2020-09-21 Leeward Exh A (SPP 20-000218)

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So, making a living farming, I really just want to talk about how hard that's been for us. In 2019 that was the first year that we have ever been able to take a salary from our farm. We had farmed for six years making no money at allsorry, my husband will talk for a second. D. HICKEY: (Indiscernible–away from microphone) I don't, what do you want me to say? I don't know K. HICKEY: Okay, he doesn't know, he didn't prepare. But we had been working for all these years not taking a salary. In 2019 that was the very, very first time that we ever were able to pay ourselves, and that was because of the event venue. We were also able to, to do a lot of other things that was really helpful for our farm. We were able to sell all of our coffee at a profitable rate for the first time because we could sell our coffee to the same clients that were at events; we could sell them to the guests; we could sell them as coffee wedding favors; sell through coffee like, you know, people would serve the coffee at their weddings. So it was in symbiosis with our, with our weddings and events, our coffee, and our farming is all one. We havesorry, I have some notes—we've been able to hire four fulltime employees. Right now we only have two because of coronavirus, but before coronavirus we had four fulltime employees with full benefits, paid time-off, 401K matching, bonuses at the end of the year. And the reason we were able to do that was because of weddings. We were never able to be the kind of employers that we wanted to be for our farmworkers before we had weddings. I realize that it is not an ag use to have a, a wedding venue, but it is what allows us to do our agriculture; those things together is what allows us to be a small farm and a profitable farm. We are also able from our small venue to support so many other local businesses like cake bakers, florals, caterers, musicians, photographers, on and on and on. And I think a lot of those people are going to be testifying at this meeting in our favor. I really want you guys to understand, and the whole commission to understand, that if we lose this and we don't get to have the wedding venue, it will be really hard for us financially, but it will also have far-reaching impact on all of our vendors. Some of our vendors count on us for almost all of their income, and they are going to talk to you about like - - -venue that's so many other - - - CARR - -CARR SMITH: - - -break up a little bit. K. HICKEY: - - - Can hear me now okay? Chair? CARR SMITH: Yeah, go ahead. K. HICKEY: Okay. We also really want to support charitable events and kama`aina events with our venue. We get asked a lot to host charitable events, a lot. And we have not been able to do that as much as we want it, because the space that we've been out of in the past has been our home. So it's like, it's been really hard to do any increase of events here, especially for not being paid for them, but with the new venue, we would like a condition of our permit that at least five percent of our events be charitable events. We've been approached by Donkey Mill Art Center, the Kona Coffee Festival, Kona Coffee Pageant, and Slow Food, I mean there are so 17 EXHIBIT A