2008-09-19 TSKCDP_JT - Laserfiche WebLink

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TANIMOTO: Thank you very much. I want to thank all of you first for allowing me this opportunity to speak at this time. My name is Josephine; Jojo is my nickname. WATANABE: Oh, I’m sorry. TANIMOTO: My last name is Tanimoto. Actually, what I wanted to do was commend the consultant and the Steering Committee for the hard work that they did, and especially the Steering Committee because they took Kawaihae out of the South Kohala area and actually recognized a lot of the things in Kawaihae that was not recognized before in documentation. And the documentation is important to all of us in Kawaihae because of the development that’s going to be moving along very quickly within the next few years, within the time span of this document. So having said that, I am a homesteader in Kawaihae Hawaiian Homes. The Kawaihae area actually did not get involved until the middle of last year. So what I need to say is that I was a trustee’s aide for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. I also live in this area. So as you know, there is a lot of information that is privy to people during that time so as not to conflict with anything. I actually had to wait until the trustee had passed away, I was no longer with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and then I could address the issues for the community that we were trying to bring out for about 50 years. So having had Kawaihae inserted is a big opportunity for Kawaihae actually. What I need to do is to ask you to include in these provisions, No. 1 is the opportunity to let you guys consider that Hawaiian Homes actually has a purpose to provide lands for the native families to build homes. But a lot of the documentation in here where it says Hawaiian Homes refers to using Hawaiian Homes mostly for commercial and they’re advocating commercial and industrial. And that’s not the way the conversation went in the Focus Group. Now, I was a member of the Focus Group, and because of my work schedule I did not have any opportunity to go to the Steering Committee meeting. I think I went to the first one; I didn’t know what was going on. So when it got to the Steering Committee, I don’t think anybody from Kawaihae got to go to the Steering Committee. And so the Focus Group, the Steering Committee and somehow this document, there’s a lot of stuff that went on in the Focus Group that isn’t in here. So that’s what I wanted for you folks to consider. The other thing is somehow when I went to North Kohala, if I especially went to the North Kohala meeting, it was, like, “You are not from North Kohala, so you don’t belong in this meeting, your participation is not Kohala.” Now, when I went to the Waimea meeting, I got the same thing over there, too, “You are not from Waimea, so you cannot put Kawaihae inside there,” which is why we were very aggressive in trying to get Kawaihae’s information somehow into the documentation. And so having the Steering Committee at least put us in there separately and addressing a lot of the issues in Kawaihae is something tremendous for the community of Kawaihae homestead. And then what we need to do is to, if you look at the map of Kohala, North Kohala has to share everything with South Kohala. So however we planned for Kawaihae, the intersection to North Kohala and South Kohala, somehow we have to include them because the people from Kohala EXHIBIT C 2