HomeMy WebLinkAboutMartin, Ryan
Tsuneda, Kaci
From:Araceley, Relley
Sent:Monday, August 31, 2026 9:53 AM
To:Ryan Martin
Cc:Council Testimony
Subject:RE: Testimony on Bill 147 (2026), Relating to Transient Accommodations
Aloha,
Thank you for your testimony. I am copying our written testimony lead on this email so that your
testimony can be processed and filed correctly.
Mahalo,
Mr. Relley Araceley
Office of the County Clerk
County of Hawaii
25 Aupuni Street, Suite 1402
Hilo, HI 96720
(808) 961-8429
From: Ryan Martin <ryan@hamakuasanctuary.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2026 8:42 AM
To: Council Remote Testimony <councilremotetestimony@hawaiicounty.gov>
Subject: RE: Testimony on Bill 147 (2026), Relating to Transient Accommodations
Hamakua Sanctuary Hāmākua Coast, Island of Hawai ʻ i
August 29, 2026
To: Chair Ashley Kierkiewicz, Vice Chair Michelle Galimba, and Members of the Policy Committee on
Planning, Land Use and Economic Development Hawai ʻ i County Council
RE: Testimony on Bill 147 (2026), Relating to Transient Accommodations
Aloha Chair Kierkiewicz, Vice Chair Galimba, and Committee Members,
Who We Are
Hamakua Sanctuary is a nine-acre nonprofit retreat center on the Hāmākua Coast, guided by our founder
Ryan. We hold 501(c)(3) status and have spent six years developing this practice, grounded in supporting
people through their own process of healing and transformation, rather than performing that work for
them.
What We Do
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Our primary offering is The Journey, an eight-day, guide-led program for a small cohort of participants, in
which lodging is included as part of enrollment rather than sold separately. We also offer standalone
room bookings for guests seeking a quieter stay. Just today, we received another booking from a Hawai ʻ i
resident seeking a week at the sanctuary. That is not an isolated case. Bookings from island residents,
rather than visitors from elsewhere, have made up a rising share of who stays with us this year, a trend
we are still in the process of quantifying precisely but which is unmistakable in the numbers we do have.
How Bill 147 Affects Us
Bill 147 amends the county's definitions of bed and breakfast, short-term vacation rental, and transient
vacation rental to address a real and well-documented problem: unregistered rentals and underreported
tax revenue in a housing-constrained county. We do not dispute that the problem exists.
What the bill's current definitions do not contemplate is a program like The Journey. It is not a dwelling
unit rented bare to a transient guest in exchange for money. It is a structured, guide-led program with a
defined curriculum, in which a room is provided as part of participation and is not marketed or bookable
on its own. The existing TVR, STVR, and B&B definitions were built around the rental of space, not around
enrollment in a program that happens to include a place to stay. As written, the bill leaves us to guess
which category, if any, applies to that kind of offering, with fines of $5,500, $7,500, and $10,000 attached
to guessing wrong.
What We Ask
We ask the Council to add a definition for a guide-led nonprofit retreat program to Section 25-1-5(b),
distinct from a bed and breakfast, short-term vacation rental, or transient vacation rental, along the
following lines:
"'Nonprofit retreat program' means a structured, guide-led program of five or more consecutive days,
offered by an organization holding tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue
Code, in which lodging is provided as part of and incidental to program participation, and is not
separately advertised, booked, or offered for rental apart from enrollment in the program."
We further ask that Section 3's definition of "transient vacation rental" be amended to exclude a
"nonprofit retreat program" as defined above, alongside the existing exclusions for hotels, motels, inns,
apartment hotels, boarding facilities, lodges, timeshares, and tents.
We recognize that our standalone room bookings, separate from The Journey, are a different matter, and
we do not ask the Council to exempt those from the ordinary rules that apply to any operator renting a
room to a transient guest.
Conclusion
The freedom to choose how one uses one's own land, and the freedom of the people who come to us to
choose where they go for the rest and reset they need, are both worth protecting as this bill moves
forward. We ask the Council to write a definition that recognizes what a program like The Journey actually
is, so that a small nonprofit doing necessary work is not left to discover its legal status through an
enforcement action.
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Mahalo for your time and consideration.
Respectfully,
Ryan Founder, Hamakua Sanctuary ryan@hamakuasanctuary.org
--
Ryan Martin
Founder & Steward @ Hamakua Sanctuary
Whatsapp: +1 303-917-2424
Hamakua Sanctuary is a 501c3 non-profit
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