2018-04-12 Hearing Transcript - Hamakua CDP

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The Hamakua Development Plan, Community Development Plan. On December 19, 2016, the Hamakua Community Development Plan or CDP Steering Committee recommended approval of a revised version of the March 2016 draft Hamakua CDP. After reviewing agency comments, the Planning Director has recommended revisions to the CDP. Pursuant to Section 2-28.1 of the Hawaii County Code, within 60 days after receipt of the Planning Director's recommendation on the draft, on a draft community development plan, or any amendment thereof, the Windward Planning Commission shall transmit the draft community development plan, or any amendment, with its recommendation through the Mayor to the County Council. Likewise, pursuant to Section 15.1 of the General Plan, the County Council may modify or amend the community development plan before enacting it by ordinance, but it shall give the Steering Committee and the Windward Planning Commission an opportunity to review and comment upon substantive amendments and modifications before final adoption of the plan. So, the purpose of this meeting and public hearing is to afford all interested persons a reasonable opportunity to comment on the Hamakua CDP and for the Commission to review the CDP and consider its recommendation to the County Council. That's the item on the agenda this evening, and with that, I'll ask Bethany to do a however long presentation on nine years' worth of work. MORRISON: Good evening, Commissioners. Thank you so much for your time this evening, and good evening community members as well. My name is Bethany Morrison. I'm a long- range planner for the County of Hawaii, and I'm helping usually you would see Leana Gloor here, but she wasn't able to make it this evening, so I'm here in her place and trying to do a decent job. I want to thank the Steering Committee as Commissioner also thanked them for their time and energy as volunteer members. We have Brad here this evening. We have Glenn here this evening. I wasn't able to see if any other—did you see anybody else? Not yet, okay. Thank you, too, for coming and for your time tonight. This was a great opportunity for the Steering Committee, the community, consultants, and the Planning Department to really come together on this process. I'm going to give you an overview of the Hamakua Community Development Plan, but before I do, I just want to provide a little bit of context for everybody. Starting in 1971, our County adopted their first General Plan as the long-range planning document for the County. It has been updated along the way until the recent one of 2005. However, there was limited public engagement and little opportunity for the community to really be involved. So, in the 2005 update to the General Plan, it was very intentional that a community development plan process be included in that General Plan to provide for that more meaningful process for the community to be engaged in how they wanted their community to grow. And, so we set off doing community planning work. The first four CDP's were adopted in 2008, and then we started Hamakua and Ka`u in the next round of CDP's. The first question that you EXHIBIT A 2