2021-10-14 Redistricting Commission minutes (5th Session)

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MELLON-LACEY: Mr. Vice Chair? HUSTACE: Yes. Ms. Bath, is that you? MELLON-LACEY: No, this is Ms. Mellon-Lacey. HUSTACE: Oh! Ms. Mellon-Lacey, thank you. MELLON-LACEY: I just want to jump in here and say that we are deviating considerably from our agenda and that if a discussion of the proper way for the Commission to proceed in its business is wanted, then we need to put that onto the agenda for your next meeting. But we are kind of deviating here from what's on our agenda. HUSTACE: Thank you, Ms. Mellon-Lacey, for correcting us there. So, we'll jump back to item 2 then. Is there any further discussion? BATH: Bath. HUSTACE: Ms. Bath. BATH: What my intent wasn't was to present this as an agenda item to petrissage specifically, whether or not we were going to do this. I apologize if it was reflected on the agenda as that. What my intent was, was to open this up as a discussion, this specific issue that I came up with, to address it because I too put Boiling Pots in the Hamakua Coast when I've been playing around with it. Puna is growing. I believe we have like a third of the Island's population. We're massive and things are going to have to change. And change is not always comfortable. Lines will have to be drawn and there will need to be adjustments made and I understood that this was what our job was. And in this particular case, it stuck out to me that this is a there's so many reasons to not have this here. And so, I put it on the table, again I say for transparency. So, whoever's watching this with the public can hear us having the discussion so that I could have a public discussion with District 4 and what happened was, I'm not surprised with what happened because this situation is going to surface in every major adjustment we make. Where we're taking people from one district that might have lived in that district their whole life and they're sticking them in District 2, from Puna to District 2. You're taking a person from rural and putting them in a more urban. And so, that was my intent. The discussion really was my intent. What are we going to do? How are we as a Commission going to dialogue with one another? I can't emphasize that we have a time crunch. Now if the process is in place, great let's do it and we can have a meeting. We'll just have a day meeting and we'll just do the work. But I wanted this to be brought to the table so that some light can be shown on it. It was not to petrissage my specific district and I apologize if somehow it was agendized as that. So, I would like to withdraw any discussion specific to whether or not Kalapana is going to go from District 5 to District 4 at this time. And we can do that when we are working on it collectively now that I kind of get a feel that's what we're going to be doing. Is that correct, Mr. Chair? 26