1999-12-08 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 12-08-99Page 17 of 31 California. I want to thank you for furnishing us with the Charter, and I’ll turn it over to you. J. OTTERSON: Okay. I’m Jim Otterson, my wife, Norma, back here. We’re very interested in the City Manager type government vs. the Mayor. And I don’t pretend to be a speaker, or anything like that. I don’t have a vendetta against the Mayor here, but it’s just the part that we’re interested in is we have worked under the Manager type government. My wife worked under it for 30 years, and I worked under it for 25 years, and, we do know, pretty much, how it works. I’m not the type to crusade but the reason why I really got interested in it - we built a pretty fine home where we’re at, and we had to go to the mainland, and when we were gone; we were gone for about three months, and we came back, and there was this huge wrecking yard moved in just two blocks away from us. Well, the first thing I did was I went to the Planning Department in Kona. I went to the Building Department in Kona several times. They showed me pictures of all types of complaints that they had come in. Junk and everything stored, and wrecked cars, and the whole works. And, I can’t think of the man’s name that was there at the time, but he said I want to show you some pictures so he showed me all those pictures of the different areas that needed cleaning up. But he says I’ve had these pictures in here for 11 years. We can’t do anything about it. So, I said, you mean, you don’t have any law to get rid of these things? And, he said we have a law but it doesn’t have any teeth in it. He said what I’m going to do is turn you over to Hilo, the Planning Department there, and so I called the Zoning Inspector here, which it should be a zoning violation because we are in a residential/agriculture area, and whether you have a zoning or not, if it’s in that type of residential and agriculture, they automatically should have the problem removed. But no, that didn’t work. This is going to take just a little time but I’ve got to tell you why I got into this. Like I say, I’m not a crusader or anything like that, no vendettas. So, then I called the Police Department. I called Public Works. I called the Fire Department because they were burning there at night and putting off lots of smells and everything. So, then nobody had any idea on how to get rid of this. I talked to my Councilman and I’ll leave that as is. And so, the last thing that I did was call the Mayor’s Office. I called the Mayor’s Office, couldn’t talk to the Mayor, but I talked to Bill Davis. I told him who I was and everything, and he says, Jim, we’ll get rid of that for you. I’m glad you called. I’ll get back with you in about a week, he said. He got back with me in about a week and he says, you know, Jim, we don’t even have an ordinance to get rid of that stuff for you. I just couldn’t believe this guy. And he says, yes, we don’t even know how to do it. Okay, you’re a lawyer, right? YUEN: I think so. J. OTTERSON: I don’t know whether I told you or not, but I used to work in this type of business. I was a Zoning and Building Inspector for the City of Riverside. So, I said let me tell you how we did it in Riverside. Well, okay, he says, I’m glad to hear that you’ve been in the business. And so, then he said, how do you do it? I said, the first thing we do; we get a complaint, we will call the people back that called the complaint in, of which these people here do not do. Time after time after time I would call. Nobody would return the call, but then he called me back and that’s when he said, you know, we don’t have anything to do that. I says, you’ve got to have. That’s when I told him that’s where I worked. So, he said, how’d you do it, and I said, the first thing we did was to send a certified letter to the people that had the problem, stating what the problem was, and then, I said, you got to make sure you have a certified letter because if you don’t, they won’t accept the letter, and then you tell them what the problem is and how much time they have to get rid of this problem. He said, then what happens? I said, well, then, if nothing happens, then you send them another certified letter stating that you will send the problem out to bid. The City or the County will send it out to bid and the lowest bidder gets it, tears it down. He said, then what happens? Who pays for it? I said, the property owner pays for it. It goes on his taxes. He says, oh, we couldn’t do that. I said, yes you can. So then, he said, I’ll get back with you again in a few days, and let you know what happened. So, he got back with me and he said, you know, Jim, you’re right. He says, I called Maui and that’s exactly how they do it. So I said, okay, now what are you going to do? Well, he says, I’m going to get with the lawyers. I don’t know if you was on that or not, to get this ordinance through. And big fine on each - It went from week to week. The fine got larger and larger as it went along. But anyway, the people that owned it, I found out later, had mortgaged it up to the hilt and moved. And the guy with the wrecking yard was still there, of course, and I talked to him many times. You know, get this crap out of here. In fact, he came to the house one day - he also does rock work. He builds walls. So he came to the house one day and asked me, he said, I heard that you needed some - I’m not knowing this guy at that time - I heard that you needed some rock walls built. I said, yeah, I do. Come on in and we’ll talk about it. So, he came in. We talked about it over a cup of coffee, and I asked him, I said, do you have any pictures of some of the walls you built. And he said, yeah. I said, can you bring some by? I thought this guy lived in Kona or somewhere. So then, I said, no hurry, but then the next day he came by. I said, come on in and we’ll have another cup of coffee. He came in. He said, I got the pictures, and I said, by the way, where do you live? I said, you didn’t have to come this far. He said, I just live down the road there a piece. I said, you don’t live at the wrecking yard, do you? Yeah, that’s mine. So, I said, hell, man, I can’t do business with you. He said, why not? I said, I’m trying to get rid of you, and my wife, was there. She’ll verify it. And so, he said I’m going to have the zoning changed. I said, no you’re not. And, so I said, I just can’t do any business with you. You’re going to have to go because I’m working on it to get rid of you. 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