The Hawaii County Council voted 7-1 Wednesday in favor of a resolution calling for the acquisition of 3.74 acres of land along Government Beach Road in Puna using eminent domain — a move that has angered the property’s owner.

Resolution 567-26 authorizes the county’s condemnation and acquisition of a long, thin strip of land running along the edge of two separate parcels located in the Keonepoko Iki subdivision just north of the Hawaiian Shores neighborhood from its owner, Lum Family Enterprises LLC.

Vice Chair Dennis Onishi cast the lone “no” vote during a meeting that saw no discussion of the resolution by council members. Puna Councilman Matt Kaneali’i-Kleinfelder was absent.

The measure had unanimous support during committee hearings on May 19, when the Committee on Legislative Approvals and Acquisitions voted 9-0 in favor.

Together, the two parcels in question add up to roughly 230 acres. The county is trying to seize a 55-foot-wide, 1.5-mile-long strip abutting the road that would allow the Department of Public Works to make improvements.

Introduced by the Office of the Corporation Counsel, the resolution is the final step in a decade-long, protracted fight over the land, which began in 2014 when the county laid asphalt outside of the road’s right of way onto private property on the western side of the winding, one-lane seaside route. Since then, negotiations with the properties’ owner have failed to reach an agreement.

“We paved onto — a little bit onto the mauka property,” Deputy Corporation Counsel Sinclair Salas-Ferguson told council members during the resolution’s committee hearing last month. “And for years, the county has been trying to negotiate with the landowner … and it’s never come to fruition, so in order to resolve the issues, we have to go through condemnation.”

At that meeting, Onishi clarified with Corporation Counsel that the issue began with the county’s error.

“The county made a mistake and paved into their property,” Onishi said.

Salas-Ferguson replied that the county has authority to take private property for a public purpose, and that seizing land for a roadway is “almost indisputable that it’s a public purpose.”

He said the case will most likely go to court, where the county will negotiate a settlement with the landowner.

In an email to the Tribune-Herald following the vote on Wednesday, Onishi said he changed his mind on the resolution since the last hearing because he felt the county hadn’t done enough to treat the owner fairly.

“Today I felt the county should do more to help with compensating the landowner since the county did pave the road into their property,” he said.

The appraised value of the land, he said, was insufficient compensation for its seizure.

“Right now the county is allowed to settle on the appraised value only,” he said. “I feel this situation is different because the county was partially to blame for what happened. I will be investigating how Corporation Counsel will have more of an authority (to) compensate depending on the situation.”

Wayland Lum is the manager of Lum Family Enterprises and travels back and forth between Oahu and his country homestead in Puna located on the properties in question. Lum is a 72-year-old organic farmer and rancher whose land originally belonged to his grandfather and has been in the family since the early 1920s.

Since the paving blunder in 2014, he said he’s been anxious about liability issues since most of the road in that section lies squarely on his property.

“If someone should get hurt … they’re going to find out it’s not county land,” he said. “It’s private land, and they’re going to be suing me because I own the road. I own the land where the road is.”

The council will vote on the resolution for the second and final time on June 17 during a meeting which Lum has said he will fly from Oahu to Kona to attend in order to testify in person.

“I need to say my piece and to look at these people face to face,” he told the Tribune-Herald after Wednesday’s vote. “It’s passion, in a sense, because we were born there … we didn’t buy it 10 years ago and go start a farm. It’s been a century.”

He said he was told by a council clerk he’d have only three minutes to testify like any other member of the public.

“How do you do that in three minutes?” he said. “It’s impossible. I think I should be receiving an adequate amount of time because we’ve been so cooperative all these years trying to resolve this matter, and at this junction, it’s really a matter of whether we lose our land or not. We should be given an adequate amount of time to state our case on all the different levels, from the history to what the county has done to the liability.”

The kupuna said he’s hopeful that by testifying in person he can convince other council members to oppose the resolution.

