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TORIGOE: Yeah, well, I guess it’s, we are, our terms maybe a little confused
<br />because what you will be doing really, at the end of the day, if you decide, basically, that you are
<br />in full agreement with everything that the hearings officer said in her report, then your decision
<br />would be as simple as saying, you know, I move to fully adopt the hearings officer’s Findings of
<br />Fact, Conclusions of Law, and that would basically be your decision. At the end of the day, if
<br />you feel like, you know, there are substantial changes that should be made to the hearings
<br />officer’s proposed findings but that it’s more or less usable, then you would make that kind of
<br />motion, you know, that you would adopt the Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law presented by
<br />the hearings officer with the following changes, and spell them out, that’s it.
<br />I want to say one thing further, in this discussion about the alleged improprieties I think, as I said
<br />before, the arguments are not directed directly at the Commissioners, but today they sort of have
<br />been brought up because we heard the intervenor actually ask that you not go ahead with this on
<br />the merits because of the alleged improprieties. So, at that level I suppose it is now before you,
<br />you know, that you’ve got to ask yourself, does the record seem to indicate that there was
<br />impropriety such that we should put this off until some other decision maker does something
<br />about it or do we feel like we can just go forward with this.
<br />ALAMEDA: Ms. Siracusa?
<br />SIRACUSA: Thank you. It was my feeling in reading the record that they were, I
<br />mean, here you have all these high powered attorneys against somebody representing his
<br />community, pro se, and so right away he was at disadvantage. I’m referring to Mr. Hardy-
<br />Sullivan. I felt that it was the hearing officer’s responsibility to maintain a level playing field,
<br />and I also felt that she did not. Now, Mr. Lim is a really high powered attorney, and he is
<br />damned good at what he does, and I certainly would want him representing me on any case
<br />because he works real hard for his client. But he kept the intervenors off balance constantly by
<br />throwing out these new papers to, you know, not accept this or just throw something else out.
<br />And I felt that the hearing officer should have cut the intervenors some slack, like when they
<br />asked for a subpoena for Curtis Tyler who was one of the people who had written a part of the
<br />proposal for the developer, for the applicant, and yet she discarded it out of hand without giving
<br />any reasons. She did that with several of the other subpoenas; she denied them but did not state
<br />why. So, it looked to me like it was being frivolous or certainly not fair handed, and all of those
<br />things started adding up. As I went through the pages and pages and pages of this and I started
<br />to see a pattern, and therefore, I feel that the intervenors all in all were not given the level
<br />playing field that they should have been given. And I would not feel comfortable with accepting
<br />the hearing officer’s report, I would just assume, you know, I’m not saying that we should have a
<br />whole new hearing. But certainly I think we should allow time what Mr. Torigoe has suggested
<br />that we call for it, we table this and let it go through some of the other processes, and see what
<br />comes back.
<br />ALAMEDA: Mr. Watanabe?
<br />WATANABE: I don’t have any objections to hearing the intervenor’s arguments as
<br />long as we are not reopening the hearing. I mean, you know, whatever discussion should be, in
<br />my mind, limited to what’s already been introduced, and it’s my understanding once you close
<br />the hearing, unless you reopen it, you are not going to introduce all, you know, new Findings of
<br />Fact and etc. And you know what, I guess my point here is, if we are not going to accept who
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