2015-01-08 Hearing Transcript-PD INITIATED _GAMBLE_ SPP 1078 & SMA 408

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response letter, I’m admittedly jumping all over the place and that’s partly because I’m, was reacting to Mr. Darrow’s comments each time we spoke on the phone. And, initially, I, I had a lot of confusion with regard to the warning letter because many of his initial comments about the sale, we thought had already been addressed in 2004. And, I have included in the attachments a copy of a letter to the Planning Department when we received a call from Robert Usagawa from the Planning Department. At issue was the Planning Department wanted us to write a letter explaining why it was within our Use Permit to have cooking classes at the Inn because they had seen, or they had received a complaint, again I believe from Mr. Parisi, that we were advertising cooking classes to be held at the Inn. What was actually the case was the Hawai‛i Community College was advertising the cooking classes. They asked if they could hold the cooking classes out at the Inn. We said sure. We did not charge them to use the kitchens out at the Inn. We simply provided the kitchens for their classes and meeting space for them to use as well. They did, however, charge student participants in the class. Our explanation of why this activity was included within the Use Permit was accepted. We never received another correspondence from Mr. Usagawa saying that, that didn’t qualify under the community and public meetings usage. So, we thought we were okay there. That’s when Mr. Darrow had told us that a meeting could not involve commerce. It seemed a direct departure from the previous decision that had allowed the community college to charge for their cooking classes. Further confused us that Mr. Darrow insisted that the sale was not a meeting. By Mr. Darrow’s interpretation of a meeting, the cooking classes wouldn’t have been a meeting either. Thus, I asked for the County’s definition of what a meeting was. And, the County Code does not define meeting, so in my response letter, I provided standard dictionary definitions of what a meeting is, and both the cooking classes and the sale that we allowed the community to have would qualify as a meeting. With regard to past uses of the property, over the past 14 years, we’ve heard many good, funny, and utterly horrific accounts of activities by the past owners. For us, that is really neither here nor there. If Mr. Parisi has letters saying that the public was kept off of the property, to us, that’s okay. It’s not a point we, you know, find as contentious. During that initial hearing, I think Neil’s comments was simply made to convey to the people in attendance and to our neighbors because we were brand new. We had just moved here—it was 2000, the economy was tanking, and here come these two haoles from the mainland who wanna open up an inn. And, I think the comments were made to try and engender to the local community that we weren’t going to be the kind of haoles who came in, put up barbed wire fence, and made everybody’s life difficult. We really wanted to be a resource for the community as long, as well as to run our Inn. And, I’d like to point out even Mr. Parisi submitted a letter of support. We continue to believe and hope that we continue to meet and exceed the conditions that were placed upon us when we received our permits. And I say hope because the council as a whole thanked us that day after the hearing for having the strength and belief in the Honomū community that we could succeed as innkeepers and be a positive addition to the community. It 6 EXHIBIT C