(BIVN) – After helping the Hawaiian Homes Commission begin its May 20 meeting in Waimea with a pule, beneficiary Kanani Kapuniai gave the commissioners in earful during public testimony.

Kapuniai expressed concern over a number of Department of Hawaiian Home Lands initiatives.

For example, she brought up DHHL’s proposal to add Administrative Rules for DCCR’s (Declaration of Conditions, Covenants, and Restrictions Communities), Multi-family, Rentals, and Kupuna Housing, and Supplemental Dwelling Units.

In her written comments on the amendments, Kapuniai also expressed her concerns with the method of public notice:

Please revisit the notification for “Public Hearing”. Notice is mailed to all lessees and applicants to participate in Consultation Proceedings. Why not for this important step in the process to amend or adopt new HA Rules?

Advertising in a newspaper or on the website is unacceptable – Lessees and Applicants are to be individually contacted, at least by mail.

I, for one, will not die on the website, waiting to see if something appears which I should be responding to. It is the department’s responsibility to directly contact us. Depending on, or rationalizing on, or deferring to, what the HRS states does not take precedence to contacting us, individually, for any business that the department and HHC conducts on our behalf.

Kapuniai also directed comments towards Puʻukapu water rates, which will more than double over the next decade.