COM 0042.074 2004-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Honorable Gary Safarik, Chair and Members of the County Council HAWAII COUNTY COUNCIL Page 2 January 31, 2005 The subsequent court action is not directly relevant to this letter, but I must mention it for the sake of completeness and explanation. The Third Circuit Court's Hokulia decision, among other rulings, declared that Ords. 97-34, 97-35, and 97-36 are invalid. The County and Hokulia are appealing this decision. In 1999, the State Office of Planning prepazed a number of Geographic Information System ("GIS") maps for the County of Hawaii. These are computer-based maps. One of them was a GIS version of the LUPAG map. It is extremely important to remember that the original LUPAG maps were not intended to be precise. Rather, they show the general location of uses. So, for example, the areas zoned for hotels within the various major resorts sometimes do not exactly match the areas for resort shown on the LUPAG maps. There are, however, a few interim map amendments, like the Hokulia resort site, that did have a definite location. The official LUPAG map, attached as an insert with the 1989 General Plan, was never updated to include interim amendments like Hokulia. So we are not sure how the Office of Planning mapped the Hokulia site on the GIS, but in any case, the GIS map shows it slightly mauka and somewhat larger than the site in Ord. 97-34. The GIS mapped location is labeled " 3" on the attached map. The Planning Department, in mapping South Kona for LUPAG map amendments, showed the Hokulia resort site as " 2", the 15 acre zoned site, rather than "1", the 25 acres. It was not labeled as an amendment because it was existing as a resort site. There was, of course, no intent to actually change the size of the resort designated area on the LUPAG maps. This same map, South Kona 1, was sent to the Council and is the "Draft 1"map for the area. When the Council Planning Committee voted to revise the maps for South Kona 1 and North Kona 2 (the Ackerman/Paris/Bell requests), we had to revise these maps. The head of the GIS section for the Planning Department, who normally prepares our GP maps, was on vacation, and we prepared the maps for Draft 4 (which is now Draft 5), using the GIS version of the LUPAG 3" on the attached map). Thus, the resort site looks larger and more mauka than on Draft 1. We did not catch this until it was recently brought to our attention. The best mapping for the Hokulia resort site is to follow what was done by the Council in Ord. 97-34, "1" on the attached map. Although we think that we could make this slight map change administratively, we are asking the Council to specifically authorize it by