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<br /> Pete Hoffinann, Chairman <br /> and Members of the County Council <br /> Page 3 <br /> the case of the Honokohau Business Park and Pua'a rezonings, relatively short <br /> sections of road. <br /> It is not necessarily a bad thing that a concunency ordinance will delay or <br /> deny development in areas that are already experiencing road congestion or <br /> otherwise do not have adequate public facilities, but this leads to the second point: <br /> that there is a great deal of potential development that will escape concurrency <br /> controls, but still have an impact on the roads, parks, and other public facilities in <br /> the areas where the concurrency controls apply. The most important sources of <br /> development that will not be affected by concurrency controls are the lots created <br /> by the 1950's and 1960's subdivisions. About 50% of the home construction in <br /> Hawaii County is occurring on these lots, mostly in Puna, but there is significant <br /> activity in the Hawaiian Ocean View-Hawaiian Ranchos area, where about 450 <br /> building permits were issued for new homes in 2005-2006 -about half as many as <br /> in all of North Kona. If there are no options for workforce housing closer to the <br /> employment centers in West Hawaii, workers will continue to have to commute <br /> from long distances, putting additional strain on roads. While a concurrency <br /> ordinance could have the result of delaying further subdivision or other <br /> development in the Kailua-Kona azea, it will not prevent traffic growth from <br /> people who have to commute through Kailua-Kona on their way to work. <br /> The only type of land use regulation that would affect development in the <br /> already-approved subdivisions would be a moratorium on building permits. The <br /> county administration has not been in favor of this because the homes being built <br /> in these subdivisions constitute almost all of the new middle-income housing <br /> created on the island during a time when rapid price increases have pushed <br /> housing beyond the reach of many families. A building permit moratorium would <br /> mostly hurt individuals and small landowners. In addition to the lots in the rural <br /> subdivisions, development on the major resorts north of the Kona International <br /> Airport at Keahole would also probably continue in spite of a concurrency <br /> ordinance. These do not need rezoning, and are generally outside the area where <br /> the Queen Kaahumanu Highway is currently below a desirable level of service. <br /> As a practical matter, the azea that would most likely be affected by a concunency <br /> ordinance would be the area between Keauhou and the Kona International Airport <br /> at Keahole, because the highways aze already badly congested. A concurrency <br /> ordinance could prevent rezoning in this area, and, if applied at the subdivision <br /> level, further residential subdivisions, at least until the next phase of the Queen <br /> Kaahumanu widening has been completed, when the level-of-service might <br /> improve enough that concurrency would be satisfied. This area is, however, also <br /> the prime area in North Kona where the General Plan encourages growth, and the <br /> results of the community development plan process so far also direct growth to <br /> this general area. <br /> A concurrency policy should not choke off the development of affordable <br /> housing in this area. On the other hand, current zoning for commercial <br /> <br />