2008-05-22 TPUNACDP - Laserfiche WebLink

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WATANABE: Frankie Stapleton. Okay. Well, I already swore Mr. Lim in earlier. So would the three of you raise your right hand, please. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Planning Commission? TESTIFIERS: I do. WATANABE: Okay. Mr. Lim, you don’t need to provide your address, but – since you already did – but the rest of you would have to, prior to beginning your testimony. Mr. Lim, do you want to start? I know you guys have waited a real long time, okay. And we provided Puna people with 5 minutes. Can we contain this to 5 minutes, yeah, everyone? LIM: Sure, I’m going to be real short. WATANABE: Thank you. LIM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission. Steven Lim representing W. H. Shipman, Limited. We submitted our May 22, 2008, letter to you today. It’s very short, and essentially I think what we are trying to hit is the some of the main points that we had heard at the last hearing out in Puna. I think what we are seeing as we go through the process seems the Puna Community Development Plan was developed through a lot of hard work by many people. And you can tell that there are a lot of ideas in there that are good ideas, some of the ideas we disagree with; but nevertheless, those made into the plan. But I think one of the things that we heard – and I think we are hearing from the Commission today – is that there’s a lot of questions with the plan. And I think these questions will be exacerbated when you start to look at other Plans because this is just a first Plan that you have before you. So this is the Puna Community Development Plan, and although I’m not, you know, a fan of a lot of paper, that’s equivalent to the Keaau town conceptual master plan just in terms of paper that Shipman had developed over the past couple of years with the community out in Keaau. And then you’re going to be faced with looking at the -, even just Volume 1 of the Kona CDP; and what you’re going to find, I think, when you look at them is that there is a significant difference in structure, in depth and in how they handle what goes forward once the CDPs get adopted. And I don’t know if that was the intent; I don’t think it was. I think that the people on the Big Island across the island should be able to look at these various CDPs, and kind of, you know, follow through and have a relatively similar conceptual framework for looking at these Plans, so you can interpret them. But I think you’re going to find, if you have looked at the Kona one and the Puna one, you’re going to see it’s totally different. So our suggestion I think is, while we do think there are issues, that the Commission and the County Council have to look at them before final adoption because these are stated under the General Plan to be adopted as ordinances, as laws, that will control the rights and duties of parties. I mean, I have heard statements that some of these statements in the Plan are policy guidelines and things like that; but I think you yourself know that if a development is proposed in an area that is not colored the right color, you’re probably not going to get the Planning Director’s support, you’re probably not going to get the Commission’s support. So we have, in the Puna CDP we have – with respect to Shipman anyways – primary concern with the Keaau map that’s on Page 5-8. So I wanted to just go real quickly, what we’ve done is our Exhibit A is a proposed amendment to the description of the Keaau town area to more EXHIBIT C 11