2011-05-04 Windward transcript HAAS

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surrounds the needs of its population. And it has done so in the areas of health, in education and public safety, transportation. We’re just really rather surprised at a request for the State and the County to what appears to be shirk their responsibilities on these roads and try to transfer them on to a nonprofit charter school. We just see that as a continuing history of kind of kicking the can down the road. And we would like to ask the Commissioners to pass this special permit but to remove these what appear to be onerous requirements for a private nonprofit to be spending huge sums of money in an absolutely impossible amount of time on State and County properties. Now I would like to point out a precedent has happened fairly recently on State Highway 130. We have Makuu Farmers Market, and somehow out of magic of the air within about a six-month period the State came up with $650,000 to make a left-turn lane improvement for a one-day event on a farmers market at Makuu Farmers Market. Now we were happy to see that, that’s a wonderful thing that had occurred. We were amazed at the speed at which the money appeared and the work got done. But to transfer that precedent over on to Post Office Road, which is a County Road intersecting the State Highway, and to turn that into asking a nonprofit charter school to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in less time than it took the Department of Transportation to write a letter is just absolutely flabbergasting to us. But we support this submission. We ask you, I have not read the recommendations or the request for changes from HAAS and ASC. But we would like to see that these requirements for a private nonprofit school, to pay for things that should be paid by the State Department of Transportation, and it should be paid by the County Department of Public Works, to remove those. KERN: Thank you very much. TUCKER: Thank you very much. KERN: Any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, Jon Olson, name and the district you represent. OLSON: Yes, my name is Jon Olson and I reside in Leilani Estates in Pāhoa, Puna. I’ve also been a member to the Puna Traffic Safety Committee for 22 years and I am currently its chair. As that function I have been on the community advisory committees for the highway improvements, different road improvements, the Puna Regional Circulation Plan, the list is too long to go through in three minutes. I will mirror what was just said about these conditions. There is no school, charter or otherwise, that could meet these conditions in the Puna district, be it the private schools, the charter schools or the public schools. As a member to the Pāhoa Main Street Society, I was on the SCBM, School Base Management Committee, for ten years at the elementary school. The elementary, intermediate and high school in Pāhoa, those offices are served by a 12-foot wide single lane road, County road. This is ridiculous. These conditions cannot be met. It’s a poison pill. They need to go away. This is a public charter school. You’re overreaching. And it’s going to kill the charter school movement if this is the way you’re going to approach it; and we don’t want to see that. What these people have done here with this school is nothing short of amazing. And you’ve got to find a way to make this happen. Thank you. KERN: Thank you. Any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, Malia Becker. BECKER: I’m Malia Becker and I am a sixth grader at HAAS, and so I’m just going to say what I think about it in this letter. I, Malia Becker, believe, along with many others, that HAAS and ACS should be kept open and given the rights to have an educational center at the subject property. This school provides a valuable 10 EXHIBIT A