2008-06-06 TPUNAcdp - Laserfiche WebLink

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WATANABE: Okay, thank you. So do we have any further questions of the presenters? No? I think the three hours wore us out. SIRACUSA: Just one question. WATANABE: Yes. SIRACUSA: Sorry. We’ve gotten an assortment of comments, some of which asked us to go back to the drawing board and use the Kona Plan as a model, some of which asked us to only pass this as a resolution instead of an ordinance, and some of which asked us to rewrite the whole thing; and I would like to hear your comments on those. BROWN: I’ll start. I’ve heard the same thing, obviously, and from my perspective the Puna conditions and the Kona conditions are very different. We have similar problems but the existing situation is the elephant in the room for Puna. As we’ve all heard many times is we have over 50,000 plus building sites in the district already with no planned infrastructure, no water, very limited public roadway system - almost all of the roads are private. As has been said a number of times before, most of the lots in Puna were really never intended to be built and lived on. They were intended to just be sold and resold over and over and over again. But as we’re finding out now, more and more people are finding that for one reason or another that’s a good place to live, or what they can afford, you know, to go build on and to live there; and some of us really like it. Kona is in a situation where they can do a more detailed planning effort based on their transient-oriented districts or developments. These pods are on a mid-level corridor that they’ve identified; and they can do that in coordination with future subdivisions in that district, and they have the room to do that. In Puna, Hawaiian Paradise Park covers from Highway 130 all the way to the sea. So, and if you go mauka of there you’d have the other subdivisions. And, so how do you get any alternate roadway to Highway 130 to service the people of, especially in Puna Makai, you know, the lower Puna area? So we have a very different situation there. And within the context of the CDP it didn’t seem quite practical to try to go, do the level of detailed planning necessary for each one of the village or town centers that is being criticized. And we didn’t do that, as it is that is being done in Kona. I agree with some of the critics of that failure in the plan to do that, that that needs to be done at those local community levels; and that is what the plan needs to probably say more clearly. But that is the intention in the plan, is that there will be these local planning efforts to do a master plan for Pahoa town, for Kea‘au town, and for Hawaiian Paradise Park. The other subdivision village centers or neighborhood centers may not need extensive community planning efforts like the big ones. They may just need to agree and make it possible to happen on a certain piece of land and adopt a zoning designation that’s appropriate for their particular village center or neighborhood center. SIRACUSA: Mr. Chairman? EXHIBIT B 12