STAR-BULLETIN / JULY 2002
Even with a guard blocking access to the Haiku Stairs, many people found a way to make the Kaneohe climb.
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Haiku Stairs partnership proposed
Mayor Mufi Hannemann said yesterday he might ask city officials to consider a public-private partnership to reopen Haiku Stairs.
But he emphasized that the private entity must take the lead -- and ensure that the city will not be held liable if there is an accident on the stairs.
"It's got to be a public-private partnership," Hannemann said after learning that Gov. Linda Lingle had refused his second offer to transfer the "Stairway to Heaven" to the state.
"Right now the onus is on the city, and it's not enough for the city to pay for the expenses and maintenance and also assume the liability," Hannemann said.
Lingle wrote in her Oct. 4 letter to Hannemann, "As stated previously, the state is declining your offer to assume control of Haiku Stairs."
The governor recommended that the city work with the Friends of Haiku Stairs, a nonprofit group that has promoted reopening the 3,922-step metal staircase that scales the Koolau Mountains outside Kaneohe.
Former Mayor Jeremy Harris' administration spent $875,000 to repair the former Coast Guard equipment maintenance stairs in 2002, with the intention of opening them as a recreational hike.
But Hannemann's administration has never been keen on the idea. He asked Lingle in April 2005 and again in a Sept. 11 letter that the state's Na Ala Hele Trail system take over the feature, which has never reopened.
Hannemann said yesterday that he had met with proponents of the stairs but still had the same questions: "Who's going to operate it and maintain it? Where's the money going to come from, and then the liability?"
John Flanigan, president of the Friends of Haiku Stairs, said the group would meet as soon as possible to discuss how to respond to the mayor's call for detailed plans.
Flanigan said although his group had worked up a plan of staffing the stairs with in-kind contributions, it never put a pencil to "the nitty-gritty about funding," costs for liability insurance, etc.
"I don't think we're in a position where we could say, 'Give it to us and we'll run it,'" Flanigan said yesterday.
Though City Councilwoman Barbara Marshall supports seeking a way to use the unique stairs, she does not want to "spend taxpayer dollars in perpetuity" to guard the stairs against trespassers, she said yesterday.