2009-11-20 TCOUNCILZONINGCODE - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

WATANABE:Any questions, fellow Commissioners? Okay, I do have two people signed up from the public to testify. So may I call up Margaret Wille and Mike Price, please? Okay, both of you have already been sworn in, so that’s not necessary anymore. Why don’t we start with you, Margaret, and invite your testimony. WILLE: Okay. Margaret Wille, again, from Waimea. And I just want to urge you to support this proposed legislation. It isn’t categorical so that it is a detriment to small subdivisions, I mean, this is, depends on what the impact the subdivisions would have on the surrounding area. And I just want to say we’ve as a community recently met with the Police and we’ve had various meetings. I recently worked on a community program for emergency preparedness, and met with the firefighters and others, and just they are sort of needing support. So I -. And that’s one. And the other area is really in terms of parks and trying to help get the whole community including large developments or even commercial developments that go on, whether it’s a Costco or a Target, and getting people to realize how important parks are. We are, since the district park in Waimea has really been on the book since 1992 when Richard Smart wrote it into the 2020 Plan and emphasized its importance as caring for our youth and enabling people to have ways of recreating that are positive. And a lot of these things, what I find they do in terms of practical purposes is they pull the development part of the community together and say you have to work with us, too, that it’s not just volunteers like Mike and I and others, like we have to all get behind these efforts and ensure that the, whether it’s the park or that there is adequate fire provisions. I mean I’m just looking around -. This program I worked on was emergency preparedness and I got to know a lot of the issues about wild fires and -. WATANABE: Okay, Margaret -. WILLE: How inadequate we are. So I just encourage you that these are important and it’s not a stop on all subdivisions, and it’s really a way to get people to work together on things that are important for the community. WATANABE: Okay, thank you. Do we have any questions for Margaret? Seeing none, Mike? PRICE: Yeah, I’ll be brief. I think you ought to support this County’s recommendation, the Council’s, because we have a deficit in this county of parks and fire facilities. And to decide to waive them because of economic conditions just makes the situation worse. I think there’re other solutions. We have the same problem with traffic safety as far as new roads. There’s some innovative thinking of having capital facility districts, having the County step forward and provide some bonding to get the program in place. There’re a lot of avenues. But to come out with a blanket waiver sets us back ten years. And we need the parks; we have a large use population on the island, and we need to get people, you know, that are not as obese as I am, and I think it’s important to have that as a quality-of-life issue. I live in Waikoloa Village, and that 25,000-acre fire I would have wished we had about three more fire stations within a mile. We don’t have the structure and facilities right now, and you are talking about big safety items as far as fire stations. I think if the Director of Planning wants to find other solutions through these economic times, that’s no reason to just say I want a waiver of this concurrency. Thank you. EXHIBIT C 2