A proposal to start a fund to help hungry Oʻahu residents get more locally produced foods appears headed for the November ballot, after the Honolulu Charter Commission advanced it on Tuesday.
The proposal submitted by Hawaiʻi Foodbank would not raise taxes. Instead, it would use a slice of existing property tax revenues to direct $8 million a year to a food security fund.
The fund would support programs to increase “access to healthy and affordable foods grown, raised, or harvested in the State of Hawaiʻi, and value-added or processed products derived primarily from such foods,” the commission said in a report recommending the proposal move forward.
Commission Vice Chair Sommerset Yamamoto choked up speaking about children too hungry to concentrate in class and said Honolulu’s response to hunger among its residents “has remained reactive, sometimes inconsistent and subject to politics of annual budget cycles. And that has to change.”…