The Neighborhood Board system was established on O'ahu in the early 1970s as a grassroots effort to enable boards of locally elected community members to hold public meetings and, as advisory bodies, to influence decisions about issues facing their neighborhoods.

The system began with 33 boards. The Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board was the second to be formed. (The first was Mililani/Waipi'o/Melemanu.)

Only twice in its history have single boards split to form two boards. The last time came more than a decade ago when the Mililani Mauka-Launani Valley area left Neighborhood Board No. 26 (Wahiawa-Whitmore Village) to form Neighborhood Board No. 35.

Now, a drive has started to split the Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board into two boards — one serving the Makaha and Wai'anae areas, and the other serving the Ma'ili and Nanakuli areas.

Michelle Kidani, executive assistant of the Neighborhood Commission, which oversees the neighborhood boards, said residents of Nanakuli and Ma'ili submitted an initiative petition with more than the necessary 100 signatures of registered voters. Once the city clerk verified the signatures, the commission published a notice in the newspaper alerting the public to a hearing on the matter.

"If it had been up to us, we probably would have waited until January," said Kidani. "We didn't want to hold the public hearing on Dec. 22 (as is scheduled now) because of the Christmas holidays. But it's spelled out in the plan. You have to have the public hearing within 35 days after the city clerk tells you there are enough valid signatures on the petition. And the 22nd, I believe, was the very last day we could have it."

Members of the public will have until Jan. 7 to respond to the commission in writing about the hearing, said Kidani. The commissioners will then have until Feb. 5 to either reject or accept the petition to form Nanakuli-Ma'ili Neighborhood Board No. 36.

The commissioners are obligated to consider alternative petitions and viewpoints. One of the major factors leading to the approval or disapproval of the proposal will be evidence of public support, according to the Neighborhood Plan under which the neighborhood boards operate.

Kidani said if the petition is accepted, the city's corporation counsel might need to determine some procedures on how to select the new board's members and how to rearrange the previous Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board. Most likely the commissioners would call for a further hearing (or hearings) to determine whether new board members would be selected by a special election or whether the process would wait until the regular neighborhood board elections in 2009.

At some point board members from Nanakuli and Ma'ili would resign from the Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board, No. 24. They could, of course, choose to run for election on the new Nanakuli-Ma'ili Neighborhood No. 36. The new board petition calls for nine at-large members to be elected by a plurality vote from the neighborhood board area in which the members reside.

If a special election is held, the soonest Board No. 36 could become a reality would probably be April 2008, Kidani said.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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