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adequate sight distance. The road has to have certain slopes, and has to have certain dimensions to
<br />it. Your land is not flat; your land is like this or like this or it could be like that. So sometimes in
<br />order to layout the roads and have a road connect to the point on the public road where you have
<br />adequate sight distance and where Public Works is telling you this is where we want the road to
<br />connect, if you took a straight line, that might connect here, but if you are looking at sight distance
<br />and topography, maybe it connects there. But that road needs to connect from here to another road
<br />on another piece of property that’s not in a straight line; so the road has got to go kind of like that,
<br />and part of it’s topography, part of it’s slope. So when they are looking at engineering it, they try to
<br />figure that out, and it means that frequently the lots cannot be nice little rectangles because of where
<br />you put the roads. That has a lot to do with it. Sometimes on a P.U.D., it may be that there is
<br />certain features on the property that want to be protected; so that reduces the amount of buildable
<br />space you have, so they want to reconfigure, if you’ve got burial sites, if you’ve got other features
<br />you want to protect.
<br />
<br />So typically, when someone comes in, it’s because they are not able to layout nice, neat, little
<br />rectangular lines for the roads and the lots. They cannot increase the total density. If they were
<br />allowed to have 50 10,000-square foot lots, the maximum number of lots that they can get in a
<br />P.U.D. is 50 lots; they cannot get 100 5,000-square foot lots. They get 50 lots; some of them may
<br />be 10,000, some of them may be less than that, but that’s the maximum number of lots that they can
<br />get. And that’s what I think a lot of people don’t understand. Because the one we had in upper
<br />Kona, the zoning was Ag-5, and the guys wanted to do two-acre lots and then there would be this
<br />one large leftover lot, which would be about – I can’t remember exactly whether it was 45 or 48
<br />acres – so you get one large lot and a number of smaller two-acre lots. And that’s actually
<br />consistent with what the Kona CDP calls for, which is to try and cluster the development and leave
<br />more open space. So the total density, the total number of lots that they get out of it is the same.
<br />But the size of lots changes, where the roads go may accommodate the topography, it may be that
<br />there is natural features that you want to preserve. Typically, the information should be in the
<br />application; when somebody submits an application, it should list why they should have a layout for
<br />it. And I don’t know whether people go and read the whole application, or they just see the letter
<br />and then they see the map, so they don’t understand what’s in the application. It may be that we
<br />need to have more information. It may be that our decision needs to have a better explanation of
<br />why a specific variance was granted. Because we are now doing that with some of our variance
<br />letters because we’ve had this come up afterwards; people said, well, why did you grant it or what
<br />was the reason for it, so we are revamping the way our letters are written, when we approve stuff, in
<br />order to give more of an explanation that somebody can read it and say, oh, that’s why that variance
<br />got granted, or that’s why the road is where it is. And so it’s kind of a fluid process that we are
<br />doing that. And also, you know, the inclusion recently of the action committees. And they were
<br />only interested, I think, in the larger ones, because these were very large P.U.D.’s. Waiki‘i,
<br />actually, the initial P.U.D. application went out to the neighbors, we had six letters of objection to
<br />the size of the lots, the applicant withdrew the initial P.U.D. application and then submitted a new
<br />one that took into consideration the objections of the neighbors; because the objections of the
<br />neighbors were they didn’t want any lots less than ten acres, and the original P.U.D. did have some
<br />lots that were smaller than ten, and so they pulled it and resubmitted and those lots are now, the
<br />smallest lot is ten and the larger lots are 40 acres.
<br />
<br />I would not, you know, I would be willing to entertain the thought that, you know, if there were
<br />language that if the action committee wanted to hold a hearing on it, that we would do it and notice
<br />would go out to the neighbors, something like that, because the action committee would be in the
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<br />EXHIBIT A
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