State Capitol, Rm. 216
415 S. Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
Dear Senator Fukunaga:
As a resident andor property owner within the proposed Hawaii Capital National Heritage Area (S. 359 HR 1297), please accept my testimony in opposition to S359 and HR 1297 which seek to estabalish such a federal designation over greater Honolulu.
I do not support a permanent federal designation of private property and residential areas throughtout the proposed area. I understand that this process has been on-going for the past six years and yet I and other residents and property owners in my community were not aware of it, It would give a small private unselected and unaccountable bodly the right to develop a management plan which would inventory and make recommendations about properties within the area. This could affect my right as a property owner to do what I please with my property or allow such a group to be able to weigh in when I wish to make changes or alterations to my property. Act 228, requiring the submission of fifty archival photos for structures over fifty years of age in order to obtain a building permit, was recently repealed as too burdensome and costly for property owners on Oahu. We do not need more restrictions and requirments, oversight and management plans for our properties or our communities. We also do not need an outside group making recommendations that could affect how our commumity should be managed or developed.
No feasibility study forums were conducted in the Kalihi-Palama area and my area was not included in the decision making process about whether this sort of designation was appropiate for my community; this is a failure of honest process. National Park Service requirement specify that a key criteria for a Heritage Area designation is a wide-spread support among area residents and also that a conceptual map of the proposed area is supported by the public. I do not support such a desifnation and I ask for my property and the Kalihi-Palama area to be removed from the conceptual map of the proposed NHA area.
I reside at__________________________________.
Thank you for your consideration.
___________________________________________.
You may submit the letter today at Capitol, Basement Rm: 016 at 1:15 p.m. or Online.
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Passed with ammendments.
Fukunaga's committee passed SR56 and SR138 (asking for an update from the Hawaii Capital Cultural Coalition on the status of their outreach efforts by July 1, 2010) with amendments to consider reducing the size of the proposed area, making it mandatory to notify people and allowing them to get out or withdraw from the proposed area, and also for the Cultural Coalition to say how the concerns and issues raised by residents, businesses, property owners, etc. will be addressed in the legislation. Some of that language could change in the final resolution that goes before the Senate.
This is national legislation. The bills are still alive until the end of 2010 when they either die or must be reintroduced in Congress by Inouye, Akaka, and whoever replaces Abercrombie.
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HCCC Feasibility Study Published 12/08
Mentions of Property Inventories, Documentation and/or More Legislative and Regulatory Controls
p. 67: “In addition to the further compilation of existing data, additional field surveys of the many residential and mixed-use areas within the proposed NHA will also be required. This will include individual evaluations of houses and small businesses in Palama, Liliha, Kaka’ako and especially Kalihi, all of which have many remaining examples of modest frame houses, buildings housing manufacturing and repair shops and simple concrete block and frame shops and mixed-use buildings.”
p. 76: “The HCCC envisions an expansion of preservation awareness throughout the National Heritage Area, potential designation of residential and mixed use areas (ital.) either as State or National Register properties..”
p. 117-118: “An important benefit of heritage designation would be an enhancement of potential for resource protection. This includes the potential for further protective legislation and regulations of historic buildings, sites and other special areas through public and governmental controls and also the potential for further documentation…”
p. 151: “Additionally, further documentation of existing resources, including unrecorded historic residential areas in Liliha and Kalihi as well as individual buildings in the Kaka’ako and the Pi’ikoi Street area may result in additional designations and further protections.”
p. 153: “[t]he proposed NHA includes many examples of undocumented vernacular and industrial buildings as well as many sites of traditional association and meaning for Native Hawaiians. Significant among the former are older plantation-style residences within Kalihi and Laliha (sic.) areas as well as industrial and residential sites within the Kaka’ako Special Design District and Iwilei area---all of which require further documentation as part of the process of future development of the NHA.” [National Heritage Area]
p. 188: “Historic immigrant residential and commercial districts
Chinatown (listed and regulated)
Kalihi (not surveyed)
Palama (not surveyed)
Liliha (not surveyed)
Kapalama (not surveyed)
Kaka’ako (not surveyed)
Source: 12/08 Feasibility Study of the HCCC.
Mahalo,
Auntie Lynn
Here's the Ahupuaa Map.
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