Proposed Haleiwa land sale doesn’t pass the smell test

Compared to large-scale land dealings on Oahu — where urbanizing 1,550 prime agricultural acres forms compounds of acidic conflicts involving profit-intent developers, powerful government agents and community groups — friction over 3.4 brushy acres in Haleiwa seems unexceptional.

It is not.

It isn’t, because the 3.4 acres are part of a regional park, owned by citizens of Oahu, and a good many of them don’t want the land sold, as Mayor Peter Carlisle and some members of the City Council have proposed.

It isn’t, because the 3.4 acres sit across the road from the blue expanse of Waialua Bay and are coveted for an ill-fitting hotel by a developer who has been given an inside track on bidding for the land.

It isn’t, because the $300,000 minimum price tag set for the property falls far short of its 2009 tax-assessed value of nearly $3 million. It isn’t because that $3 million assessment three years later has curiously decreased to a meager $83,400.

It isn’t, because there is a shortage of park lands in the area, which both the mayor and the Council have acknowledged.

For the time being, park advocates have fended off the proposal, flooding City Council chambers this week to speak their minds, prompting the cowed Budget Committee to put off a vote on the enabling resolution that Council Chairman Ernest Martin introduced at Carlisle’s behest.

The committee would have done better had it dealt the proposal a quick death.

Martin declared that the postponement was needed because of his amendment to require that proceeds from the sale be used to acquire other land for a park or recreational purposes on the North Shore.

Whether the Council can legally designate the minimal potential income exclusively for the region is debatable. What isn’t debatable is that law already requires returns from sales of park land to be used for other park land acquisition, which the city would be hard-pressed to find for $300,000

The resolution aims to offer the land only to the developer, who bought adjacent land in 2010 with a hotel in mind, and to Kamehameha Schools, one of the private landowners from whom the city took the property four decades ago through eminent domain with the intent of expanding a municipal park.

The city’s initial idea was to sell the land to the developer, but that would be unfair to Kamehameha Schools, which had proposed less intrusive plans. It would allow the city to keep the property while the trust paid a monthly fee for access to its nearby Loko Ea Fishpond, used for cultural education.

As matters stand, the city administration and the Council have created a mess that doesn’t pass the smell test.

While no one is accusing them of giving preferential treatment to anyone, selling public land along a shoreline on the cheap is wrong.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.