2006-08-25 TPLANNING DIR. - Laserfiche WebLink

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So, with that, I will shut up. Pardon me, I’m an old college professor and I never know when to shut up. ALAMEDA:Are there any questions for our old college professor, Mr. Landis? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony. Appreciate your coming out to Kona today. Next testifier, would you please state your name and address for the record. THURMAN:Yes, my name is Larry Thurman. I live at 17-324 Palaai Street in Keaau, the Keaau Ag Lots. ALAMEDA:Thank you, Larry. You may proceed. L. THURMAN:Before I get into my statement, I made a note here a little bit ago. I want to revisit the eight versus five number again. At one of our very first community meetings that we had, I recall the person from Marimed standing up and saying, “Well, we’ve got to have eight because it’s not cost-effective at five.” But nobody seemed to have brought that up; but I find it very ironic that the Director’s proposal comes up with the same number eight as that person from Marimed did. I had a 30-year career in law enforcement in California. I retired as the equivalent of a police chief in Hawai`i; and after that I went into private investigation and did defense work for another five or six years. And during that time I became very familiar with programs like this, not only for children but for adults. And I’m here to tell you that there are very well intentioned and I support the programs; but there are places to place them and there are places not to. The politically correct term for kids like this is “children at risk;” and when you have a program like this, you have situations like Mr. Carter brought up about the three kids that walked away from over there. You have many of those. Unfortunately, some of those when they leave they decide to break into homes, they decide to steal cars, and that type of situation. But the biggest problem is, is that in addition to those eight people that live in that house, they have friends that are going to find where that’s at, and they’re going to come over and try to visit them. So you’ll have more than just those eight and it’s a constantly rising thing. Now the great majority of the people in the Keaau Ag Lots are my age or older; and they don’t need to be worrying about leaving stuff out and it walking off. They don’t need to be worrying about their houses getting broke into when they’re not at home. For those reasons, I’m really opposed to this. And like it or not, that’s going to happen; and like it or not, a lot of these kids are going to be referred to this program as a condition of probation because of some criminal activity with the juvenile authority, with the court authority, before they got there. And that’s all I have to say. ALAMEDA:Thank you, sir. Questions? Commissioner Siracusa? SIRACUSA:Yes. Do you think that with two adult staff living in the house, they would have better control over what’s happening if they were only five clients, or students, or children in the facility rather than eight? Is eight spreading, do you think that eight is spreading EXHIBIT D 14