2007-07-20 TKOHALA - Laserfiche WebLink

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TORIGOE: Well, we can, you know, I guess we can see if the parties -. Mr. Lim, would you request that the Planning Director basically take a seat as a party for these proceedings at the counsel table or are you okay with him seating where he is now? LIM:I’m okay with him seating where he is now. I understand in SMA proceedings that he would be a party. ALAMEDA: Okay. All right. Seeing no further questions for our Corp. Counsel, Mr. Lim, go ahead. LIM:Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Commission. I think what I’d like to stress the most is the issue of fairness on this proceeding. For those of you -. Can you turn it (microphone) up a little bit louder maybe? Thank you. Okay. (Testing microphones). I’ll just try to speak louder, I’ll try. Okay, so going back to the fairness issue, as I think those of you on the Commission, probably half of you have been on for some years now, half of you have just recently been appointed. But for those who have been on for some years now, I think you probably understand that this is the very first and the only Planning Director initiated down zoning of a private property without any consent from the fee owner. I want you to understand that very clearly because I’ve been doing this, at least with Mr. Yuen, for about 8 years now or nearly 8 years. I am only aware of two instances in which the Planning Director initiated a down zoning; and those were both voluntarily agreed to by the applicant. One of them was in approximately 2006, that was an application by the Matsuda family for approximately 1.95 acres in Waiakea in Hilo. He took his previously zoned RS-10 property, Single-Family Residential, back down to Agricultural 3 acres because he was not going to pursue subdivision or development of his property. It doesn’t say in the Planning Department’s records but I’m assuming he ran into some difficulty with respect to developing his farm dwelling on the lot and had to pay the fair share fees and all the other things that come along with the rezoning. So that was revoked and reversed, the zoning was reversed back down to Ag-3. More recently, some of you probably worked on the 2007 request by the Planning Director to down zone the puu up above Waimea town. That was property that was owned by the State Department of Land and Natural Resources; and also in that case the State Director at the time, Peter Young, consented in writing to the down designation. That was from Ag-1a to Agricultural 400 acres for the area of the puu. So other than those two, I am not aware, and I’ve been doing this in the County of Hawaii for about 20 years now, I am unaware of any other Planning Director initiated down zoning of a private property without consent by the property owner. So that’s why I’m saying we’re raising the fairness issue. Going to the reasons for the Director’s recommendation to down zone the property, essentially what he’s saying is that we haven’t gotten the final subdivision approval in the 10 years since the rezoning was adopted and the SMA was approved in approximately 1997; and that is correct. The developer and owner has changed over the years. I’ll give you a short rundown on that. But that is part of the reason why there was no action. The other big reason why there was no action is that the property has significant archaeological sites and burial sites on it. And it was only until May of 2006 that we got the final approval of the archaeological inventory work from the State Historic Preservation Division. So I’m going to pass out exhibits that detail some of the burial treatment work and the latest May 19, 2006 SHPD approval letter. What I’m passing out EXHIBIT A 6