2010-06-04 T-MALOOF - Laserfiche WebLink

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Advisory Committee for the planning of the KeaÒau Bypass, the planning for the widening of Highway 130 in the early nineties for the, representing them on the Long Range Surface Transportation Plan for the State in the mid nineties. And I am on the current community advisory committee for the present plan for widening Highway 130. I know an awful lot about traffic in Puna. I have read the objections of the Planning Department; and a little bit of information is a dangerous thing. I will grant you that Highway 130 is a mess. And the Traffic Committee, in fact, told the State that it was going to be a mess when they did it, weÓre on record. And, in fact, we filed on the Long Range Surface Transportation Plan a civil rights complaint over that, a successful civil rights complaint over that. More relevant to this, in the work on the current widening process, one of the understandings that we came to very early on in that process was that no amount of work on Highway 130 is going to fix it. That is not possible at this time in any future that anybody in this room can foresee, including her. ThereÓs 40,000 plus vacant lots in Puna. In March of this year Puna led the State in home sales. ThatÓs over Oahu that has 11 times the population. It was agreed in our planning process on the State Highway issue and on the Puna CDP, which I chaired, I think most of you know that, that no amount of road building was going to fix the process. The only thing we could do was to designate commercial areas and bring the jobs and the services into the communities. I hear what Taka says, but that boat has sailed. T methodology that applies anymore. In a normal system you would approve the lots based on the infrastructure. Well, thatÓs not going to happen. The lots are already out there, theyÓre in private hands. So we put those commercial centers and those other services into the subdivisions with the advice and consent of the subdivisions, in this case Orchidland. ItÓs there because thatÓs what they asked for. And what they asked for was reasonable in terms of the size, the number of lots in the subdivision; and itÓs not intended to serve all of Puna, just as has been pointed out. The intention of that is to serve the people in Orchidland. Now the fact of the matter is that the majority of the accidents that occur on Highway 130 are people turning left out of Orchidland headed toward Hilo. Now guess why theyÓre headed toward Hilo ? Go ahead, take a wild guess. Cause they canÓt get a job in Puna, they canÓt get the services they need in Puna. We need that. We needed it a decade ago. ItÓs real clear. As to the Special Use Permits, the history on this special use permit -. Within a mile of this and in recent times some of you may recall you approved a special use permit for the Water Works. They have no access to Highway 130. TheyÓre actually within Hawaiian Paradise Park. You approved a special use permit for Drain Pipe Plumbing and for tw the same situation, you canÓt let them out on the highway. We all understand that. HeÓs not asking for that. So this is not, this is not asking for anything that hasnÓt already been done and been done recently. I canÓt let this go without, you know, the issue of whether or not the General Plan supersedes the CDPs. The CDP, our CDP was adopted by ordinance. It is a law. It is under County law. Now the argument as to whether or not that law supersedes the General Plan law is going to be 17 EXHIBIT A