2009-01-15 THAWAIIAN RAINFOREST - Laserfiche WebLink

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HOUSEL: Do you feel that there is an impasse that you can’t get beyond? MOORE: We were very close, and I think there could be a resolution. HOUSEL: So you would be willing to negotiate, continue negotiating? MOORE: Oh, yes. WATANABE: Thank you. Actually I see Mr. Walter just got back from his meeting. So maybe you can be seated, Mr. Fuke, because he did, Mr. Walter did sign up to testify. And so if you still care to provide testimony, this would be your opportunity. Let me swear you in. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Planning Commission? WALTER: I do. WATANABE: Yes; and then, of course, name and address. WALTER: My name is Bill Walter. I live in Keaau, Hawaii. Please excuse me. I, we believe that negotiations were near enough to resolution; and we found out at 8:30 this morning that the other party didn’t wish to complete negotiations at this time. Otherwise I could have scheduled and been here; but I had another meeting that had been previously scheduled, so I apologize for that. And I come in, and I probably will be a little bit redundant. But let me say that our concerns are, there are two concerns essentially.The first has to do with a safety concern. I’m sure Mike has covered that and possibly Sid. The roads are not, in our opinion, adequate for an ML zoning. An ML zoning requires, the Code calls for 60-foot wide right-of-ways of which 40 feet are paved. The road today is 20 feet paved, has a 40-foot right- of-way. It would be very difficult to pave that entire 40 feet. We haven’t measured it but you come right up, I think you will go beyond fences on either side if you tried to do that. But it would be difficult to provide that. So if you give a zoning that’s wide open, and following that the park, which his request was ML-1, gets filled out, you then have a lot of potential industrial uses that will be using that road. And we just have, we hold the liability on that; and we feel more than liability, we feel a responsibility because we own that road. So we feel that the road is not adequate. County Code seems to validate that. Our secondary concern is that we have about 5,000 acres of agricultural uses below that area. Agricultural theft is a very major problem. We have spent tremendous monies in 2008 adding gates, keeping them locked, and so on, to try to keep ag theft under control. It is not under control. The more people we draw into this area the greater the risk, the greater the problem that we anticipate for agricultural theft. And that’s our concern. So we worked through this agreement; and it’s all tied together. So, you know, whatever uses, part of it, if I can go into it legally, you know the uses and the improvements were tied together. If you give the zoning, then that breaks that tie, at which point my own opinion would be that, that point, County requirements for appropriate access will come into play. WATANABE: Mr. Woodward. EXHIBIT A 14