As I reflect on my life in Laie, I am reminded of my great-grandparents, the Kekauohas and Meatogas, who settled their families in Laie in the late 1800s and early 1900s to gather with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their sacrifices and resilience made me who I am today.

I grew up in Laie, graduated from Kahuku High School and got my first job with the Polynesian Cultural Center’s maintenance department. A handyman at heart, I built my own home in Laie, where my wife Rita and I raised five children and now enjoy the blessings of three grandchildren.

Over the years, the economy hasn’t always weighed in Laie’s favor. Multiple families live in single homes due to the lack of affordable housing. Young families are forced to choose between long commutes to Honolulu or moving away due to the lack of jobs in our area. My grandkids live out of state for these reasons.

Today we have a choice.

The city’s Koolauloa Sustainable Communities Plan (KSCP) offers us the opportunity to improve our quality of life: affordable housing options for local residents; commercial areas to diversify our economy and attract new jobs; more parks and recreational places; and views of the land and ocean that will keep what we have grown to love — our life in the country.

For the past nine years, as Laie Community Association president, my goal has been to help Laie and the Koolauloa region become more active in deciding their futures.

That’s what the Envision Laie process is about: grassroots participation and empowerment.

For more than a year, at workshops and community meetings across the region, local residents and Laie’s major institutions weighed in on issues of concern to us all — housing, jobs, better education and the sustainability of our family-oriented lifestyle — encouraging every voice to be heard.

We who live here want to determine our own future. And so we participated — 600-plus people attended visioning workshops, 696 responded to a scientific survey, 100 gave in-depth interviews and more than 1,300 residents signed petitions.

Ideas were generated: housing in Malaekahana, bike and pedestrian pathways to link communities, and restoration of the old cane-haul road to alleviate traffic on Kamehameha Highway, among others.

Needed infrastructure will require public and private sector cooperation. In Laie, flood control is one of them. Those of us who live here know the consequences of destructive floods. According to the KSCP, several collaborative drainage projects are under way, funded jointly by government agencies and landowners.

For example, in 2011 the state Department of Transportation is scheduled to replace the Laieloa Bridge, next to Foodland. The new bridge will be twice as wide, doubling the drainage capacity of that critical outfall — one of the keys to improving flood control.

This is what the KSCP public review draft offers.

Not all of our ideas have been included. Yet in every public forum to date, a large majority of Koolauloa residents say they favor appropriate and controlled growth that will keep families living in the country.

Recent community meetings on the KSCP were well attended, showing the interest and passion of those for and against. This is healthy. I envision both sides coming together as we go through the process.

The majority of the residents of Laie and throughout Koolauloa are in support of the city’s draft plan.

I applaud the city Department of Planning and Permitting for listening to the concerns of the residents. This plan is of the people, for the people and supported by the people of Laie.

Pane Meatoga, who grew up in Laie, has worked at Laie Quarry and in the construction industry, and currently is state administrator for Local 3’s training trust fund. He has served as Laie Community Association president for the past nine years.