2009-07-01 THI JOHNS - Laserfiche WebLink

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WOODWARD: Okay. Mr. Cummings. CUMMINGS: You’ve got to forgive me. I’m very nervous. My name is John Cummings. I live at 44-2307 Mamalahoa Highway. I take medication for my kidney transplant so it makes me very emotional, the medication. So I’m sorry. But I run a small family business. I rent portable toilets, me, my wife, my sons, and I have seven employees. We’ve been doing this for about 17 years now. And I try to be an honest businessman. I do a lot of charity things and most of, about 100 of my toilets is for agricultural use. I rent to people who grow plants and stuff like that. But, you know, I try to help people who call and ask for our help cause, you know, cause of the work I do. Sorry. But before I give this over to Jeff I’d like to say that I’m amazed on what you guys do. You guys don’t get paid but you guys come here and listen to people like me and try to help us. So I’ll give it over to Jeff. Thank you. WOODWARD: All right, thank you. Any questions for Mr. Cummings? All right, Jeff. MELROSE: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, John, I know that’s not easy. You know, I recognize the, and read through the -. WOODWARD: If you could give us your name and address. MELROSE: Oh, I’m sorry, Jeff Melrose, 1405 Waianuenue Avenue, Hilo 96720. We’ve read the Planning Department’s background report and recommendation and understand the rationale they presented for a denial of this application. I think our task here today is to kind of, is to take a couple of those specifics and talk about some of the specifics of the recommendation, put a little bit of a personal face on the business, because this isn’t just a simple application of State Land Use law. It is an existing business that supports multiple families in a rural community. So this issue was not really provoked by neighbor complaints. In fact, I think -. Did you guys just get the letters -? I think there are three letters from immediate neighbors, and I believe there’s actually a neighbor here who’s willing to, who drove down for the purpose of testifying in favor. Mr. Cummings is a, you know, has built his business one small piece at a time, one step, backyard, slow, from the bottom up. He’s a good competitor. He reaches out to the community, and I think helps in a lot of different ways. But I think it’s partly, it was a competitive issue that drove the complaint that brought us here today. And I think Mr. Cummings knew couple years ago that this was something that he needed to get. He’s not making any excuses for not getting it. He made a couple of efforts to try and do so. But he had the citation, so here we are; and we’re here just 90 days after the time the citation was here. So that’s thanks to the Planning Department’s quick movement, but I think it shows you his intent. Generally speaking the State Land Use law is a pretty blunt instrument for managing land use issues in rural communities, as different as they are state-wide. It’s a fairly clear statement about the importance of one element or quality of land for which we have about 2,000,000 acres of. So, and it can also be a very sharp instrument, and it can have the impact of impacting a small business like this in a very harsh way. So I think what I want to do today is kind of blur that line and talk with you folks a little bit about what are the issues that are really associated with this 3 EXHIBIT A