2008-05-08 TPUNAcdp - Laserfiche WebLink

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NAKAMURA: Yeah. ARAKAWA: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. WATANABE: Okay, thank you. Fellow Commissioners, do we have any -? Yes, Ms. Siracusa. SIRACUSA: I noticed in your, let’s see which bullet it is, it’s the third bullet, you say that it’s not consistent with the Volcano 2020 master plan. And yet we had a support letter from the Volcano Community Association, so I’m having a little problem with that. ARAKAWA: It depends on the person who wrote the letter, right? We can go through, I can send you something -. SIRACUSA: Well, they’re here so they’ll speak for themselves when the time comes. ARAKAWA: Okay. SIRACUSA: And I raise that question so that when they come up to speak that they will make sure to address it. You seem to be suggesting that you think that we should expand the process, not rush to complete, although eighteen months they’ve been at it. Do you think that’s a rush? The time extension, the County Council passed, as I’m sure you know, a moratorium on upzoning for the community’s districts that are in the process of doing community development plans, so that the plans would have a chance to take effect before and it would make it a lot easier for the Commission to know what the guidelines are going to be. However, you seem to be interested in extending the period by allowing the Steering Committee to continue convening and bringing more people, more stakeholders on board and everything. However, the way those County decisions were worded was that there is either a drop-dead date or the, and Director Yuen can correct me if I’m wrong, but there was either a drop-dead date or the plan becomes law. And it seems to me like it would be in the interest of some people to have us pass the drop-dead date so that the upzoning moratorium dies and then a whole lot of parcels would come up for upzoning and we could increase the density dramatically of the Puna district without necessarily adding concurrency in terms of infrastructure. Would you like to respond to that? ARAKAWA: You know, I’m not familiar with the specifics of that but increased density we’re finding across the nation is a good thing because it prevents urban sprawl. Increased density in certain areas next to shopping centers, next to transit stations allow people to walk to school, walk to work, walk to their place of business. So increased density is not a bad thing, you mentioned. So perhaps those plans that are on the books are good for sustainability. Perhaps those plans are good for, I’m not familiar with all those things. But hearing you talking, it seems like you think that all of these plans that 16