2023-01-19 Leeward Exh B (Items 1&2 Ahu Pohaku Hoomaluhia PL-SMA-2022-000018&PL-SPP-2022-000018)

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THOMA ROBINSON: I do. KNOWLES: Thank you so much. THOMA ROBINSON: Thank you. I am Beth Thoma Robinson. I live in zip code, would say I live in Hawi, I live in Ka`auhuhu Homesteads, ahupua`a would be Awalua. I've been in Kohala for 18 years. I'm, I did submit written testimony,which you all should have in your packet on behalf of the Kohala Community Plan working group. I'd also like to address the letter that was submitted by Toni Withington on behalf of the growth management subcommittee of the Kohala CDP advisory group. And I'm speaking particularly because we have an empty seat for the North Kohala representative on Leeward Planning. I'm not sure how many of the Commissioners are aware of the fact that we don't have an Action Committee, a CDP Action Committee, in Kohala. But Kohala has proactively worked with the Planning Department to create two other structures, and those two structures have attempted to gather larger community input as opposed to the very valid concerns in the process from the neighbors. The CDP advisory group,which is the other letter that was submitted by Toni Withington, and the growth management subcommittee is a pre- existing subcommittee of the CDP going back to our 2008 CDP. It's one of the four focus areas. The concern is that we had not had a quorum on our CDP for many years because no one in Kohala wanted to serve on an action committee that had become essentially an inaction committee. Kohala people are known for being people of action, people who want to get things done, and so they were putting their efforts into those subcommittees that had been meeting continuously for 15 years or putting together new projects under our fiscal sponsor. We met with the Planning Director shortly after he was appointed to the position, and we explained what the concerns were that had led to a situation. And these were people who'd been part of the logistics team, the steering committee, in 2007 and who had served on action committees in the meantime. With the agreement of the Director, we came up with a different structure that we are trying, called an advisory group; it's still nine members, it still meets monthly, but it's not subject to Sunshine Laws, and it's still coordinating input from those same subcommittees that were working under the action committee and were formed under NKCDP process. Simultaneously, there were a number of us who were being recruited to submit on that, to sit on that who said we really don't have any energy for a 15-year-old plan because so much has happened. I work with the affordable housing group; we'd already gone back in and redone our housing survey that we'd done in 2007 because we didn't have accurate data anymore. So we knew that it was possible to go back to the community and get updated community input. So we are calling that the Community Plan, the Kohala Community Plan. Spoken about it with the Planning Director,have his endorsement, it's a plan being written by the community for the community. But those of us who were on the logistics team working with a consultant to gather the community input in 2006,we are replicating that process. Then we are feeding the results as they go into the existing groups. Our hope is that that will give more current community feedback for you as Commissioners and for the Planning Department. So, the applicant did appear in front of the growth management subcommittee, which meets monthly, and they did in fact vote in favor and presented to the advisory group, feeling that this is compatible with what they are hearing not only currently from the community but with our CDP. Our Kohala Community Plan group, as I said in our letter, there is a section that's not actually part 5 EXHIBIT B