La`au Point

In what observers called a highly suspicious coincidence, five Ke Aupuni Lokahi (KAL) board members failed to turn up for a meeting which had been scheduled with months of advance notice. The five absent members stated ahead of time that they would not present prompting Molokai Enterprise Community (EC) executor, Abbey Mayer, to cancel the February 15 meeting. It was to be the first assembly to include newly elected board members Bridget Ann Mowat and Leila D Stone who were both elected in a landslide vote January 31.

The five absentees- John Pele, Rikki Cooke, Shannon Crivello, Treasurer Russell Kallstrom, and President Stacy Crivello - all happen to be proponents of the Master Land Use Plan, which includes the development of 200 luxury home lots on La`au Point on southwest Molokai. Their absence sets back the timeline for the likely inclusion of up to two new EC board members (in addition to Mowat and Stone), the subject of which was to be agendized at the cancelled meeting. More importantly, however, are the trust issue raised by their absence; the ‘Save La`au’ community has perceived the no-show as a delay tactic by the five Master Land Use Plan supporters.

“It is strange that the four who want to save La'au from development showed up and the five who support the Plan did not” said Walter Ritte. “Why are they hiding?” Ritte was one of 40-odd members of the community who did not hear that the meeting was cancelled until they arrived at Kulana O`iwi last Thursday. The group, along with KAL board members Mowat, Stone, Josh Pastrana, and Sybil Dunnam, made the best of the turnout by holding an unofficial community involvement meeting in front of the building.

“It’s pretty despicable, don’t you think?” mused rally member Steve Morgan, “that they would try to derail our momentum by just not showing up. It makes us wonder about their true dedication to the community involvement process.”

Thursday’s meeting would have been a go if one other board had showed; EC bylaws state that official meetings in which issues can be voted on, need five board members present.

“The DEIS tries to present a strong case that the ranch and EC did in fact examine alternatives, but this is not the case,” claimed Yamashita. “At best the Ranch walked through the motions of looking at alternatives, while real efforts to find alternatives were purposely suppressed and invalidated (by the Ranch)”

Planning Commissioner Lance Dunbar, former manager of Molokai’s Bank of Hawaii branch, seemed impressed with the scope of Yamashita's testimony, and assured Yamashita that his testimony “did not go unnoticed” by the Commission members.

“Alternatives to a proposed action in any EIS is one of its main brackets and it does carry a lot of weight with the Land Use Commission (LUC)” Dunbar said. He urged Yamashita to pursue this issue with the state Land Use Commission (LUC).

The LUC is the state agency that will determine whether or not the Ranch’s Final EIS adequately addresses all the substantive issues raised by concerned Molokai residents and others.

The LUC has assured the Molokai community that it will hold its meeting on Molokai to determine if Ranch’s Final EIS is adequate. If the Final EIS document is determined not to be adequate, the Ranch will be required to start the public review process over with a new Draft EIS document.

It’s anticipated that the LUC won’t schedule such a meeting until the summer contingent on when the LUC receives the Final EIS from the Ranch.

MORE DEFICIENCIES EXPOSED IN RANCH DRAFT EIS

Sybil Lopez, a member of the EC Board who does not support development at La’au, lugged her 800-page DEIS document to the podium and told Planning Commissioners that Ranch’s plan for affordable housing was “very vague and needed to be expanded on”.

She also took exception with the Ranch’s consultant who concluded that property taxes would not increase on Molokai as a result of the 200 multi-million dollar homes proposed at La’au.

Lopez also was not impressed with the depth of “economic impact analysis” in the Ranch DEIS.

The endangered ihi ihi fern found at La’au, was an issue raised by several testifiers, including a beautiful ‘oli (chant) shared with the Commission by Noelani Lee, a young community leader and Executive Director of a local non-profit agency.

Lee also expressed concern about impacts being experience on the health of Molokai’s fishponds as a result of the island’s dwindling fresh water resources. Mervin Dudoit supported her sentiments

The ihi ihi is classified as an endangered plant by the federal government.

