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Hawaii Fishing & Boating Association
P.O. Box 1554
Kailua Kona, HI 96745
www.hawaiifishingandboating.com
September 1, 2011
Mr. William Aila, Chairperson
Department of Land and Natural Resources
1151 Punchbowl St.
Honolulu, HI 96813
Dear Chairman Aila,
It is with regret and through despair that we feel compelled to write to you, but we are deeply disappointed by the continued lack of response to the call for change that we have offered so many times in our communications, and by our testimony to your Department. The people of Hawaii, native and transplant residents from all islands of this State deserve honest, fair, and equitable treatment from our government and we are not getting it!
We are particularly annoyed that once again, we have been presented with ill conceived, poorly written, and ambiguous rules and amendments, and have been given inadequate time to respond to the proposed changes now on the agenda of BLNR meeting for September 9. Just one egregious example:the re-definition of the prominent mooring in Hawaii from "Bow/Stern" to "Tahiti Moor" (which cannot be found to be defined in any credible maritime resource), as opposed to what is described throughout the world as the "Med or Mediterranean Moor" mooring system. This change appears to be an attempt to skirt the bogus 'along catwalk' issue and thereby justify higher rates, which makes this change dishonest and insulting to the people DOBOR serves. DOBOR has advanced numerous failed attempts to raise bow/stern mooring rates through subterfuge, and unauthorized re-definition of terms, and this appears to be yet another attempt.
It would be far more honest for DOBOR to propose a need to raise the mooring rates and to provide, at the same time, some concurrent improvement in the facilities and/or services you provide. Instead, what has been declared publicly is that no specific capital improvements are marked to receive funding from these increases, which will see our mooring fees double. To say, as Mr. Underwood did to a West Hawaii Today reporter, that the larger harbors must 'keep the smaller harbors afloat' by doubling their fees, and then siphoning revenue from revenue producing harbors with no actual improvements or service to those harbors, we consider to be completely unacceptable, especially in view of the deplorable and dangerous lack of maintenance Honokohau Harbor suffers . "There's no money" is the reason always advanced to answer our urgent pleas for maintenance, even though we all know that arbitrary creative accounting, which siphons off all the revenue from so called fast lands is the only reason there is not a healthy surplus of revenue on the books for our harbor. Revenues from all harbor operations are interdependent. The harbors businesses are dependent upon and feed each other to such an extent that it is irrational and arbitrary to assert that they exist independently.
After being patient for almost two years, through an election cycle, and 8 months since you have been on the job, we are truly discouraged that you have not implemented a corrective management paradigm. That the same administrative structure, procedures, and personnel are continuing in what appears to be the same old direction (nowhere) would lead one to believe that either you cannot or will not lead DOBOR in a new, improved direction. To that end, the 2344 members and affiliates of the Hawaii Fishing and Boating Association, and likely most of the boaters in the State at large, are deeply disappointed. We are equally discouraged that after taking the labor and expense upon ourselves to repair, clean and repaint the restrooms at Honokohau small boat harbor, Honokohau management has not been able to keep them at even a minimum standard of cleanliness for a public marina. It is a disgrace and speaks volumes to the continuing problem of leadership at DOBOR, leadership that apparently will not set standards for performance, train employees to meet or exceed those standards, or supervise and hold accountable those employees for whom they are responsible.
We have repeatedly and continuously offered to become part of the solution for Honokohau only to be ignored. Just as a reminder, we submitted three white papers to you when you took the position of DLNR Chair, and to date we have not had a response to any of those suggestions. Moreover, we still suffer from failing infrastructure that includes only 37% of the lighting being functional, severe high water pressure problems in parts of the marina and a lack of water pressure in other parts of the same marina, water leaks, and a desperate need for repaving, amongst other issues we reiterate constantly. Within our 2344 members we have professional and practical skills and expertise in many areas, and we have volunteered our expertise and services because we want our boating facilities improved. We want DOBOR to succeed. Why does DLNR continue to accept, even condone its managers' failings and ignore our offers to assist?
As if our management problems were not already overwhelming, we are also faced with a significant DOBOR software problem that has hobbled the Division's ability to conduct business, cost the State a significant amount of revenue, cost the Division's employees hundreds of hours of wasted time, angered the boating public, and this failed software seems no closer to being functional than when it was instituted two months ago. It is customary, industry wide practice to run enterprise software "in house" and parallel to the existing system to check and recheck for bugs before going "live." This major management failing is worthy of a departmental investigation in order to understand how DOBOR management got this software implementation so wrong, and to explain this expensive mistake to the Governor and the boating community.
At the end of the day, the failure of DOBOR to do one thing that the boating community deemed to be of importance, the adoption of our Green Lighting Plan, something that would have paid for itself, saved lots of money, restored lighting to the entire harbor, met the Governor's vision for a New Day and a new approach to providing a basic public service, speaks volumes about the prevailing obstructionist culture within the department . . . no can do, no desire, no will. . . the public's interests be damned! It leaves us to question, what is the future of our harbors?
Respectfully Submitted,
The Board of Directors
Hawaii Fishing and Boating Association
CC: Governor Neal Abercrombie
Senator Josh Green
Senator Gil Kahele
Representative Cindy Evans
Representative Denny Coffman
John Buckstead
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Kailua Kona, HI 96745