2010-12-16 TFOULKexhibitE - Laserfiche WebLink

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on the makai side, way back. And there’s lot of ponds there. We used to play there before. And my grandmother taught us a lot of things about there. There are some burial graves there yet. And I know lot of those places there, they’re biting back at the people, if you know what I mean, after they built. It’s like, it’s haunted. Okay? I don’t care what you do, it’s going to be haunted forever. But I’m against building that condo. If these developers have gone and looked around and see how many proposals we have here in Kona on the condos, time sharing, I think they should know better. GONZALEZ: Somebody is leaning on the light switch. PUBLIC: Haunted. PONTES: Yeah, it’s haunted, yeah. HOUSEL: I think, okay, I think that was a real person that did it, not a ghost. PONTES: See what I mean? You look all along Ali‘i Drive, lot of those places have gone out of business. Why? You know why. Okay. But here I am against building those condos there. I think we do have enough. And Ali‘i Drive is just packed with traffic. We don’t have the roads. When a tidal wave occurs, I don’t know what’s going to happen. They better look forward into this. All I’m saying is I’m against building this condo, right in that area, or any place on Ali‘i Drive. Thank you. HOUSEL: Thank you very much for your testimony. SEITER: Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Kevin Seiter. I live at 75-650 Mahi Iulani Place, Kailua-Kona. And I’m here on behalf of the West Hawaii Surfing Association. It’s a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to preserve and protect the coastal assets –excuse me, I’ve had some bronchitis – of West Hawai‘i. I know you’ve heard all the reasons not to do this, and your purpose today, of course, is really very limited. So as much asI’d like to see moratoriums and so on, that’s not why I’m here to speak. Nobody, we aren’t opposed necessarily to coastline development, if it’s in the right place in the right manner. We aren’t opposed to people making a profit. That’s the nature of the beast in this country. We are opposed for all the reasons that you’ve heard to this project. But the thing I really want to emphasize is by saying no to this today you aren’t depriving the applicant of any money or property. You’re just saying back to the drawing board. And what this does, if you say no, is it provides many opportunities for use of this land consistent with other uses in the area, including what happened at Honl’s, Wai‘aha. And I had the pleasure of working with the County to make that a park with Wally Aniban and a lot of people. And that’s what it was; it was a really great joint effort of the private and public entities to put that together. That’s a possibility here. And if you say no today, it opens up that possibility. Because I know that there has already been some discussions from the Mayor’s office down, so to speak, about that possibility. So by saying no what we’re doing is giving everybody an opportunity to put this to the highest and best use – and that would be a public use. You know, anecdotally, when I worked with Wally who has since passed away, on Honl’s, the thing that bothered him about the condo so close to the shoreline was, he was asked during the contested case, “why are you doing this,” and he said, “because I don’t want the little kids to feel shame when they walk in the shadow of that condominium to get access to shoreline.” And, boy, I had chicken skin when I heard that. And I’ve sat through a lot of these hearings on this side of the table, so to speak. I know a lot of the staff 12 EXHIBIT E