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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0426.021 2004-2006 PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI`1 HEARING TRANSCRIPT' APRIL 1, 2004 A regularly advertised hearing on the AMENDMENT TO CHAPTER 25 RELATING TO AGRICULTURAL TOURISM was called to order at 5:38 p.rri. in the County Building, Councilroom -Room 201, 25 Aupuni Street, Hilo, Hawaii, with Second Vice-Chairman Hannah Springer presiding. PRF,SENT: Hannah Springer ABSENT & EXCUSED: Fred Galdones C Kimo Alameda Jeffrey McCall Bill Graham Andrew Iwashita Allen Salavea Rene' Siracusa Rodney Watanabe Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher J. Yuen, Planning Director Norman Hayashi, Planning Program Manager Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner And no one from the public in attendance. IMT[ATOR: PLANNING DIRECTOR Amendment to Chapter 25 (Zoning Code) of the Hawaii County Code relating to Agricultural Tourism. The purpose of the draft bill is to specifically address the permissibility of agricultural tourism or its impacts in the various zoning districts. SPRINGER: Our tinal item is Agenda Item 11. The initiator is the Planning Director. It's an amendment to Chapter 25 (Zoning Code) of the Hawaii County Code relating to Agricultural Tourism. The purpose of the draft bill is to specifically address the permissibility of agricultural tourism or its impacts in the various zoning districts. HAYASHI: 'Thank you, Madam Chair. 1 think the Planning Director will be addressing this particular bill. Thank you. SPRINGER: You're welcome. Thank you. Mr. Yuen? YUEN: Yes. We have a staff member, Larry Brown, who has been working on this and was going to present this. He has a bad sore throat, and so [told him to go on home. We also, at that point we weren't, you had done a little quicker than we thought we were goin to get done with the last couple of items. Nn. •Z~ Ref. To: Raf. [date EXHIBIT J But what this is, this is amendment to the Zoning Code; and what we want to do with it is clarify what kinds of tourism and tour activities and sales can be done on agricultural property as an accessory use to agriculture. This was, and there's two sides to this issue. On the one hand we have a lot of fanners and farming entities that want to be able to have some kind of accessory tours and sales on their property as an enhancement to their agriculture. Typical kinds of things that might be involved here is that they would have visitors stop by, they would show them the agriculture, they show them the fields, they show them how they process coffee, for example; and they might have a sales area where they sold some items to visitors. They might charge for this or it mightbe free. There were also some concerns about this kind of activity from people in the neighborhood. There can be traffic, there can be tour busses. And one of the problems right now is that we don't really have a bright line for what's allowed and what's not allowed. We, those of you that have been on the Commission for a year or more had the Doutor Coffee Special Permit application, for example. And that was an incident, a situation, where the Department decided that what this particular operation was doing fell on the side, that needed a special permit. That is it had some facilities that were built specifically for the visitors, that they were having regularly scheduled tours, that they were having busses come in and go, and that they warted to have some sales of nonagricultural products. On the other hand, there are quite a tew operations, particularly in Kona, that are not that different that we have never investigated or cited. Typically, we haven't had complaints of them. We're generally aware of them but I'd have to say that they are, in some respects, not that different from what we've cited as a violation. So we tried to come up with a bill that would give a clear guidance to people and draw some lines as to what you could do as a farmer and what you can't do. Clearly now without a special permit who can have a roadside stand, you have to have, you saw somebody come here with a roadside stand earlier. You can sell, you can have a roadside stand for produce that yuu grow on your site and you can sell that produce. That's about the extent of what's clearly allowed under the present Zoning Code. So this bill, although it has a lot of sections to it, the basic idea is that you can have an agricultural tourism operation on a scale of a maximum of 40,000 visitors a year, which is a little over 100 people a day. The maximum size of facility that you can have specifically for the visitors would be 1,000 square feet. Now this doesn't mean that all your buildings have to be under 1,000 square feeC. For example, if you had a big warehouse that, say, like a banana packing shed that was 10,000 square feet, you could have an agriculture, you could still have agricultural tourism in that. But the portion then where you say seating for people, or a sales area, or something specifically devoted to agricultural tourism, could he a maximum of 1,000 square feet. You also are, one of the lines that we draw is that you can't do special events like weddings, catered parties, that sort of thing, on a commercial level under the agricultural tourism permitted activity. So there would be one level of Ag Tourism in this bill that's basically a permitted use. The level of control, there stil I is some level of control for this, is that they have to come in and apply fr>r plan approval. So they would have to come in administratively to the Department and apply and show that they fit within what is allowed as basically a permitted use. One of the things that we're especially concerned about is traffic and loading. So, at that point, we would look at that, if they had a safe place to bring