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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03/17/2010 Public Hearing Transcript re: BILL 2349PUBLIC HEARING MARCH 17, 2010 A public hearing of the Council of the County of Kauai was called to order by Daryl W. Kaneshiro, Chair, Budget & Finance Committee, on Wednesday, March 17, 2010, at 2:34 p.m. at the Council Chambers, Historic County Building, 4396 Rice Street, Lihu`e, Kauai, .and the presence of the following was noted: Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Dickie Chang Honorable Jay Furfaro Honorable Daryl W. Kaneshiro Honorable Lani. T. Kawahara Honorable Derek S. K. Kawakami Honorable Bill "Kaipo" Asing, Council Chair The Clerk read the notice of the public hearing on the following: BILL NO. 2349 - A BILL ~ FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2009-691, AS AMENDED, .RELATING TO THE CAPITAL BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI; STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2009 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2010, BY REVISING THE SURPLUS AND APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATED IN THE SPECIAL TRUST FUND FOR PARKS & PLAYGROUNDS- HANALEI DISTRICT, which was ordered to print by the Council of the County of Kauai on February 17, 2010, and published. in The Garden Island newspaper on February 24, 2010. The following communication was received for the record: • JoAnn Yukimura, dated March 16, 2010 The hearing proceeded as follows: Mr. Kaneshiro: Before we take public testimony, I want to make an announcement that we will have a special budget and finance committee meeting on March 22, next week Monday, at 8:30 on this bill number .2349, and let me explain why the reason for that, is that yesterday we received correspondence from Holly Smith, who is the.. coordinator for Legacy Land Conservation Program, and the requirement regarding matching funds for- this year's. legacy land projects, all documentary evidence and matching funds are due on March 31. Unfortunately for us, our next scheduled public or Council committee meeting won't be 'til April 7, and. 1 so we are pushing this item out to bring it on the agenda again for Monday at 9 o'clock in the morning, or 8:30 in the morning, sorry about that, 8:30 in the morning on the 22nd, and thereafter, we're going to have a special Council meeting to deliberate on this matter. So again, for public notice, I wanted to give that information out. With that, Mr. Clerk, do we have any written testimonies? I believe I have one in front of me. Is that the only one that I have right now? Mr. Nakamura: That's correct, Mr. Committee Chair, one written testimony. We do have registered speakers. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that. Are you prepared to call up the first speaker? Mr. Nakamura: Yes, Mr. Chair. First registered speaker is Bill Chase, followed by Jennifer Luck. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for that. Mr. Chase, you have the floor. BILL CHASE: Thank you. I'm Bill Chase, the president of the Kauai Public Land Trust. Long before the days of Kalani Tai Hook, what came to be known as Black Pot Beach Park has played an important role in recreational, economic, cultural, and spiritual lives of the many peoples of Kauai, an importance beyond the daily lives off our residents has been recognized as well. In the 90s, then Governor Cayetano recognized the Statewide importance of the area, then President Bill Clinton included the Hanalei .River as a national heritage river, and in 2008 and 2009, the State Legacy Land Commission has made this expansion project one of their top priorities. On behalf of the people of Kauai, our visitors and rich history of this area, the Kauai Public Land Trust has been working tirelessly exploring countless options making repeated efforts and offers over the course of a decade to begin the long overdue expansion of this beloved park. As a voice of the community, the granddaughter of Kalani Tai Hook, Cathy Ham Young sat before you last year as a reminder of the community's ongoing and active commitment. She is here again today as you have questions later on. We now have a unique almost blessed opportunity to finally begin. A lot has happened in the past year- opportunities lost, new opportunities found. We still have a supremely committed landowner. We still have your already powerful commitment in last year's funding, and with the bill before you, the opportunity to give the State some much needed encouragement to crown our efforts by releasing the dedicated funds it has already awarded to this project. And yes, most of the work is still to come. There will be more land to acquire, inclusive planning to engage in, more funding to secure, and this will require determination, creativity, and patience. But it has to start somewhere. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your very speedy consideration of bill 2349. The board of the Kauai Public Land Trust will be honored to talk with any and all of you about this opportunity, the larger vision it serves, and how we 2 can all continue working together to help honor our past and build our future. