COMM. 42.21 from FOPF-Testimony - Laserfiche WebLink

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PRESIDENT YEN CHIN VICE PRESIDENT PAUL CAMPBELL Public Testimony DIRECTORS: ROB TUCKER DELIA MONTGOP,^ERY PATT I PINTO ROBIN STETSON SCOTT STODDARD Public Hearing of the Hawaii County Redistricting Commission, October 11, 2011 Pahoa Neighborhood Center, Pahoa, HI As you may already be aware, Friends of Puna's Future has previously endorsed the idea expressed by this commission that, due to the rapid rate of growth during the last ten years, Puna should be divided in such a way as to create two county districts. We applaud all efforts aimed at helping realize this goal, and yet we are now dismayed by the plans that have been advanced by this commission for continued consideration. In recent history, the issue of representation in Puna has not been one of having too few representatives, rather it is one of having had too many. For the last ten years, Kea'au and Orchidland have been forced to share a representative from South Hilo, residents from Volcano to Kurtistown have been forced to petition the representative from Ka'u, and the balance of Puna enjoyed a representative of its own. Three council persons, two serving a majority of their constituencies based outside of Puna and having distinctly different concerns from Puna, do not make up a viable Puna delegation. Puna deserves two council representatives who will be giving us their full attention. This means no more than two council districts encompassing all of the towns and communities of Puna. These two districts must include the town of Kea'au, the town of Volcano, the town of Pahoa and the communities between these towns and south of them. None of the advancing plans have managed this basic requirement. All of these plans either send Volcano back to Ka'u or put Kea'au in the South Hilo district. It has been expressed among the members of this commission that Puna should be divided mauka makai rather than east west. This approach makes it very difficult to maintain the internal roads critera [Hawaii County Code: 36- 4(11)] while avoiding any division of incorporated subdivisions. In fact, all of the plans that seem to be attempting this mauka makai approach have settled upon a division of Hawaiian Paradise Park. We feel that the basic guideline of not dividing communities [Hawaii County Code: 36 -4(8)] is of the utmost importance here. In fact, we feel that it has a greater urgency here in Puna, where so much of the district has been subdivided and where spending for road maintenance, as enjoined by the courts, falls to the collective residents of each subdivision rather than to the county. Many of these communities are actually non - profit corporations with a mandate from the courts to require residents to pay a mandatory road maintenance fee. We are currently working with Council Chairperson Dominic Yagong, State Representative Faye Hanohano, State Senator Gil Kahele, and Mayor Billy Kenoi to alleviate this burden by developing a grant in aid program which would allow these non - profits to submit proposals to their council member and receive county fuel tax revenue allocated to that district for certain specified projects. Dividing Hawaiian Paradise Park, or any incorporated Puna subdivision, into two county districts would create problems for the grant in aid effort: either the divided non - profit would have to submit two grant proposals to two different council members in order to fund any single project that happens to cross district boundaries; or worse, if they were to choose one or the other council member and then spend money received in the other district, the fuel tax allocation system itself would be compromised. This kind of legal confusion could make redress of the current private roads funding issue in Puna more difficult for all parties involved. Hawaiian Paradise Park, as well as all the other Puna subdivisions, deserve better. COMM. 42.21