An Open Letter to Senator Sharon Moriwaki: Hawaii No Longer Has Time for Subterfuge

Note to reader: there will be a "visioning" meeting that will be held on Monday, July 1, 2019 for the purpose of discussing the future of the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor (AWSBH) and its surrounding properties.  Please contact Senator Sharon Moriwaki for more details (senmoriwaki@capital.hawaii.gov).

Aloha Senator Moriwaki,

In order to help maintain any semblance of credibility, sorely needed to make any "visioning" meeting productive, may we offer the following observations:

1. Surely, anyone who has made the effort to attend this meeting is not stupid.  Can we both agree on this?  In any conversation where two or more stakeholders are participants, there will be superficial talk about a "plan" and then there will be an unspoken communication, just under the surface, about real intent -- real agenda.   The only substantive conversation that any special interest stakeholders should have is the latter –- the conversation about intent/agenda.  Why?  Because it is uniquely this conversation that defines everything: the plan, the reasons for the plan, and the proportionate gain for each of the parties.   Therefore, we propose that this meeting should be about disclosing agenda -- true intent: why each of the interests want what they want. 

Sound reasonable?

2. Everyone sitting at the table of any "visioning" meeting should be fully apprised of the legal and historical background, and day-to-day community activity of any areas affected by a privatization proposal -- how the population will be impacted.  For example: the AWSBH, a public harbor that is not funded by taxpayer dollars  (a deliberately perpetuated deception to confuse the general public), has within it a vibrant community made up of Hawaii residents from all walks of life.  Harbor tenants, liveaboard and recreational boaters, have deliberately chosen this lifestyle, this avenue of recreation, this community of association, because this is what suits them best. That those with money and power should decide whether another's lifestyle is "acceptable" -- should be bought up and made "our way" -- is an outrageously arrogant assumption in a free democracy.
   

Another misconception: liveaboards are a problem for the public harbor system.   Actually, if you contact the Honolulu Police Department, they will tell you that LEGAL liveaboards in the AWSBH are the eyes and ears of security for not only the harbor environs, but for the surrounding Hilton, Ilikai, and Prince Waikiki properties.  Give them a call.  Education is a wonderful thing, and we're proposing that the meeting should, in part, be dedicated to educating the participants, especially as regards to dispelling the demonizing myths about the tenants of public small boat harbors in the State of Hawaii.

3. The meeting should be about solutions for the community as a whole and not just to find ways to shape a subterfuge to camouflage the true private self-interests of those at the corporation running the Hilton or the Waikiki Improvement Board.  

For example, let's disclose the pure folly of privatizing a public asset in order to improve its management -- kind of like gassing an entire city to kill one mosquito.  Public assets are, essentially, historical heirlooms that belong to the public -- under law and according to our cultural and moral tradition.   If the AWSBH is having management problems -- and, clearly, it is -- then, rather than stealing this public asset from Hawaii's residents through privatization, why not find a way to bring in a professional management company, leaving the public asset public?  Certainly, there is plenty of precedent for this.  I think that we can all agree by now that DoBOR is inept.  Operatives there have squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Special Boating Fund, needed for management and upgrades, through bungling and mismanagement.

The meeting should be centered around finding a hybrid solution: keeping public assets pubic with accountability to the State, while accommodating a truly professional management scenario.

Visioning meetings are nothing without credibility, Senator Moriwaki.  As we’ve said, people who attend these meetings are not stupid people.  Everyone has an agenda.  Out the agendas first and the future will take its natural course in the best interests of everyone in our community.

Best,
Katherine Lindell, Editor
Hawaii Ocean News

Note: this letter was published as "An Open Letter to Senator Sharon Moriwaki:  Hawaii No Longer Has Time for Subterfuge