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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -6 December 14, 2018 Secondly, there is a lot of testimony against removing the no transfer or the requirement of the PONC acquired properties. Your ad hoc committee looked at this and the reason we are taking this out is not to somehow, for some kind of a nefarious reason to sell the land, to put it into the general fund cause which would be clearly illegal and which would be set aside, but the reason for this change is to give the people dealing with PONC funds more flexibility in enhancing the overall PONC program of acquiring lands for public use and freeing their ability to deal with landowners in furthering the goals of the PONC program, and this is what we have you know, learned from our ad hoc committee and our investigation. You know, their hands are tied many times. There is no other County in Hawaii that has the no transfer provision in their PONC Charter terms. And the reason for this I think is simple. Because having such a provision in the Charter provision prevents them from carrying out acquisition and maintenance deals with others that enhances the overall PONC program and you know this is something that was suggested by I believe, when we were in our ad hoc committee, so from the public testimony, the tenor seemed to have been like some of these changes are being made to cut down the PONC program when in fact everything we are trying to do is trying to enhance the PONC program, to liberalize like for example the maintenance provisions because right now they are handcuffed from doing certain things because of the strict provisions in that part of the Charter provision. Thank you. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you Mr. Hamann. Commissioner Todd. MS. TODD: In 2003, before leaving the Council, I had staff looking at the provisions of the Maui and the Kaua`i Charters which were at one percent and half percent and based on our assessment of the size of our County what had looked like rapid development and the need to front load purchasing of open space, we had come to the independent conclusion that if we were going to propose something, we needed two percent and the rationale for the two percent is that there are lands that may come on the market may become available that may have a hefty price tag and you wanted that flexibility to be able to pick that property up and part of the rationale for looking at two percent was that if you waited for the money to accumulate at a rate of half a percent or one percent, that you would lose the opportunity to pick up parcels as they came along. So when my staff and I looked at it, we were not concerned about whether the money accumulated and grew to a nice hefty pot at one particular time because part of it too was the idea that you weren't going to do eminent domain. So you needed a willing seller and that is just because it is faster and easier and less expensive, so sometimes there are parcels that people want but the seller doesn't want to sell, so you move to something, you pick low hanging fruit, even if the low hanging fruit isn't necessarily your number one priority, but the idea was that without front loading, in other words purchasing property as soon as we could, that you would lose the opportunity because the momentum to develop a parcel would make it difficult to acquire. You take a look at `O`oma, at some point you know somebody had invested a lot of money into planning to try and develop the Page 43