By Baron Sekiya | Hawaii 24/7

The Hawaii County Council passed a resolution providing county owned gravel material to communities at no cost to maintain ‘roads in limbo’ Tuesday (April 6)

Many of these ‘roads in limbo’ were originally homestead roads on subdivisions of land designated by the Territory of Hawaii. The roads were awarded to the County in the 1960s by the State as-is without improvement. For years these roads have been an issue between the State and County as to who should maintain them.

Councilman Dominic Yagong introduced the resolution to allow communities agreeing to perform maintenance on these roads to do so with material from county owned quarries. Having the communities maintain these roads would save money by not having county workers perform the maintenance.

Opposition to the resolution was focused upon the liability of the county should there be a problem with the roadways or material from the roadways.

The resolution passed 5-4 with members Brenda Ford, Kelly Greenwell, Pete Hoffmann, Emily Naeole-Beason and Dominic Yagong voting yes. Donald Ikeda, Dennis ‘Fresh’ Onishi, J Yoshimoto and Guy Enriques opposed the resolution by voting no.