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BOWMAN: I just have a -.
<br />
<br />GIFFIN: Lani.
<br />
<br />BOWMAN: Maybe because I’m not a builder. Seven thousand five hundred, that’s a big, isn’t that
<br />big?
<br />
<br />ARAI: It’s big.
<br />
<br />BOWMAN: Okay, so but I think what saves you is that it has to be under $500,000, and it’s kind of
<br />hard to build that big of a house, I believe, for $500,000.
<br />
<br />LEITHEAD TODD: No, no, no. I’m sorry.
<br />
<br />GIFFIN: Director.
<br />
<br />LEITHEAD TODD: For the house, it’s just less than 7,500 square feet, it’s exempt. Previously,
<br />any single-family residence, regardless of size, regardless of cost, was exempt. This just adds a size
<br />restriction. The $500,000 is separate and apart from this. And so you can have a 7,500-square foot
<br />house that costs you $9,000,000 and it’s still exempt. It’s purely the size of the house that becomes
<br />the trigger, and not the value of the house. Because otherwise, if you are familiar with construction
<br />on the Kona side, you could have a house that’s 2,000 square feet and worth more than $500,000.
<br />So it’s purely the size of the house. The $500,000 is for anything else that you are doing that isn’t
<br />covered by an exemption. So a cell tower in old days – because I was in one of the cases that went
<br />up to the Supreme Court, it was I think the Curtis case, where the issue there was what was the
<br />value of the construction. It would also go to the value of, you know, reconstruction of existing
<br />buildings and stuff, if there isn’t a specific exemption. So you have to read the exemption separate
<br />from the difference between the SMA Minor and the SMA Major. And the $500,000 is that, you
<br />know, the $125,000 was there for many, many years, and so they are finally saying, you know, what
<br />you could build for $125,000 20 years ago and what you can build for $125,000 now is vastly
<br />different. So they are tying to basically kind of bring the numbers more in line with the change in
<br />the cost of construction.
<br />
<br />BOWMAN: But -.
<br />
<br />LEITHEAD TODD: However, I should note that if you come in to the Department with something
<br />that is less than 7,500 square feet in the house, less than $500,000 in value, and our staff looks at it
<br />and believes that it would have or could have a significant impact on the shoreline area, we can still
<br />require, and recently did in a case of somebody coming in for an area where we felt that there was
<br />the potential to have a significant impact. We did not look at the value of what they were
<br />proposing, we didn’t look at the fact that it was in fact a single-family home; we looked at the
<br />impact on the shoreline, and sent a letter out to the applicant, saying that because of the location of
<br />the property and the location of what they were looking at doing, we felt that it would have or could
<br />have a significant impact, and therefore, before they could proceed further, we were going to
<br />require an SMA Major.
<br />
<br />BOWMAN: Thank you -.
<br />
<br />GIFFIN: Lani.
<br />3
<br />EXHIBIT B
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