2008-08-22 TSKCDP - Laserfiche WebLink

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WATANABE: Okay. That concludes the questions then. Thank you for your presentation. You may be seated. Last chance – well, I shouldn’t say last chance – but right now I have ten people who signed up. Is that pretty much it? Ten people signed up to testify – is that pretty much it? If that is, then you know, considering the amount of time that you all have put into this project, I don’t want to shortchange you, so I’ll, let’s say we’ll try to limit to a maximum of five minutes per testifier. And that doesn’t mean you have to use all five minutes, but it’s better than three. Please be concise and let’s try not to be redundant. With that, let me call up – let’s see we have four chairs – I’ll call up the first four signed up, and that will be Margaret Wille, Alice Tinsman, Lisa Yee and Peter Hackstedde. May I swear the four of you in, please. So would you raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Planning Commission? TESTIFIERS: Yes. WATANABE: Okay, thank you. I believe you have a mike, Margaret, so why don’t we begin with you. You’ve already provided us with your address, so you don’t need to repeat that. WILLE: Okay. Margaret Wille. And let me just say that I was assigned to answer any specific questions regarding the district-wide policies, and I just put together a little quick outline with heading, so it was handed out. I guess I just want to express something that Mr. Tsuchida mentioned as a process and the direction that we are going – sort of the history. If you read books about the Island of Hawaii politics, it always talks about how in particular this island has lack of public participation, and working with large land owners and the government, and stressing the need for more public participation. And I really see this as adding, instead of there just being a dialogue between developers and landowners and the government, now there is really a conversation with three entities, so that you have -. I think that the Stanford Carr hearing this morning in some ways to me was a manifestation of that – that they met with the key elements or key participants in the community before they came to you. They just didn’t come to you and say, okay, this is what we want, you all decide. They worked it out. Not too long ago I went to a seminar on importance of historic preservation, and John DeFries was the CEO of Hokulia, and he spoke and talked about, you know, at this point in our history we have to work with the community, we all share the same vision in what we need to protect. So I just, as we look forward, and I think the key thing is that you all passed the bill of the action committees. And as I see the action committees, it’s not just the action committees, I see the ad hoc committees under that and giving people a voice. That doesn’t mean, okay, you are making the decision. It’s allowing that voice to be heard; it’s allowing those concerns to be heard. So I see this, just looking in terms of process, as very important. I do think just in that same line that really in Hawaii you have that balancing between private property rights and sort of what is the vision and what is the public trust and what is the stewardship issues, and such as the conversation that came up about trails earlier today with the North Kohala. It’s really working through that balance. And I think there was, one of the EXHIBIT E 15