2008-05-08 TPUNAcdp - Laserfiche WebLink

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The community planning efforts strive to engage the community in the planning for the future, but the actual participation of the broader community always falls short. The planning professionals do their best to inform and guide the process but if you do not start with a good representation of the key stakeholders, the regional plan will lack the realities of what can be economically achieved and not represent the desires of the broader community. I hope this Commission can recognize the shortcomings of the draft Puna CDP and request that these concerns be addressed in a revised draft before forwarding any recommendations to the County Council. Thank you. WATANABE: Thank you. Fellow Commissioners, do we have -? Yes, Ms. Siracusa. SIRACUSA: Thank you, Mr. Witten. I was following along on your written testimony here. I noticed that you’re with a Honolulu firm, so I could not possibly consider you community as far as Puna goes. Naturally you having worked with Shipman your focus seems to be rather Keaaucentric. I’d like to point out that the people along the coast have to travel anywhere between, oh, 11 up to 15 miles just to get to Pahoa and another 11 miles to Keaau. Therefore, having a regional town center in Keaau may be fine for the central subdivisions and the people heading to like Mt. View, Kurtistown, going up in that direction. But for the coastal Puna, the Puna Makai area, Keaau would not be viable at all. And so while Keaau might be viable for some of the communities, it would not be the big “be all/end all,” I do not think, that would serve our entire Puna community. Thank you. WATANABE: Any further questions for this testifier? Seeing none, then you may be seated. Thank you for your testimony. And it is also, I would remind you, a draft. Let’s see, I believe the next person is Mr. David Arakawa. Would you -. ARAKAWA: Hi. Dave Arakawa. WATANABE: Yeah, name and address please. ARAKAWA: Okay, thanks. WATANABE: Thanks. ARAKAWA: Dave Arakawa, Land Use Research Foundation of Hawaii, 700 Bishop Street, Suite 1928. Good evening, Chair Watanabe and Members of the Planning Commission. My name is Dave Arakawa. I’m the Executive Director of the Land Use Research Foundation of Hawaii, a private, non-profit research and trade association whose members include major Hawaii landowners, developers and a utility company. We do have as members, W.H. Shipman and KSPE. I was born and raised in Waipahu, which is not Puna but it was the last plantation town on Oahu. It was the last plantation 13