After nearly eight years of talk-story groups, community meetings, committee meetings, readjustments and revisions, county planners and a steering committee of residents are close to finalizing the draft of a document that will guide future planning decisions for the entire Ka‘u District.
“It’s been a while,” steering committee chairperson Leinaala Enos said with a laugh.
“We’re all kind of stuck in there because many of us are very passionate about the process and what the outcomes can mean to our community,” she said.
At the core of that process is the premise nobody knows Ka‘u better, or knows what’s best for the region, than its own residents. The Community Development Plan is a way to codify those priorities, making sure future development takes them into account.
“The end result is a document that hopefully our community is going to be proud of because they had a lot of say about it,” Enos said.
“There has been active community involvement from the get-go,” senior long range county planner Ron Whitmore said in an email.
Nearly 1,200 people — about 14 percent of the district population, and a record participation rate compared to similar efforts — helped create the vision statement that serves as a thesis for the project and a foundation for the CDP document.
Beginning in October 2008, county planners hosted talk-story sessions and distributed surveys asking two basic questions: What do you love about Ka‘u, and what would you like to see in Ka‘u in 20 years?
Unsurprisingly, given the district’s rural character (it has one of the highest proportions of land in conservation and just 0.3 percent of its acreage classified as urban), many cited Ka‘u’s landscapes and natural resources. Others pointed to its uncrowded spaces and friendly residents.
The completed vision statement states that the CDP should honor Ka‘u’s “unique rural lifestyle, its connection between people and place,” and its “distinctive Hawaiian cultural heritage.”
“The core values and vision were fairly consistent across the district,” Whitmore said.
From that guiding point, planners and a CDP steering committee began to host meetings throughout the district, addressing the individual concerns of Pahala, Naalehu, Ocean View and Discovery Harbour. Economic development and coastal management were “quite concerning to people,” Enos said.
Other primary issues facing the district, Whitmore said, are agricultural subdivision, permitted uses of agricultural areas and development options in Discovery Harbour.
Though dozens of meetings have been hosted since the CDP project began, Enos said the most fruitful sessions were the straightforward talk story ones because people felt most comfortable sharing their ideas in that environment as opposed to the meetings required to stick to an agenda.
The CDP has been in the works so long that it’s easy for residents to lose track of details.
“This type of process, if it takes a long time, people tend to forget what they said or what they really want, and so you have to remind them and bring them back,” Enos said.
Community meetings continue through this month and September, and Enos said the steering committee welcomes more input — from those who have been involved for years and those who might be new to the CDP.
“If [people] look at the document and see something — or don’t see something — we would still like people to be part of the whole process and let us know,” Enos said.
The steering committee is scheduled to meet Sept. 22 to prepare a final form of the draft CDP. Once that is approved, an action committee will be appointed and the CDP’s guidelines can start to be realized. That’s expected to happen by the end of the year.
Though the Ka‘u CDP effort began in earnest in 2008, a countywide general plan was created in 2005 establishing CDPs as “the forum for community input into managing growth [and] coordinating the delivery of government services to the community,” The broad general plan then would be translated to apply to the particular district.
A total of $542,000 was appropriated from country funding for the Ka‘u CDP, with about $180,000 directed toward the community efforts. The remaining funds were used to develop the Ka‘u community profile and set up the draft CDP itself.
A CDP also is in progress for the Hamakua District, with a timetable similar to that of Ka‘u. CDPs for Kona, Puna and North and South Kohala already were put in place.
The draft, as well as other CDP materials, can be viewed at www.hawaiicountycdp.info/kau-cdp
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
