2006-08-04 TMCNICOLL - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

already but I’ll swear both of you again. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Hawai`i County Planning Commission? TESTIFIERS:Yes. ALAMEDA:Thank you. On my far left, could you please state your name and address for the record? MCNICOLL:Milton McNicoll, 1400 Ainaola Drive. ALAMEDA:Okay. Hello, Milton. NISHIMURA:Brian Nishimura, 1174 Awiki Place, Hilo. ALAMEDA:Okay. Thanks, Brian. Brian, you’ve heard the discussion. I know you got the report from the Department and, also, I know you’ve turned in a packet of support letters and all. Do you have anything else to add or to comment on? NISHIMURA:Yes, I wanted to briefly summarize the points that I was making in the letter addressed to you and the rest of the Planning Commission. After receiving the negative recommendation from the Planning Department, I went back and discussed the matter with the Applicant, and we decided that we would try to request that a five-year time period be granted to allow the Applicant to try to relocate his business, that there is difficulty, you know, in terms of a financial situation that he has with his ongoing obligations. And in his attempts to look at for or to look for property in the Industrial- zoned District, he has found them very few and far between and quite expensive, well beyond the means that he has right now to try to acquire these properties, or to even to lease them for this purpose. The Planning Department’s Recommendation on dealing with, states that this is an unreasonable request because of adverse negative impacts that the use would have on surrounding properties; and I want to focus on those for a moment. They list “dust, noise, visual and traffic impacts.” We believe that the primary problem that triggered the filing of the complaint, and we don’t know who filed the complaint with the Planning Department, was primarily because of an unsightly visual impact that the use had in the surrounding area. There were a lot of equipment and a lot of material that was stored on the front of the property that Mr. McNicoll has since cleared away; and that is the only portion of the property that is highly visible. The portion, the front part of the property that is adjacent, immediately adjacent to Ainaola Drive, because of the sloping terrain of the property, the rear of the property is not visible from that street. The three adjacent property owners does have a view of the vehicles that he is storing; and in light of that, Mr. McNicoll is, would like an opportunity address some mitigating measures that could be taken to provide a planting screen to block the visual impact, as well as providing additional setbacks from the property lines from those adjacent property owners. But, in addition to that, we’d also like to point out that two of those adjacent property owners have signed letters of support for Mr. McNicoll and indicated that they don’t have any problem with this application. EXHIBIT D 4