(BIVN) – Even as the University of Hawaiʻi is moving forward with administrative rules to govern public and commercial activities on UH-managed lands on Mauna Kea, the president of the university is contemplating some changes to the Mauna Kea management structure.

During his May 16 report to the Board of Regents, UH President David Lassner gave an update on his “four ideas” for management changes. Lassner says he met this month with both the Mauna Kea Observatory directors and the Mauna Kea Management Board.

Lassner said his first idea is to bring together the Office of Mauna Kea Management and the Mauna Kea Support Services, “and beginning to build in a new capacity around culture and education into a unified structure for our stewardship of Mauna Kea, which is currently disparate in different parts of the university,” Lassner said.

“I talked about the concept of appointing a chair of the Mauna Kea Management Board as a university executive who would also directly oversee our entire enterprise for stewardship of Mauna Kea across the entire University of Hawaii,” Lassner said.

Third, Lassner said he “talked about bringing ʻImiloa in as a full partner in our work and stewardship, as a way of addressing the areas of culture and education that we have not focused on historically in our stewardship programs.”

Finally, Lassner said he talked “about making the Mauna Kea Management Board itself more representative of our stakeholders.”

Lassner said the feedback he received was good, however the two items that raised the greatest concern: “The Mauna Kea Management Board was not very excited about designating seats on that board that would be for specific stakeholders – like saying this person is the OHA representative, this person is the DLNR representative, this is the mayor’s representative. They were extremely supportive of inviting input from all of those groups, each and every time we make appointments. So that was excellent feedback and I think it’s another way of trying to accomplish the same goal.”

Lassner also said the Mauna Kea Observatory directors “are quite happy with the way the Mauna Kea Support Service program is working under the leadership of the Institute for Astronomy. They are quite concerned at a change that might impact the services which they do pay for. So, I think we have some work to do to ensure that we don’t break anything that’s working, while moving to a more streamlined and integrated structure.”

Lassner said his ideas for the structural management changes could all be addressed “through bylaws changes, which are under the authority of the Mauna Kea Management Board, and all of this is part of the work that is fully integrated with the work we’re doing to update the Mauna Kea Master Plan, the updates to the comprehensive management plan, and the EIS that we are beginning to work on for a new master lease to extend astronomy on Mauna Kea past 2033.”