COM 1568.000 2006-2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Pete Hoffmann, Chairman and Members of the County Council Page 3 those with lots of 10,000 square feet or more. Under current laws, these could have IWS's. Only a few areas are currently served by wastewater treatment plants. Private plants can be expensive, and trigger an environmental assessment for the entire project if they serve more than 49 units. It is very expensive to connect low density development, such as agricultural subdivisions, to a central wastewater treatment plant. If an area has special environmental issues that make it necessary that it have a wastewater treatment plant rather than an IWS, this can and should be a condition of rezoning, rather than it be an island-wide rule. The lack of developed parks is not caused by rezonings in the last fifteen years or so. During this period, most large rezonings have required substantial pazk improvements, such as Parker 2020 or Palamanui. While there aze many smaller rezonings, these cumulatively do not add as many units as the large rezonings, and for the last fifteen yeazs, have had "fair share" assessments that at least require them to contribute toward the capital costs of new parks. The major shortages of parks on the island occur in the subdivisions created in the period of rampant subdividing, from the late 1950's to the early 1970's, and in areas that were primazily zoned before 1990, like Waikoloa Village and Kailua-Kona. There is no question that these areas are short of parks, especially ball fields, gyms, swimming pools, and other developed facilities. The question is what, if anything, a rezoning ban would do to increase the number of park facilities, or limit the number of park users. Puna has probably the biggest shortage per capita of any district, but rezoning is almost irrelevant to the overall growth of Puna because almost all development takes place in the already- approved subdivisions. - The handling of park requirements could be standardized and rezoned. The best vehicle to accomplish that is the County's Park Dedication Ordinance, Chapter 8 of the County Code. This ordinance was enacted in 1977, and because of a State law, H.R.S. Section 46-6, which requires each County to "adopt ordinances to require a subdivider, as a condition of approval of a subdivision, to provide land in perpetuity or to dedicate land for park and playground purposes..." Chapter 8 is broader than rezoning: it also applies to new subdivisions and multi-family buildings. It is ineffective in creating parks, however, because of a clause that states that it does not apply in districts where there are already more than 5 acres of parks per 1,000 persons, and includes all State and County park acreage, developed and undeveloped. This means that it excludes all the districts with major subdivision and multi-family development, such as North Kona and South Kohala. In these districts, while there is much less than 5 acres per 1,000 residents of developed park facilities, there are large undeveloped facilities, such as the Kekaha Kai State Park.