COM 0358.000 2006-2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Honorable Pete Hoffmann Chair and Presiding Officer and Members of the County Council COUNTY COUNCIL Page 3 Apri12Q 2007 The major exception to the affordable housing requirement will be those projects, which have an agreement with the County that fully satisfies their affordable housing requirements. Typically, these are projects which were zoned in the 1980's and 1990's which entered into an agreement with the County and have fulfilled that agreement. For example, the Waikoloa resort development gave 300 acres to the County for affordable housing in Waikoloa, and has some ongoing responsibility to provide infrastructure for the project. Other developments, such as the urban portion of Kohala Ranch, fulfilled affordable housing requirements by paying an in-lieu fee when it was inexpensive to do so. We are not exempting these developments out of favoritism, but because of legal concerns over trying to impose a new requirement when the County previously agreed that the affordable housing requirement was fulfilled. The proposed ordinance will also not apply to existing individual lots, such as in subdivisions already approved, and small subdivisions and other developments with fewer than five units. These are exempted by the current policy. We do not see a practical way of putting an affordable housing requirement on individual lots that have already been subdivided, such as in the Puna subdivisions like Hawaiian Paradise Park. As a practical matter, most affordable housing being produced on the island is actually being built in such subdivisions. The bill deals with projects that are currently in the development process by exempting subdivisions that have received tentative approval on the effective date of the ordinance, and projects which had a plan approval application received and acknowledged as complete on the effective date of the ordinance. Tentative subdivision approval gives the developer the right to draw up construction plans for the subdivision infrastructure and to build that infrastructure once the plans have been approved. Plan approval similarly approves the basic site plan for amulti-family project. The attached bill is in Ramseyer format from the current Chap. 11, Hawaii County Code, and does not include any changes that may result from Bill 156, which is currently under consideration by the council. If Bill 156 passes and is signed by the mayor, we will revise the current proposal to include the necessary changes.