KRCA Homeowners
Board of Directors Meeting

Wednesday, October 28, 2015
6:30 – 9:30 pm
Kilauea Neighborhood Center

Kalihiwai Ridge homeowners can find official minutes to KRCA Board of Directors meetings by setting up their own Account Log In at www.associaonline.com.  They can assist you in getting your 7 digit homeowner number.  After you have that you will then need to set up a User Name and Password.  You can also set up having the Agenda to these meetings sent to you by e-mail the day before the meetings are held every month.



My Impressions

I have taken the summer off and resigned from the KRCA Board of Directors as of July 1, 2015.  I could no longer personally justify serving the community under such conditions as have been experienced by many others serving before me, good neighbors long gone from ever attending any board meetings again.  It is a volunteer job requiring you often have to fall out of step with your neighbors as you gain such different inside knowledge and of course cannot ever hope to satisfy everyone.  You then spend a good part of your life consumed by issues such as neighborhood dog barking, the new farm worker housing controversy, ongoing deterioration of Kahiliholo Road the County could care less about until maybe sometime in 2017-18, trimming of the Kuhio Highway now slated for January 2016, collections from the 4-5 delinquent homeowners, and of course the common area of Kalihiwai Reservoir (lake lot 3), of which I have been more directly concerned.

It is now my observation the lake has been lowered to near 10 on the stick for many years to come.  This means unsafe mud hole conditions around the lake for the 12 lake lot owners living on the lake and for the additional 12 owners bordering the lake who face the street.  I have dismantled my boat Moe Moku I can no longer safely launch from shore and have pulled her upside down to wait out these many years ahead.  The EHs basically need no more water than is currently being stored and dam safety concerns are now pretty much satisfied with the Outlet Works #2 ticket repaired as far as the EHs are concerned, but not according to the Arcadis engineers and DLNR in terms of rip rap vs rock used in the bottom of the ditch.  It appears that may continue to be argued as well as not having reliable safe vehicle access to the spillway. 
 

A new wider spillway and repaired embankments would also of course solve this issue and allow KRCA to have a full lake at 14/15 on the old stick to get something of real property and recreational value for their one third investment, but I feel that is now a long way off from ever being settled to either have the Kalihiwai Reservoir finally remediated or some other solution implemented.  Regardless, it will take another four years to collect enough in the lake lot reserve account to pay for any of this, which is a long time to continue going to repetitious meetings during this long impasse.

Meanwhile, all that is needed for maintenance is to mow and repair the rutted dam crest, embankments (all getting way overgrown), and access road, clear out the intake ditch, and allow Jack to monitor less than usual, or retire if he cares to, as nothing much changes from day to day with the lake kept this low.  There is a deeper mid level trench going into the lake now to keep the lake consistently draining at 10 on the stick with the new outflow gate kept open all the time so water flows out to sea, having the old spillway acting as an emergency back up.  I would think we will stay under the DLNR radar for many years to come with this arrangement in place, until perhaps Common Ground is sold to someone who might want more water than is currently needed and a new easement holder comes on board.

New KRCA board members will be elected in February 2016 who will change the inner dynamics yet again in terms of what the board can get done or not.  I now intend to change some of my focus of the KR Newsletters from reporting on KRCA board meetings, which the approved minutes will eventually cover a month later, to also begin writing about other topics of community interest.  There is a Nene Habitat Conservation Plan talk by Dr Christian Vlautin coming up on September 9th at 6:00-7:30 PM at the Princeville Public Library I encourage you all to attend that I will report on in the October 2015 Newsletter and the public unveiling of the King Kaumuali`i bronze 3' statue created by my husband Saim Caglayan to be held at Smith's Luau on November 7th I will write about in November 2015 so stay tuned.

Until we meet again.

Aloha,
Maggie Lea