CDPs again

[Rob Tucker]

quote:

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Originally posted by pahoated

The real question is why is there even a Community Development Plan?

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Those of us that worked on the CDPs were not aware at time of launch that the movement for the CDP process was the result of a lawsuit filed by the Federal government against the state in which it was alleged that the State of Hawaii, in the disbursement of Federal Highway Funds, was only consulting the large land owners and not the communities or citizens at large. Guess who was getting the dollars?

Anyway the state tried to defend itself by claiming that the counties were their source of input for state road projects. That dragged the counties into it.

A "consent decree" was entered in which the state and counties promised the feds that for future development the communities would be consulted.

After a two year process involving several hundred people in Puna (me included) - which resulted in the Puna CDP and others- we were rather dismayed to learn this and to find out that while the consent decree required community input there was really nothing that the county was required to act on or even respect. Basically it was a case of "Okay, Now we have the community input and now we can ignore it".

So the end result is a continuance of plantation trickle down politics. There are occasions where it suits the county to use the CDP when it suits them on a case by case basis.

I think Harry Kim was sincere about the CDP process when it launched but Billy Kenoi could care less and operated behind the scenes to effectively neuter it.

JMHO