Parks / The Friends of Heeia State Park, the nonprofit group that has managed park oversight for nearly three decades, is protesting the results of a bid process put into motion by the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Land Board, which would turn over control of the park to the non-profit childcare group Kamaaina Kids.

“In a nutshell, the Friends have provided stewardship for this little coastal park in Kaneohe for the last 27 years,” said Friends of Heeia State Park Administrator Carole McLean. “We had a lease for the two buildings and we were responsible for arranging programs because the state didn’t do that.”

McLean said that for the past decade, the Friends have been working to secure a more all-encompassing lease from the state, so that they could be in charge of the entire area and make necessary upgrades accordingly.

“Three things are missing: there’s no security, no safety and no cleanliness,” said McLean. “We’ve been trying to convince them for a long time if we could have the lease for the whole park, we could ensure those things. We finally convinced them but they said it would have to be an open bid. If it were a fair process, we were confident we would be selected.”

Selection suspicion

But the Friends weren’t selected. State officials say that the DLNR originally recommended that the Land Board approve an extension of the Friends of Heeia State Park agreement, but that the Land Board voted to have the department issue a request for proposals to invite open competition for park operations.

“Kamaaina kids was awarded the bid,” said DLNR spokeswoman Debbie Ward. “They would have started by September, but due to the formal bid protest, that is still undetermined. It’s a quasi-legal action, so we can’t comment too much.”

But the attorney representing the Friends says that Ward has been “misinformed,” and that, in what amounts to “criminal misconduct,” DLNR Chairwoman Laura Thielen selected Kamaaina Kids as the lease recipient before the formal process even began and prohibited the Land Board from actually having a say in what should happen.

“She, in effect, took it away from the board,” said Friends attorney Anthony Locricchio. “That’s the first time in the history of DLNR that that has ever occurred and the board was rather shocked.”

Locricchio says that DLNR repeatedly ignored the Friends of Heeia State Park’s complaints about the process and that when the agency finally responded, it did so in a way that breaks a state statute designed to prevent conflicts of interest in investigating or reviewing protocol.

“There’s an appearance that the whole process was shibai,” said Locricchio. “When a complaint was made about the way it was awarded, there’s a process that is to be used under statute. That process requires that the agency, in this case DLNR and its head Laura Thielen, not to assign this to someone in her own agency to review for appropriateness. It should have gone to the ombudsman’s office. We wrote a letter to Laura Thielen asking that it go to the ombudsman. She refused to respond and sent it to the person whose children are in Kamaaina Kids and who headed up the staff committee [the conduct of which is target of the Friends’ protest].”

Stuck in the middle

In the meantime, Kamaaina Kids is defending the legitimacy of the bid.

“As a company, we have a facilities department that has the expertise, the background and all the experience that we need to keep the facility up and going, and we truly understand that Heeia State Park needs to be run and operated as a state park,” said Kamaaina Kids president and founder Ray Sanborn. “We’ve been operating there for more than 20 years and we’ve never had a complaint. We’ve never had any problems. We’ve had 150 kids coming through there while people were at the park, having a picnic, taking photos, and none of those activities were affected by the Kamaaina Kids.”

Now, however, there are complaints about how smoothly things are running at the park. The debacle is making it difficult for the Park to offer regular services–like the renting out of a pavilion for weddings and other events–that residents rely on.

“We’ve already given the DLNR more than sufficient time,” said Locricchio. “We have no choice but to file in court, to ask the court to issue an order to continuing management of the park until this is reviewed by an independent party.”

And while Ward says that there’s no way she can yet disclose how long it will take to resolve the dispute–be it days, months or years–Kamaaina Kids’ Sanborn says that it’s time for a change in park leadership now.

“Change is something that happens,” said Sanborn. “And, you know, my heart goes out to the Friends. I love those guys–they helped us get started. I just think there’s a time for the park where there needs to be a new model. I have the depth of staff and I have the financial stability to really be able to go in there and make an impact.”