2007-05-04 THICDC ORI - Laserfiche WebLink

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GRAHAM:Thank you, Mr. Duryea. All right, you all can go back. We appreciate your testimony. I have three more signed up, T. J. Steele, Darren Johnson, and Chengwu Chen. Thank you all. Could you raise your right hand, please. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter today before the Hawaii County Planning Commission? TESTIFIERS:Yes. GRAHAM:Thank you. Ill start with Mr. Steele and, again, I would ask you to please be concise if you could. Thank you. STEELE:T. J. Steele, PO Box 979, Pepeekeo. I think that Mr. Domingo hit it on the head when he said we lost our focus. Weve had so much discussion about affordable housing. I havent heard anybody say we dont want affordable housing. Everybody is all thumbs up. Its justnottherightspot.Wevealreadyseenweregoingfrom30tomaybe20,maybe15.So now the deal is not looking so good. And we do have to plan for what we want to do in the future. I mean thats the whole idea, I thought, by the Planning Commission. And do we want to start mixing and matching? Do we want to start jamming stuff in and not have infrastructure like they do over in Kona? So I think that that was an appropriate comment about losing the focus, because were not planning here. Were trying to cut deals to get affordable housing; and its not the right spot. If were not going to get the affordable housing density we had heard we were originally going to get out of it, its not worth it to lose our Ag land and to cut these things up, when it was already denied to begin with. If its a rezoning issue, lets do the rezoning. Lets take the affordable housing out of it and see how it flies. I guess its not going to work. Weve already turned it down. Anyway, I think we need to keep focused on whether this is the right spot for this affordable housing. GRAHAM:All right. Darren Johnson, please. Your name and then address. JOHNSON:Darren Johnson, 28-498 Pepeekeo, Sugar Mill Road. This is actually my first meeting here but Ive been keeping up on the whole project. My first question is that how could not the Board Members know that this was a packaged deal when Rene actually brought it up, which is a great question, and when Mr. Inouye said to Andrew that, you know, its either or, no, well pull out. And my question is that when the petitions were sent out to sign, did anybody recognize and know that this was packaged deal? Instead of 28 acres, now its what, 140 acres that they have to be approved for. And now theyre cutting up their lots from 20 now to 5; and thats going to bring more traffic up that road. And my main concern is that are you prepared for the consequences that are going to be behind the actions of this decision? And the gentleman before us said, you know, theres no turning back. I mean once you sign this agreement theres no turning back. And when we first bought land out there, we were under the impression, and it was actually told to us, that this is going to be Ag land, the greatest soil on the planet, you guys can grow anything here. And that was our basis for buying out there, not because we have a lot of money, were billionaires, and this and that, but because we wanted to farm. And then for somebody to come up and say all of a sudden everything has changed, were going to take some of the best land that we have on this island and were going to build on it -. 21EXHIBIT A