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On CA -27, regarding the vacancies, we think it is practical, and we support CA -27 as a <br />practical mechanism to fill vacancies in the event of untimely deaths, or people who resign or <br />are recalled or impeached. To have a six month window trip wire as far as whether it would <br />go to an election or not, I think is practical. So, we are supportive of CA -27. <br />I am going to skip through some of these because you have dealt with a lot of them and I <br />would be repeating support. Generally, we are in support of CA -16, 14, 20, and 17. <br />What I really want to talk about now as I start the clock again, if I may, is on CA -25, which <br />is the Community Development Plan (CDP). At an earlier testimony we had some <br />discussion here about the issue of how much participation was gained in developing the <br />Community Developing Plan. I would like to point out that this was a system of community <br />development planning that was launched by the County. Millions of dollars have been spent <br />on it, thousands of people have participated, and we would really like to see it codified and <br />protected in the Charter. I have brought a visual aide; it doesn't travel well from its easel, but <br />we have been to numerous meetings around our communities trying to talk to people and <br />explain the CDP to them. I'll just try to hold this up for you. This is our description of the <br />CDP to our people in Puna. Up here we have these little dots representing 130 small group <br />meetings. These were attended by well over 1,000 people. That's not a small thing. It took <br />place over a period of time. The information from those groups was carefully collated and is <br />available up on the Planning Department's CDP web sites. They have the demographics of <br />who appeared at these meetings, and they have the input from all of these people. All of that <br />data was carried down into the ten working groups. I participated in one of these little dots <br />up here, and later on I came to the meetings to form the working groups and I participated on <br />the Land Use working group, myself. It was comprised of about 25 people on that working <br />group. These ten working groups worked for a year or more, and then brought their work in <br />to the Steering Committee, working in conjunction with the consultant, Plan Pacific, and the <br />County Planning Department. This developed the Puna Community Development Plan, <br />which came to the Council last year. <br />I thought this might help to give a little of the scale and scope of the investment on the <br />community's part. I offer that as a validation as to why we think these plans should be <br />codified in the Charter. We should be able to ask the citizens, do we want to keep these <br />plans as part of our working documents and our working methodology into the future. <br />Asking for every ten years to revise our Community Development Plan, does not dissuade us <br />from the fact that we continue to and want to have more community participation in the <br />CDP's. With our CDP for Puna now having an Action Committee established, we will be <br />making proposals to them soon regarding our mana`o on how to bring more people forward <br />into this living process. We have some very firm and good recommendations intended for <br />our CDP that we think will even bring more people out of our communities. As these issues <br />filter down from a district -wide plan into the neighborhoods, believe me, more people do get <br />interested and they want to get their hands on it. And we want all the fingerprints on these <br />plans that we can get. We like the fingerprints, and we have always had the doors open. So <br />we are in support of CA -25, and we would ask you to let the voters decide. Thank you very <br />much. <br />22 <br />