Craffic into the farm, into their facility, and load and 2 oft=load people without affecting the highways and Che public streets. So that's the kind of control we would have at plan approval. Now if you wanted to do agricultural tourism that went beyond this level of permitted use, for example, if you wanted to have a larger facility, or if you wanted to have special events like weddings, then you would still have to go in the special permit route. So we're, this is our draft bill. W e're looking for, 1 know that, 1 thought that there were some people who were going to come and testify. They may have not been able to stay for the end of this. We have some written comments. None of the square footage limits or the dollar limits, or the number of visitors are written in stone. All of these are numbered that we, we tried to balance the various interests and pick numbers, but that can be changed. What we're looking for at this stage is input, discussion, critique of the bill, before we take it up to the County Council which will make final action on this. SPRINGF,R: Is there any discussion? Commissioner Siracusa. S[RACUSA: Well, I have some questions. [must admit, you know, I've been sick so I never got a chance to read this. And so if you don't mind, Director Yuen, if 1 ask you the questions that 1 didn't get around to finding out wherein here naught. In terms of, for example, items for sale, besides say produce and flowers and foliage, would also other items that are sort of related, like note cards that have photographs of orchids, for example, would that be considered a proper item for sale in an Ag-tourism gift shop or sales area, or would be allowing just about anything for sale, whether it had any kind of relationship or not to agricultural products'? Yll EN: We have provisions for nonagricultural product sales and those are, it's in, on page 6, number 7, incidental sales of nonagricultural promotional items, including but not limited to coffee, mugs, t-shirts, etc., shall be provided; and it said then, provided the items are spccitically promotional to the sites, agricultural activities, and/or products and b) the gross revenues from the sale of nonagricultural promotional items shall be included with the gross revenues from the agricultural tourism activities." SIRACUSA: Thank you. That answers it. Then 1 had another question as well, and that We had a, I think it was the last Hilo Planning Commission meeting, we had someone who was hoping for a bed and breakfast operation who said that she had a lot of fruit trees and things like that, produce growing on the property, that she intended to use in serving the breaktasts. And I know that on the mainland there have been some very upscale kinds of restaurants and inns out in the country that have massive vegetable gardens where people can actually walk through the garden with a basket, pick the produce, take it in, and they'll cook it for you. And l'm wondering if, yeah, I've seen that in National Gardening Magazine and stuff like that. So I'm wondering if something like that would be also covered in this. YUEN: Weli, if you had a bed and breakfast permit, then you can supply fruits and produce, uncooked fruits and produce, to your customers, to your guests as part of the bed and breakfast operation, whether you grow them on site or not. But you can't cook anything for them with the bed and breakfast permit. 3 SIRACUSA: Okay. But if it was a restaurant like YUEN: Then you'd need another, you'd need a separate permit. It wouldn't be called a bed and breakfast. You could have a restaurant permit under, you could have a restaurant under a special permit, but we wouldn't call it a bed and breakfast, `cause a bed and breakfast is limited to uncooked, like continental breakfast, because of Department of Health Food Service regulations. SIRACUSA: [was thinking specifically ofthese fancy country inns in New England that have the big gardens and you go around and pick your produce and then they cook it for you as part ofthe menu items. And you get to choose what tomato or all those tomatoes are going into your salad; and you can't complain afterwards, oh, I found a worm in my tomato. Well, you should have, you know, found it when you picked it. But those are things that are becoming increasingly popular. And 1 can foresee that with Ag Tourism coming on. I know the Ag Department is pushing it. You know, they had, the last year's fair at Komohana was talking about Ag Tourism and they had a fancy glossy brochure. So I imagine it's just a matter of time until somebody comes up with something like that. YUEN: Yeah, it is becoming a big deal. And a lot of fanners are, there are a lot of pa~plc that arc doing it and there are a lot of people that are interested in doing it. What happens though is you"re a little bit at risk. And if somebody makes a complaint, then we go out and investigate, and you may wind up getting cited for a violation. So what we want to do is really lay out what level is detinitely okay, and you're not at risk if you stay within these bounds, and you don't need a special permit but you can operate this kind of facility. SPRINGER: Commissioner Iwashita. [WASHIT'A: Mc Director, the restaurant scenario, that would require, ifit's in an Ag area it would require a special permit, right, or a use permit? YUEN: That's right. It would require a, it wouldn't be covered under this Ag, under the Ag Tourism itself, so you'd have to get a special permit. You could combine it with Ag Tourism but the restaurant itself would not tit under the Ag Tourism. It would need a special permit, still need a special permit. SPRINGER: Commissioner Graham? GRAHAM: 1 guess my first reaction reading this bill is rather negative, and it's negative fiir infrastructural reasons. And the sense is it's all done at plan approval. In other words, 40,000, a