In this letter, George Downing, a legendary surfer and activist for SAVE OUR SURF writes an important rebuttal to the 2001 ‘sudden’ legislative move to privatize the recreational harbors. He writes to the Board members of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR), and states, “We, the People of Hawaii consider all Harbors of the State as assess of the people.” The Board was now seeing the effects of the 2001 harbor privatization legislation that occurred in Oct. 2001. Representative, Cynthia Thielan (Kaneohe-Kailua) had described the 2001 legislative process to allow privatization was undemocratic and unprecedented. ‘It’s the first time in House of Representative History that anything of this nature has happened.” She said, “They shut the public out and railroaded this through.” October 30, 2001 Starbulletin.com

Here George Downing is talking about public access and the importance of youth access for surfing and ocean recreation. There is no excuse, even financial, for our government to allow charging for parking in this ocean access area. This fight to preserve free ocean access has gone on for 20 years, with intermittent bursts of ‘privatization greed’. We know the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor is more than financially self supporting, if all eared revenue stayed with our harbor it could be world class without a ‘public-private’ partnership or 65 year lease.

This is 2002 article in the Honolulu Advertiser, about 2002 Privatization efforts. There are many remarkable quotes in this article written by reporter James Gonser. #!: A letter of dissent from committee members Napolean and Zelei Aborto was given to the committee and Napolean said, “I don’t like the idea of Privatization for a number of reasons. I side with Hawaii Supreme Court Judge who said you cannot privatize government services that have been traditionally conducted by the government. The government was commissioned to protect this assets on behalf of the people. If you let it go to disrepair and then get to sell it, that is how the public gets disenfranchised of its stake in the political process. Privatization gives them the power to take public lands without public hearing.” The map shows the No Build Area recommended by the Ad Hoc Committee.