MIN CHARTER 2019-01-25 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -7 January 25, 2019 the bill, I got it passed $250,000. God knows what is in there now. I don't know how much money is in there. That is what the Disaster and Emergency Fund is for. The PONC fund is not to cover emergencies. They should be funding the Disaster and Emergency fund at anywhere between two and five million dollars a year and it will be a revolving fund because when you have emergencies you have to take the money out. You are going once again after the wrong pot of money when you should be fixing the Disaster and Emergency fund. You need to put... this is in the Code right now. I can leave it here for you guys to read. You need to put it in the Charter and you need to set a substantial sum of money so we don't get into this problem again. We have every problem on this island except maybe snow avalanches. Everything else we get hit with and we get hit with almost every year or every other year and now we have had a major lava eruption. We are going to need tens of millions of dollars sitting in that fund for the next disaster. We need to get this done. It is Section 2-209, is the Section and there is also the Budget Stabilization fund which I did the same thing there. Pitifully underfunded. And that is to protect us. It is a temporary supplemental fund if something disastrous happens other than an emergency, a natural disaster. You are trying to take money from the wrong fund and you are not fixing the problem where it needs to be fixed, in the Disaster and Emergency fund. Fix the problem where it needs to be fixed and leave the PONC and the maintenance funds alone. They are not emergency funds. They are for our treasured lands. You all know this. You are all intelligent. You all know what these funds are for. Don't try to fix the problem with the wrong funding source. Fix the problem where it needs to be fixed. The Disaster and Emergency fund. Thank you very much. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. Ms. Ward. DEBORAH WARD: Proposal No. CA -7 and CA -13 in opposition and Proposal No. CA -9 in support. MS. WARD: Aloha, my name is Deborah Ward. I am Chair of Sierra Club Moku Loa Group which is the island's group and I represent over 400 people many of whom can't be here because it is a working day and I have testified on this before so I will be brief. But we do oppose CA -7. We oppose CA -13 and we support CA -9. I wanted to elaborate on some of the points that were brought up during the last meeting to talk about some of the responses that I heard. The purchase, protection, and preservation of significant beach and fishing access is critical because as we know when you gate a community and close off the beach and provide no parking or very, very limited parking as you sometimes see at the hotels which are discriminatory and difficult and arbitrary, then you get, you end up with people that live here on the island and can't get to the water. We have significant sacred and historical sites that are not being protected. We have agricultural land that is subject to inappropriate development. And as a local farmer, I can tell you, there are plenty of beginning farmers who do not have access to land and it took me until I was in my middle 50's in order to buy the land that I am currently farming and I am finally making money as a fanner but Page 11