Puna parks

[Seeb]

How about the county building a park on the land it already owns in HPP

[james weatherford]

@ Seeb,
You would be speaking of the small parcels near the ocean?
Curious situation there.
HPPOA turned those over to the County some years ago and zero has been done with them, although people -- including non-HPP residents -- regularly use HPP roads to access those parcels and use them for fishing and whale viewing (that is called a 'public purpose' and the idea of 'private roads' has no relevance). The County won't even pick up the trash from their own parcels.
After Fred Blas manipulated the derailment of money for an HPP park on a 20-acre site, so that money could be put in Pahoa, HPPOA asked the County to return the small parcels to HPPOA so the community could do something there. The County said it could not transfer the title to the small parcel because they are on the coastline...
So, that would, as you suggest, Seeb, appear to put the onus back on the County to do something.

[Seeb]

Bathroom, Trash can , and a No Drinking sign.

[Rob Tucker]

I am curious James, how did Fred Blas manipulate the park money away from HPP? As I recall the HPP BoD narrowly rejected the proposal.
I would appreciate the details.

[james weatherford]

The people on the HPPOA Board who dealt with Fred Blas on the park had much stronger words than "manipulate" -- they dealt with falsity in statements from him.
It is interesting to note that the HPPOA Board voted for the park at the June 2011 meeting, and Fred was videotaped (on Big Island Video News) the day before that meeting at the opening of the new Pahoa transfer station saying of HPP and the park, "...it is their loss", even though the HPPOA board had already previously approved first steps toward the transfer of the land.
The pivotal and later vote to not proceed with the park came from a member new to the HPPOA board. This new board member reported that days prior to that second vote she had been in the Black Rock Cafe in Pahoa and heard Fred Blas trumpeting how he was going to take the park from HPP and put it in Pahoa.
At the January 17, 2012 meeting in Pahoa regarding the park there, Fred Blas explicitly stated that he wanted the park in Pahoa rather than "just one subdivision" (never mind the fact that subdivision has much higher population than Pahoa.)

[Rob Tucker]

Okay. Rumors and second hand stuff.

There was more than one HPP board member who voted it down. I thought it a less than wise decision myself... I would have been happy to see HPP get a park though I had not much enthusiasm for the county to actually deliver value for the money available. That will be a problem for whatever may occur on the Pahoa District Park Lands.

[james weatherford]

Second hand it is.
The same as for your recent comments in a discussion about roads and schools, and what you are "told" regarding certain "forces" in HPP.
The difference is, I live in HPP and stay in touch on a day to day basis with many people who live here.
You, on the other hand, do not do either.

[Seeb]

The county would not write a
Letter of intent " if you give us the land we will build a park" so giving them the land would have been stupid.

[Rob Tucker]

Seeb. I agree. I was on the BoD in Pahoa when we deeded 56 acres to the county for a District park. Nine years and nothing. My advice to the HPP BoD at the time the Kenoi Admin was asking for the land was for HPP to get a lawyer. I wasn't advising don't do it.... just get a lawyer.

http://www.bigislandchronicle.com/2010/1...-a-lawyer/

Plenty of land in lots of counties has been given for parks. It was eminently doable. Somehow I think that Fred Blas was not the reason that the HPP BoD voted it down. But with James Weatherford's wife on the HPP BoD and James himself so "in the loop" as he claims to be... what happened?

But hey? What do I know?

[JerryCarr]

I was there the night the HPP BoD voted the park land donation down and at the previous meeting where we were given to believe they were moving toward approving it. I was also at one meeting where County officials gave us their positions. From my point of view, the most notable person who changed his vote was the board president who was recently removed from that position, but still sits on the BoD. After having at one point said, "Hey guys, we have to give them a chance to do something for us," he voted against the donation. Nobody at that meeting said a thing about Fred Blas. It was later that we began to hear stories about the park being "hijacked" to Hawaiian Beaches, et al.

I am a well known cynic when it comes to promises from the County, and I strongly suggested to the BoD during the negotiations that they follow Rob's advice and get a lawyer to draw up an instrument which would require the County to build something on the land within a stipulated period of time. Failure to do so would cause the title to revert to the HPPOA. We were told by County officials that this would not be a problem, but there were differing amounts of time that were acceptable to different parties. Some BoD members were OK with the County's time line, and others wanted a tighter one. (My own representative was consistently against the donation because he insisted that the County make a gesture toward compensation for increased road wear by either taking over one of the roads or providing some other infrastructure improvements or maintenance.)

We were all amazed when the president changed his mind. He mumbled something about the deal not being good enough, but I'm not sure what he meant. I was a skeptic of the whole thing at first, but having closely followed the process, I would have been OK with the donation as long as the time frame was clearly defined and an ironclad reversion clause was in the contract. It was extremely frustrating to have put in the effort to attend all those meetings and be convinced to change my mind only to have it go down that way.

What it all came down to was ineffective leadership in HPP. The BoD, like many, has factions and personal grudges. They were not able to put those aside to give the County a chance to do something for us. The next time we ask them for something, the County can say, "We offered you a park, and you wouldn't give us a chance to deliver. Why should we work with you now?" The people in HPP who spearheaded the effort to get a park were convinced that the County intended to deliver, and some of them were skeptics early on, too.

So we have met the enemy and he is us. I could start a whole thread on the HPP BoD's issues with transparency, violating its own by-laws on executive sessions, factionalism, lack of vision, and other problems, but I'll save that for later or let somebody else do it. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a big fan of Fred Blas. In this case, however, the real culprit is the HPP BoD and its leadership . . . or lack thereof. That might change with a new president, or it might not. I'm waiting to see how that plays out, but with the same players in place, I guess I'm a bit skeptical.