Kekaha still can’t decide how to spend landfill money

NAWILIWILI — The Kaua‘i County Council years ago decided to give something back to Kekaha for that community’s hosting the island’s only landfill.

Now, with $810,000 earmarked — and sitting in county coffers without accumulating interest — for improvements in Kekaha, the community members still can’t come to a consensus on how to use the money.

Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. appointed last year nine Kekaha residents to serve on the Citizens’ Advisory Committee for the Kekaha Host Community Benefits program. In addition, four county employees, plus Jeff Kaohi, Kekaha landfill manager, and Neil Pflum, from a consultant firm hired by the county, also served as advisors and non-voting members.

The mission of the CAC, as stated on the county’s Solid Waste Division webpage, is “to recommend projects and their administrative process for the disbursement of the HCB fund(s) allocated to, and in accordance with, the general consensus of the Kekaha community.”

Several community meetings and over 1,300 delivered surveys later, the CAC came up with eight major project proposals.

Some of those projects, however, were contested by the CAC’s own members during a hearing last week at the council chambers here.

CAC members told the council the survey was evasive, and did not specify to residents if they would be willing to spend the HCB funds in projects that should be the responsibility of the county or the state government.

Criticism

The CAC survey showed five leading items that the community wanted to put forward as recommendations to the mayor, but CAC member Jose Bulatao Jr. said those items did not make it onto the HCB list of recommendations.

“The survey was only given to homeowners, not residents, and only one per household,” said Rosalyn “Barbara” Bulatao, Jose’s sister.

Mary Jean Buza-Sims, president of the Kekaha Community Association, said there is a “great concern” from the community members that the survey went out to only a few people.

“The big issue is, we had requested the CAC to send back the final priority list to the community for verification and input again, because we thought it was not a total reflection of the community’s needs,” Buza-Sims said. “The CAC said no.”

“What does it say in terms of the residents’ opinions?” she asked. “I really feel that we should go back to the community once more before there’s a final recommendation to the mayor.”

CAC member Evelyn Olores said the survey was vague. She personally delivered many surveys, and community members questioned her if some of the items listed in it were government’s kuleana in the first place.

“There was hardly anything that they didn’t come up addressing the county or the state,” Olores said.

She also criticized that only the head of the household was able to answer the survey, potentially leaving input from other family members out of the survey.

“One thing I’m concerned about in Kekaha, especially, being that we are in a tsunami zone,” Olores said. “I’m looking for something where the community can go, a corridor or a piece of land, where the kids can finally go to evacuation purposes.”

Olores said there are about 500 children enrolled in schools in the Westside. “There’s no place for 500 cars to go up there and pick up their kids.”

Another community member questioned how some of the items got onto the final list of recommendations without even being in the survey.

“How did it get on the list without the community knowing about it?” she asked. “We do have time to make it good, to make it what the community wants, not a group of people who has some hidden agendas, who were seated at the table at the CAC.”

Learning process

Jose Bulatao said the process was a learning experience, and because of that the CAC may have approached it with some naiveté, and may have come out too broad and general.

“It continues to be a learning process for us as we move along,” he said. “We continue to want to be a part of that process as a community.”

“It is essential that the community, from kupuna to keiki, have an opportunity for input,” Bulatao said.

Some of the ideas that came out of community meetings would be to set money aside for scholarships for the children instead of spending it on capital improvement projects, he said.

Council Vice Chair Jay Furfaro said he hadn’t had the time to research it, but he thinks that the money could possibly be earmarked for use in the form of grants. Furfaro, however, said he wasn’t sure yet, and didn’t want to give false hope.

Councilman Daryl Kaneshiro said it’s his desire to deposit the money into some sort of trust-fund account to collect interest, because some of the projects may take years to become reality.

“As you go through this process … at least you’ll be gaining interest on whatever amount is in there,” Kaneshiro said.

Work together

Facing frustration from CAC members, Councilman Tim Bynum said it is not the council’s job to work out the  administration of the HCB.

“It is our job to make decisions about the amount of the funding, and eventually to give blessing on how funds are expended in the county,” Bynum said.

 Council Chair Kaipo Asing, quoting the county’s website, said the HCB objective is to “balance the need for safe disposal of solid waste with the sacrifices borne by the host community. The cornerstones of Host Community Benefits are mitigation (alleviation of landfill impacts such as landscaping and revegetation to alleviate visual impacts), and compensation (just payment to offset living near the landfill).”

Asing said the mayor appointed the nine CAC members and the four county employees to serve as advisors. In addition, Kaohi and AECOM also served as advisors.

“The structure is there,” Asing said. “They met at least eight times.”

Public also gave input, and the result was the HCB’s list of recommendations.

“There is some members of the community who might not agree,” Asing said. “We can only have one group making a decision. We can’t have everybody making decisions.”