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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -14 August 8, 2019 MS. STANBORO: Okay. If you have driven around the south end of the island, and seen the spot at Whittington Pier called Honu'apo where the fish ponds are, everyone the tourists go nuts at the view of that. Everyone thinks that that is the most beautiful spot. That is actually what started the whole PONC thing going because that was going to be developed as a closed gate fancy house community by a fellow from San Francisco, and when the community actually got their act together and started working together down there, they asked the Trust for Public Land to come in and help them raise funds. It was not an easy job but it got done and what happened... that was before the 2%... what happened is a wealthy person in the area that had property down there actually put some money in trust into an account for the 501(c)(3) that they could draw from for toilets, to mow the place, to keep it clean, to fix the parking area, because Whittington park, it was part of Whittington that the state owned it, they didn't realize that Brewer had sold it off. So that is a beautiful park. The reason why it is so beautiful is because somebody put the money up to use the... basically the interest from... to do the work to pay for the mowers, to pay for the gas, this isn't just paying people. It is paying for what is needed to mow the lawns on these places and to keep it up... weed wackers, the gas, whatever. So you know if you haven't, take a good look at that piece of property. And people use it to picnic all the time, but that was done before so basically what we are trying to do here. Is have that money put there so that people can run their mowers, get the gas, and keep these places, you know, as nice as Honu'apo was. It was a lot of Hawaiian groups coming together that don't usually work together and then when they saw the power of what working together can do, without using the government, that and actually Harry threw in the last bit of money. He said "hey if the County is getting 300 acres, we can put in a little bit of money for it." And so Harry made that happen at the very end. You know, part of the $3 million dollars anyway. But that is kind of what we are doing. It was successful, it worked well, and we want that to continue happening with the properties. I have known Maile and Karen Eoff for a long time. We worked together and I just thank them for stepping up here at the end and you know, helping us put this through. Again, I want to remind you because we have gone through all of the things that... it's the lack of trust of government that causes problems like what we are seeing at Mauna Kea. It's a lack of trust of government that makes people say to me "what Sammie, you're still working on this, you're still fighting for this, why do you... don't you get tired of going to those meetings? Say something for me." You know, and so, we want to show them that our government does work for us and especially after we voted continuously. Kaua`i, Maui, and O`ahu are so envious of us and they tell me all the time when I go to board meetings over there "you guys are so lucky that you got in and did this early, and you protected lands. If only we could have done this on our islands earlier." So thank you very much for your time and your effort. I appreciate it. Thanks. Page 8