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"Over 40 years ago, my parents bought our property on Hualalai Road because they wanted to live away from the city and in the natural beauty of this majestic mountainside. They did not want to live in Honolulu or in Hilo, or in any other high density area. They wanted to live here, above the town of Kona and surrounded by the natural beauty of the Hualalai area. They built a house that blended in with the landscape and they left the big trees and natural landscape. "What is being proposed here runs counter to everything they loved, and I love, about Kona. This development will not blend in with the surroundings — it will destroy them. It is not an environmentally friendly development, and in fact, it is anti - environment. It will destroy the natural vegetation and, with it, important wildlife and bird habitats, and replace it with a flat landscape of asphalt, concrete, high density houses, and motor vehicles. "In the past several years, we have seen large tracts of our Hualalai mountainside scraped clean of its vegetation, flattened, and bulldozed into pads that stay vacant and unoccupied for years. Given the many other possible locations for this type of development, there is not a justifiable reason to rezone this particular tract of Ag land and place a high- density development in this location. This development will forever rob our local community of needed open space and natural habitat. This Ag land, with its ranches, old growth trees and vegetation, is symbolic of the Kona hillside and is the reason many of us have chosen to live here. "This development is not something we as a community want. It does not enhance the neighborhood. It will take away the very environment that is the reason we all love this area. Once this land is developed in this manner, another piece of the natural beauty of the Hualalai mountainside will be forever lost. Once gone, it cannot be recovered." HOUSEL: Thank you very much. COATS: And I will submit this to staff, so -. HOUSEL: Yes, please do. Thank you. If you can give that to the staff, that'll be great. Mark, would you like to proceed? VAN PERNIS: Yes. I'm Mark Van Pernis. I'm an attorney here on behalf of the Heights at Hualalai Homeowners Association. I have a little bit of a problem with the fact that the staff is not presenting its position or its information on Parcel 42, as well as Parcel 43; it's difficult to testify in response to what the, in not knowing what the recommendations or position of the staff is. So we are somewhat in the dark, and I think that's a disadvantage. HOUSEL: If you would like to testify on the first item. You will have the privilege to testify on the other items also. VAN PERNIS: Well, for expediency sake, I'll try to limit my testimony to three minutes, but I did intend to testify on both Parcels 42 and 43, first and second items — so perhaps if I can run over a little bit. HOUSEL: Okay. If you'd like to, yes, thank you. 5