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KERN: Thank you. Any questions from Commissioners? Seeing none, thank you very much.
<br />Peter Kubota, name and address, and you may begin.
<br />KUBOTA: Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Kern and the members of the Commission.
<br />My name is Peter Kubota. I reside at 35 Terrace Circle, Hilo; and I also have an office down the
<br />street at 505 Kilauea; and I directly abut this project. I'm speaking as an individual and not as a
<br />representative of any organization. I believe that if we build that they will come. This, you
<br />know, it’s trite, but this is really a trail of dreams. There’s so much potential for this thing.
<br />And, you know, I was born and raised here in Hilo, and Hilo was a much more conservative
<br />place 40-45 years ago. I attended the University of Oregon about 30 years ago; and if any of you
<br />guys have been to Eugene, the shopping center was, you know, a few miles away from the
<br />campus. And I had to, you know, the only transportation I had was to ride a bike. And
<br />fortunately for us there’s a trail along the Willamette River. It was a 7-mile round trip back and
<br />forth; and I just always remember how beautiful it was to hear the river, not have any cars. And
<br />there was about maybe 100 yards separating the trail from the nearest houses. You come back to
<br />Hilo and you see that, wow. You know, we’ve got places like Wailoa Park, it’s one of the most
<br />beautiful places you ever can be in. But it’s so underutilized because it’s not maintained, there’s
<br />no real infrastructure and things. And, you know, if you go there and you appreciate it, or if you
<br />look at what the County did with Leonard Bisel’s design at Liliuokalani and Coconut Island,
<br />we’ve got so much potential here. And we can do this for all the City of Hilo.
<br />When I first got involved with this it was this Hilo Bike Paths organization. I just kind of did
<br />some internet searching and I hooked up with Sandy Bonk; and they’re kind of, there’s two sides
<br />to it. They’re kind of more geared to like bicycling is for transportation. You know you get here
<br />and there doing that stuff. I’m an occasional bicyclist, I would say. My original tires on my
<br />mountain bike is 15 years old and it still hasn’t worn out. But I, you know, because I do, you
<br />know, I’m an attorney and I do this kind of stuff, you know, I kind of help figure how to get
<br />things through. So I did a list of stakeholders and who we had to touch on to try and get help to
<br />get this project going around by law. But then our group got contacted by Mayor Kim’s office
<br />and he brought all the stakeholders into this very room. And it was the canoe paddlers, the large
<br />harbors, small boat harbors, soccer field guys, everybody that had a stake in this, the Downtown
<br />Improvement, and he got us here to start talking. And thanks very much to Beth Dykstra, I
<br />mean, she championed this thing and put heart and soul into this project right up to this point.
<br />The last thing I wanted to say is just, you know, we take so much for granted in our lives, yeah,
<br />but we live in the most beautiful city, in the most beautiful state, in the best country in the world.
<br />And we’ve got to appreciate it, and we’ve got to show it off to everybody else. My job is as an
<br />estate planner. I help people figure out their legacy, you know, for the kids in a financial sense
<br />and planning kind of stuff. I believe that this is our legacy. We build this, we leave it for future
<br />generations, and this is the mark that we leave on this earth when we’re gone. Thank you.
<br />KERN: Thank you very much. Any questions from Fellow Commissioners? Seeing none,
<br />thank you very much. Claudia Rohr, name and address, and you may begin.
<br />ROHR: Claudia Rohr, 369 Nene Street, Hilo, Hawai‘i. I'm here representing myself, although
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