Posted on: Monday, December 2, 2002

ISLAND VOICES
Residents' concerns must be addressed

By Doug Thomas
Chairman of the Planning & Zoning Committee of the Mililani Neighborhood Board

Along with the many valid points in your Nov. 22 editorial expressing concerns over the Central O'ahu Sustainable Communities Plan, residents of Central O'ahu have another major concern. From the beginning, there has been an effort by the city to ramrod this plan through to approval despite community concerns. As evidence:

• The community accidentally found out about the original draft in 1999 just before it was to go to the City Council for approval without public comment.

• Except for a public hearing in Waikele in mid-November attended by two of the nine council members, where every person who provided testimony opposed the plan, all City Council hearings have been held during the normal business day in downtown Honolulu, which makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for residents of Central O'ahu to testify. This venue, however, is very convenient for those pushing the plan — the Department of Planning and Permitting and developers.

• The Mililani Neighborhood Board, which has been expressing concerns over the plan since 1999, received no official notice of the September City Council meeting in which the plan passed second reading.

• This plan has been on the DPP Web site for several months, giving the impression it is already approved. At its August meeting, the Mililani Neighborhood Board asked Randall Fujiki, head of the DPP, why this was the case. Although he said he would get back to us, this question has gone unanswered.

• Both the Mililani and Mililani Mauka neighborhood boards passed resolutions in opposition to the plan last spring, with not a single vote in favor.

• Three years of meetings with DPP have produced no meaningful changes in the plan from the September 1999 draft.

• Numerous requests that final consideration of the plan be deferred to the new council — whose members must answer to voters, as opposed to a lame-duck council that will return only three members — have gone unheeded. The plan is scheduled to come up for final vote at the council on Dec. 6.

Our community's last hope is that the council will do the right thing and put the welfare of the residents of Central O'ahu ahead of profits for developers and not approve the plan until residents' concerns are adequately addressed.