hundred a day, 40,000 a year visitors can come to the facility and participate this without the public ever having a hearing or a meeting to say the road is not adequate, the turn-around is not adequate or anything. It all takes place in the County offices. And, you know, like just looking at a specific instance, I think maybe only Commissioner Springer was with me on the Commission when we did the Doutor Coffee one. As far as I know, the Planning Department had no problems with tour buses going along the Holualoa Road, which forme was a very substandard road and had no place for tour buses. But they didn't get a recommendation for tour buses, only because they didn't get the turn-around proper. But I think it was a real community issue whether tour uses should be coming to an agricultural tourism situation on that 4 particular road. And I can figure that could happen in lots of places with this kind of tourism amount of4Q000 a year or something much more akin to a commercial or resort area where presumably we already have infrastructure place and so many of our agricultural places do not. And to have al] these decisions made behind closed doors, so to speak, in the County Building t don't like iC. So I think whatever direction we take to promote agricultural tourism should be a lut more restrained than what 1 see in this bill. YUEN: It was interesting for me that the Farm Bureau said 40,000 was too high. We thought that they were more, going to take a more wide opened approach. But then they said, their letter said 6,OOQ which I think is a very, very small amount, you know, taken over a year. We arc going to look at the number and it may be that 40,000 is a bit high. As far as the tour bus though, you have to remember that a tour bus can go on the Holualoa Road. There is absolutely no control over tour buses going on any public road. So if that becomes a, if tour buses want to go on Holualoa Rod, for example, to see the town of Holualoa, to sec the view of Kona from the mauka road, well, they can do it. It's true that you may he creating an attraction along a particular road by allowing an Agricultural Tourism operation, but it doesn't necessarily mean that buses are there or not there on Holualoa or any other public road. GRAHAM: Well, obviously, that's true. 1 don't find that last argument particularly persuasive, however. SPRINGER: Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABL: Well, [don't know what number is right, whether 40,000, or 1,000 square feet, or 500 square feet is right. But I think that this is the beginning; and I applaud you guys for making that effort of making some type of distinction. So 1 think that way you will have some guidelines to have some consistency, and possibly not everything has to come to the public, you know, which is kind of like what you're doing with boundaries for commercial versus residential, etc. So 1 think you're on the right track. But, again, 1 don't know whether 40,000 is right but f don't know, I had the opposite opinion from him. I think you're on the right track. YUEN: And just to clarify, what we are expecting out of the Commission today, we'll take this to the Commission at least one more time. And the end of, we would like a recommendation from the Commission, favorable or unfavorable, to go up to the County Council. Thal's the purpose of bringing it here. But 1, this is the first time you've looked at it, so we wouldn't ask for that recommendation today. We'll be putting this Norman, we'll be putting this on the next Kona agenda, right? HAYASH I: We don't have it on the next Kona agenda. We can still put it on. YUEN: Okay. Why don't we put it on the Kona agenda because, to give both sides of the island It hasn't been heard in Kona yet, right? HAYASHI: No, it has not. YUEN: So we should at least give both sides of the island a chance to comment nn this before the Planning Commission takes a vote on it. If the Planning Commission needs to 5 take more time with it and deter it after that meeting for further discussion, then that's fine as well. SPRINGER: Thank you. So, Commissioners, we'll be hearing this one more time over in Kona. Is there any further discussion on this matter today? IWASHITA: 1'd just like to comment SPKiNGER: Sure. IWASHITA: That, I guess, [understand the intent of where this is going. And I think that there has to he some sensitivity to the public's interest and a local community's interest. 1 mean, we look at the church issue, you know, these relatively minor kinds of uses, compare it, 90 people going once a week to church, right, and we've got, the reaction that we got. And you're talking about, you know, now you're talking about allowing basically commercial activity down in an ab~icultural area, right? And so there's going to be some, at some point, I think we have to be sensitive to where you draw the line. Right? And, frankly, 1 guess right now my gut thing is 40,000 is a little high. To say the least, I think it is high. And that, you know, the line has to be drawn where we perceive that it's, now it's reasonable to have public input, give the public an opportunity to address whether or not that you should be allowed. SALAV~A: Madam Chairman? SVRINGFR: Commissioner Salavea. SALAVEA: For Director Yuen, 1 just wanted to clarify for my own self the intent of the bill is to delineate or define what would be allowed on agricultural ]ands in terms of Ag Tourism. Is that correct? YUEN: 'That's right. To allow, to define a certain level that we allow without having to go to a special permit that comes to the Planning Commission. SAI.AVF,A: Thank vou. SIRAC'USA: I was wondering if we want to look at the issue in terms of, well, if iC's agricultural land and the primary source of funds for the farmer should be from actual farming, do we want to then say that any monies that come in from Ag