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<br /> Pete Hoffmann, Chairman <br /> and Members of the County Council <br /> Page 2 <br /> Stated as a general principle, it is impossible to disagree with the concept <br /> of concurrency. The difficulty is in putting it into practice, particulazly with the <br /> conditions that exist in Hawaii County, and coming out with policies that have <br /> the intended results. It is especially difficult to establish a concurrency policy by <br /> ordinance that has to apply generally to a wide range of situations, rather than as a <br /> general principle to be applied to rezonings, and possibly to subdivisions and <br /> other post-zoning approvals, on the circumstances of an individual application. <br /> This recommendation will discuss the bills primarily with reference to roads. <br /> Water is not that urgent an issue from a concurrency standpoint. Although some <br /> rezonings have been granted for properties for which there was not an assured <br /> supply of water, the subdivision code and plan approval processes, as well as <br /> Department of Water Supply regulations, prevent actual development and <br /> occupancy from occurring without a water supply. The major exception is the <br /> availability of water variances, although there is at least some consistency now in <br /> the treatment of this due to the adoption of an administrative rule, Planning <br /> Department Rule 22. The same is generally true for sewers and individual <br /> wastewater systems. (Bill 329 appeazs to prohibit development using individual <br /> wastewater systems, even though these are allowed in many circumstances by the <br /> Department of Health.) <br /> The four bills in question all have the basic strategy of delaying or <br /> denying development approvals until public facilities are at a desirable level of <br /> service. There aze two basic difficulties with this strategy: first, that it does not <br /> necessarily lead to the construction of the public facilities, and second, that it will <br /> not affect development that is occurring on already-subdivided land, such as in <br /> the Puna and Ka'u subdivisions that were created from the 1950's to the late <br /> 1960's, and some other development that will create the same or worse traffic and <br /> other impacts. <br /> Taking the first point: most private developments, since the era in the <br /> 1950's and 60's that resulted in the creation of more than 60,000 lots with poor <br /> roads and no water supply, have incorporated decent on-site infrastructure. They <br /> typically have good roads within the subdivisions, and county water systems or <br /> equivalent private water systems. The public facilities outside the private <br /> developments -the regional roads, the community pazks, the schools -have not <br /> kept up. The difficulty for the private developer is that, except perhaps for some <br /> large developments, the necessary regional road improvements aze too large for <br /> their project to beaz the costs. For example, the current congestion problem on <br /> the Queen Kaahumanu Highway can probably only be cured by its widening to <br /> four lanes. This is currently underway between Henry Street and Kealakehe <br /> Parkway, but even after this section is widened, the remaining areas may still be <br /> at an undesirable level of service. Generally, it is not practical, and makes little <br /> sense, to have a private developer do a project like widening their "fair share" of <br /> something like Queen Kaahumanu Highway. The rezonings discussed earlier <br /> which had road construction requirements involved fairly large projects, and, in <br /> <br />