2012-05-03 Windward Transcript Circus

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to the general public, my office immediately called SPACE, the phone number at SPACE. Sue Lee Loy, from my office, asked a woman who answered the phone some questions about tickets and the event being open to the public. The woman who answered the phone was not a Village Green Society representative. She did not know anything about the event, other than her own assumptions. And she did offer tickets for sale to the general public. At that point Ms. Lee Loy identified who she was and what office she was from and that what she was doing, what she was representing was unacceptable and a violation of the Special Permit terms and told her to stop it. The unidentified woman admitted she didn’t know what was going on. She said, and she said she wasn’t going to talk to Sue anymore and hung up. We called Graham and Jena, and they were also dismayed that the wrong information was going out and reassured us of the event. We contacted the Planning Department and told them what we had found. Graham signed a Declaration under penalty of perjury, which is attached to the Exhibit 16 of the Planning Department’s exhibits, regarding this misunderstanding and what the factual circumstances were. I would note Jeff talked to you about this being posted up on Facebook. Graham assures me that in terms of his, he did post it on his Facebook page, that was only for his friends with respect to members of who were the Village Green Society and other special guests. Based on what my client told me in February of 2012, we advised our client that it was still within their right to proceed with the Anniversary Party as we understood it. If there is anyone to blame for allowing the event to have occurred it was my office; and I apologize for the misunderstanding. Our analysis involved a private landowner holding a private party on their property. It is my hope that the Planning Commission does not penalize my client for our advice. Let me highlight some other misunderstandings brought up this morning. They talk about public performances as not being educational opportunities. But SPACE is a performing arts learning center. Their educational opportunity is to do performances. That’s what they’re trained to do, lighting, sound, performances, costuming, everything else. So it’s like being in a band, cause I was in a band, the high school band. It’s like rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, but then you don’t have a concert, a spring concert. So the public performances that were going on that I think some of the, where some of the source of misunderstanding is that they’re being trained to put on, the students are being trained to put on these performances, they do the performances, and yet these performances are misunderstood as violating the terms and conditions. The other misunderstanding that came up with the Le Chic IV that morphed into some kind of Latin theme kind of event, that did not occur on SPACE property or the area of SPACE, on which SPACE is located. That was in Kalani Honua, so that’s another misunderstanding. The third misunderstanding I wanted to highlight was the farmers market. After the letter we received from the Planning Department, it said that we could not do anything that was not originally permitted. What we took away from that was that the farmers market was part of that original permitting, so we said that the farmers market should be able to continue. My client was very distressed and concerned that SPACE would actually have to shut down operations, including the school. And so we discussed that very thoroughly with our client. This meeting allows the Planning Commission to find the solution for the community, my client and the Planning Department arising from these continuing problems and misunderstandings. In our written material, we respectfully ask the Planning Commission as a short term solution to allow us to amend the Special Permit when we present our formal amended special permit application. 11 EXHIBIT B