MIN CHC 1999-09-29 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• there's a letter that was just passed out, dated today, from the Planning Commission. Leonard. TANAKA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Commission, aloha. Mr. Chairman, I signed up to comment on two items on your agenda. One was the new proposed Division of Permitting. The other was on the holdover terms. Allow me to speak on the holdover terms first, since Ms. Fujioka was finishing up on that. After further discussion with the Commission, we came up with another recommendation. That is the 30 day holdover period for the Planning Commission. We discussed several different scenarios, including the one that the Charter Commission has proposed, a 90 day holdover, and most of the Commissioners felt that it was maybe too long, and that a 30 day would be appropriate. RAY: Can I ask you why? Why is that too long? I mean specifically. TANAKA: We hope that the Administration will fill the vacancies on a timely basis so that you don't have to go the extra three months. Now for the Planning Commission, as you know - RAY: Why is that an issue, specifically? TANAKA: Okay, let me finish up. We had just switched over our agenda schedules this year so that we meet twice a month now. Once in Hilo, once in Kona. We feel that it's working out for both the community and the Commissioners in that agenda items are lighter, and that the community has a chance to bring their applications before us on a monthly basis, as opposed to every other month, the way it used to be. So if you think about a holdover period of 90 days, you're talking about three months. You're talking about six additional meetings after a person has already served for five years. You talk about finding people who are capable, who have the knowledge to serve, and the willingness to serve. Five years is a long time, so most of us felt that a 30 day holdover would be appropriate. Now, the other side of that is getting to fill those vacancies in that time period, and the last sentence of that paragraph referring to this item, or the latter part of the sentence, we don't give you a time period, and we couldn't agree on something, but one that was prevalent was, maybe, following the Maui County Charter. And I think they say that they give you something like 70 days prior to the vacancy, not more than 70 and not less than 60, that the nominations will go in before the Council. I think something similar to that would be appropriate for our County, and here's the reason why. This will be my fifth year so I've gone through the five years almost, and as Ms. Fujioka has said, it's a long period to serve, but then, especially on the Planning Commission, it takes you a couple of years to get up to speed with Land Use laws and all the regulations that we have, the • Zoning Code, and so forth. So if Administration were able to make their nominations 8