2012-05-03 Windward Transcript Circus

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This morning you will also hear from Sue Lee Loy who will talk about the progress that we’ve made since August to bring SPACE into compliance with the general terms and conditions, and also in terms of amending our special permit. You’ll hear from Graham Ellis, and obviously a number of interested members of the community. I want to point out that their testimony may be passionate at times. But forgive us if we are passionate in our testimony about the school, because the possibility that this unique and cutting edge performing arts school could be shut down is so devastating that their enthusiasm might be strong. We are not blaming anybody for this situation. This is a misunderstanding. We are sorry for this misunderstanding. We hope we can continue to work with the Planning Director and move to amend our special permit application in the next few months. And we hope that you’ll work with us on the solution and not let this problem overshadow what the school does, what it means to the students, faculty, staff and community. Thank you. So the next person who I’d like to speak would be Sue Lee Loy to update you on our progress of what we’re doing. KERN: Before that I was going to see if there were any questions for you, Mr. Hong. Commissioners, any questions for Mr. Hong? Seeing none, Ms. Lee Loy. Thank you. LEE LOY: Aloha, good morning. My name is Sue Lee Loy. I work with Ted Hong. In August of 2011 we met with Graham and basically went over some of his concerns and where he was at. So basically what I did is what any planner does, is do a due diligence report. I went to the Planning Department in August, met with Planning Department staff to understand exactly where Graham was with his permit, what the concerns were, and just basically did the digging. In September I floated a preliminary report to the Department of Land and Natural Resources. As Mr. Darrow had mentioned part of the remedies was securing a lease with the adjacent landowner, the State. So I met with them, prepared a preliminary draft environmental assessment and had them evaluate that. Based on that meeting, I got some great feedback from DLNR, put together an amended draft environmental assessment, and floated what we call is a preconsultation letter to various agencies that prepare comments for a draft environmental assessment. That was done in October of 2011. That process took a little longer than I had anticipated. Normally agencies return comments within 30 days. Through that process we also need to engage community groups. And so the struggle was getting various community groups to reply or respond to our preconsultation letter. We finally got the last of it back in November of 2011. Basically took all of that information, retooled the draft EA and transmitted that to the Department of Land and Natural Resources. rd On January 23 the draft environmental assessment was published in what’s known as the Office of Environmental Quality Control Environmental Notice. That notice provides a 30-day comment period. Immediately after being published in the Environmental Notice we had a stakeholders meeting down in st SPACE. That was held on January 31 of 2012. That was a great meeting. It provided valuable information and comment that we could then incorporate back into the environmental assessment and retool the special permit application based on stakeholders’ comments. Where we are right now is, I had to wait for one more piece of information to submit the final environmental assessment. Based on timelines available, the environmental, final environmental assessment could be published in the rd Environmental Notice as early as May 23, so about three weeks away, or the next publication date th would be June 8. 12 EXHIBIT B