District of Puna -- drawing the lines!

2011 Redistricting Commission -- © write-matters 2011

Members from the Puna Hwy 130 corridor gathered to give testimony to the 2011 Redistricting Commission Tuesday evening, Oct. 11, 2011. The topic? Defining how to draw the lines to create 2 Puna centric districts represented by council members who would have a natural interest in their respective districts.

Testimony varied primarily in the choice of map #'s offered by the commission for review. Consensus was to keep all of Puna together! HPP had the most representation and the hew and cry was to not divide a subdivision with a line in the lava. Those who spoke either represented themselves or spoke on behalf of the largest lobbying group in Puna, 'Friends of Puna's Future' [FOPF]. Paul Cambell, acting officer for FOPF, read testimony which was submitted to the commission for consideration. Key to the testimony -- draw attention to a modified version of one of the commission's many renderings for consideration. FOPF submitted the commission's Map #40/27. This rendering of that map had been altered to reflect consensus among the parties who worked diligently with FOPF. It seemed to have unanimous support from nearly everyone who testified.

One commissioner, Jeff Melrose, was interactive with the testifiers asking questions which reflected some of the constraints and issues the commission faces in laying out the different district boundaries. One question was 'do you lay out the district based on anticipated growth or current data' and he was roundly reminded the census they are considering is the data from 2010 census. Obviously,  in 10 years that commission will deal with the anticipated growth as a reality of that census. Another question was raised when dealing with the legal size of any one district -- since the whole of Puna is approximately 45,000 residents logically the districts would be divided into 2 districts with 20,000 resident increments; The question is: what is to be done with the left over 5000 residents. Mr. Melrose's question was in response to the strong sentiment to disallow gerrymandering of district lines to allow for any other district to adopt any portion of Puna.

The room was filled with the usual faces who have become Puna activists over the decades showing up to assist in the future of Puna. It is rather disheartening to see the same self sacrificing individuals always doing the work for their community's interest. They are as committed a bunch as you can find. One new face beginning to make the rounds is 'Mikey', the man who will be the next Mayor of Hawaii Island, or so he says. [He is seated in the foreground with a blue cap on in the picture above.] Yes, as one of the last to testify he came with his musical accompaniment -- a song about revolution -- and his weapon, a "pahi ka u". A blogger's attempt to represent the weapon is at the end of this article. Mikey met with this blogger in the parking lot after his testimony to explain the instrument he waved around during his musical testimony and to listen to a little campaign speech about his Mayoral ambitions. This is Puna, after all, and no matter what lines the commission may ultimately decide upon you might take some portion of the current district out of Puna but you can't take Puna out of the residents who call Puna Moku their home.

For a copy of the testimony submitted by Friends of Puna's Future please email them. The next meeting of the commission for the Puna District residents will be held in the Kea'au Community Center on Saturday, Oct. 15th beginning at 2P.

Write-Matters © 2011