1999-07-07 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 22 of 23 the principal sustainability on this island. Now, sustainability is a word that gets bandied around to the point where it’s become almost meaningless but which is a shame because it is a word that’s full of meaning if you really begin to ask the hard questions about what it means, what it is you want to sustain, what the trade offs are, involved in sustaining the various things that people want. Now back to the County Plan, it seems to me that this is the place and the time that we begin to engage that issue but as I look at the process - RAY: That’s a whole separate process that is also ongoing but we don’t discuss the County General Plan. That’s what you’re speaking to? PERRY: But there is in the Charter - HERKES: Every ten years you have to review it. PERRY: Every ten years you have to do it and there’s nothing I read in the Charter that says it sets up a Planning Department in order to do this and the point I’m trying to make is that planning process needs to reach out and engage the community people on this island. And it is, I’m suggesting that the Charter direct that that be done. Right now, the best I can tell, it’s done by people who are hired to do it, sitting in a Planning Department. They sit down and they do a plan. Now I think is the time that with this plan revision coming up, we need to think seriously about where we’re headed on this island. Where we want to go. And we need to engage the communities in the island in this and the Charter could not do that but it could begin to set up the mechanisms and the direction by which the people who make this plan, would do it and begin to reach out to these communities and engage them in a meaningful way about just where we’re headed. Thank you. RAY: Okay. HERKES: Mr. Ray? RAY: Ms. Herkes. HERKES: Can I just encourage you to go to the hearings, the public hearings that the Planning Department is holding on the Hawaii County General Plan? They’re on their second round of hearings now. They have already done one round. I attended five meetings around the island on those hearings and the second round of hearings is coming up in a month. So if you call the Planning Department, they’ll give you the schedule of the public meetings for the Hawall County General Plan. That process is separate from this one but it’s going on at the same time and I encourage you to have an input in that because this is how you can change that Hawaii County General Plan. Do you have a copy of the Hawaii County General Plan? PERRY: I do. HERKES: It’s fairly extensive and it has a lot of the things in it that you are talking about. It’s the implementation systems and those can be built into that general plan also. PERRY: All right, thank you. RAY: Another question? Mr. Martin. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 7-7-99.html7/1/2011