HANALEI — The Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay is seeking input and ideas for its next major community project. “We like to do projects that can benefit the public and contribute to the community,” said John Oszust, president of the
HANALEI — The Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay is seeking input and ideas for its next major community project.
“We like to do projects that can benefit the public and contribute to the community,” said John Oszust, president of the Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay. “We’re looking for any and all ideas. We’re really welcoming anything that people will want to put down.”
Input will be collected on the club’s website until Sept. 1.
“We’re going to compile all the ideas and we’ll sit down and go through them and figure out which one seems to be the most feasible, practical and beneficial to the community,” said Oszust, an eight-year club member.
As of Tuesday, the club has received 53 responses.
Oszust said popular ideas so far include building restrooms along Hanalei Beach, purchasing an ambulance for the North Shore and raising money to construct buildings at an agricultural park in Kilauea.
“The interesting thing about it is the more people put into this, the more we’re going to be realizing the island’s needs,” he said.
Even if ideas aren’t selected for the next project, they may be used for future projects.
Projects earmarked for the community take between one to three years to complete. After the club makes it selection, members will begin working on the project Dec. 1.
For instance, the Hanalei Pier restoration project completed two years ago took three years to complete. That was the club’s last big project, Oszust said.
“We raised almost $200,000 for it,” he said. “By the time it was done, we ended up with about $60,000 left over that we put into a fund for maintaining it.”
The Hanalei club is also looking at projects that may be co-sponsored with the other rotary clubs on the island.
Funds for the projects are received from community donors as well as money raised from fundraisers sponsored by the club.
“We got some donations in the $5,000 range from the pier restoration and most of those were all from all island,” Oszust said. “There’s some really generous people in the community.”
Info: www.hanaleirotary.org
