2016-02-04 Hearing Transcript - Arrow SPP 09-076 & Rodrigues SPP 15-178

Home

In February of 2014, we had a meeting with the HOVE Road Maintenance Corporation to try and come to an agreement with them—a meeting that they knew I was recording because Mr. Dahlberg was not able to attend due to a previous commitment. Present at the meeting were members of the HOVE Road Maintenance Board, representatives from Arrow, Soil Plus, David Dalley and my son and I, and at the end of the meeting, both Mike Finn, the president of the Board at the time, and Laura Foster, the general manager, can clearly be heard saying that if we agreed to the conditions discussed, that the HOVE Road Maintenance would put everything in writing so we could all sign it, and they would not contest our application. They promptly changed their mind and contested our application. Since then, we have received document after document containing many accusations and suggestions of very intrusive and unfair conditions from the law office of Yeh & Moore, but in those many pages submitted by Mr. Yeh, there is not a single page with a date or description of any work done on the roads that the Commission visited last Friday or any document showing that the HOVE Road Maintenance has ever made an attempt to collect any extra assessments or heavy truck fees from anyone but Arrow and us. This is a corporation that is entrusted with well over a million dollars of the community’s hard earned money every year. These records should be easily accessible but have not been provided. We have never had any issues with the HOVE Road Maintenance until the last two boards and current management. If fact, we have done work for the HOVE Road Maintenance on more than one occasion when the HOVE Road Maintenance was still building up their inventory of equipment, and we had the equipment that they needed to get certain projects done on time. In fact, my father had his soils report—when my father had his soils report done in 1992, when he was trying to get his first permit, he had the HOVE Road Maintenance and other quarries in the area done at the same time to help the HOVE Road Maintenance and other quarry owners to apply for a permit. But, no one else did at the time. All the tmk numbers are in the original soils report. thst Our contested case hearing was held on September 30 and October 1, and we presented truthful and honest evidence without exaggerating or misrepresenting facts or conditions in an around the quarries and why we should be allowed to continue operating without intrusive and unfair conditions placed in our permit by HOVE Road Maintenance Corporation. When that hearing was done, we received a second recommendation for approval from the Planning Director, and after the submission of Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law by all parties, we received the recommendation for approval from the Hearing’s Officer. th At our hearing on January 7, the Commission heard Debbie Sheldon and Jon Dancel testify about the dust and other issues. These are real concerns, and we have always tried our best to be considerate of the dust, even shutting down for days at a time when the wind was blowing hard. What Debbie did not say was that her grandfather, Robert Selfridge, and his business partner, Jerry Miller, were cinder quarry owner-operators themselves, and that my father bought the business from them. Debbie also showed the members of the Commission some pictures of what the area looked like a long time ago. We were not allowed to see these pictures, but I do remember what the area looked like when we started working there in 1987, before Kona and— 10 EXHIBIT D