MIN CHARTER 2018-12-14 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -6 December 14, 2018 addressing 21 which proposes CA -7. 1 oppose the adoption of CA -7. The PONC process and its sister procedures in three other counties work with their statewide counterpart, the Legacy Lands Conservation Program. They are all extremely popular and vital programs. They are popular because they are the people's small part of government where residents can have a big say in saving from development, some of the wahi pana that they cherish. Resident's nominate lands and advocate for them at the meetings of the commissions and the commissions evaluate, rank, and recommend the applications that have the best merits and the greatest chances to proceed to acquisition. The commissioners that evaluate applications are not career politicians or bureaucrats but they are appointed citizens just like you. The larger the amount of monies entering the PONC fund and the more the people's places can be saved from development. Do not lower the percentage of monies entering the fund or try to cap it. I just returned from the Legacy Lands Conservation Commission's deliberations for this year's awards. There were powerful testimonies from members of the public identifying the importance of particular wahi pana to them. There were new coalitions of motivated public that formed to advocate for and malama such lands. You do not get such dedication from government by itself. You know that. There were quieter applications where the importance of biological, scenic, and cultural values spoke for themselves. It was inspiring and rewarding to participate in this as a plain citizen on this Legacy Lands Conservation Commission. As is generally the case in most years, Hawai`i County is a recommended recipient of a generous award from earmarked state funds for a property important to our people. The top ranking applications all had sizable matches from other sources. The PONC program was the recipient of one of these, offering to the state as the PONC's match, about half of the nearly three million dollar acquisition cost. Neither program could afford it alone without the match unless it passed over many other qualified ranking applications and some of this happens already because the funds for purchasing lands are already inadequate for the demand. Each acquisition of the acquisition programs has a provision where and here it is called the restrictive covenant where the land must be protected in perpetuity and other match partners expect the same. Should CA -7 become law and the commitment to keep perpetual interest in lands be lost, the PONC program would no longer be likely to be awarded such matches and be severely curtailed by this provision alone. Funding partners expect public funds that are used for perpetual protection to be used for such. To change the PONC commitments to allow the sale or other transfers of the acquired lands is just disingenuous to the partners and to the people. And today's `dina is just real estate environment driven by ever increasing speculative investment by offshore buyers. The ability of the PONC to acquire properties that are important to our residents is already diminishing daily. This ability of PONC funds to leverage more matches is essential. Don't pull its plug Page 23