2007-07-20 TAHuiHou - Laserfiche WebLink

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RHO:And I was distracted because we got so much new information or so much additional paper to read as you came up today so I didn’t get to read it before; and I was reading it while some of your testimony was being made, so I apologize for that. But I guess I didn’t personally hear you folks address this parking issue that’s really, to me, anyway, the focus of these four or five pages. It does mention a smoke or the emissions, but that’s only in basically one paragraph on Page 4 maybe. But other than that, on almost every single page it talks about parking. So can you address parking? CARROLL:Well, I would do it this way. The Kailua Design Commission, Kailua Village Design Commission had a lengthy hearing on the subject matter and they recommended to you, and I think you should have that document, it basically states that they should approve, that you folks should approve what we’re asking for as we have designed it, including the parking. And the bulk of the argument that was coming from the Board, not even from us because we were ready to go, try to find the parking if it was necessary, but they, themselves, found that the additional need for parking was not necessary. And, also, and I thank you very much, Mr. Yuen, the Director actually conducted a separate investigation and found that, indeed, their comments regarding parking were true. And they went around and I presume one of the inspectors had asked the different people to describe what kind of activity they had seen there; and their so- called full service mortuary operation primarily revolves around giving full service. But what we all think of as services, church services and that, do not occur there. In fact, I’ve been in the place a few times and there’s not enough room, No. 1, to do them and, No. 2, I didn’t see enough chairs or pews or anything, even remotely supportive of that kind of an activity. I could let Ms. Brumbaugh here comment more on that if you like. WATANABE:Well, before you do comment, let me swear you in and I’d also like to have probably the Director make some comments to that. I know this all revolves around a definition of whether it’s a funeral home or you’re going to have services, so maybe you can have the Director clear up that situation. YUEN:Yes, the Zoning Code has a section on parking; and it says mortuaries are one per 75 square feet, whereas offices and other kinds of commercial uses are one to 300. The logic behind that is that a funeral home that has services on site does need, tend to need a lot of parking. When this business originally started, there were discussions with Planning Department staff about what was actually going to go on in the business; and it was described as an office, a place of making arrangements and that there wouldn’t be services per se, like the typical wake service or viewing of the body that’s open to the public. And so because of that, and there is a catch-all provision in the Zoning Code that the Director can adjust parking in cases of doubt about the actual use. So we did send out a letter saying that based on what was described to us the business could go ahead on that site with the amount of parking that it had which is enough for a regular office or commercial enterprise. Later, we, I believe in response to, I’m not sure if it was a response to a complaint, but we had an investigation; and our investigator went to the site at the time when there were EXHIBIT D 12