LA’AU A SENSE OF PLACE

Kawila Hanchett, a young teacher born on Molokai, pointed out that the DEIS lacked an adequate assessment of impacts created when disconnecting people from place.

“In western thought, we view place as a commodity, as real estate,” Hanchett eloquently proclaimed. “In Hawaiian thought, place is ohana. There is a spiritual connection and tie to people, the indigenous people, and the place they inhabit.

Hanchett, went on to explain that Hawaiians were not in good shape health-wise and economically because “they have been disconnected from their Ohana lands and therefore their spiritual health is compromised and their health on every other level.”

“What you do to La’au, you do to us,” said Hanchett. “There is no disconnecting people from place.”

The final person to testify before the Commission was Vanda Hanakahi, who is a highly respected cultural specialist. She was born on Molokai and raised by her grandparents in what she described as “culturally rich lifestyle”.

Hanakahi spoke of the sacredness of La’au and it being a place rich in marine life and cultural history that led La’au to be referred to with two Hawaiian words specific to Molokai that are a metaphor for “wealth of Molokai”.

For five minutes, she testified to the cultural significance of La’au, and shared knowledge from chants over 900 years old that were passed down to her from kumu John Kaimikawa. As she spoke softly on behalf of herself and her kupuna, the audience listened intently and in silence.

Hanakahi recalled ancient chants proclaiming La’au a sacred place where kupuna chose to close their Makahiki ceremony.

“I know from my upbringing that no place is randomly chosen by our kupuna to be sacred….and once a place is designated as sacred, it is sacred.”

SILENT MAJORITY SPEAKS

Lawrence Aki, a Native Hawaiian, who served on the Land Use Committee that worked to develop components of the Master Land Use Plan, advocates an alternative for the La’au development.

“Peter Nicholas is lying plain and simple,” Aki told the Commission. “He told us on several occasions that the community would make the decision on La’au” Aki also mentioned that Nicholas often boasted that he had Molokai’s silent majority behind him and La’au Point. Well I haven’t seen that,” concluded Aki.

Little did Aki know that the silent majority would make its position known on La’au the very next day at a community-wide election held to fill two board seat openings on the Molokai Enterprise Community Board.

The two incumbents Claude Sutcliff and OHA Trustee Collette Machado, supported the Master Plan with its oceanfront, luxury home development at La’au Point. The two leading challengers, Bridgett Mowat and Leila Stone, ran on a platform of no development along the pristine shoreline at La’au Point.

There were 1,284 residents who turned out to cast their ballots at Mitchell Pauole Center. The election was well administered under the watchful eye of representatives from Oahu’s League of Women Voters.

The voter turnout was impressive considering the fact that only 1,170 residents turned out on election day to vote in last year’s general election.

The Ranch did its best to convince the silent majority that its La’au Point development was the way to go by sending out its impressive professional produced DVD to residents a few weeks before the election.

Several Ranch vans delivered voters to the election site.

POLITICAL MUSCLE RANCH’S ALLY

For the past couple of years, the Ranch and the Enterprise Community co-sponsored meetings around the island while developing a Master Plan for Ranch lands. At nearly every public meeting, those attending said “DO NOT DEVELOP AT LA’AU”.

The Ranch and the Enterprise Community Board elected to ignore the message and moved forward with the La’au development plan, hoping to push La’au through on the strength and influence of their political allies. The influence peddlers who lent their support to the development of up to 400 homes at La’au before the community had even finished coming up with a final environmental impact statement are: Senator Daniel Inouye, Governor Linda Lingle, DHHL Chairman and Lingle appointee, Micah Kane, and the OHA Board of Directors.

 Silent no more; Molokai voters send a clear message not to develop.

Mowat and Stone win EC election decisively as Molokai voters send a clear message: No to the development of La`au Point.

The Results Are In:

In the largest voter turnout in Molokai Enterprise Community (EC) history, challengers Bridget Ann Mowat and Leila Stone upset recumbent board members Colette Machado and Claud Sutcliffe on Wednesday, January 31. Together, Mowat and Stone garnered roughly 66% of votes on the nearly 1,300 ballots cast- a landslide considering there were six candidates on the bill.

