Haiku Stairs
in legal hitch

The Council needs to pass
a special bill in order for
a land swap to go through

A land exchange that could open public access to Haiku Stairs has hit another snag.

After months of trying to get information, the City Council's Budget Committee again deferred acting yesterday on a measure that would approve the swap between the city administration and the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which owns Haiku Valley.

The proposal would trade the Haiku Valley parcel for city land in Varona Village in Ewa.

Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said city attorneys told her on Tuesday that the exchange cannot proceed because of a legal obstacle.

Kobayashi said the Ewa property was purchased with money from a special housing fund, and if an exchange occurs, "there has to be housing property for housing property," which the Haiku property is not.

Now, the Council has to pass a bill to exempt the Ewa property from that requirement, she said. That process should take at least three months.

The land exchange has been in limbo for months, but Kobayashi said once this legal issue is resolved, the approval process can proceed. Kobayashi and other members complained that after months of deliberating, the legal problem was only brought to the Council this week.

Deputy Corporation Counsel Diane Kawauchi apologized to the Council that the problem was not reported earlier, but said she did not learn about it until after the last Budget Committee meeting in November. She acknowledged that a legal check should have caught it early on.

But Kobayashi said: "We all know the mayor (Jeremy Harris) was anxious to open Haiku Stairs before he left.

"It seems that in this haste, legal things were overlooked."