Waialua group losing support
By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer
As it gears up for its 70th anniversary celebration this summer, the Waialua Community Association — the oldest organization of its kind in Hawai'i and a forerunner of O'ahu's Neighborhood Board system — struggles to redefine itself in a time far removed from its plantation beginnings.
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Membership is down and volunteers have been hard to come by, association president Jeff Alameida told slightly more than two dozen people who attended the annual meeting last week.
Waialua Community Association office manager Xavier "Marty" Martin flips through photos and documents that tell of the rich history of the 70-year-old organization. Low turnout at the group's recent annual meeting left him disappointed.
"Where does the WCA go over the next 70 years?" he said, explaining that the association would issue one-page questionnaires that will go to 5,000 homes in the Waialua and Hale'iwa Zip code areas.
"We want to get an idea of what you, the community, wants of the WCA."
Even as the association gropes for a focus, it finds itself uncharacteristically embroiled in a controversy regarding the North Shore Seniors, an organization that feeds community members 55 and older twice a week at the WCA building, known locally as "The Old Hale'iwa Gym."
For more than a decade the North Shore Seniors have used the facility for free. The conflict stems from an agreement the North Shore Seniors reached several years ago with about a dozen area homeless people. The homeless help the seniors set up tables and chairs at meetings, and in return the seniors share their food with them.
However, because the association board says some of the homeless have been disruptive and at times even violent, it has asked the seniors to pay rent on the gym (it has offered to give them a deal on the usual $25 an hour fee), and told the group to get its own liability insurance.
The association says feeding the homeless violates the original agreement it had with the North Shore Seniors to help the elderly. But Melvin Amantiad, who heads the North Shore Seniors, says it has never had a written agreement with the association and that helping the homeless is in keeping with the WCA's stated mission to "support individuals and community."
The association's concerns are heightened by the fact that its insurance agent has told the board it risks losing its own liability insurance if the homeless situation isn't resolved, Alameida said. Still, the association finds itself in the uncomfortable position of coming off heavy-handed at a time when membership is down.
The 2004 annual meeting started 15 minutes late because extra time was needed to assemble a quorum of 20 members to vote for new trustees.
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Association office manager and former trustee Xavier "Marty" Martin was not pleased with the turnout.
The Waialua Community Association building also is used by the North Shore Seniors to feed community members.
"To me the involvement of the community is disappointing," he said before the meeting. "We have approximately 500 members in a district that has 20,000 homes."
Martin's concerns were echoed by WCA Trustee Meryl Andersen, who, along with her late husband, Andy Andersen Jr., became part of the organization in the 1950s. Andersen recalls the days when widespread support for the WCA was a given.
"At that time we had no buses," she said. "We were kind of stuck out here and the plantation was the whole thing."
Now, she says, support has diminished because of the increasing number of younger people moving in who have mobility and far more activities and diversions to choose from.
A plaque near the front steps of the building said the WCA began on Dec. 17, 1934. The association, which became a vital component of the rural plantation lifestyle of the times, began as an umbrella organization to assist some three dozen churches, schools, service clubs and other institutions in serving the people from Ka'ena Point to Waimea Bay.
The 4,200-square-foot association gym facility, complete with kitchen, dressing rooms and offices, was dedicated on Oct. 18, 1937. And although the structure's mezzanine is no longer there, the recently renovated building is essentially what it was in the beginning.
But by the time the Waialua Sugar Mill shut down in 1997, the association's role had been usurped by the North Shore Neighborhood Board, a city-sponsored effort, which focuses its attention on issues affecting the area.
In the meantime, the WCA had long since lost the Honolulu Community Chest subsidy that paid for 75 percent of its overhead. Although it still receives grant money from a number of sources, it has had to generate additional income by renting office space in the building and organizing fund-raisers.
Today, the WCA finds itself competing with other civic organizations, such as the Sunset Beach Community Association, the Mokuleia Community Association and the Friends of Waialua, among others.
But longtime members such as Antya Miller, administrator of the North Shore Community Chamber of Commerce, believe the venerated, historical WCA will succeed in strengthening its niche. It is still, she says,
Waialua's primary gathering place.
"Any organization, over the years, has got to change and grow," said Miller, whose father was a WCA trustee.
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
