2005-10-07 TENVISION - Laserfiche WebLink

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MOON:Yes. GALDONES:Okay, thankyou. Ladies, could you please state your name and your residence address. MOON:My name is Alice Moon. I reside at 121 Lokoaka Streetin Hilo, Hawaii. GAGORIK:My name is Susan Gagorik and my address is PO Box 188, Volcano, Hawaii. GALDONES:Ladies, you may proceed with your presentation. MOON:Thank you. Thank you, Planning Commission Members, for your time today.Imalittlenervous.Iveneverdonethisbefore,butthatskindofwhatsexcitingabout this whole process, is that it has never been done before; and so there may be a little bit of confusion. But we worked through all that because we are a grass roots community based effort to envision a future for Downtown Hilo. And we brought along some of our friends and supporters just because we are a little nervous. I do really thank you for this opportunity to present to you today. The Planning Department has provided a background report and I believe that the Commission has had an opportunity to review the community-based vision and living action plan for Downtown Hilo; and we really appreciate your time in this consideration. Id also like to thank Susan Gagorik and the Planning Department in their support and encouragement throughout this entire process which has taken a little over a year and is still on- going. We really hope that this is going to serve as a model for other communities here on our island, and perhaps in the State and beyond. This has been a really unprecedented community planning process, as you can probably imagine having reviewed the document. It has never been done this way before; and were, again, very excited about that fact. But we want to make clear on a couple of things, that this is not the end of the planning process, this is really the beginning. Its also not a perfect plan. We had some challenges with it; and I would like to bring up again the fact that this entire process was done, again, in a community-based grass roots effort without the services of a paid planning consultant, not that we would recommend this for any future community based efforts because it was a tremendous amount of work and it continues to be such. I just wanted to point out a couple of things to you today; and that is that when we came together to put this process together all of us that were in the initial workshop that were invited by Susan to come together to do this community visioning process, we all thought two things: We didnt want this to be a plan that sat on the shelf. And in Downtown Hilo there have been several plans that have come through for various reasons. We were also very concerned that Downtown Hilo with all of the changes in our society, on our island here, we didnt want Downtown Hilo to end up being like Kailua-Kona. And I know nobody has said that, but Im going to say that, we didnt want it to end up like Lahaina. And Ive lived in Hilo, fortunately, for over 40 years. My family has been here since 1960; and weve seen a lot of changes. I grew up in Downtown, I 3EXHIBIT B