HPP Owner's Meeting

[Punawild]

The HPPOA membership meeting is tomorrow, Sunday June 29th, at 3 PM in the Community Activity Center. Come show face, share your concerns, ask your questions, meet your neighbors & new board members, and learn about (& be apart of) the future plans for HPP. Hope to see you there! []

http://www.hppoa.com/GenMem%20agenda.pdf

[lavalava]

Any significant news or plans to share?

[Lin W]

This is cut-and-paste from a Facebook HPP group. I was not at the meeting, don't flame the messenger. If C&P isn't permissible, Rob, please remove it.

Sorry for the late response. I was at the meeting last Sunday and here's quick-ish recap. There was a "15 minute" slide show (which was actually more like 35-45 minutes) on the history of HPP, possible bike & walking paths, the bus route and the possibility of a town center in HPP. Three of the four new board members were introduced, the forth was/is on the mainland to welcome a new grandbaby. There was a presentation of awards to volunteers.
There were quick reports from a number of committees.
1) Neighborhood Watch (kids are out of school with nothing to do but make mischief so keep an eye out and call the non emergency police number, 935-3311, if you see anything odd)
2) Road, Traffic, & Safety (green waste on easements are eliminating bail out areas & carelessly tossed coconuts sprouting along the road.)
3) Path (if anyone wants to volunteer to carry mulch or pick up trash call them)
4) Road tests (tests of new road material will be starting soon).
The members voted on new Finance committee members. A little unsure about that one since the board only actually counted the 'aye's while just eyeballed the 'nay's.
The GM got up and showed us all a "conceptual" drawing of what he wanted do for a green & solid waste dump site in HPP. Owners were able to give their input and some brought up great points.
1) in the pro list it was mentioned that if we had the green waste dump we could chip it and have mulch but no where on the con list was the price of a chipper mentioned.
2) with a dump site there would be a worry of polluted run off, so would we need environmental reports? ground water testing? etc
3) the work crews are not able to keep up with basic maintenance of the roads as is, how in the world could they be expected to run a dump site too?
4) and if the workers we already employ wouldn’t be able to run the dump site that means more crew so why wasn’t salaries for new workers on the con list?
After seeing the drawing, his pros & cons and hearing from members there was a vote on whether we (HPPOA members) wanted the GM to go forward with getting permits to do that and 40 to 15 (people asked that the board count EVERY vote, no eyeballing this one) it was decided that we did not want that.
There was another owner input time after all that. Why was having a shopping center in HPP brought up since we are so close to both Keaau & Pahoa? Why are we spending 100K less on road maintenance now when road fees are bring in 2+ million then when it was bring in just 1 mil? While at the very same time employee salaries have gone up around 100k? Why was the HPPOA attorney asked to come to one of the last board meetings since that is supposed to be approved by the board and it wasn’t? Who ACTUALLY asked the attorney to come to the meeting since, once again it wasn’t approved by the board? And since it wasn’t approved by the board who would be paying those attorney’s fees??? Towards the end of the meeting & owner’s input Joy SanBuenaventura rushed in and told us that she didn’t have a position on the dump and that we should contact her to tell her how we felt about it. She also said that the important thing was Aug 9 and voting. (On a personal note, considering she's running for office I wish she was a little more concerned for, aware of, and involved with her own neighborhood. :-|)
There was an HPPOA Community Action Committee survey handed out. Asking what you'd like in the park, if anything. Market, gas station, urgent care, beauty shop, & etc. If you'd like to fill one out I'm not sure if you can get one but I'd try calling the HPPOA office. Oh, there was also some talk about there being a great deal of the stuff on HPPOA.com that is out of date or just plain missing in action. Heck, even the online newsletter is MONTHS behind schedule.
Okay, I’m sure I forgot some things but I think I got the highlights. Hope everyone has had a fun & safe 4th!

I am so much more like I am today than I ever was before!

[kalakoa]

Why was having a shopping center in HPP brought up since we are so close to both Keaau & Pahoa?

Because the highway is behind the population growth by about 20 years, and requires a car (scooter dangerous, bicycle suicidal)?

[csgray]

"Why was having a shopping center in HPP brought up since we are so close to both Keaau & Pahoa?"

Because over 10,000 people already lived here during the last census, and the number has just gone up since then, and that many people should not have to get on a dangerous highway to buy a gallon of milk. I grew up in a small farm town with 10,000 people in it, we had schools, a library, fire department, police protection, some light manufacturing jobs, ag related jobs and all sorts of needed commerce, for far less taxes than our combined taxes and road fees today, even when adjusted for inflation.

HPP was designed with big 20 acre blocks designated for commerce, light manufacturing, schools and parks. The county zoning overlay does not match with that, and the current owners are not yet interested in developing, but the community really needs those things, and it would reduce the need to keep expanding the highway for the next 50 years.

Carol

[dchanmer]

Curious if there was any comment or discussion concerning the albizias....thanks for the update, btw!

[james weatherford]

"Why was having a shopping center in HPP brought up since we are so close to both Keaau & Pahoa?"
Agree with kalakoa and Carol.
When this question was asked at the meeting (indicating HPP was only 5 or 6 miles from either town) I pointed out that the distance from Pohaku or 33rd Ave (i.e., right at the highway) might be 5 or 6 miles, but the ocean side of HPP is almost that far from the highway so the the trip is double.
The surest way to address the traffic on highway 130 is to reduce the need for people to drive on it.

[kalakoa]

HPP was designed with big 20 acre blocks designated for commerce, light manufacturing, schools and parks.

As it turns out: six of these, evenly spaced throughout the subdivision, PLUS a very nice oceanfront parcel for a park. Many would be within walking distance, everyone would be within an easy bicycle/scooter ride.

The surest way to address the traffic on highway 130 is to reduce the need for people to drive on it.

Which is why we have the PCDP that defines "sprawl" as anything not in a "designated commercial area". This has always seemed like "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" -- development along the highways is probably a bad idea, but refusing to allow "village commercial" in the ("private") subdivisions is starting to look pretty dumb.

Consider the following "thought experiment". If there was a corner store inside HPP, would people from outside HPP shop there? Once you're out at the highway (say, from OLE), seems like you'd shop on the highway instead of crossing the highway to fight traffic in and out of HPP...

[csgray]

A community of 10,000+ people and growing every day could support a fair amount of commerce without relying on people from outside the subdivision. HPP could support businesses like a cafe or pizza place, medium size grocery, small hardware store and garden center/feed store, daycare center, hair salon, coin operated laundry, and gas station with no problem. It already supports several mechanics and could support other services too, but currently the only way to do anything is to go through the onerous conditional use permit process and most small business owners just don't have the time and resources to do that, plus everything is on a case by case basis with no logical long term plan.

Carol

[kalakoa]

everything is on a case by case basis with no logical long term plan

Technically the PCDP is a "long range plan" -- it's just not necessarily designed to meet the needs of the public, seems more like a guarantee for the "large local landowners" (who happen to have all the "designated commercial centers") and workers for the State DOT (who might eventually widen the roads enough to carry all the traffic to and from these "designated commercial centers").

I find it painfully (or stupidly) ironic that the subdivisions are "private" if they want something (roads, zoning) and magically "public" if County wants something (speeding tickets, building permits).