MIN CHARTER 2019-03-08 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -9 March 8, 2019 section, and I submitted that maybe three or four weeks ago and asked that it be delivered. Just to streamline it, not to change the impact and I hope that you will also take care of the budget stabilization fund in the same manner, and I hope the Commission on both of these will raise the amount required to be put into these two funds to something reasonable. At least two million, possibly five million dollars a year. I want to support CA -18. I have spoken to you about this before so I am not going to go into a lot of detail about it, but we have learned a lot in the last 13 years about the needs of the PONC fund and its maintenance fund. I will tell you as a Council member, I was able to purchase a piece of land on Ali`i Drive and create the Kipapa Park using the PONC funds. It is a beautiful little piece of land right across from the shoreline. Unfortunately on the shoreline of Ali`i Drive there is very little public access and it is very important that sometimes we buy entire parcels of land because developers do not want us local, non -local, whatever we are, we are all here together, they don't want "us" down on that shoreline when they buy land. You will notice that all the hotels do their very best to exclude the public from getting in there. As an example, the Mauna Kea Hotel has I think 20 or 25 spaces allotted to the public and after those are filled, the public is not allowed to come in, only their guests, and that happens every single time. During my terms of office, my staff and I went down to Ali`i Drive and we walked every single public access six feet wide to the shoreline. They were almost always blocked. One in particular, I will never forget had boulders, three, four, five feet in circumference at the trail. So you actually had to climb over the boulders to get down to the shoreline, or you had to walk underneath the substructure of the house that elevated it above the ocean area in order to get down. I mean I had to trespass on somebody's property instead of using the easement. These types of things happen all the time when you have an easement and somebody doesn't want you on the property, and it is notorious, notorious that this occurs when developers take over. We have finally got O`oma purchased to stop that from happening and it will happen again and again, and that is why we usually have to buy an entire parcel of land. The PONC Commission has the right to do an easement. They have the right to buy a portion of land, or they can buy the whole parcel. Whatever is appropriate for what we are trying to do. So, I do not support CA -27. I don't like eminent domain. It just makes people very, very, very, angry and an easement that is only a few feet wide even if you make it 20 feet wide, remember they may let you have an easement to the shoreline but then they will block the shoreline because that is what they want to do. They don't want you down there on "their land" even if it is public land, and I have been a witness to that myself. Excuse my voice. So, I support CA -18. I think that is a great thing. I support CA -17 with the amendments to just streamline the wording in it, and the budget stabilization fund Page 13