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And the August Yd letter I submitted, I hand-delivered the applicants' position and proposed
<br />recommendation and, with conditions, and that pretty much like summarize our position. And I'll
<br />kind of like just highlight what I noted in that. And first of all was that the time extension is
<br />consistent with the General Plan and the Community Development Plan. This is kind of like, you
<br />know, beating a dead horse; we know that the, when the Council considered the General Plan and
<br />the Planning Director considered the CDP and the General Plan on extensions, everybody else
<br />concluded it was consistent. The plans haven't changed. And yet today we have the current
<br />planning director to say, hmm, stop, it's not consistent. So it kind of like boggles our mind in terms
<br />of why now, and, where we have documents that have not changed, but now you can take a position
<br />contrary. We've also, I also kind of pointed out in that brief,letter-'that this project provides much
<br />needed infrastructure in terms of having a new mauka-makai road, and also provides much needed
<br />affordable housing - - - more detail, and not to say provides much needed construction, as well as
<br />post-construction employment. And I think that we'
<br />are at the stage; .you know, when you deal with
<br />the COVID pandemic, I kind of implore in the decision-making Pike this to kind of like look at the
<br />consequences of your decision relative to the message, which you communicate to the broader
<br />development community.
<br />We also heard at the last two Commission meetings, the:Commissioners had expressed concern
<br />about the need for affordable housing. Asa result, in the August 3.rd letter, what "I kind of wanted to
<br />point out - - - affordable housing. In'the beginning what the'developer wanted to do was to delete all
<br />references to affordable housing obligation that; obligations thattwere committed to back in 2005.
<br />And one of the reasons why_was we were saying that just, you know, there is now an affordable
<br />housing code which was.not present back then.. So why,don-'_t you have that code be the guiding
<br />force? And that was, y u-know;.predominant pos tion 'on the part of the applicant. However, what
<br />was represented then obviously is'substantially..more than what the code, if you, if the code were
<br />strictly applied, what the' ,code would.require. Theicode currently, housing code currently requires
<br />20 percent of,the-units to be, you know, .you need to generate 20 percent affordable housing credit
<br />for your total, density. " Now, that, affordable liousing ,credits can be generated in one of three ways:
<br />One, it;;can;be on site; �tWo-- Jt can be-'off site; and; three, if you have credits, you can purchase those
<br />credits arid'uuse those credits. Now oh'this particular property, Mr. Cook already has 40 affordable
<br />housing credits that's - - - forAhisproperty: He has chosen, and the conditions have also clearly
<br />indicated that- number one, you cannot use.those credits; number two, you cannot go off site;
<br />number three, you 3are back to square one, you have to development all of your housing, you have to
<br />satisfy all of your housing obligation on site. Now, relative to that, in the beginning on the Suffolk,
<br />as I think, you know, the''staff.hadi`mentioned, the existing conditions call for at least—the project is
<br />going to be rental housing-On Suffolk, it's clear, it's going to be rental housing—you've got to rent it
<br />for 20 years, and of these units at least 20 percent of those units would have to be targeted at
<br />80 percent of AMI, the balance would be whatever the housing - - -. On the Puaa property, the
<br />original request was to say, okay, let's not talk about any housing obligation over there, but the
<br />existing condition already called for having a minimum of 50 housing units on the Puaa site, which
<br />is a commercial site; we are saying, fine, restore that, you know. The Commissioners have raised
<br />concern about the need for affordable housing in this particular area. They've responded, like
<br />coming back and saying, look, we'll do it, we will not, we will not seek any relief from whatever
<br />was represented - - -.
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