2008-05-22 TPUNACDP - Laserfiche WebLink

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WATANABE: So that means if I have RS-15 now, and you downzone to – I don’t know what a good example would be – that’s not a taking even though I can build less than half the homes there? YUEN: That’s, say, giving you an example of cutting it in half, no, that’s not a taking. WATANABE: I don’t know. I think you’re going to test that in court. YUEN: I did write a – maybe I didn’t send it to the Planning Commission – I did write a memo on this for the County Council in connection with the Kohala LLC project, and if I didn’t send it to the Planning Commission, I’m sorry. But generally, yes, you can change the zoning on a piece of property and reduce the ultimate level of development that can be made on it without constituting a taking. You have to leave the landowner some economic use of the property, and you can’t interfere with what are called vested rights. But in a case of property that’s not subdivided, generally you would not be talking about the rights having vested in the property. There are -, you know, you can get to really specific factual circumstances where somebody might have a vested right, but generally these properties we are talking about wouldn’t be vested. In terms of Puna, when we are talking about changing the zoning would be on properties that are in the agricultural district that are currently zoned, you know, something, there are -, in addition to all the subdivided lots in Puna there are very large areas that are zoned, which could be subdivided into much smaller lots, that are currently in large lots. For example, there are about 6,000 acres that are zoned Ag-1 that have never been subdivided to the 1-acre lots; a lot of these are in parcels of several hundred acres.So the Development Plan has a downzoning proposal for those that is pretty drastic. I have proposed an amendment that is still a downzoning but less drastic. In any case the Council -, the Plan itself does not accomplish the downzoning; the downzoning would have to be done on a property by property basis with notice to the property owner, and give them an opportunity to contest it at the time it went forward. WATANABE: Okay. My real concern here is not so much whether it’s appropriate to downzone or not, okay? If the community wants to downzone, maybe that’s appropriate. That’s not my major concern. My general feeling – and I’m not an attorney, and haven’t studied case law on this – is that it constitutes taking, which means somebody has to pay for this. And my general concern is that while I’m on record saying that this is one island, one county, we should remain one county, you know, and I have no objection to subsidizing Puna or Kau or whatever for essentials. I don’t consider downzoning, especially if it’s a taking, as an essential, nor do I consider for that matter – I’m getting ahead of all of this – providing free wireless internet access as an essential. And you know, the thing that I have a problem with is how do you pay for all of this, especially when you have a community that is largely retired, predominantly agricultural. Now, we all know we’re going to support agriculture by providing the low real property tax rates; I’m not opposed to that. And we also know that we’re trying to support the elderly, the retired or who are on limited income, I’m not opposed to that, with the property tax deductions. But all I see here is a lot of things that to me increase expenses and decrease revenue with no logic on how we’re going to finance all of this. You know, my concern here is the unintended effect of adding all these expenses is the burden will be carried by the working force that is non- agricultural, and older will still get a free ride and agriculture will still get a free ride. And once again, I’m not opposed to agriculture or the elderly getting subsidies. EXHIBIT C 5