02-22-2010, 07:34 PM
quote:the praises of SPACE in BIW are impressive, but as an onlooker it bothers me to see Graham write about it almost in terms of a community association, when your statement here makes it quite clear that it is and was always meant to be privately steered. This is from one of Graham Ellis's comments in BIW:
It IS a privately owned building, owned by "Hawaii's Volcano Circus, a non-profit organization that received funding to build SPACE. Our funders were well aware of the nature of how SPACE would operate and that it would not be run by the members of the Seaview Owners Association, much less renters in the subdivision.
quote:The word "community is used six times, public, and the people are emphasized, and neighborhood. If I were just reading this on the blog I would assume this is a grass roots organization run by the community of Seaview.
If sustainability as a goal has any meaning at all, it must embrace community-based, community-run efforts to strengthen the social and economic fabric of their neighborhoods... Can our government respond to the needs of a legitimate community asset that serves the public, promotes sustainability, and buffers residents of lower Puna from the harmful effects of the great recession? I’ve observed that if the people speak loudly enough, the government can be made to listen. For that, we must look to our base as a grassroots community organization and to our service to you.
SPACE is the creation of a grassroots community development movement that meets the changing aspirations and needs of our community.
But he also refers to SPACE as the community, so he speaks of a community, his non-profit that serves the larger community, yet the larger community doesn't make the decisions. I find all this rhetoric about making the government serve the community troubling, because "community" means his private organization and it means the people who love his organization. But nowhere in any of this does it mean the general public, only SPACE and fans of SPACE.
Also, a lot of the support letters are regarding the school, which is not in danger of being closed. I learned that charter schools are exempt from the need for special use permits on ag land. So it's all the other stuff, and they knew they weren't allowed to do it, and they did it anyway.
There are farmers' markets all over the island. Why can't there be a farmer's market in the Seaview area? One just started up in Pepe'ekeo. Is it that there's no commercial zoning at all in the area? How did the Maku'u Market come to be?