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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -9 March 8, 2019 One is the restroom facilities are a major issue on the land that we steward which is Kawa, it's the Kawa property down in Ka`u. It is 776 acres acquired in 2008 and 2011. Yeah, and the issue of open defecation is pretty bad at this point. The people who are camping and people who are coming down just for the day, that is a huge issue. The only bathrooms on the entire property are at the Hilo gate at the entrance, which is if you are at the coast anywhere from 20 minutes to a half hour, which a lot of people don't make that trip and "we", our organization, pick up the t.p. (toilet paper), so I can speak on behalf of myself and all the people that clean up the mess down there, that it is a huge, huge, issue and it is not something that we want to continue to address on our own. We support the funds being allocated or appropriated or approved for the acquisition or the use of renting a lua and we eventually want a lua that's wheelchair accessible, and we want that at the end of the gravel if at all possible to reduce the walk time from the beach to five minutes. And we also are lobbying for composting toilets, not on the beach but off the trail, right before you hit the beach, if we could get two of those. And ideally if we could also get another lua or composting toilet at the other side of... where the public easement is, I think that would help to resolve a lot of the issues with human waste management down at Kama. I think that was my bell but yeah, we also support the use of the funds for structures, all of our equipment is susceptible to theft down there. We don't keep a lot of it down there but the few pieces of equipment we have down there luckily everyone and the good will of the people, no one has committed any theft, but it puts the strain and the burden on all of the board members and the contractors to host all of the equipment which is a lot to ask of people who are you know for the board, not getting paid. Taking up space in their house and to ask you know, special request to the contractors to house our equipment. I think it is okay but it is not the best option and it complicates our field operations and our work days and it adds extra burden on everybody that I think we can resolve with having like a ship Matson container that is secure down at the property. We support the streamlining of the process. We have waited this past grant to be executed, we waited 13 months and luckily we have a lot of people in our organization including myself, who are skilled enough to acquire other grants where we can hold and pay for the cost of the maintenance through other grants and be creative with how we use our funds, but I don't think that it is a successful recipe especially for other non -profits who may be don't have those skills or if we fall on harder times and are not able to acquire grants from other organizations, then it puts us in a bind and you know, would cause our organization to have to stall on a lot of our projects and so, I support the streamlining of the process however that looks. You know, if the Department of Finance takes the kuleana then I think that that is a good option, whatever it takes to streamline the process. I also support hiring somebody to... CHR. ADAMS: Please summarize. Page 15