2018-04-12 Hearing Transcript - Hamakua CDP

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So, when the County plan looks at things like roads and signs and public parking and utilities in regional communications, please keep in mind that there is a resource that needs to be considered in the communities related to these other things in the plan, and that is the public libraries, which are very fragile right now, and they are subject to very reduced budgets in both the State and Federal levels, so librarians are leaving the island to go find jobs elsewhere. So, please consider these as valuable resources as part of the implementation plan for CDP. The second area I want to talk about is CERT. I'm trained by the County of Hawai`i's Civil Defense Division for Community Emergency Response Teams, and I'm glad to see that there are policies in CDP, Policy 93 and Sections 5.9.3 and 4 call for "increasing the number of CERT programs in the Hamakua Planning Area." So, the final report that came out this week from the Federal Communications Commission, you know, about the missile test thing? That talked about, it emphasized the point that we've got to have a locally -based community emergency response. That's just critical, because, you know, if we are depending on some institutionalized system or some State plan, we are not going to make it. The, you know, phone systems have dead zones or there's intermittent service even on a good day, so we've got to have local communications. Now, I didn't see anything in the plan about ham radio operators, amateur radio operators. That's a critical part right now of what Hawaii Civil Defense is talking about is increasing not only the CERT teams but getting community emergency plans, `ohana emergency plans, and ham radio operators increase. So, that should be something that needs to be added to that. The only word "radio" I found anywhere in the plan was related to the Pohakuloa Training Area radioactive waste. So, that's not good. We need emergency alert and communication systems as a part of every plan. Civil Defense is rolling out this thing right now called Project 360, which nobody has any piece of paper on. That calls for doubling the number of CERT teams and for increasing ham radio operators. So, we need to roll this in to what we are doing right now. Also, there is references throughout your document to State Civil Defense. There is nothing called State Civil Defense. It's called the Hawaii Emergency Management Association. Civil Defense is only used by the county for their agency name. So, that's a term that's out of date. It was like 50 years ago, you know, the Cold War stuff Last area I want to talk about is neighborhood watch. And that is, I'm also a member of the Ahualoa Neighborhood Watch Team, and I found about one reference to neighborhood watch, so, and that was I think to say that you could train neighborhood watch people to look for illegal litter dumps and things like that. But, there is a whole lot more the neighborhood watch gets involved in and are not just crime watch anymore. We connect with community associations, and the Civil Defense people reached out to neighborhood watch to see if we could drum up some people for CERT teams and for amateur radio operators. So, there is a lot more that we could be doing. So when you get to the implementation issues in the CDP, please define these community groups—neighborhood watch, you know, and also business associations as partners to do the implementation, because they are the movers and shakers in all of our communities and get a lot of things accomplished and they'd be happy to be included. Maybe they could also be included in the definitions in the part of the plan that would highlight that they are part of it. Lastly, just mahalo for your great work in this and for your involvement and your steadfastness in keeping this going and keeping the community involved. I know that was a lot of work. So, thank you. EXHIBIT A 16