HILO, Hawaii – The Hawaii County Council held a meeting in Hilo on Friday, and one of the big agenda items was the resolution accepting a public easement on a shoreline trail in the Kohala Kai subdivision.

The development is located along the Kohala Coast, just north of Kawaihae. The resolution drew lots of interest – and heated testimony – because of confusion between the proposed easement, and a different path said to be part of the historic Ala Loa trail.

Hawaii County Council discusses Kohala Kai grant of public easment

The whole thing seemed to be on the right track when the measure was given a positive recommendation in the Finance Committee. But when it went before the full council on Friday, Kohala Councilwoman Margaret Wille had renewed concerns. An apparent agreement to include development restrictions – such as an improvements setback of 10 feet from the Ala Loa trail – in the language of the grant of public easement was transferred to a good faith agreement that’s currently in the works with the National Park Service.

Margaret Wille

“We’re sort of switching tracks and now you’re saying ‘no I cant really do it in the grant of easement we need to do it this way now’ (National Park Service agreement) and I look at my constituents are they’re like ‘what’s going on?’ and they’re calling me.”

Charlie Anderson of Kohala Kai LLC and his attorney Steve Lim were present for the discussion.

Steve Lim

“My recollection of what happened at the last council meeting was that we agreed to go forward with resolution 140-13 draft number 3 as it sits today. And that we voluntarily agreed to work with the community to try to work on the Ala Loa issue seperately, so this National Park Service good faith agreement that we’ve been talking about is part of that voluntary effort. And its very ironic to us that now we’re into this voluntary effort to try to address the community issues its now kinda creeping back into the grant of public access easement. So we’d ask the council to keep those as two seperate issues. Let us finish this grant of public access easement once and for all. And let’s us move forward with National Park Service and the community on how we handle the portions of the property that are burdened by the old jeep trail.”

Charlie Anderson

“No one will ever build anything on the Ala Loa. We’ve agreed to that… There has to be a certain amount of trust in our word. And I know Brenda (Ford) just scoffs at that, and its sort of disturbing because we’ve been here for going on nine months.”

After lengthy discussion, the local lawmakers were assured that the developers intend to preserve the Ala Loa. The council voted to approve the resolution.

December 3, 2013

A Kohala Kai LLC grant of public access easement resolution created controversy at a Hawaii County Council Finance Committee meeting in December.

At the Finance Committee meeting, Kailapa’s Kanealii ohana opposed the Kohala Kai trail plan

January 21, 2014

As Kohala Kai’s grant of public access easement continued to toil at the Finance Committee over numerous meetings, Kona resident Chuck Flaherty kept a close watch on the situation, offering his testimony on multiple occasions.