Our hero Councilman-Elect Dominic Yagong

During the recent primary election season, candidate and now County Councilman-Elect Dominic Yagong emerged as O'okala's hero.

When we first learned back in May of Tradewinds' intent to build a veneer mill and power plant in our residential neighborhood, we were distressed to discover that our local elected officials supported this plan. Our State Representative Dwight Takamine put forth a bill for a $25 million special purpose revenue bond for Tradewinds. Luckily, Governor Linda Lingle thought that special purpose revenue bonds should not be used for private gain, and for that reason, combined with her concerns about our opposition, she vetoed the bill. When our nine-member steering committee met with Mayor Kim at his request, he spent most of the two hours lecturing us about the value of a diversified forestry industry and we had to work to get a word in edgewise. He never did hear the details of our concerns about Tradewinds locating their industrial business in our community, and he refused to accept our signed petitions. Our county councilman Fred Holschuh wrote in his monthly column in the Hamakua Times that "I know some people will be upset, but I am in favor of Tradewinds' plans for the Ookala mill site." We were dumbfounded. How could it be that our local elected officials didn't care about the impact this mill and power plant would have on our quality of life?

But luckily for us, it was election season, and former county councilman Dominic Yagong threw his hat in the ring once again. Right after he declared his candidacy, we invited him out to O'okala to break bread with about a dozen members of our community and listen to our concerns (Holschuh later declined an invitation to come talk to us). And Dominic really listened. He let us rant and rave and explain for hours. It was a late night. And then he did something amazing: he made our issue one of his platform issues. In every stump speech up and down the Hamakua Coast, he spoke out against Tradewinds coming into O'okala. In fact, he spoke out on behalf of all communities and said that it was unacceptable for any industrial business to be located in any residential community. For all his hard work on our behalf in alerting the public about this issue, the people of O'okala are very grateful.

We're happy to say that Mr. Yagong was elected on Sept. 23 to serve on the County Council. We're proud that our precinct helped make that happen. Here attached is our endorsement letter for Yagong, the ads that Holschuh and Yagong ran in the local papers, and some correspondence between Holschuh and our group where he postures as "negotiator" with Tradewinds. Councilman Holschuh, you're fired!

Protect O'okala Ad Hoc Steering Committee