|
<br />JACKSON: Okay, so that gives a general overall view of what Bill 108 includes. And now I’m
<br />going to move on to the Planning Director’s recommendations.
<br />
<br />YEE: I want to chime in real quick around good neighbor policy procedures. All these changes
<br />that were built in the bill, there were hundreds of hours put in by Council staff, Mayor staff,
<br />Planning input, there is nothing being suggested that hasn’t been tried somewhere else. You
<br />know, looking at best practices was clearly something that staff was looking at. There are many
<br />ideas that were proposed that we found weren’t consistent with County code, State code and
<br />stuff. And so nothing being proposed hasn’t been tried somewhere else. There are, you know,
<br />thousands of examples of cities trying to address this issue, and I think, you know, credit to
<br />Council Members Eoff and Kanuha and Mayor staff, they were trying to call the best practices
<br />that they could to see what would fit here. And you can go to thousands of cities and every
<br />short-term vacation rental bill would be slightly different; yet, you have to really try to tailor it to
<br />your local, you know, landscape. And we have the added challenge here where, you know, our
<br />landscape is somewhat different between West Hawai‘i, East Hawai‘i, and you are still, you
<br />know, Puna, trying to make that fit. So we have an additional challenge here of trying to help
<br />provide recommendations to the Council that try to fit all the island. Just wanted to provide that
<br />little bit of context for you.
<br />
<br />UNGER: I really appreciate that comment because I am hoping we are not reinventing the
<br />wheel; this is happening elsewhere, and so I’m really glad to hear that. But I would like to take it
<br />one step further and say that we stay flexible and we stay adaptive because with the public
<br />testimony that’s coming in, clearly there are certain areas that do not fit here that may have fit on
<br />the mainland.
<br />
<br />YEE: Absolutely. I, you know, the condo-hotel issue came up more recently, and that’s what
<br />this public process is for. There were many months of going through Planning Committee and
<br />this was not highlighted as an issue at that time, you know. So Council Members crafted what
<br />they knew at that point and pushed it forward, you know. In this process we’ve learned about
<br />this. Clearly, you know, it’s quite obvious, we want to be able to address it. And, you know, as
<br />we’ve said, we are trying to provide avenues to those adjustments through General Plan and
<br />stuff. And clearly it’s the, you know, responsibility of the Commission to be able to provide
<br />recommendations for the Council to look at additional revisions when it goes back to them.
<br />
<br />JACKSON: So the Planning Director is recommending the Commission send a favorable
<br />recommendation of Bill 108, Draft 4, to the Council, with the following suggested revisions, and
<br />there are 16 of them. So these recommendations, some of them are like housekeeping
<br />recommendations just to make the intent of the bill be implemented better. So I’ll kind of, as I
<br />go through, just explain which ones are housekeeping and which ones would actually change the
<br />intent of the bill.
<br />
<br />So Recommendation No. 1 would be to change the title of the bill and references of “short-term
<br />vacation rental” to “un-hosted short-term vacation rental.” And that kind of touches on what
<br />Commissioner Church, I believe, said is if you hadn’t looked at the slide, how would you know
<br />what a short-term vacation rental is. If it’s stated clearly these affect un-hosted short-term
<br />11
<br />EXHIBIT B
<br />
<br />
|