Parks are a gathering place for families, organizations and community groups to meet, recreate and enjoy. As your councilmember, one of Councilmember Pine’s ongoing goals is to keep the parks in our district safe and clean for our community by ensuring our Parks Department has the funding it needs for ongoing maintenance and new capital construction projects, encouraging communities to be good stewards of our parks, and creating a new Adopt-a-Park program to make it easier for communities to create and participate in park adoption projects.

Recently, Councilmember Pine spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon on the Leeward Coast at Makaha Community Park renovating the park bathroom, providing new play equipment and planting ti leaves on the park grounds. This event kicked off the next phase of her ongoing commitment to revitalize Leeward Coast parks and transform the community.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell joined to help plant ti leaves and showed his support for our efforts at the Makaha Community Park Rededication as he delivered a message of civic pride and community duty to be good stewards of our recreation resources.

It’s amazing to see what can be achieved when volunteers come together to revive their community. In partnership with the Department of Parks and Recreation, Laborers International 368, Grace Pacific Maintenance Solutions, the Pacific Links Foundation, PBR and Associates, Hawaii Electrical Workers and the Active Hawaii Foundation, the community combined efforts to clean-up, paint, and refurbish the heavily-used park. Volunteers helped to restore the park’s comfort station with fresh paint and the Microguard protective coating that resists graffiti and staining, and install new lights for safety. Meanwhile, the Parks Department replaced all fixtures, sinks and toilets and community members participated in a park clean-up, painted benches and removed graffiti from the park grounds. The before and after results are profound, and provide a fresh new outlook to the park.

Volunteers from Laborers Local 368 and the community painting the park comfort station.

After completing all the work in the morning, volunteers gathered together to participate in a beautiful and inspiring rededication ceremony led by Reverend Kahu Steven Costa.   Dipping a ti leaf into salt water in his koa bowl, Kahu Costa sprinkled salt water to all corners of the park, blessing the grounds and drawing forth positive energy. Meanwhile, students from neighboring Makaha Elementary School also helped to breathe fresh life into this park by symbolically planting ti leaf cuttings near the park’s entrance. The ceremony concluded as Councilmember Pine joined community leaders, volunteers and Makaha’s keiki, untying a maile lei and commemorating a new beginning for this park.

The Makaha Community Park Rededication was touching and demonstrated what can happen when volunteers and the City come together to transform our community.

In addition to this project, Councilmember Pine is working hard to bring bathrooms to Puu O Hulu Community Park in Maili and build new bathrooms at One`ula Beach Park.

With the help of community volunteers, we can transform all of our Leeward parks into safe and clean environments for our keiki. If you would like to know more about how to get involved in a park restoration, please feel free to contact Councilmember Pine’s office via e-mail: kmpine@honolulu.gov, or telephone (808) 768-5001.  It is absolutely fulfilling to give back to our community, and transforming our parks is a great way to do so.