Sutcliffe had dubbed the election a “community referendum,” because of the ideological split between the incumbents and the eventual winners over the EC decision to support the development of La’au Point. Mowat and Stone campaigned on a clear ‘No to La’au development’ platform, making the answer in this unofficial referendum a resounding NO; a favorable result for supporters of Hui Ho’opakele ‘Aina and others who voted for the Mowat-Stone bloc and clearly believe La’au is worth saving.

The Hawaiian League of Women Voters acted as enumerators and started accepting votes at 7:30am, but because of the unexpectedly high turnout, had to remain in the voting room in Mitchell Puoule Center until just after midnight counting ballots. Several anxious onlookers stayed for the entire count and endured roughly five hours of “four, five…four, five…”, as enumerators read voter cards of the alphabetically-listed candidates. A power outage put a halt to the vote counting with roughly 20 ballots left to go but winners were announced anyway; Mowat and Stone were ahead of first runner up Machado by nearly 450 votes.

Significance:
This result is an important one to the community involvement process; MPL has always maintained that there is a ‘silent majority’ of Molokai residents who are in favor of the Master Land Use Plan. This election was pivotal in proving what anti-development supporters have maintained all along - that there is no silent majority, and in fact most people do not support the development of La`au.

While 1,284 people officially turning out to vote out of roughly 5,000 eligible voters may not seem like a high percentage, consider that there were fewer than 200 votes cast in the 2006 EC election at this time last year.

Numbers aside, the war of words leading up to this election was furious; media coverage and local attendance at community meetings was widespread enough that even visitors of the island knew the issues. Certainly, those who missed the media coverage and ignored the word-of-mouth buzz could not have missed the hand-painted signs on every roadway on the island. It is safe to say that everyone on Molokai knew of either the Master Land Use Plan or the push to stop La`au development.

In voting out Machado and Sutcliffe, the community has unseated two very well-known, hardworking individuals who have each donated years worth of time on various boards and committees, and who have diligently served Molokai in many facets of public life. In their place, two inexperienced candidates step in to a very contentious arena.

Both Mowat and Stone have admitted they didn’t want to be in politics in the past but felt their hands were forced by an EC board that had stopped listening to the people of Molokai.

Indeed, several attempts were made to put the Master Land Use plan, along with its most controversial aspect – the development of La`au Point, to an official community vote. But the idea was dismissed by a majority of the EC board on November 21 because of “vague wording”.

The November 21 rejection of a public vote was not the only instance whereby the EC board quashed a project capable of decelerating the La`au development. Just two weeks ago, EC board members voted to defer a request to reinstate the Water Moratorium Project (EC project #7). The conservation project would have restricted water use from new west-side developments such as the La`au development, until a water management plan could be created.

In addition to these roadblocks, several members of the community have accused Ke Aupuni Lokahi (KAL), the organization which administers the EC, of not honoring the spirit of public input it purports to strive for. In creating the Molokai Land Trust to work on the Master Land Use Plan, for example, several KAL board members, including Machado, were appointed to that committee. The resulting planning body was one so similar to the EC board that people began confusing the two entities.

Looking Ahead
When the USDA awarded Molokai with an Enterprise Community grant in 1998, the timeline for funding was capped at 10 years, potentially making this vote the second-to-last chance that the community will have to involve itself at this level. As of now, KAL executive director Abbey Mayer says that the organization doesn’t know what the state of public input will be when EC funding sunsets in 2008. Mowat and Stone have secured their places on the EC board until that timeline runs out, and have been empowered with the community’s confidence to channel both government funding and the wishes of the people of Molokai in appropriate directions.

Given the uncertainty of public input and the finite timeline for the influx of public funding, it is as important as ever for Molokai citizens to stay involved in the process. The huge majority of voters who placed their Anti-La`au candidates in power should not shy away from attending EC meetings and lending constructive criticism to new and returning KAL board members.