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.
