2007-04-05 TMIRANDA - Laserfiche WebLink

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SIRACUSA: Yes. Putting up the building as I recall was not part of the special permit. And so I’m wondering why you’re even bringing this information before us. It seems to be irrelevant. My big question which I asked last time when you weren’t here was between March and August you had 8 months or so to start doing some of the compliance on the permit, which you had agreed to do when it was granted to you. And you decided for some reason to put your time and your energy and your considerable finances into this building and put that as your priority rather than starting the steps that were requested of you in your permit. So I’m wondering, you must have been thinking something about why you made that decision; and I would like to try to understand why you made the decision to go forward with the building rather than start off with the steps to comply with your permit. It seems like a cart before the horse kind of thing and I would like to understand what your reasoning was. MIRANDA: Okay, very, very good question. I remember one of the stipulations in getting the permit was that I was to put down a cement slab, so when I would do any oil changes or work on my trucks we wouldn’t have anything contaminating the soil. Okay, in that area that I’m at it rains a lot, as all of you folks know. So with that I wanted to put up a building so we could be out of the rain, and also a slab. And this is what I put my efforts in toward doing. And that took a while before I could get the permits and really just to get the slab and building. Now the building wasn’t part of what was to be done, but I knowing what I know it’s like it makes a lot more sense to have a building over the slab. And this is what took a lot of my time. Because in 2005 the construction boom was so strong I couldn’t get an engineer to draw the site plan or the foundation plan. I’ve had the building sitting on my property for over two years but I couldn’t erect it. And I went through three different engineers to draw the plan, and this is no lie. Because, you know, Mike Krochina from Kona, he’s my good friend and I worked with him, and he had told me he would do it, and I waited like three months; and he was so busy doing plans for homes and engineering stuff for Kona and Kukio that he said he just couldn’t do it. And pretty much he had more important things or higher paying things to do. Then I got another guy, William something from down here in Pahoa; and he told me he would do it but it would take him a couple of months before he would get to it but give him my plans. And I said okay, and I never met the guy, I was just referred to him. So I dropped my plans off at HPM in Hilo and he was going to pick it up at the Building Department. I called him up a week after and he said, yeah, he didn’t have a chance to get it and he will get, and it will be two months before he can start working on it. Two months went buy and I called him again. And to make a long story short, the plans sat at HPM for seven months. And he told me he was working on it and finally it was somebody else’s plans and not even mine; and I ended up going to HPM picking it up. And then I had this other engineer. In the meantime, 10 months had gone by. Then I got this guy TJ and he drew it up, all the foundation plans. It took him I think three or four months. Then I submitted it to the County. But, in the meantime, a whole year had gone by. SIRACUSA: Follow-up, please? GRAHAM: Commissioner Siracusa? SIRACUSA: I understand these kinds of delays. Any of us who have tried to build anything, you know, have experienced this sort of thing. What I’m wondering now though that you’ve explained that is why you didn’t ask the Department for an extension due to EXHIBIT A 4