“There was no representation for the other side of this issue except good thing for Mr. Onishi. Thank you to him,” he said. “If I can get there and hopefully influence three people and maybe show them a little bit different side of the picture instead of just following the whole program with each other — you know one votes yes and they all vote yes — maybe it’ll create a little bit of thinking on their part so that they can kind of evaluate and see the whole picture.”

When asked if he feels the county has treated him fairly throughout this drawn-out process, he was quick to respond.

“Not at all. Not one bit,” he said. “They abused their rights as the county on a private landowner who really has no way to defend themselves in this kind of situation except for legal action, which is happening.

“When you have people taking over and coming into your land, it really feels like you’re getting violated,” he added. “You’re taking — you’re ripping out, just ripping out a part of your heart. So, it’s very difficult for me and my family to see this happen.”

Email Stefan Verbano at stefan.verbano@hawaiitribune-herald.com.

It will be much easier to watch University of Hawaii athletics this season, both in and out of the state.

Beginning this season, the University of Hawaii will move its broadcasts from Spectrum Sports to Hawaii News Now, a group of over-the-air stations owned by Gray Media. Gray will also have the opportunity to distribute some Hawaii programming on its stations outside Hawaii.

“This partnership is about maximizing exposure for our programs and ensuring every fan in Hawai’i and beyond can watch our games,” said UH Athletics Director Matt Elliott in a press release.

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Broadcasts on Hawaii News Now will include 110 home sporting events per year, including all available football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s volleyball, and women’s volleyball games, along with a select number of baseball, softball, and women’s soccer events.

The announcement builds on changes made last season, when football broadcasts moved from pay-per-view to cable on Spectrum Sports. Outside Hawaii, broadcasts moved from the mobile-only Team1 Sports app to the more accessible free Mountain West app. The Mountain West is also in the process of launching a new, and likely paid, direct-to-consumer streaming service through the app for this upcoming season.

The University of Hawaii is part of a long list of sporting entities that have worked to make their sports properties more accessible in recent years. The old pay-per-view broadcasts long helped fund the extra travel required for other schools to play at Hawaii. This new partnership is expected to return the university $7.5 million a year, up from $3.2 million in the previous pay-per-view-focused deal with Spectrum. In addition, the university will receive additional media revenue by moving its athletics entirely to the Mountain West. Outside of football, Hawaii has long been part of the Big West, which has a far less lucrative media rights deal.

Several NBA and NHL teams have made similar decisions in recent years, including the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans, which partnered with Gray Media to move all of their broadcasts over the air. Teams that have made the move have publicly expressed satisfaction with their decision despite earning less revenue than was the case through traditional RSNs.

In the face of a threatened budget veto by Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, the City Council on Wednesday approved a $4.96 billion budget package for fiscal year 2027, which begins
July 1.

On a 6-3 vote, the Council adopted a spending plan that reduces funding and staff for the city’s Office of Economic Revitalization, a move that prompted Blangiardi to warn he’d veto the budget if the agency were dissolved.

The Council approved
Bill 22, a $3.193 billion operating budget that funds city services, employee salaries, police and fire operations, parks, road maintenance and other day-to-day government functions.

In a separate vote, the Council unanimously
approved Bill 23, a $1.77 billion Capital Improvement Program budget that will fund infrastructure projects across Oahu, including investments in roads, public facilities, parks and wastewater systems.

The budget bills now head to the mayor, who has 10 days — excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays — to potentially issue a veto.

The Council’s decision, according to budget documents, will be funded at $991,000 from OER and restores funding for nine full-time positions. That office, currently funded at about $2.2 million and attached to the city Managing Director’s Office, has been staffed largely by more than 20 contract employees rather than permanent civil service workers.

Created in 2020, OER was tasked with promoting economic development and improving quality of life for residents and businesses across Oahu.

The Council’s approved cuts stem largely from an Office of the City Auditor’s scathing audit released in January, which found OER failed to implement several economic development initiatives and lacked transparency in its budgeting and performance reporting.

Prior to Wednesday’s vote on Bill 22, Blangiardi — who submitted his $5.08 billion budget proposal to the Council in March — appeared before the nine-member body and reiterated his opposition to eliminating OER.

