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SIRACUSA: But I want to -.
<br />WATANABE: Yes.
<br />SIRACUSA: Point out that not all the funding has to come from the County or from our
<br />tax dollars. For example, the USDA has a special program called rural electrification and they
<br />have other programs that give very large grants to communities to upgrade, to put in electrical
<br />energy and other utilities such as WiFi and that sort of thing. So it doesn’t have to necessarily
<br />come out of our tax dollars. But those -.
<br />WATANABE: I agree -.
<br />SIRACUSA: But those grantors would not consider a grant application for something
<br />like that unless there were some kind of documents that authorize the community to initiate that
<br />sort of a program such as the Puna Community Development Plan would do. So just to answer
<br />that part of your question, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
<br />WATANABE: I agree. The Community Development Plan, though -.
<br />SIRACUSA: And I hope my cats don’t hear that.
<br />WATANABE: The Community Development Plan, though, is not specific to that. And
<br />it’s my understanding that it at some point becomes ordinance. And then what? It’s not like it’s
<br />saying subject to any available funding from wherever; it just says go do it, and we have a
<br />timetable to do it. But I don’t see anything in there that says and this is how we’re going to fund
<br />it. That’s where I have a problem. Not with the actual goal, okay, but how are you going to fund
<br />it.
<br />OLSON: Mr. Chairman.
<br />WATANABE: Yes, Mr. Olson.
<br />OLSON: We had a great deal of discussion on that very issue, and our conclusion
<br />on that was what is going to happen, if we don’t do that. In other words -, let me give you some
<br />figures we worked with: the total numbers of parcels by district, okay, as of 1999 there were
<br />16,600 parcels in Kau, there were 5,205 parcels in South Kona, 15,300 in North Kona, South
<br />Kohala had 7,500, North Kohala had 2,800, Hamakua had a total of 3,450, North Hilo 1,273,
<br />South Hilo 19,327, Puna 56,989. Now, that’s pieces of land that people own already. And if we
<br />add another potentially 20,000 lots, which is about a number that could be, if you took all of the
<br />Ag parcels that could be zoned Ag-1 or Ag-2 or Ag-5, and let that happen. I mean, the
<br />consequences to the County -, do you really want to have six council people elected from the
<br />district of Puna? I mean, that’s -, politically it becomes the gorilla in the living room – police,
<br />fire services, schools, all of those things. It just -, I mean we’ve already got a monster, and if we
<br />don’t do something about what we can do something about -. We can’t do anything about the
<br />60,000 lots that are there, right?
<br />EXHIBIT C
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