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which we cannot, we have no leeway to go above 4.99 %. That is the drop dead figure. So
<br />we have no leeway there. With other things we have some leeway. So if we are looking at
<br />a road connectivity, or compactness, or keeping communities together, you know,
<br />sometimes we have to make unpopular decisions. We had all; everyone of us in our district,
<br />different districts, have to make, not sacrifices necessarily, but we certainly had to
<br />compromise. We had to make compromises; every one of us did make some compromises
<br />so that the whole thing could go through; so not everybody got 100% of their wish list.
<br />Well guess what folks, this is life. You never get everything you ask for. You try to do the
<br />best you can, you strive for the best you can, and I think we did that.
<br />When we got those emails -- -Some were emails and some were faxed. They came in three
<br />batches. The first one, I went back and looked at them afterwards, but at first I really didn't
<br />pay much attention because they all started out with saying Chair Siracusa, and spelling my
<br />name wrong. So right away they lost me, right? And then they went on and asked; the first
<br />fax that was 51.30 to 51.44, so 14. The first 14 messages; of those, only one, two, three,
<br />four, five, six, seven, only seven of them, half of them, had intelligible signatures. None of
<br />them had addresses; none of them had their names written out. Some of them you could tell
<br />a little bit, it looked like Juanita P, or somebody like that, but you couldn't really tell who
<br />these people were. Those first batches, they were all asking first that Hilo not be changed at
<br />all, that all three Hilo districts stay the same. Well, guess what, Hilo didn't grow to the
<br />extent that Puna grew. If we kept Hilo with three districts, Puna would not have gotten its
<br />two districts; it would have been stuck with only one district, the way we have always been.
<br />So the minute I saw that, I said forget this, and as soon as I saw that all the other letters were
<br />pretty much saying the same thing, they were form letters, so I pretty much, in my own
<br />mind, disregarded them. I didn't pay much attention, if at all, until the rest of what they
<br />were saying. Because the basic premise of keeping three districts in Hilo, was untenable.
<br />When I went back later on and started analyzing these emails, I realized they were all saying
<br />Wailuku River is the top boundary, and use Komohana or Kapiolani to go across. The next
<br />batch of communications, 51.49 to 51.56, so that is seven more, there were only two people
<br />whose names were intelligible, and they also misspelled my last name, which is not hard to
<br />do. They were asking for the same thing as the first batch. But then we get to the next
<br />batch of testimonies, and there were nine, and only three were totally recognizable, although
<br />one of them, it was her second letter, and she had also been in the second batch. And this
<br />time, they didn't mention about keeping District 4 in Hilo, and I guess someone figured out
<br />what their mistake was the first time around, and they started referring to Haihai Street. So,
<br />you know, we didn't do what they asked because they were all asking for a north/south
<br />orientation, and what we did was a mauka /makai, which is basically and east /west. So we
<br />did not do what they were asking us to do. And that was the most important thing.
<br />Anything else would have been a question of where you would draw the boundaries of a
<br />north/south orientation. But we did not do that. And I think that the maps will show that.
<br />As far as dividing Pahoa; it could not be avoided. The area between Pahoa Village Road
<br />and the Pahoa Bypass contains 178 people. The minute we moved that line to the Bypass,
<br />as a dividing line between the new Districts 4 and District 5, we would have had to find, we
<br />would have been moving those 178 people over to District 5. And in doing so, District 5
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