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MS. FORD: Can everyone see the map that is over my shoulder? Okay, thank you. Good <br />morning, Commissioners, and thank you for allowing all of us to testify. I am not happy <br />with Plan A or Plan 40, so I submitted a hybrid. Every plan needs to be tweaked, <br />including this one. This is not about me; this is about getting a fair plan. So I'm not going <br />to read most of my testimony. I would like to say that everybody on this island, in this <br />room, can tell you what district they think they should be in. What some of them are not <br />saying is what district they absolutely do not want to be associated with. And it is coming <br />across loudly and clearly, and with all due respect to the Commissioners from Hilo, <br />anybody who lives outside of Hilo wants nothing to do with the possibility of having a <br />representative from Hilo. It has been unfortunately very clear, I don't need to go into all <br />the details; you have heard it before. <br />In my plan, which I am calling the hybrid, Hilo has two districts, and Kaumana stays with <br />Hilo. Puna has two complete districts inside of the geographical boundaries of Puna. <br />Almost all Puna residents that need to be assigned to another district are in the Volcano <br />area, which I have assigned with Ka`u, South Kona, and southern North Kona. Basically, <br />Volcano, upper and lower, will stay in the same district where it has been for at least ten <br />years. Attempting to put Volcano in the Puna district means a third district for Hilo, <br />populated by many Puna residents who will not be able to get a Puna representative <br />elected. And that district will be controlled by Hilo, i.e. you have a third district in Hilo. <br />Volcano could be with Hilo, Puna, or Ka`u; and we all know where Volcano wants to be, <br />and that is obviously in Puna. However, I chose Ka`u as the least objectionable of these <br />three alternatives; you must decide where Volcano would hate to be the most, eliminate <br />that possibility, and then decide where the numbers are going to work. <br />Kailua Village remains in one district, because of the Business Improvement District. It is <br />very important that this urban core of Kona be recognized by a district so that its <br />characteristics and the support and the CDP be adhered to. These particular residents in the <br />Kailua Village area have never had single representation. They have always been split <br />between two districts. District 8 is the northern area of Kona; it is also the access to Saddle <br />Road. In Plan _A, you have got a thumb sticking up from District 6 up to the South edge of <br />Saddle Road; you cannot get from District 6 to Saddle Road without driving through <br />District 7 and District 8 to get up to Saddle Road. It is an illegality; it needs -- -Just get rid <br />of that plan completely. It does have some good things; because my plan is a hybrid of <br />both of them. District 9 contains Waik6loa Village and most of Waimea, excluding the <br />Lakeland area. Kohala, like Kona, is too big to fit into just a single district. In fact, what <br />has not been mentioned here is that historically, and currently, South Kona, the district I <br />live in, has been split between Kona and Ka`u, and nobody raises that as an issue. You <br />have got to consider that somebody is going to get someplace and South Kona has always <br />been split. <br />Lakeland goes with Hamakua in my plan because it just doesn't fit into the deviations, <br />which are very high in this plan, but because this Commission has chosen to keep <br />communities of interest together, I put in the high deviations. You cannot use Hamakua to <br />encroach upon Hilo; you cannot do it. They have nothing in common. I will stop here, my <br />22 <br />