By TOM CALLIS
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Mountain View residents will be able to weigh in on the future of their community at a meeting Thursday.
The meeting, held at 6 p.m. at the Mountain View School cafeteria, is the first gathering for the Mountain View Long Range Plan.
The plan will guide development for the community, including how much and where it will take place.
It’s part of the larger Puna Community Development Plan, and follows the lead of other communities that are bringing control down to the town level through their own individual documents.
“If we don’t start to decide how we want our village to grow, it will happen patchwork and it may be not responsive to what the community wants,” said Patti Pinto, a member of the Mountain View subcommittee.
Pinto said she believes the community plan could be finished in about a year.
“We’re really in our infancy,” she said.
But it does have examples to follow, including from nearby Pahoa.
“Pahoa is proceeding along really well at this,” Pinto said. “We would like to follow their model in a much smaller scale for Mountain View.”
The Pahoa Regional Town Center Steering Committee held its first meeting in March, and has been gathering input from community members since through surveys.
“We try to make them as objective as possible and neutral as possible,” said committee member Mark Hinshaw.
Generally speaking, the survey participants desire protection of the town’s historical character and are concerned about uncontrolled growth, he said.
Sewage is also an issue.
“We’re the largest little town in the state that doesn’t have a central sewage system,” Hinshaw said.
The survey results will be presented at the committee’s second public meeting from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23, at the Pahoa Neighborhood/Community Center.
An “interactive poll” will also be available at the meeting.
The Pahoa plan is due early next year, Hinshaw said.
He said the community plans help provide the local level control and input that is sometimes lacking.
“This whole process of community development planning is almost a shift to giving more say to the community and not just the county,” Hinshaw said.
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
