2004-07-02 TDJSMLL - Laserfiche WebLink

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GOLDMAN:Good morning. SPRINGER:Good morning. GOLDMAN:I, too, would like to thank those of you that came out andwalked through the site. Because we all know that the map is not the territory, and that what we explain when we actually put ourselves into a situation is different than when were giving the symbolic representations of it. I was not able to come to the last hearing because I had a family situation on the mainland that required my presence, but I heard a little bit about it. And Im gratified that you did not come to hasty conclusion, and I hope that you will continue to deliberate this looking at all of the aspects. Id like to clarify one thing because I feel that the neighborhood group has been characterizedassomewhatself-servingandonlylookingtopreserveanexistinglifestyle, and that our concerns dont need to be on that; and I thinkthat thats an unfair characterization of our group. We never intended for this to turn into any kind of adversarial proceeding. We felt that an issue was being debated that ought to be discussed. Debate immediately polarizes the issue. We felt that many decisions would be made on the basis of information that its quite outdated, its quite theoretical as he pointed out, the percentage of error in his predictions is itself not predictable. And its true that we are the ones that are directly impacted. But its also true that the larger community of Hilo is impacted by the nature of these decisions and the decision-making process. We know the existing directive in place and people go ahead without regard to that directive, and they retroactively want the things changed. I think thats a dangerous precedent. We came asking for clarification. We thought there was a regulation and that it was not being enforced. And my question was, Why wasnt it being enforced? But we did not have all the information, and you folks did not have all the information. So my feeling is that we should all proceed in the spirit of goodwill, to try to create for this area of Hilo which is our community. Were all going to be impacted by things like the traffic in that area. When you walked that area this morning, did you picture 71 cars in the parking lot there. I think thats what the plan calls for. Seventy-one cars is a lot of cars to put into the traffic pattern in that area; and we dont know what the impact is going to be from the Subway building thats going in the corner. So thats a real concern to us. The concerns about the flooding, our question was whos responsible if something goes wrong? Is it the County, is it the developer of the property? Where would we go for recourse if our yards turn into marshes because of the change in configuration? It seems to us that some of the planning and some of the decisions that apparently were being made were premature. It felt to me as though the bridegroom was going ahead planning a honeymoon, and how many children there were going to be, and down to the 18