Hawaii’s unrelenting happiness continues.

Just last week, the Gallup Poll weighed in, proclaiming 2012 to be the fourth year in a row with us listed No. 1 in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being index.

"Residents living in Hawaii were most likely to experience daily enjoyment and least likely to have daily worry or stress, which contributed to their high emotional health.

"Hawaii workers also reported having the most positive work environments in the nation," said the pollster.

That much open good-heartedness just cries for a counterpoint, and there is one: the Hawaii Fed-Up Index.

Just this week, there were four new entries to tip the scales from bonhomie to fed-up.

First up is the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. Not content to raise water rates by 70 percent, it just announced that it will need $9.5 million to study climate change and how it will affect our water supply.

If BWS had said it would spend $9.5 million to build a really big dam or reservoir to catch all the water pouring off the Koolaus every winter, it would be understandable — but the money is just for mulling around about how dry it will get.

Officials did say it will also go for an assessment of the condition of BWS pipelines and other infrastructure, and will determine capital improvement priorities for the future.

Then the folks from Kakaako, the Hawaii Community Development Authority, decided they still can’t figure out what to do with the apparently historic but noxious Royal Hawaiian Brewery building.

You recall this building was purchased 14 years ago, but because the rehab in 1996 included termite-treated beams and flooring smelling so bad, no one could work in the place.

For the second time in two months, the HCDA board postponed a vote on whether to do $6.1 million in repairs to the renovations.

Since that fix-up failure, the state has learned. For instance, in 2003, the state shut down the nine-story downtown Kamamalu Building. After estimating that fixing it up would cost more than $27 million, state officials just hired people to remove the asbestos and shut off the power. Since Ben Cayetano was governor, the building has sat dark and unused. It does stand as a perfectly preserved example of an abandoned public building.

If all that doesn’t edge up the Fed-Up Index, there is the University of Hawaii.

The institution of higher learning that has spent more than $1 million investigating how it lost $200,000 to alleged con men promoting a phony Stevie Wonder concert, has been raising national rankings.

Students at UH are No. 2 in the nation for paying the highest percentage increase in tuition, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Falling just short of No. 1 University of Arizona, UH boosted its annual bite on students 108 percent between the 2006-07 academic year and the current 2012-13 academic year. Formerly $4,522, tuition now runs $9,404," the Journal reported.

And the No. 1 contributor to our Fed-Up Index is the announcement by new Mayor Kirk Caldwell that his ambitious plans to fix Honolulu roads translates into a 5-cents-a-gallon increase in gasoline taxes.

The city now takes in 16.5 cents out of the 68 cents per gallon in federal, state and county gasoline taxes. The tax on Hawaii drivers is now the third-highest in the nation.

Amazingly, all this has not stopped our incessant cheerfulness.

We are the happiest tweeters in the land of Twitter. Last month the University of Vermont studied how many happy words are included in geotagged tweets.

Yup, that’s Hawaii typing "happy words" instead of "sad words" more than any other state.

———

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.