MIN CHARTER 2019-04-01 (2018-2020) - Public Hearing

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing April 1, 2019 MS. KOBSA: Aloha. Mahalo to all of you for serving on this Commission and for coming to hear from us in Pahoa. Appreciate it, and I am also here to speak for... toward PONC. I have been involved in the PONC process by nominating properties and then also applying for stewardship grants and I just really value the program. It is my favorite part of County government and I am fully supportive of a, one additional staff position for PONC. It has been great having Maxine to deal with. She is super helpful and having a dedicated person to help with the nomination process and also the application for stewardship funding would be really useful. And then I also support the transfer from the Parks and Rec to the Department of Finance for the acquisition process because that would just streamline things so much and be really helpful. And just also want to reinforce what Diga said about just in general, encouraging you to give full support to PONC in whatever way you can over the process. Mahalo. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you very much. If I could ask Steve Sparks please to come up to the table. Ms. Ward. DEBORAH WARD: Proposal No. CA -9, CA -17, and CA -18 in support and Proposal No. CA -27 in opposition. MS. WARD: Aloha, you have heard from me many times and I will try to be brief but I wanted to thank you all very, very much for showing up tonight because I was expecting one or two Commissioners and it is amazing that you all came, so thank you very much. I know you have a hard week next week and I appreciate the time the time that you have spent. I will note that originally many of us put out the word that it was going to be at six o'clock and I know that at Kapa`au several people showed up that missed being able to testify because it was changed back to five at Commissioner Roehrig's request, so I am glad that there are people here tonight and thank you for coming. Of course I want to reiterate our support for the CA -9 and adding staff to the... a single staff member of the Finance Department to the PONC fund in order to better leverage other funds so that we are not just spending County money and taxpayer money from the 2% but also that we are bringing in Fish and Wildlife Service, Legacy Lands of the State, Trust for Public Lands, and other organizations that are willing to contribute in order to help us save and acquire pieces of new land so that we can keep what we have on the Big Island as the valuable resource that we have that is open space because you see what's happened on Maui and on Kaua`i. It is highly gentrified and very, very gated and we are trying to avoid that here. We want to make people available that land available so that people can have the opportunity to visit and enjoy it. On CA -18, I wanted to point out that currently the Parks and Rec Department is you know administering the maintenance fund. We fully support having it Page 9