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communities; Pahoa, Kea`au, and Volcano. Given the numbers, Volcano could not remain in the Puna district, and went over to Ka`u, and we all realize that. However, a good portion of Kea`au could have been given over to the Puna district. In all of the hearings I attended, which most of them not one person came forward saying they wanted Kea`au in the Hilo district. In fact, several people expressed an interest in wanting to remain in the Puna district. What I saw at the last meeting I attended was a committee member coming forward with a plan that split Pahoa down the middle and placed Kea`au in the Hilo district, with the rational that Kea`au relates more to Hilo than Puna. For those of us who live in Puna, we know that is not true. Kea`au is the gateway to Puna. Most of the people who shop in Kea`au are from Puna. The majority of the businesses in the Shipman Industrial Park, such as HPM, Puna Rentals, Hawaii Catchment, are serving Puna more than Hilo. CHR. SIRACUSA: That was your time Richard. Would you wrap it up please, because that was the timer that just went off? MR. BIDLEMAN: Okay, give me another second here. With Puna being the fastest growing area on the island, this is more likely to increase. Puna needs jobs; and when Shipman represented their argument at the final consideration of the Puna Community Development Plan, at a meeting held in Kea`au, they were talking about a lot of jobs creation. CHR. SIRACUSA: Richard, we do have your written testimony, and this is in there. MR. BIDLEMAN: Let me make my one final consideration here. That is that I think some of the Commission members were less than genuine and what I see happening here is that special interests have trumped community input. Thank you. CHR. SIRACUSA: Thank you. Our next testifier is Andrea Tischler, representing herself. ANDREA TISCHLER (At this time Andrea Tischler came forward to address members of the Commission.) MS. TISCHLER: Good afternoon, Commissioners, my name is Andrea Tischler, and I live in J Yoshimoto's district. I was quite shocked; I followed the meeting you had on November 22nd where the boundaries were divided so that Onishi and Yoshimoto were going to run against eachother in my district. I was okay with that; that was fine. And then after November 22nd the series of emails came from Mr. Onishi's friends and so forth; and I think that is inappropriate. And I think it kind of borders a little bit of like attempt to gerrymander the districts. And then when you had that meeting on November 30th well, then the district got changed so that wow, now they are not running against eachother. I've heard it said by a few people, it is kind of a perception of impropriety here that this would be changed like this within that week. What was the advantage to changing that? What was reasoning that the Redistricting Commission had to change those lines right there at that time? Now, I'm not saying that there was any collusion among you or anything, but I'm just - - -It gives me kind of a bad taste in my mouth to think that there might be some impropriety here. So, what I would like you to do is, from living in that district, I would prefer, and I would ask that you would 13