Big Island Circus Fined $50,000 by DLNR

[SBango]

Kalakoa, there is a job opening at the county planning dept. Now is your chance to improve the civic planning process in Hawaii and try to find solutions to the problems created in the 50's and 60's by people who are either retired or dead now. Or would you prefer to continue complaining and casting blame?

[kalakoa]

Actually driving these issues from within Planning is a great idea on paper; the reality is that I simply don't have the political connections necessary to land a County job, and even if I were magically appointed, I would always have the minority viewpoint, hence accomplish nothing.

It's impossible to retrofit civic planning after-the-fact. We need completely different solutions, but the Powers That Be insist on seeing everything in terms of the current paradigm. Population increase = more trips to town, obviously the road needs to be wider to accomodate, no need to look at other solutions...

That said, yes, I agree there's nothing productive to be had with complaints and blame. Then again, it's not clear that the PCDP is accomplishing much other than to spawn endless committees and working groups who propose recommendations which look ... exactly like what we have now.

County should facilitate any and all development that the individual subdivisions elect by majority vote of their landowners. Puna-wide "one size fits all" is a failure.

[Guest]

It all started with a post on this thread.

http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19712&whichpage=9

HawaiiTedd, on page 9, posted a Press Release from the Hawaii's Volcano Circus (HVC) written by, Dena Smith, Interim Director, who is Graham Ellis's domestic partner, claiming that,

"during the aftermath of Tropical Storm Iselle....SPACE stepped in to offer assistance to local residents and neighbors by serving as a relief station; offering free ice, bathrooms, food & water distribution, and daily potluck dinners."

The next post was a response from a Seaview estates resident, who wrote,

"Funny, most people in Seaview did not know about the free ice, water and food after the storm. There was neither anything posted on the bulletin boards nor were the usual "SPACE event" road signs set out to let people know of these generous offers. Was this outpour of 'assistance' an internal affair for fans only? JB Water Hauling was highly visible in Seaview's Front park offering free water, food and other items (big Mahalo!)"

This response peaked my curiosity. So I decided to look into it further, but with all that is going on, it took a little time. I would like to shed some light on the subject.

Based on our experience with Graham Ellis, in the past and his shady dealings, we were fairly certain that he didn't acquisition the donations out of his own pocket.

So I called the food bank and found out that two people from SPACE, took it upon themselves, to go down to the food bank and represent themselves as representatives of the Seaview Kalapana Estates subdivision and promised that they would see to it that the provisions were distributed to the residents of the Seaview subdivison. So the Food Bank gave them an unknown quantity of donations. I haven't been able to track down the exact amount.

What happened after that?

These two individuals took the donations back to the SPACE 'relief station' which is basically on private property, in the back and outside of our subdivision, with no high visibility or reporting to the association, of these most 'generous offerings'.

What they did with the food or what happened to the food is unclear.

First, I called the president of the Seaview Estates Community Association. She lives approximately 2 blocks from the SPACE 'relief station'. She had NO knowledge of food, water or ice that was available for the residents that needed it. So I figured maybe the president wasn't in the loop. Although she should have been, given the fact that, Belly Acres who leases land to SPACE, is outside of the Seaview subdivision, so they should have given our community association president, a courtesy call, so she could have notified the residents about the "relief".

I then called a number of other Seaview Estate residents to find out if they were notified about the food, water and ice, available over at SPACE. They all answered in the negative.

I finally found two neighbors that would have been considered living close to SPACE. They said they had been invited to one pot luck dinner and said from, their point of view , "that it was horrible." They were NOT aware that the food was part of a food distribution giveaway.

What was not taken into consideration was that there are some seaview resident who would have preferred to prepare their own food in their own time. Also, there are numerous residents, for many different reasons, who would prefer not to go over to SPACE to have dinner.

The question I would like to have answered is why didn't SPACE distribute the donations on the front law or in the pavilion so that the Seaview residents could have easily seen them and passed the word that it was available? What gave them the right to decide that they were going to take donations, meant for the residents of seaview, and prepare that food themselves for everybody? That is 'everybody' who knew. Ridiculous!

So here it was, after Isele, countless were without electricity for many weeks and it was just cruel and unusual punishment to have S.P.A.C.E., who is under the fiscal sponsorship of Hawaii's Volcano Circus nonprofit 501c3, representing themselves as a "relief station" at the Food Bank and then neglecting to tell a lot of people who needed to know.

Funny, yesterday, Oct. 15, 2014, I spoke with the president of our subdivision. She told me that Graham had just called her to make her aware that there is a shuttle going every hour on Saturday to SPACE market at Uncle Roberts. This is very interesting and typical that Graham would call about the shuttle to his market but not call about the donations of water, ice, and food.

Very interesting but par for the course.[]

[kalakoa]

Very interesting but par for the course.

Indeed. Pity this level of scrutiny is not applied to things like the $20M bond for "lava roads".

[Guest]

kalakoa quote:
"Indeed. Pity this level of scrutiny is not applied to things like the $20M bond for "lava roads".

How do you compare the two? What 'level of scrutiny' are you talking about? Of course, we called about the food donations, because we do not want it to happen again! And we also want you to know and stop defending this conprofit, who is led by Graham Ellis, one of the most scandalous people I have ever met running a 501c3.

Are you saying we should only pay attention to the county level and above? While this very organization is lobbing the county and the state, that they have been snubbing anyhow, after receiving special privileges.

Kalakoa how do you justify what you are writing? Just by typing it? Just by thinking it? Do you say it over and over in the mirror just to convince yourself that what you are saying is relevant and has something to do with the train going to Georgia?

[kalakoa]

this conprofit, who is led by Graham Ellis, one of the most scandalous people I have ever met

Just stop pretending it's "for the good of the people" and admit it's a personal vendetta against Graham specifically.

Otherwise, take on a "for the people" issue with the same zeal.

Kalakoa how do you justify what you are writing? Just by typing it?

By being tired of it, mostly.

[missydog1]

Sativa, back to your post about the donations, I'm actually shocked.
So to be clear, SPACE is NOT part of Kalapana Seaview subdivision, yet members collected a substantial amount of Food Bank donations representing themselves as Seaview residents?

Isn't that called fraud or stealing?

And then, because it might have been OK if indeed they passed it directly to Seaview in its entirety, they didn't share it, and instead had a dinner by invitation only, which is what I would call a private dinner party?

Meanwhile people in Seaview were cut off from supplies and in hardship?

OK, that is really low, and IMO it is theft. [!]

Kathy

[Guest]

kalakoa quote:"Just stop pretending it's "for the good of the people" and admit it's a personal vendetta against Graham specifically."

kalakoa, you can scream all you want about a 'vendetta' but we are talking about the basics, FOOD! And this rogue nonprofit has even managed to mess this up.

[kalakoa]

Isn't that called fraud or stealing?

I consider it "fraud" when land values are misrepresented for tax purposes.

I also think taxation without representation is "stealing".

Critical difference: Graham isn't involved, and these activities aren't happening in/around Seaview, therefore it's a non-issue as far as Sativa's gang is concerned.

this rogue nonprofit has even managed to mess this up

Maybe they couldn't afford to eat after being financially devastated by a $50K judgement from DLNR?

[Punatic007]

I concur, it's very shocking.