2004-12-17 TPettuso - Laserfiche WebLink

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MARQUESS:I own 52 acres just above Cheryl Green,and we have cattle and macadamia nuts, and we use Velez Road when we want to. And Ive never been involved in anykind of County planning until people in our community started applying for these special use permits. And its not with the nature of the community; and it tears the community apart to try to say why one person could have, say, six dwellings on a 12-acre parcel and somebody else couldnt have at least six on 50 acres. I dont understand, and I couldnt explain it to my neighbors. So I think if this is granted, everyone is going to apply for a special use permit and were not going to have any Ag land left. Thank you. FUJIKAWA:Any questions, Commissioners, with Gayle Marquess? None. Go ahead, Jason. WORCHEL:Good morning. Im a neighbor of Lisa, and a neighbor of Gayle, and stone throw from the Pettuses, if you throw real hard. And Ive never been involved inanythinglikethisbefore;andIthinkthisspeakstothepassionthathasbeengenerated in our community by a number of special use permits and people waiting in the wings to apply for special use permits. You may or may not be aware but we had one of our neighbors apply in a similar circumstance with unpermitted illegal buildings wanting to make them legitimate through this special use permit; and it really galvanized portions of our community and split it apart at the same time. We have spent countless hours attempting to put together a vision for how to preserve agricultural land in Hamakua under the leadership of Dwight Takamine, and maybe you have all heard some about that. And we hope to present that with regard to the Draft No. 3, I think, thats currently out. One of my concerns is theres Ag land and then theres Ag communities. You can designate agricultural land and lease it out, and no one lives there. So you could live in a community and drive out to your Ag land and do agriculture. And, so, you might be preserving agricultural land, but theres something unique about agricultural communities like Kapulena. We chose to live there, rather than live in a tourist spot or perhaps a more beautiful spot, not primarily just for the serene beauty and tranquility but because of the people who live there, and the values of those people, and the ability to get to know our neighbors. Now, we have problems. We have drag racing, we have ice deals going down all around us. We are attempting as a community to galvanize and to begin to work with each other in an inter-dependent way which can concur in an agricultural community. And it doesnt occur in tourist destinations, and it doesnt occur in cities where you really dont know who your neighbors are and theyre transient. This special permit, like all of them, I think it was addressed earlier, is not personal. It doesnt really have to do with the Pettuses who may be stellar community representatives. It really has to do with the use of the land, it has to do with the future generations, it has to do with the vision of what is going to occur in the future with Hamakua. It runs with the land. In our own neighborhood the special use permit was 20