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~2-1:'-D4: 8:44AM:18085283463 ~1BUB F983463 # q 1 Honorable Pete Hoffmann and K. Angel Pilago, Co-Chairs, and Members Committee on Planning December 2Q ?004 Page 3 for land use approvals. But badly needed infrastructure funded by the public sector has lagged conspicuously, most obviously in the fastest growing regions of the island. In the future, we would like to see greater evidence in the General Plan of a clear commitment of public agency staff, resources, and funding to ensure that infrastructure will be built, maintained, expanded, and replaced as needed to accommodate projected development. One way to do this is to indicate with appropriate specificity, perhaps in the district courses of action, where individual CIP projects are most needed, and how soon. • The public sector commitment to build needed infrastructure can and should also include greater use of innovative means ofpublic-private financing to fiord that infrastructure, such as impact fee assessments, development agreements, community facilities districts, special improvement districts, and tax increment financing (see HRS ch. 46 pts. VI-VIII), rather than ad hoc exactions. We would like to ensure that all development projects, large or small, contribute their fair share no less but no more of the costs of the infrastructure from which they benefit. • The revised General Plan should reflect a truly visionary and conceptual planning process, and not include explicit terms and conditions which will provide a rationale for rejection of individual development proposals on the grounds that they are not consistent with the Plan. Charter § 3-15(b) provides that "no public improvement or project, or subdivision or zoning ordinance, shall be initiated or adopted unless the same conforms I to and implements the general plan" (emphasis added). Settled case law in Hawaii also indicates that [development] plans become "de facto zoning" when they contain provisions more restrictive than the corresponding zoning ordinance and with which [hat zoning must be consistent; see GATRI v. Blm:e, 88 Hawaii 108, 962 P.2d 367 (1998), cited in Save Sunset Beach Coalition v. City and County of Honolulu, 102 Hawaii 465, 78 P.3d 1 (2003). The content of the General Plan is therefore a very powerful instrument which must be used judiciously to guide the entitlement process rather than overlap with, supplant, or regulate it. Accordingly, it is important that the General Plan include a statement of legislative intent to the effect that it is "not intended to be regulatory like the zonir:g code or other land use regulations, but flexible and resilient." • With regard to consistency, we would not like the LUPAG map to be interpreted as a fixed and arbitrary guide to the phasing of development projects, such that zoning requests cannot be accepted for processing if the projects fall outside an urban expansion or resort area at a given point in time. Instead of providing a rationale for saying "no" to private projects, the LUPAG map should become a signal of government's conrnritnrent to say "yes" to the funding of needed infrastructure in support of development. i i