2013-02-21 Leeward Exh A - Director Initiated Amend re PUD

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play. That’s where, the greatest need for housing was on O‘ahu and it happened to have some of the best soil. The older islands tend to have the better soil. We have no A soil on this island. We have a little bit of B; most of it is located on Hawaiian Home Lands up in the Waimea and Kohala areas. When we have a B application, we look at it very closely. And we have recommended denials for some of the special use permits when it’s a B soil, because it’s soil that you can actually grow something in as opposed to -. You can grow anything anywhere, if it’s in a hot house and it’s aboveground; but the theory of protecting Ag land was trying to protect land that had the ability to actually plant stuff in the ground. And on this island we have instead unique crops like, coffee doesn’t require dirt, papaya actually likes rock; so it’s a very different way that we look at Ag land here. But it’s also much what’s growing is smaller agriculture; it’s not 29,000 acres anymore, it’s a five-acre coffee farm. And we have language where we protect the coffee lands, lands that are in the coffee belt; through the General Plan we look at very closely in terms of whether those get reclassified or rezoned. And it’s kind of learning where we are growing up, you know. I think planning was in its infancy where we are getting better at it; we are not perfect. But it’s also frustrating for a lot of people because, I think, most people want predictability, and rezoning and P.U.D.’s are not necessarily something that people can predict, and I think that that’s the frustration that members of the public have. GIFFIN: Sir? MADSON: So if I have 149 acres, I can split it up into ten 14.9-acre P.U.D.’s and totally circumvent whatever the reason was in 1978 for the state to impose the land use requirement, if you are going to develop more than, 15 or more acres. LEITHEAD TODD: Not exactly. And that’s, we look at who owns the property, and if you own all of those parcels and come in for successive things, we will reject your application and kick you up to the Land Use Commission. And we are doing that currently with a – we’ll see how well the litigation goes – we have a 140-acre parcel, it’s the same landowner, they are leasing subsections of the land, less than 15 acres, and guys are coming in for special use permits. And so we looked at that over a 20-year period. This is like the fourth one that came in. So we said we were going to reject it, even though they came in with just 10 acres. And we are saying, because we are looking and it’s a 140-acre parcel, it looks clear that there is an intent to do successive development, and so that the whole parcel should go up. And so we have that one. And we have another one where they did 15 acres and it started looking like their operations were larger, so we basically said that we are either going to shut you down or you need to go to the Land Use Commission and get all these things that you are doing permitted. So you would not be able to do that. You could divide it and sell them off to 20 different people and each of those 20 people could, theoretically, could -. MADSON: Yeah, my son and two other straw owners, or eight other straw owners. LEITHEAD TODD: Well, we look at the ownership, and if the ownership is not identical, then we process them. MADSON: So it’s a father, son and two other straw buyers, their, you know, the intent was to defeat the intent of the land use ruling in 1978. LEITHEAD TODD: And if it meets the parameters of what’s permissible, then it comes through; because we look at letter of the law, black letter, and if the black letter says that if the ownership for 17 EXHIBIT A