FTA, HART ART $$$ SCAM, Cartoon Concrete Columns, Few Cheap Coloring Books For Hawaiian Culture
Has anyone ever seen the MILLIONS in purchased HART Rail Artwork?
ART AWARDS – Handing Out Millions With No Stations. Where is the artwork? Rail not running until at least 2026-27. Why all these art commissions now? And WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Divide 21 stations by $7.5 million - zero monies have been allocated to maintain it.
July 25 at 9 AM, HART Office, Public NOT invited, HART meeting on Tuesday to decide on coloring books for destroying Pueo, Ewa farmland. City awaits State Legislature to bail out the City and HART for the never ending $$$ Party FTA Artwork Rules
This is why the City Council was against a HART Rail forensic audit! Their friends and relatives are getting lots of these money tossing kickbacks and Payoffs.
Video game getting $190,000 in Honolulu rail money
Large very lucrative HART Rail Art Contracts going out almost entirely for very abstract art and sculpture as HART and City awaits State Legislature to bail out the never ending unaccountable spending.
At a HART Consulting Party meeting on Tuesday, HART had realized and admitted they were not keeping up with the FTA Programmatic Agreement (that few people know about and which the “news media” has virtually never reported on) and will need to ask for MORE MONEY.
After shoveling out MILLIONS of art contracts, HART realizes they have “no budget” for fulfilling their FTA PA agreement to fully record and present the history of the areas around the rail stations as per FTA Grant Agreement to get the $1.5 Billion. (Another City breach of contract.)
The HART plan- maybe some very cheap coloring books to “honor” Hawaiian culture.
Hawaiian art culture almost entirely omitted. No sense of local place, just art abstractions purchased for millions. HART insider millions art rail party.
The overall budget for the Art-In-Transit Program was $5 Million. Submittals reviewed by a transit art committee but no one knows who they are. HART also has a “History Committee” to spend $500,000 but no one knows who they are and what they have spent the money on.
No accountability at HART.
Was the very expensive artwork selected just to amuse Asian rail tourists? The budget for each piece ranges from $125,000 to $450,000 based on the artwork and the station, officials have admitted.
The city has already spent $694,000 for art in the Farrington Station group, which includes the West Loch, Leeward Community College and Waipahu Transit Center stations.
However these stations have not yet been built and rail is not expected to even by running until 2016-27. Why is the money being spent NOW? Because there is NO ACCOUNTABILITY and the State Legislature and City Council will GIVE THEM ALL THEMONEY THEY WANT, no questions asked.
"This art program is an excellent example of building rail better," Caldwell said. "This provides an opportunity for our local artists to showcase their talent and their passion for Hawaii. This will truly be a canvas of creativity for generations to come" – Caldwell HART news release
The city “may offer” the public an opportunity to participate in the artist selection, but in fact this never happened. Selections were made by HART rail insiders. Friends of Caldwell.
The Art-In-Transit funds come from two sources: the Full Funding Grant Agreement signed December 19, 2012 between HART and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and revenue from the State of Hawaii’s general excise and use tax surcharge.
Federal guidelines call for transit projects to provide between 0.5 percent and 5 percent for a project called Art in Transit.
The FTA defines rail station "art" broadly, allowing works ranging from free-standing sculpture to wall pieces to functional elements such as lighting, seating or railings. Presumably then elevators, escalators and toilets could be classified as “artwork” by FTA.
The city said in a news release years ago that it plans to provide 1 percent of the estimated cost of the stations, or about $5 million for artwork. However project and station costs have skyrocketed since then and it would be assumed that now the figure would be $10 million for artwork, or eventually -$15-20 million for artwork once the final projects are known, which no one knows at this point what anything will cost.
"HART's art program will reflect the rich tapestry of Hawaii's culture, tradition and histories.”
Lisa Yoshihara, HART's Transit Arts Program administrator, said in a written statement that the city "wants the art to reflect a ‘sense of place' that recognizes Hawaii's multicultural landscape and reflects the community, or ahupua’a in which the station resides."
However it is very hard to see how highly paid abstract artists without any public input will result in this happening.
The HART meeting on Tuesday asked the few attendees (since the public was never invited) to decide maybe on coloring books for destroying Pueo, Ewa farmland, burial sites, which HART denies exist. In fact the only history HART admits to are downtown buildings.
Empty stations if ever built to have expensive abstract artwork for mostly Asian rail tourists, concrete pylons, a few coloring, maybe 500 coloring books "honor" Hawaiian culture.
Why does HART have apparently ZERO BUDGET for local cultural history stories but millions for expensive abstract artwork which has no place to go and will be eventually very expensive to guard 24-7, 24 hours a day in the massively expensive electricity intensive “palace” rail stations?
Where there any specific guidelines for purchasing artwork? No, it was all up to the whim of a few HART rail insiders as to who got the huge abstract art station contracts.
Originally the entire Art In Stations program was advertised as “offered to artists all over Hawaii (and the world) according to news media reports, but in fact there was basically ZERO art awards to young or actual ethnic Hawaiian artists, just the art insiders picked by HART. No representation of local art cultures and history.
HART RAIL ART AWARDS
John Koga $170,000.00
Carol Kouchi Yotsuda $160,000.00
ART: No artwork could be found
Mamoru Sato $246,000.00
Carol Bennett $230,000.00
Robert Flint No Amount Shown
Karen Lucas No Amount Shown
Satoru Abe No Amount Shown
Hans Ladislaus $190,000.00
Jay Wilson $160,000.00
Robert Kushner $219,500.00