“We all know why I’m here,” the mayor told the Council inside a chamber filled with city officials and members of the public before deliberations began. “And also, I’m befuddled by this, I’ll be really honest with you.”

Blangiardi said he’d reviewed the OER audit, but noted that “for me, as a management principle, audits have always been a guideline.

“There’s no question … in your oversight capacity … challenge us operationally … to do something about that,” the mayor said. “And we’re prepared to do that.”

Still, Blangiardi highlighted what he described as OER’s accomplishments, including distributing federal COVID-19 relief funding to small businesses and low-income residents affected by the pandemic.

“And to have no OER resource, it’s not just going to affect the 20 positions, it’s going to affect the thousands of people in their lives,” the mayor said. “So I don’t understand why.”

Blangiardi said that in less than six years, OER had distributed $405 million into the community.

OER’s funding was one aspect of a broader budget debate over how city resources should be allocated.

At the meeting, Andy Kawano, director of the city Department of Budget and Fiscal Services,
expressed concerns
about funding reductions impacting the Honolulu
Police Department, the Department of Planning and Permitting and many other city agencies.

Kawano noted the city’s proposed $5.08 billion budget submitted in March had “not changed materially” under the Council’s version.

“The numbers are really close,” he said. “What has happened, though, is there has been a shifting around of the mayor’s priorities versus yours, Council members, which is fine.”

However, Kawano said $1.8 million was removed from HPD salary funding while the Council added requirements that were not funded under the budget bill.

“I want to be clear about the practical impact of those changes,” HPD interim Police Chief Rade Vanic told the Council later.

“Reducing salary appropriations while adding new spending requirements creates a contradiction: it directs the department to accomplish more while providing fewer resources to do so.”

Likewise, DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna said Council-led cuts to her agency totaled about
$2.2 million, affecting development initiatives, including affordable rental housing projects, as well as the department’s core operations.

But Council members, including Chair Tommy Waters, offered a different perspective on the budget.

Regarding DPP specifically, Waters noted that more than $10 million in previously approved funding lapsed during the
2024-25 fiscal year.

“Couldn’t you use
some of that savings to supplement the $2.2 million that is currently being redirected to other priorities?” he asked.

Takeuchi Apuna replied that about half of the
$10 million consisted of affordable rental housing project grants under Bill 7 that had not yet been
distributed.

“And we will continue to use those funds,” she added.

During discussions though, Council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam objected to the operating budget’s elimination of
positions and funding.

“There has been a lot of drama on this, and I really do believe that a better pathway is possible,” he said. “But here we are today with a budget that’s balanced on the backs
of city employees whose positions will be cut in OER.

“And if we start cutting positions in OER, there’s nothing to stop us from cutting other live bodies in other departments as well,” Dos Santos-Tam added. “We have before us a budget that’s balanced on cuts to HPD, a critical public safety agency.”

Ultimately, Dos Santos-­Tam, Matt Weyer and
Augie Tulba voted against Bill 22.

Waters, along with the rest of the Council, supported the revised budget.

“You know, the Council budget is forward-looking, it’s fiscally responsible, it’s transparent and intentional,” Waters said. “It reduces spending below the mayor’s proposal without reducing city services.

“We respect the administration’s work in preparing its initial budget proposal and commend the mayor for presenting a budget that slows the growth of government,” he said. “But the Council has a responsibility to review, question, adjust and improve what was initially presented. Our job is not to simply act as a rubber stamp for the mayor.

Waters also said that for years, “hundreds of millions of dollars that the Council appropriated simply went unspent and lapsed quietly with little public discussion.” He added the Council’s “tightened budget” would reduce “paper vacancies” within city departments
including the more than 460 sworn-officer vacancies at HPD.

In a written statement
issued after the meeting, Waters said “this budget restores and expands support for public safety and justice, including additional prosecutorial capacity and victim and witness services” that includes
10 funded prosecutor
positions.

“It also strengthens emergency preparedness through investments in emergency management staffing, disaster resilience, flood mitigation, stream maintenance and drainage infrastructure,” he said.