2007-07-20 TSEASCAPE - Laserfiche WebLink

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CHING: Commissioner, with all due respect, I don’t believe I’m in a position to provide legal advice to you as a Commission and as to your actions. I offer my observations and the facts that I believe are appropriate for this particular matter, but I leave the deliberation and action to you. WOODWARD: Well, thank you, maybe I can redirect that to Mr. Torigoe. ALAMEDA: Mr. Torigoe, get an answer? TORIGOE: As I said, I don’t think we want to, you know, get into any real substantive deliberation on this today, but I think this is a good heads-up that we can all do some legal research, and come and give you some advice when next you meet. And perhaps Mr. Dickler also would like to do that, and prepare to discuss this. ALAMEDA: Mr. Ching? CHING: If I could just add, I didn’t want to leave on a bad note that the State opposes the development of affordable housing projects such as described here. It’s not a matter of as to the merits of the project or the petition for reclassification. I believe I’m simply obliged to review petitions and applications for conformance to provisions of the State Law. I do understand, and there have been indications, that this project might be reconfigured or recast in such a manner, such as to address some of the concerns that I brought here today. But that’s not my place to say what that is, or when it will be done, or again the merits of it. I just understand that there’s possibility that it might be recast. ALAMEDA: Okay. Very good. Any further questions for Mr. Ching. Seeing none, thank you for coming today. Appreciate your testimony. See you again. Mr. Gimpel, state your name and address for the record. GIMPEL: Sure. My name is Joel Gimpel. I reside at 73-4686 Hina Lani Street in Kailua-Kona. And I’m here as the Chair of the Public Affairs Committee of the Kona Traffic th Safety Committee. We submitted written comments to Mr. Yuen on April 30, I believe, and those comments are I believe Exhibit No. 15 in your materials. Accordingly, I’ll just review the highlights of what we said, and first I should note that although we appreciate the desirability of providing affordable rental units in the Kona district, and are pleased with the mixed use element and recreational area set aside, we do have several concerns regarding traffic issues that merit your consideration and we believe should be addressed. The first of those is the single access problem. Here we have a single access route for 360 residential units, and we believe it as unconscionable because it creates an unnecessary – I’m sorry, 306 residential units – it creates an unnecessary danger to residents and visitors in the event that evacuation or emergency vehicle access is required. It’s certainly violates the intent, if not the letter, of Section 23-48 (a) of the County Code. So we urge that you require a second access route as a condition of rezoning and occupancy. The second concern we have is parking. And although the number of parking spaces that was specified in the application, which was more than 460, might satisfy the current Code requirements, those requirements are woefully inadequate. In fact that’s a situation that the EXHIBIT B 6