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of Ka`u but of different perspectives that are inherent in this community. So, you can see on the
<br />screen the geographies that were represented, but I want to also emphasize the background and
<br />perspective of some of these folks. We had a realtor. We had a land use manager, developer.
<br />We had a community builder by profession. An Army Reserve officer, a pastor, actually two
<br />pastors, I think. A rancher. Who am I missing?
<br />HECK (from audience): Farmer.
<br />WHITMORE: Right. Farmer? Yeah you're—yes, thank you. I was going to say joker, but
<br />farmer works. Yes, Loren provided levity. Kept us all sane during the process.
<br />So, anyway, great credible group of people who were good listeners both to each other and to the
<br />rest of the community and really brought an extreme diversity to perspectives to the process.
<br />What's important to note, too, is that these folks were not the crafters of the plan. Their roles
<br />were really three fundamentally. Because they are of the community, they played a critical role
<br />in helping the planning team design a process that was very participatory and really tailored to
<br />the context here. And, then, when implementing that process, they were, they played an
<br />instrumental role in maximizing community engagement along the way. And, then the, probably
<br />the most important role is the buck really stops with the Steering Committee. The plan does not
<br />enter the adoption process until the Steering Committee says it's ready, and so, they made that
<br />last and final call when they thought it was ready for your review. And, by the way, they're
<br />volunteers like you also. They put in tremendous amount of time and effort into this.
<br />You don't need to see the detail on this, but basically, it describes four phases of the planning
<br />process followed by a fifth phase which is implementation. And, I'm going to touch on each of
<br />these phases. Just to give you an idea of the color coding here. The green is community
<br />engagement, the blue is Steering Committee key decisions, and the black is Planning team work.
<br />And, so you, again, you see just in colors on the screen the balance of perspectives and different
<br />roles and the thought that went into engaging the right people at the right time in the process.
<br />So, anyway, we started with the foundations which was to identify the core values and vision that
<br />the community has. And, I think at the time, that we set a record, but then Hamakua followed
<br />and beat our record, but Ka`u CDP was the fourth CDP, but at the time had heard from the most
<br />people during that initial values and visioning process. And part of the reason for our success is
<br />we made it really easy for people to answer, answer two core questions: "What do they love
<br />about Ka`u?" and "What do they want to see 20 years out?" We did aobviously surveys were
<br />available either online or paper, but more importantly, we had, we trained volunteer facilitators
<br />who would hold a small meeting anywhere—in a pavilion, in a carport, on the beach, in your
<br />home or living room, and go through a quick process to identify those, those core values and
<br />vision.
<br />We heard from 14 percent of the population which if you only think about statistics is a
<br />ridiculously high number. Probably more importantly, though, is we were tracking participation
<br />as we went relative to what we knew from the census where the, were the demographics of Ka`u
<br />and assured and made an extra effort in communities where we knew we were not capturing the
<br />EXHIBIT A
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