2017-01-05 Hearing Transcript - County Council Bill 227 Draft 2

Home

Additionally, there were changes to the requirements of information to be provided, and Plan Approval which included in allow on -street parking, if adequate; deleting the 1,000 -square foot limit for facilities principally utilized for the agricultural tourism activity; and adding an allowance to request a waiver from the Planning Director for the requirement for the site drainage plan upon certain circumstances. Within our agricultural tourism Section 25-4-15, they, the bill removes the requirement to provide evidence of a minimum of $10,000 in variable [sic] verifiable gross sales. There right now currently is a minimum of agricultural gross sales that the farm needs to be producing. That's been eliminated, and instead of that, what you would have is just simply the agricultural products that are created on the property. The gross revenue has to be more than the gross revenue of the agricultural tourism activities. It reduced the maximum amount of visitors allowed before requiring a Special Permit or a Use Permit from 30,000 to 10,000 visitors. Hours of operation were changed. Currently it's 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The proposal was sunrise to 6 p.m. daily unless otherwise approved by the Planning Commission. So, that was a unique circumstance. To just bring this request to the Planning Commission to change hours on an operation that may not have actually been approved originally through a Use Permit or a Special Permit. Added requirement to provide adequate road and site access for fire, ambulance, police, and other vehicles related to emergency response. The deletion of the 1,000 -square foot limit for facilities utilized principally for the agricultural tourism business. Continuing on, changes to the waiver process that we had spoke about regarding—oh—this is a little different. If the actual agricultural operation is having difficulty meeting that, that gross requirement of having gross sales from the ag products being more than the ag tourism, they can actually ask for a waiver for a period of time from the Director. It also in, added this section that prohibits agricultural tourism in Waipi`o Valley or where the property is only accessible by 4 -wheel drive. It extends compliance from July 1st, 2017 toI'm sorry, it extends the compliance deadline to July 1st, so if there's any non-compliant ag tourism operations, they have till July 1st, 2017, to comply. And, again, we mentioned the yearly registration process where they have to submit financial records and daily visitor counts. They added a section to allow the Director to conduct a site inspection without prior notification. And, lastly, a section for enforcement for violations that occur regarding this section. 4 EXHIBIT C