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short stretch of road, and particularly because you’ve got a historic building next to this road and
<br />some walls that may in fact be more than 100 years old, kind of conflicts with some of the message
<br />that I have out of the Kona CDP. So I found myself very conflicted with this. I would not have
<br />been as concerned, if this had been a rezoning that was coming in and asking for commercial
<br />zoning, so it was going to significantly increase traffic on this road, then I thought it would have
<br />made total sense to widen the road and increase the, you know, the accessibility. But we are talking
<br />about one more house. And it just seemed that to put the burden for the intersection and the
<br />improvement, when all it is is it’s going from, well, it’s essentially residential right now, one house
<br />to two houses, it just seemed like a lot.
<br />
<br />And also, the question I had was what was the likelihood that the rest of this roadway would ever
<br />get, you know, widened, because I think the intent is to try and keep commercial traffic on the Old
<br />Māmalahoa and not to necessarily expand it to this back road. So I don’t see that you are going to
<br />have commercial zoning come in off of this back road. And I just don’t really see us ever widening
<br />the whole stretch. I like preserving the possibility by having a set-aside, you know, for the property.
<br />But if you are not going to do the whole thing at one time, then you are just going to have a segment
<br />that’s this wide, that just all of a sudden goes like that and may be like that forever. So I was very,
<br />very conflicted over this.
<br />
<br />Also because I kind of like some of these old historic roads. And this one doesn’t pose the same
<br />problems like the other what we are calling a homestead road, I have major problems with, because
<br />of topography, the sharp 90-degree turns on it that creates some problems for emergency access –
<br />but this is a straight road, and it doesn’t present the same kind of problem, the same kind of need,
<br />except for that intersection area that you are concerned about. But you really don’t have that much
<br />traffic going in there. So I just was not comfortable, given the fact that all that’s occurring out of
<br />this is one more, one more house, and so I find myself very conflicted over this.
<br />
<br />But we typically, our Department typically defers to the requests from DPW because they are the
<br />road people, and so we include it and we put it in. But this was one where I felt like I was a rock,
<br />you know, or between two rocks kind of, because on the one hand you want to try and preserve the
<br />rural character and the difficulty that you do have some historic sites along this area and, you know,
<br />traffic concerns. And I kept thinking that perhaps the problem is is that we haven’t had that wider
<br />discussion over what’s the other alternative, and I thought that the one-way was a possible
<br />alternative that would take care of a lot of the concerns and also preserve, you know, especially
<br />because it’s a short stretch and there’s two ends to it. And so I just, you know, that may be
<br />something that the County Council has to take a look at, you know, it’s above my pay grade, so to
<br />speak. But I think you have to have that conversation because you also don’t want to turn this into a
<br />little speedway where people are trying to avoid the traffic on Māmalahoa with the commercials and
<br />then come zipping through this as a way to get around some of the other traffic, and that will
<br />happen if you widen this whole road to 50 feet in a long run.
<br />
<br />So I’m just, I’m just, you know, thinking that maybe there is more than one way to address this and
<br />still preserve the character of the area and yet address the traffic concerns. And I know it’s not an
<br />engineering thing per se; it’s kind of like, you know, what do we do with this area, how do we
<br />preserve the character, how do we retain the wall. I happen to love old stonewalls in Kona, and I’d
<br />like to preserve, you know, a lot of them unless they really present health and safety kinds of issue,
<br />sight distance, that kind of thing. But I was really troubled by this particular one because of the
<br />proximity to the historic home and also because I just felt like in a long run we are not going to
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