NKCDP AG STRUCTURE & BYLAWS

North Kohala Community Development Plan Advisory Group

GUIDING GOALS AND STATUTE

From the North Kohala Community Development Plan (NKCDP):

The County of Hawai‘i General Plan section 15.1 (February 2005, as amended) calls for the preparation of community development plans “to translate the broad General Plan statements to specific actions as they apply to specific geographical areas.” The General Plan requires CDPs be adopted as an “ordinance”, giving the plans force of law. The following are excerpted from the NKCDP: Administered by the Planning Department, the CDP Action Committee is to be a pro-active, community-based steward of the plan’s implementation and update. (p. 94)

The stated duties of the CDP-AC are: (p. 95)

The principal goal of the Action Committee and its subcommittees is to improve the quality of life in North Kohala. The CDP is the plan that guides development toward realizing that goal. The role of the Action Committee, as we move to implementing the CDP, is to take a collaborative, cooperative approach to dealing with areas needing improvement or change.

Proposed Reorganization of the NKCDP AC:

Over the past few years, the NKCDP Action Committee became difficult to staff, due in part to the restrictive mandates of the Sunshine Law and the expressed need of the Planning Department to gradually reduce meetings from monthly to bimonthly to quarterly in order to conserve staff time. With the cooperation of the Planning Department, we propose to implement and test an alternative AC structure that we believe will be much more effective and alleviate several impediments to an efficiently functioning group and, if successful, perhaps enhance the ability of the Planning Department to manage implementation of the several Community Development Plans on the island (Kohala may serve as a test for a new structure).

We begin by saying that we firmly believe in the spirit of the Sunshine Law which was developed to mitigate having important decisions affecting the public made by officials behind closed doors without public scrutiny. We plan to adhere to that spirit. The Law itself, however, has seriously reduced the effectiveness of volunteer community groups such as ours. It is our wish to create a less formalized structure that still works in close cooperation with the Planning Department yet is not an official government entity and therefore not subject to the strict mandates of the Sunshine Law.

Bylaws for an NKCDP Advisory Group:

It is critically important that the NKCDP-AG maintains the previous close ties of the Action Committee with the Planning Department and retains its status as working in conjunction with that department to implement the CDP (a formal Planning Department document and County Ordinance). They must be able to speak with the authority of NKCDP when dealing with various State and County agencies, other offices, and individuals. We also wish to continue having access to Planning Department documents so that the Growth Management and Community Access Groups can continue to operate.