2009-07-01 THI JOHNS - Laserfiche WebLink

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foreclosure. This is on the sawmill property. So in a lot of ways the options that he has outside of the place that he has been in all this time are very limited. And I just want to suggest to the Commission, because you’re going to see this issue come up in the Kau Community Development Plan and in the Hamakua Development Plan, that a lot of what drives the economy in rural Hawaii are small people doing small things in their own backyard in a way that doesn’t affect their neighbors. And if there’s a strict application of the State Land Use Law we’re going to pull those feathers off of that wing of rural economy. So I think what the Hamakua Community Development Plan needs to look at is how do you actually enable and cushion agricultural or non-agricultural uses that actually do a sustained effort to fund the economies of rural Hawaii. So I just want to put it in that broader context for a minute because I think it is an issue that’s going to come to you folks; and it isn’t just a matter of applying simple hard black and white rules on land. So finding alternative locations is hard in this place; and we know that that has got to change, the community has actually got to revisit that issue a little bit. The application refers to this as a permanent use of agricultural land. This is not a quarry. This is not a job that’s going to dig up soil and take it away. They’re not going to pave it over and put rebar in it. At any point if this business is stopped, within a year it will be a pasture again. It will be fully grassed and you could have your half a cow. But that’s what the issue is in terms of use. So we never perceived this to be a permanent entitlement. We perceived it to be a period of years. And anything over a period of 5 years, say you let the community development plan process work, you kind of look at what, how this region wants to look at these kinds of decentralized economic uses. If we could get a use for a period of years, that will be acceptable. The recommendation calls it an irreversible use of ag land; and we just don’t think that’s what we expect to be doing here, and we don’t think that that’s what it really is. The recommendation talks a little bit about visual impact; and I’m sure if you guys have driven along this coast you’ve probably seen these units. We’re fortunate to have a good barrier on the makai side. But I’ll tell you right after this thing came one of the first things John did is get another 70, 75 trees planted all around the outside, fast growing podocarpus trees, so that visual impacts can be mitigated; and they are being mitigated. They will be out of sight in a short period, that visual impact certainly as it relates to the neighbors. If that was the driving feature, that’s where the complaint would have come from, but it did not. And all of the neighbors have been supportive; and we’ve got written testimony to that effect. So I think that’s, you know, what we’re asking the Commission to do is to look at this as a, one, a right for a period of years, two, for a reasonable use of a small amount of land that produces a significant amount of economy with a very little cost, and to allow Mr. Cummings and his family to continue to do and to try and mitigate any visual impacts or any kind of neighbor’s thing. He’s very willing to try and address those issues. But we clearly ask that this Commission consider this not to be a kind of an end to the business that he has built. The last thing I want to add is that from an agricultural perspective, from a point of view of using this business’s role in agriculture, today probably more than a hundred of his units are on farms, 5 EXHIBIT A