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Chase? Mr. Furfaro: First of all, county working supervisor Kalihu also is the steward acknowledged by previous Mayor Baptiste. I do want to share that for the land trust benefit, the finance chair of our committee has acknowledged that we are going to have posted on Monday after our budget introduction, we are fast tracking a special posted meeting to come out of his committee for the 350,000. Yes. Subsequently right after that, we will have a special Council meeting, which I signed off on yesterday, to do that step. So it goes in front of the full Council as a full Council. meeting. I do want to be very honest,. we are in a position that we cannot earmark these funds indefinitely, and so correspondence went from my committee as planning to the State that basically says the sequence here is we move on these commitments so that you have them before March 31. Mr. Chase: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: On March 31, that represents the $350,000. We already have earmarked 1.850 in the open space committee. Yes, this then gets conveyed through the state legacy fund to the head of DLNR, I believe. They transmit our action today. Mr. Chase: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: She then transmits the action to the board, the board then :transmits the substantial evidence of funds to the governor, the governor has until June 30 to sign off. We need to be very clear that if nothing happens by June 30, we will not have the ability to just hold on to those funds until something happens. Mr. Chase: We understand that. Mr. Furfaro: We have taken this 350,000 from the North Shore parks fund and we have earmarked open space money, but we would also like to say if there's anything that we can do, to send correspondence, Ithink the chairman has mentioned, Mr. Asing has mentioned, if we have to do a resolution to demonstrate our commitments and so forth to the governor to get this executed by June 30, we would be more than glad to do it. But you need to give us some of the particulars and we have to openly honestly share with you how-long we could sit there with this money for this project. 3 Mr. Chase:. We understand that, and again, we appreciate the enormous logistics that have to be going on behind scenes in the public, eye, but there's a lot of fast tracking that's having to happen here. Mr. Furfaro: All publicly posted. Mr. Chase: Absolutely. Thank you for that special meeting. Never a good time to remodel, but 'I guess that's why things are getting postponed. We will also be working at the level to get information to the public to help convey to her the deep importance of this area and the amount of work that has to, that's gone into this that shows the level of commitment here. Mr. Furfaro: date. Mr. Chase: deadline. We'll know. I needed to reiterate the June 30 need to happen There's a deadline, the bad news is there's a Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions ,for Mr. Chase? If not, thank you very much. Can I have the next speaker. Mr. Nakamura: Next speaker is Jennifer Luck, followed by Cathy Ham Young. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Jennifer, you have the floor. JENNIFER LUCK: Good afternoon, Councilmembers. For the record, my name is Jennifer Luck, executive director of Kauai .Public Land Trust. Before reading my testimony, I would just like to thank all of you and indeed to the Council staff for working so hard on fast tracking this and working with the State deadline of March 31. We can't tell you how much we appreciate your support of this project thus far and all of the work that you.put into ensuring that we're doing everything possible and within our. power to make sure that this actually happens and this property gets acquired. So thank you again on behalf of the KPLB. I thank you for your expansion of Black Pot State Park. The efforts to require the Hodge property has truly been a collaborative effort between the county, Kauai Public Land Trust, and Mr. Hodge. As .you know, working on acquiring a lot next to the pier from Mr. Hodge in 2008... at the time the property was listed for sale for 4.5 million, Mr. Hodge generously agreed to sell the property to us for 3.3 million. ~'~ith the support of the county parks and recreation department and the office of Mayor Carvalho, we began immediately raising. funds for the purchase a .year and a half later. We're now finally close to securing all moneys necessary to expand a.s much as well as the park. To date, we have secured 1..85 million as Councilmember Furfaro said, from the county open space fund. As you all know, recommended for 800,000 in funding from the Legacy Land Commission and Board of Land & 4 Natural Resources. This is all contingent on the remaining 350,000 being secured by March 31. Once we heard this deadline, we re-approached Mr. Hodge and he agreed to reduce his sales price further by 30.0,000 to $3 million. That's the sales price we're working with now. To ensure the State's requirement is met, we respectfully request your support- of bill number 2349, earmarking 350,000 to purchase the Hodge lot and expand Black Pot Beach -Park. Thank- you again. Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions? Ms Luck: ~ Thank you again Mr. Kaneshiro: Any questions? Thank you. Next speaker please. Mr. Nakamura: Last registered speaker is JoAnn Yukimura. I'm sorry. Cathy Ham Young. I'm sorry. CATHY HAM YOUNG: Good evening. Aloha. Good afternoon. Mahalo for everything. That's all I want to say ,because Bill and Jennie has already said what needs to be mentioned. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, ana I know that my dad will be so happy to see the work that's happening. There are so many activities going on there right now. and I hope that it won't be overtaken before we get the money. As I see, we have so many problems there right now. We have not enough parking space, people. are just overrun by everybody, and at one point they wanted to close a part of the beach which allows... .Right now, .ail the older people are getting out to enjoy the sunset and do whatnot. I have no problem for that. I have seen good behavior. As I see, we are trying to help the county because I know of lack of funds that they have and trying to support the workers there and trying to do the best they can. So I've been trying to tell everybody whatever rubbish you have, please take it home, take all the bottles and cans, because you can make money, and that's where I make money too. So I'd like to thank the Bill Chase and Jennie because of the hard work, .and Barbara Robeson and all the rest of the workers, and all of you people, mahalo too much. Thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: Last speaker please. Mr. Nakamura: Next speaker is JoAnn Yukimura. JOANN YUKIMURA: Councilmembers, JoAnn Yukimura for the record. Thank you for this opportunity to speak in favor of bill 2349. I speak both as the director of Kauai Public Land Trust and as an individual citizen. Every summer during my childhood, our family camped on Hanalei Bay or somewhere in 'Ha`ena. Perhaps we were among the first vacation rental users. I learned how to dive from Hanalei pier, and every day we would swim and fish and snorkel all day long, and then we would play cards and music all night. I could not ask for a more wonderful childhood memory as, and Chair Asing was here earlier, if I have memory, he has 5 far more and same as Aunty Cathy, also Councilmember Furfaro, and I'm sure every one of you has some memories of Hanalei Bay, and the many, many local people and residents have used that park for years. It forms .part of their fabric of life. So and then we have the visitors, countless visitors, who use that park. Fast forwarding to the present, I remember the dismay that the Kauai Public Land Trust board felt when the fences went up around the Hodge property. We thought we had lost that property forever. The lot is available today, still for purchase by the county, so I want to thank you, Chair Asing and Council Vice Chair Furfaro, for introducing this bill which will enable us to finalize all of the moneys and which will enable us to save the Legacy Land moneys, the 800,000 that the state will be contributing toward this purchase. I also want to thank budget chair Kaneshiro and Chair Asing and Council Vice Chair for accelerating the timetable for the committee meeting and Council meeting next week, and I want to thank the entire Council for the earlier passage of the $1.85 million. Without that, we wouldn't be where we are today. And finally, thank you to the heroic staff who has had to scramble and help us, and all of those who has had to scramble with all of these difficult timetables. I also want to thank John Hodge the owner of the property who is making the property available at a hugely discounted price. It is community-minded landowners like Mr. Hodge who is making it possible for Kauai Public Land Trust to secure and expand places of heart, which is our mission, for present and future generations. Finally, mahalo to Mayor Carvalho and his administration for the support of this effort. And lastly, actually, I want to thank the colleagues on the Kauai Public Land Trust board for their tireless efforts. Future generations will thank. each one of you for approving bill 2349 and it will be a legacy that you can truly be proud of. Thank you very much. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you. Any questions for JoAnn? Ms. Yukimura: -Thank you. It's been my privilege. Mr. Kaneshiro: Is there anyone else who hasn't had an opportunity to speak that would like to make comment or public hearing on this matter? Seeing none, public hearing is now adjourned. There being no further testimony on this matter, the public hearing adjourned at 2:52 p.m. Respectfully submitted, P ERA. NAKAMURA County Clerk /ao 6 ~:-