2015-03-19 Leeward Exh B (Amend SPP 378)

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and we can only do so many things with what we’ve got in terms of sports. Bill agreed only if I would start powerlifting myself, and so I did. I was coerced into doing it. And what I found was not only do I love it but I was entering a community that I had no idea that existed. I’ve been in, I have friends on O‘ahu now through powerlifting, I have contacts, and I have entered a community that’s amazingly supportive. Going into a gym or facility and seeing incredibly massive people can be overwhelming till you know that all they care about is your success and that you are doing well. And that was environment I wanted the students that go to my school to be a part of. And so we chose to bring eleven students from Parker School over to the gym, and they were speaking of them, you will hear from some of them now. I think the reason that I wanted to do that more than anything was to give these kids another connection to their community, not just in Waimea, not just at their school, but everywhere; it’s important for them to know adults and for adults to know who they are in order to build the community that we live in. And more than anything else that’s what I feel is important. I have some students with me here today. One student is a young man who is 16 and who is on a college trip this spring break, and he wrote me a letter and he asked me to read it out loud today, and I’m going to. And I think he speaks very clearly to what it is Five Maintain means to us and why it’s important that they are allowed to stay: “The meaning of the word ‘strength’ has become increasingly abstract concept. The popular ideology is that people are considered strong because of the relationship they form, because of their friends and families, because of their own confidence and moral integrity, not because of the literal strength of their bodies. The problem with that kind of abstract strength is that a function is in the way that is often impractical in terms of everyday wellbeing. Speaking as a teenager, the kind of goals I work toward in a long term often leave me feeling somewhat powerless. Goals like college and what life is going to look like from then on all seem so distant that it’s impossible to tell you if your efforts really will make a difference at all. For all the hard work you put in you still just have to wait and see. At that point it becomes important to have something to inspire faith in yourself in a much more concrete sense. This gym, Five Mountain Fitness, has given me and my friends an opportunity to gain the strength. This gym allows me and my friends through nothing but our own hard work and dedication to become stronger. There is no abstraction, no wait-and-see; you come in, make the effort, and even on a week-to-week basis you become stronger than you’ve ever been before. Having the real sense of progression, when other objectives are so hard to qualify, is a way to without a doubt solidify your ability to move forward no matter what. The reason that this particular gym is so important then, because I’ve lifted weights and gained strength in many other environments, is because it allows the people of Waimea to make the progress, the struggle, together. There are people, school mates, acquaintances, even random people I see on the street to whom I would normally never give a second thought to. Once you’ve trained with someone, be it your Spanish teacher or some dumb freshman, sorry Dalton, once you’ve seen them struggle to complete a lap, seen them become stronger, better, more than they ever thought they could be, you really have no choice to but become their brother. This battle forward unites people in a way that I’ve never witnessed elsewhere. Waimea is a small town and in many ways concern more with the spirit of the law than a letter. I know there are dozens of homes and businesses technically on ag land that have been and will continue to be there for years. I feel that this is not because of any bureaucratic technicality that allows them to continue but because there is a recognition that those people and their lives are more valuable than those technical stipulations. This gym is a special place where people of Waimea come together to grow strong as individuals and as a community. I’m not a lawyer or politicians, so I honestly don’t know what the legal grounds there are against us --. BEAUDET: -- Excuse me, if you could, if you could just summarize --. 16 EXHIBIT B