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SQUASSONI: Right, right. As a courtesy I would like to put someone back in the space
<br />that they love; but, no, it’s not tied, legally it’s not tied to that space, to the land or to the sticks,
<br />actually.
<br />GRAHAM: Thank you. Commissioner Watanabe, you had a question? I don’t think
<br />we need to go too much longer here today. Maybe you’re hearing and all, but -.
<br />WATANABE: No, I have a comment. You know, we have a letter here to Mr. Koob, I
<br />believe it’s from the Planning Director; and on page 2 of that it says “Therefore, the Planning
<br />Director is recommending that no more than 13 hale units with no individual kitchen facilities be
<br />approved.” And yet we’re talking about permanent residents. Throughout the material that we
<br />had, we were also talking about in various areas about each unit having a refrigerator, each unit
<br />having a kitchen unit; and I know, okay, you can say yes, no, whatever. I think what it all boils
<br />down to for me is you’ve got an occupancy issue. You know, to me, when you’re talking about a
<br />retreat and temporary residents and transient people, I’m not envisioning a community. But now
<br />all of a sudden you’ve got, what is that, 52 units. They said you can have as much as 2 people in
<br />each unit. That’s 104 people; and all those people have got to eat, they have waste. What are we
<br />going to do here? And you’re going to concentrate them there? And by their own admission
<br />they’re saying, you know, the plan is to come back and say we want to do more, ask for more. I
<br />think, I cannot see how anybody would have envisioned the retreat as having potentially 104
<br />people in it, nearly permanently. You know, cause I could say I’m a student but I’m a lifetime
<br />student so, you know, I’m not faculty but I’m there 365 days a year. You know, I just, and they
<br />may actually intend to do this. But I think if we were to approve something like this then we’re
<br />opening up a can of worms for everybody else that’s going to come in and tweak it just a little bit
<br />with one or two different words; and then you’re stuck.
<br />GRAHAM: Okay, thanks for your thought. Mr. Koob, you have something to say?
<br />KOOB: I appreciate that concern; and I really think that it’s really important that
<br />we really be clear that we’re not trying to pull off a subdivision with permanent residents. And I
<br />think the way we proved that is by our history. We have been around since 1975. Kalani Honua
<br />has been operating since 1980 when we got our special use permit. And in that time there have
<br />been staff, there’s international staff, there are volunteers from all over, they come and go,
<br />they’re not permanent residents. We’ve had an Alu Like Program; and with that program we
<br />have wonderful permanent staff that are native people and other staff that live in the area, and
<br />some of whom live on premises. And even the staff of those who have lived on the premises
<br />have changed over time; but it’s great that they’ve been there for long periods. And we have
<br />faculty, we have yoga teachers that have come back for 30 years. We have repeating groups that
<br />keep coming back and they are there every year. I think we’ve demonstrated, and we’ve
<br />demonstrated in our reports to the IRS, to the Planning Department, that we are an educational
<br />facility, that we’re a transient guest facility, in terms of the students that come there, and that
<br />we’ve been doing this for, you know, all this time. And we’re not trying to do anything
<br />different.
<br />We’re actually just trying to have the support people that are essential to making a retreat center
<br />operate successfully, to have them have their places where they will be staying, which means as
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