Peter Kay keeps using the word “Herculean.” Jeannine Johnson says there are people who work for the city who no longer return her calls. Margaret Pratt said, “After the first meeting, I went home and told my husband, ‘Oh my God, I just found out how government works.’”
It started like this:
Johnson’s 2-year-old son was playing with his cousins while she went for a walk around her Niu Valley neighborhood. When she came around the corner, she saw her boy chase a ball onto the road. That did it. She realized that her neighborhood didn’t have but definitely needed a safe playground.
“I went to the neighborhood board and asked, ‘Can we have a playground?’ The vote was a unanimous yes. And I thought, ‘Oh, great! Thanks!’”
She thought that was the end of it. That was 12 years ago. Since then a group of East Honolulu neighbors has slogged through the bureaucracy of four mayors, three different City Council members, state legislators who have come and gone, and a maddening game of changing rules and seemingly irrational requirements.
“This is a story of tremendous struggle of a small community fighting City Hall,” Kay said.
“And we never gave up. Ha!” Johnson said.
From the perspective of resident Sue Johnson (no relation to Jeannine), this has gone on since her family moved into the neighborhood in 1965. There was supposed to be a park near her house, but the city didn’t want the donation of land unless the residents pledged to take care of it, and the deal fell apart. She has grandchildren now. She has been waiting for two generations for a playground.
The community has a large open field adjacent to Niu Valley Middle School. It’s used for the school’s PE classes, weekend soccer games and dog walking. The city put in tennis courts on one corner of the land in the ’70s but no swings, no slide, no playground equipment. The state wasn’t interested in putting a playground in a park that isn’t next to an elementary school, but there was a spot below the tennis courts on city property where the neighbors thought a playground would fit nicely.
They were told that there wasn’t enough room, so they got their own surveyor to stake out the boundaries.
“When I saw the pink ribbons, I bawled,” Jeannine Johnson said. “There was so much space! How could they say we had no room?”
Rather than continue the frustration of asking for government funding, the community decided to raise funds for playground equipment, with a goal of $80,000. Their long list of corporate donors, private gifts and funds raised through social media campaigns is on
their website, niuvalley
playground.com.
The city turned down their offer to do a community-build and said the job had to be bid out to contractors. By then the playground equipment was already paid for and on-island, but the neighbors had to wait for installation.
“Of course, there are rules and procedures. It has to be safe,” said Lee-Ann Brewer, Niu Valley Community Association treasurer. “But it was almost deliberate at every turn, like, ‘If we just hold them off, they’ll give up.’ Like they didn’t want to see a community take initiative.”
On Saturday the neighbors will open their brand-new playground. It feels like a monument to victory. They have been fighting for so long.
The story goes on, though. The community actually bought a second playground set — exercise stations meant for adults — with a portion of the funds. Rather than try to get everything done at once, they donated that equipment to the city in the hope of installing it near the playground someday. Johnson recently got a call from the city asking whether it would be OK if they installed that equipment in another neighborhood.
“What can we do?” Johnson said. “We gave it to them.”
Lee Cataluna can be reached at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
