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thing we came in, being pretty much part of the Hawaiian community after 45 years, as I said,
<br /> we stated that all archaeological sites have to be identified, isolated and protected and given
<br /> public access. So I thought we were doing a good thing to the Hawaiian community. Third
<br /> planned thing is we are not building at all in the floodplain. And I understand that there is a
<br /> flood issue and we are going to leave that alone; in fact, we are even, I'm in discussions because
<br /> I know people from the Nature Conservancy that maybe we can utilize that and bring in
<br /> indigenous Hawaiian plants since it's really unusable to build, and bring back some, you know,
<br /> some of the idea of where that's been of the older days. The parking, you know, is a thing that
<br /> came up kind of after the fact. We are looking at that because we want to probably clear up
<br /> some of the parking. I know, when I go to my land there now, that there's parking on both sides,
<br /> sometimes even double-parking, and it clogs the area, you know, Pahoehoe State Park and also
<br /> Diamond Head Beach. And the last thing is, of course, is just to cover the cost of the building
<br /> and the construction, not really looking to make—I'm not really looking to make a lot of money
<br /> on this; I'm just looking to see what is the best use for the land that we can give back to the
<br /> people.
<br /> And, I've got a lot of letters here. These were all sent to me. And I'm not, like I said, I'm not an
<br /> expert in this area; I'm just showing my feelings. We've got lots of support and we've got some
<br /> dissent. And I want to talk about that very quickly, like one of the examples is we don't have
<br /> safety access and egress; that's all part of the permitting now, we understood that, we corrected
<br /> the permitting to be able to handle that as far as the upper areas, so we do have safety access and
<br /> egress to provide. We are trying to get, like I said, some of the other areas in there. But, at the
<br /> conclusion of this thing, I'm retired, I don't have a lot of money, I have my retirement funds, I
<br /> mean, but I've now invested 300,000 dollars in this permitting process on my own retirement
<br /> funds. I'm just trying to get something back here, if we can make it happen, we can make it
<br /> happen. If we get to a legal situation, legal issue, then I'm done, I can't do anything else, I mean,
<br /> it's going to go away probably. And that's simply because the cost will be so prohibitive, and
<br /> then it will basically take away affordable housing project for West Oahu[sic]. So that's my
<br /> clearing. Hope it helps.
<br /> LINGER: Thank you. To the Planning Director, do you have any objections to the petition?
<br /> YEE: No objections. Comment, though. So, contested cases is one avenue for the public to be
<br /> able to engage in development projects here. So I think it's a very important piece that's been
<br /> provided within our rules and stuff for the public to engage. So the question really is, you know,
<br /> within the criteria, do they have standing? And in this case you are very capable of determining
<br /> that. I personally tend to decide with being a little more—I don't know, I think "lenient" is not
<br /> the right word—but, you know, we want community to have an opportunity to have their say,
<br /> okay. So, with that, I'm open to hearing things. I would also weigh in that I also would hate to
<br /> see that contested case procedures are used to kill any kind of development that occurs,
<br /> especially in West Hawaii. And I'm not saying that's the case here, but I want folks to really
<br /> have standing to be able to make their case to you and not just argue case because they don't like
<br /> a project. So those are just my comments around it.
<br /> LINGER: Thank you. Commissioners, any questions of any of the people up here?
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