“I’m not saying it was fixed but it wasn’t up and up.”
Surf as living, man, is a rough gamble. Sometimes it’s all golden, clicking, flowing. Other times it’s the Golden Bachelor, rough, merciless, lame. Tide all the way out. And so I very much sympathized with the various surf schools on Hawaii’s Big Island that, two weeks ago, had entire business models upended via a nasty new lottery.
For then, seventeen hopeful surf school owners had gathered in the Old Kona Airport Pavilion, on Friday, waiting to see if they would receive one of only four permits being offered for the very popular Kalahu’u Bay. The Department of Land and Resources had decided to drop balls in a hopper, bingo style, in order to select the programs allowed to instruct the vulnerable.
The balls were dropped, spun and selected.
One person, Wesley Moore, getting three out of the four slots.
The others, who had been there for decades, left without a rose.
It seemed like an apocalypse.
But, hours ago, the state’s courts intervened in a miraculous reprieve.
According to Big Island News Now:
At a hearing on Thursday afternoon, 3rd Circuit Court Judge Robert D.S. Kim granted the temporary restraining order, saying this is a public interest case because confidence in the state systems must be based on transparency and fairness.
“It’s skyrocketed because of the concern that the entity [the Department of Land and Natural Resources] knew the system could be gained,” Kim said. “I’m not saying it was fixed but it wasn’t up and up.”
In the hearing, it was noted that Moore owned eight of the 17 companies in the lottery, but had only one school. Moore, a longtime Kona resident, has been operating Kona Town Surf Adventures for years. But all the other LLCs were created within the past couple of years.
Boom and Wesley Moore readying his legal forces?
Probably. That’s the day and age in which we live. Where slaps have been exchanged for briefs.
Yuck.
David Lee Scales and I, anyhow, did not discuss this subject but did dig into the pure adult joy of dipping French fries into mayonnaise instead of ketchup.
Where do you stand on that one?
Listen here.
