2013-05-16 Leeward Exh B - Council Initiated Amend re Ag Tourism

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that does not mean that that exists on every farm and every area on this island. Because many of the farmers, our farmers are born and raised here, and they come with a certain level of values with regard to respect, responsibility, and the fact that there isn’t any open communication could be that there are differing values because people maybe come from different places so do not understand what we are talking about. I personally myself own an ag tourism venue; it does not have any of those nuisances that have been shared with today, so I have a very different view of ag tourism. I also work with many ag tourism venues here on this island, and I found that those who had to go after special use permits had to spend anywhere from thirty to forty thousand dollars in getting the engineers and all of the different plans that were required by the special use permit. That in many cases almost took them down just to get the permit. So I am a huge advocate for this bill, because if we can get some of those smaller farmers out of the gate and they can survive so they can continue supporting their habit called farming, I think we should try to really look carefully at this and not just blanket some, “oh, these nuisances are too much for us so we should not continue on.” And I, too, like Nancy, have been following this for years, so, yes, it is an inconvenience for everybody to come out here and say their testimony again year after year, but we will not give up until this goes through because this county is going to set the precedent for all counties throughout the state of Hawai‘i, and by all means we need to get it out of the gate. Thank you. GIFFIN: Thank you. Director? LEITHEAD TODD: Lani, you are involved in Maui with the lavender industry. WEIGERT: Yes, that’s correct. LEITHEAD TODD: Was that through a special use permit or just farm tours? WEIGERT: Yes, yes, that was a special use permit. And the reason that we decided to go with a special use permit there was because there were other things on the property, such as weddings and special events that were going there, and we wanted to set the example to other agricultural tourism venues that if you are going to go outside of simply bringing people and doing educational tours, selling your value-add, then you need to go this other route. And that’s why I am a real advocate for this particular bill, because I think it should be watched on both sides, meaning when people start to do more and abuse what this is, an organization, such as Hawai‘i Agri Tourism could be a major advocate for the county as well in making sure that people are self-policed, because it is very difficult for the county to have their resources to go out and do this, you know, for the neighborhoods. But I want you to know that it affects ag tourism overall when there is one player that’s not playing nicely. So the organization needs to go out there and police them as well and say, “Hey, knock that off, because you are going to hurt us as an industry.” And this is the position in which we are taking statewide. GIFFIN: Any other questions of the testifier. Thank you. Sir? Brian Lievens? LIEVENS: Yes. Brian Lievens. I’m president of the West Hawai‘i Fruit Growers Association, also on the board of the Hawai‘i Tropical Fruit Growers for the State. I’m a small farmer here in Kona, and I have some land in Honomū that I’m considering for an agri tourist business, so I’m concerned about the bill, and in our organization as well because we represent so many small farmers. An example of the agri tourism with our organization is every year we have a statewide conference, usually on a different island. This year we are having our statewide conference on all 16 EXHIBIT B