2007-09-07 TENVISION - Laserfiche WebLink

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When we stared, of course, there was no manual. There was no manual on how to do this. This is a new process, at least to us, and I think to this island. As we go along, though, we are writing the manual for other communities to follow. We have set ambitious goals for this coming year, including some Easy Wins. Easy Wins are something that are highly visible, fairly easy to implement. And one of the things that we hope the Easy Wins will do is generate the excitement in the plan and get people, more people involved with this and enthusiastic about implementing the plan. And then there are also some larger actions which have been prioritized according to surveys that we have done from the community, both in the initial information that we got in order to put together the community-based action plan; and from our recent town meeting we put out some surveys to find out what is important. And these include the Hilo Bayfront Trails project; development of the Wailuku River Walk; tsunami preparedness training; interpretive signage for Downtown Hilo; a transportation plan that will include traffic circulation, pedestrian safety, and multi-modal transportation systems. Some of these actions we’ve already have been pushing along and trying to get underway; and others we are set to start this coming year. The Implementation Guidebook is, like I said, we are writing a manual for other communities to follow so that they can learn from the things we did right, the things we did wrong. And there are a lot of other communities - as I know the people in the Planning Department and probably all of you on the Planning Commission know about in the different communities - that are trying the same sort of process. So hopefully we’ll be able to guide them along in their efforts as well. And, also, we will be having a second town meeting to report to the community the things that we accomplished in our second year. So I’d like to thank everybody, again, for the support that we have been given in this process for the first 18 months. We’re very dedicated to this; and we hope that you will continue to support us. Thank you. ALEXANDRA: Thank you. GRAHAM: All right, hold a second. Do we have any questions from the Commissioners? Commissioner Iwashita. IWASHITA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I commend you on your dedication and commitment to improving the Downtown Hilo area. I have just a couple of, I guess, these are more challenging kind of goals to suggest to you in looking at what you’ve done so far. And you probably don’t know but all of my Fellow Commissioners know that I’m a staunch advocate of the community development plan process and, you know, my position is it really should be going on an island-wide basis at this time. And we have some resource challenges on that; but that’s my belief. And in that regard, as far as your transportation plan that you mentioned earlier, I would like to suggest that you on the multi-modal aspect of it that, you know, you really look at what would be an ideal kind of scenario for train stations in Downtown Hilo when 50 EXHIBIT A 5