2009-12-04 TMALA MOHALA - Laserfiche WebLink

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generating income from agriculture, not from residents. In other words, you have to show a bonafide agricultural production in order to house bonafide agricultural employees. The other thing I might draw your attention to is the article from the September ‘99 Honolulu Star Bulletin where essentially right in the article it states no more youths can go to this facility, I’m sorry it’s not in quotes, but essentially in the middle of the article it states no more youths can be sent to this facility till licenses are obtained. This is regarding a facility that was in Laie. And so this is not a new thing for Hawaii. Hawaii has seen this before, in ’99. So if it was already a problem in ’99 it was here way before that. Okay? By now these types of operations should have some awareness of how they can proceed. The other curious thing that Mr. McKinney mentioned in his previous testimony from the last meeting was that he’s from Utah. Well, Utah it turns out is actually the root of this type of program. And I’m not stating that these programs are necessarily bad. But Utah has recognized that these programs need to be tightly regulated. Kids get injured here. Well, Utah has really strengthen their regulation. And so what’s happened? All these ex-Utah people have gone to Samoa, Costa Rica, Hawaii, other rural locations where the regulations are not as strict to operate this type of system without any oversight. Okay? So even if it is a good program, they need oversight. And even the industry people within this industry are saying we need oversight in some way, shape or form by being members of associations, by actual government regulation, definitely by health code, absolutely that goes without saying. The last thing I wanted to state is, once again I brought up the money at the last one, was as a business if they are doing -.Well, they say in the past they’ve had 20 students. But I’ve calculated from what they project of 24 students, well, if they have full occupancy that’s $3.9 million a year. They’ve been operating for five years already. They said they’ve had, by his own testimony he says he’s had 20 students at one time. That’s a substantial amount of money to not have to follow any building code, any health code, and in addition to impacting the neighbors. I feel that this thing, it should be in a different area. It shouldn’t be in an Ag zone. And I’m just going to finish up with my last couple of my, in my last testimony, “Mr. McKinney, Mr. Kaiser, Preacher Creek LLC, Pacific Quest, and now Mala Mohala have acted with impunity, disregarding the rules the rest of us have to follow. When the Planning Department acted to protect their neighbors the applicants withdrew their application and subsequently filed the application now before the Commission. The applicants have already negatively impacted their neighbors by building their facility and operating it without oversight for five years. Granting the application today would reward them for their poor behavior, unusual when they claim to teach minors values. The applicant’s lack of attention to all of these issues brings question to their ability to operate such a facility. Their qualifications should be carefully scrutinized as their acts on the ground bring question to the credibility of their statements and their true intent.” And then my last paragraph essentially talks about the Kau CDP which I understand is in progress. And, honestly, I think the CDP is a good thing but I think the end result will be that they’ll decide this area is not fit for this type of operation. That’s my belief. Thank you for your time and thank you for volunteering for this. 10 EXHIBIT B