COM 0073.004 2012-2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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ONO: Thank you. ISHIBASHI: Any further questions from the Commissioners? Thank you, Daryn. ARAI: Sure. ISHIBASHI: We have Lani Weigert? Come, come forward. Raise your right hand,please. Do you swear and confirm to tell the truth before the Windward Planning Commission over this matter? WEIGERT: Yes, I do. ISHIBASHI: Okay, thank you so much. Go ahead. WEIGERT: My name is Lani Weigert; and I am the executive director of the Hawai`i Agri Tourism Association, which is a 501(c)(3)nonprofit for the entire state of Hawai`i. Our organization is based here in Hilo and we are in support of Bill 25 which has had, as Daryn said, several rounds through this. So we're going through it one more time to see if maybe we can get it passed again. When I say passed again I mean it passes always through the Planning Commission; and it just so happened that we got a new council so they didn't know what was going on. So then we had to throw it back to the Commission again. So, so here we are. So I'm ready for any questions. So let me tell you why this bill was created then,just to kind of bring you up to speed. The bill was created so that farmers could create supplemental income, not necessarily on the tourists but to attract people to come to their farms so they could sell their value-added products. The value- added products are really what adds to a supplemental income. So I'll give you an example. If somebody goes to a lilikoi farm, and when they go there they are able to buy lilikoi jam or jelly, that jam or jelly actually profits them anywhere from six to eight times more than them just selling the lilikoi by the pound. So this kind of supplemental income will allow a farmer,not only to hire more labor but also to afford the food safety certification that many farmers are trying to acquire now. Because basically they all have that type of certification. You don't get to swim with the big fish, you know, and sell to the bigger stores. So a lot of the farmers they don't have the wherewithal to do that. My only thing about this current bill that's up right now is there is a stipulation that the daily count that can go to a farm is 15 people. And I know that the reason that came up was because the passenger vehicle is 15. But that is so stringent. I mean a lot of the farmers may get,maybe one day they get two vans, and then the whole week they don't get anybody. And the other thing too is a lot of farmers won't charge for admission. They just want you to buy what they have on the farm. So if we, you know, I would rather see us go with a monthly maximum. But if, you know, there's too much opposition on that, I'd say, I mean, base minimum weekly at least. But a daily, that just doesn't make any sense. It's so strict that there's no farmers that are going to be able to get out the gate. So, the fact that the Planning Director at the time created definition of the major/minor, the reason that was created too was because there were a lot of start-up farms that would never have 4