2014-05-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – May 19, 2014 REPORTS/SPECIAL COMMITTEE/PRESENTATOIN: 1. Larry Brown will brief the GMAC on public access, who they work with to identify, enforce and maintain access and easements to public lands and any suggestions that he may have to help GMAC better understand the process. Chair Sylvester welcomed Larry Brown who is a Planner with the County of Hawaii’s Planning Dept. Mr. Brown will cover the public access process which is under Chapter 205 A of the Hawaii Revised Statutes. L. Brown primarily concentrates on shoreline areas. When a special management area use permit, minor permit or any determination of exemption to the SMA assessment application he typically looks at the potential for public access to or along the shoreline over the property that is being proposed for some sort of development activity and where appropriate they will utilize the authority granted HRS 205 A to require public access. The process would be either through a public access agreement or grant of easement document. Non access have been relatively few and far between because they’re basically – the only power the county has under the county’s Chapter 34 – Chapter 34 is an ordinance that’s out of the Hawaii County Code that receives its authority under Chapter 46 or Hawaii Revised Statutes that said that the county shall enact an ordinance creating accesses where there’s subdivision activity and Chapter 34 it’s where you have a lot – in a subdivision that’s creating six lots or more or where you have six or more multi-family residential units going on to a property. Planning Dept. sees so little subdivision activity on properties that lead to mountain accesses in Hawaii County that this has only come up maybe three or four times in the last ten years. Planning Dept. has secured one and they are working on another one right now. And these weren’t in connection to subdivisions – there have been none to L. Brown’s knowledge, ever, with regards to the other trigger which is a six-unit or more multi-family development. These are much more frequent in the shoreline areas that you probably could well understand so Chapter 34 has come up several times and for development activities in shoreline areas but more often than not are shoreline accesses are the result of the imposing of any requirement for public access under the Special Management permitting process and the authority granted under HRS 205 A. Mr. Brown stated that all of this really, and admittedly, he is not the attorney here – that his understanding of this stems from HRS 115, which was the, as has been explained to him the infamous un-mandated mandate from the state legislature that the counties shall acquire public accesses to and along the 2