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meeting, I’ll repeat again, that in my mind that is not, you know, given our current circumstances
<br />on how we, I think how we wish most of, you know, my sense in the community is most of us
<br />wish to have a sustainable development, to have developments such as they have on Oahu, in
<br />Honolulu around the airport, in Kahului around the airport. Those kinds of developments really
<br />are not sustainable developments in terms of the community in the long run because they
<br />essentially require motor vehicles to accomplish whatever is needed. Any employees, any
<br />suppliers, any purchasers, all of that would have to, you know, require additional load
<br />infrastructure and so forth in order to support that. And that, as we have seen on Oahu which has
<br />had a general plan for all of its developments, which has had LUPAGs for all of its
<br />developments, basically ends up with what they got. Everything there is planned and approved,
<br />and they don’t have a sustainable environment or community. They have congestion, they have
<br />all of that. And we’re not doing anything different from what Oahu is doing. And it’s hard for
<br />us to, it was hard for me up until maybe about 15 years ago to see what was going on. But all
<br />we’ve really got to do is pay the $100 or $200 now to fly to Honolulu to see what our community
<br />is going to look like when there is half a million people here. You know, that’s basically what
<br />it’s going to be.
<br />I think that as a public body that’s responsible for looking at these bigger issues that we need to
<br />look at that, and not look at just each individual application as we do now and say, well, this one
<br />is okay because we don’t really see any significant impact from this one. All you’ve got to do is
<br />look at all of the rest of the yellow that’s up on that chart, that map, and watch it turn gray, or
<br />just imagine it’s all gray, it’s all Industrial, and what that is going to look like. It’s going to look
<br />like Nimitz Highway next to the airport in Honolulu, which is not sustainable. I think we all
<br />agree, we all have to agree it’s not a sustainable kind of development. So when the report, the
<br />background report talks about the General Plan’s intentions and sets forth all of the nice things
<br />that we want the General Plan to do, that is to designate and preserve lands needed for residential
<br />use, commercial, visitor services, industry, agriculture and open space, reciting the words is not
<br />going to make it come true. We have to act in a way and have a clear picture of where in this
<br />case House Lots is going to be.
<br />We all know that we have a tremendous homeless and housing shortage, affordable housing
<br />shortage, here on this island. Why are we not looking at House Lots as part of the solution
<br />instead of more and more we take what’s already zoned Residential land in Medium Density
<br />Urban designation -? It can be used to increase the density of residential use in that area in town
<br />where we really need it. Why are we not looking at that? Every application that we’ve seen in
<br />the last six months in the House Lots area has been to take residentially zoned land out of
<br />residential use. All that does is compound the problem, pretty obvious. To me all that does is
<br />compound the housing shortage problem. So that is my concern.
<br />Again, as I stated at the beginning I do understand, I do believe, and I do support the
<br />development of commercial industrial uses. We do need that, although right at this time, I think,
<br />you know, there’s a sort of higher vacancy rate and the applicants are looking forward, I think,
<br />legitimately, right, to future needs, which is we all have to do. But in the House Lots area, I
<br />think we need to look at and consider that we are taking residential property out of residential
<br />use and what we really should be looking at is a bigger picture. And the Hilo Community
<br />Development Plan which was given two sentences of reference on page 2 of the recommendation
<br />designates this area as Residential. There have been General Plan Amendments since then but
<br />there has not been an amendment to the Hilo Community Development Plan. My preference, as
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