Tourism should be less than that so that we have a, we know that the maxi Excuse me. WA"TANABH': May I? I believe the proposed bill indicates that no more than 50 percent of the gross revenue can come from peripheral sales. SPRINGER: Thank you, Commissioner Watanabe. And, also, on page 2, there's that discussion of a value that is commensurate with the land area and type of crop produced from the Fann Bureau. Any other discussion'? Okay. So, Mr. Yuen, we'll hear this again Kona. 6 The discussion end at 5:55 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Sharon M. Nomura, East Hawa`i Secretary 7 PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAII HEARING TRANSCRIPT April 22, 2005 A regularly advertised hearing on the application of INITIATOR: PLANNING DIRECTOR was called to order at 5:22 p.m. in the King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel, Islander Room, 75- 5660 Palani Road, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii with Chairperson Fred Galdones presiding. PRESENT: Fred Galdones ABSENT & EXCUSED: Jeffrey McCall C Kimo Alameda Rodney Watanabe Hannah Springer Allen Salavea William Graham Rene' Siracusa Andrew Iwashita Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher Yuen, Planning Director Norman Hayashi, Planning Program Manager Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner .leff Darrow, Staff Planner Kiran Emler, Representing the Department of Public Works And approximately 5 people from the public in attendance INITIATOR: PLANNING DIRECTOR Continued hearing on the amendment to Chapter 25 (Zoning Code) of the Hawaii County Code relating to Agrricultural Tourism. The purpose of the draft bill is to specifically address the permissibility of agricultural tourism or its impacts in the various zoning districts. GALDONIsS: Norman are you going to take the next item'? HAYASH I: Basically, I'm going to defer that to the Planning Director, this is a continuation of- this was carried over from the last meeting. Okay. GALDONES: Mr. ti'uen. We are on Agenda item Number 6, Commissioners. This is a continued hearing on the amendment to Chapter 25, Zoning ('ode of the Hawaii County Code relating to Agricultural Tourism. YUEN: This is a continuation of a matter that we had at the last Hilo meeting and this is a proposed ordinance prepared by the Planning Department. The purpose of the ordinance is to establish a bright line for when agricultural tourism is allowed and when you need a special pcnnit tier it. The background of this is that many agricultural operations on the island are interested in having some kind of tourism related focus whether it's a pass of tours, bringing groups in and selling merchandise to these. We know the fanning community is very interested in this as tar as a l EXHIBIT E matter of having value added to the product. It's hard to compete on strictly a commodity basis with millions of agricultural products in Hawaii. We have a big visitor industry. Many visitors arc interested in a little more than going to the pool and drinking Maitais or sitting by the beach. Some of them are very interested in seeing our flower farms, our coffee farms and the like. There's been a bit of a gay area on the regulatory side. Clearly you can a roadside stand and sell things. We know that there are ongoing operations that have a more formal kind of tourism focus. At the same time, there arc definite community concerns, or neighborhood concerns about wide open agricultural tourism. So what this does is it sets some parameters for agricultural tourism that would be allowed as a matter or right. The farmer would still have to come in for Plan Approval which is an administrative matter and get Plan Approval to establish the agricultural tourism operation. There arc some conditions connected with the Plan Approval. One of the key conditions is off sh~cct loading so that they would have to have an area, if they had buses they would have to have an area to pull off of the highway and get back on safely. We would check this at Plan Approval. The bright line has to deal with- the ordinance has a limit of 40,000 visitors annually that would be allowed under simple Plan Approval, anything bigger than that would need a Special Permit. T'hc Farm Bureau is saying they would be happy with a lower number and I think depending of the outa~mc of today's hearing wemay- when we take this to the County Council, or at the end of the hearing today, we may recommend a lower than that. Pm thinking something in the order o f 20,000 people a year works out to about 50 people a day on the average. The other thing is that there's a size limit to how much space that you can have in agricultural tourism operation. This would- and then to be clear this would not allow special event type activities without a special permit. You couldn't have weddings, catered parties, things like that, without having a special permit What you could have would be tours, sales, walk throughs, that kind of activity without a special permit. If you went above the size limits then you would have to come in and apply f~n~ a special permit. GALDONES: Commissioners any questions of the Director'? Commissioner Springer SPRINGER: I'm looking at the correspondence that was just circulated from Mr. Conant and on page 2 he questions whether the Section B I requiring a minimum of $10,000 verifiable gross sales is the best approach to take. He suggests that instead the Federal Tax Schedule F should he accepted and 1 wonder if the Planning Director has any comments on that. YUEN: I think it's a legitimate comment. We could accept some level of investment in planting crops where the people might- you might not having bearing crop yet but you can prove that you've invested xamount of-. 1 really must sit here and think of an amendment that would do something like that. What we didn't want to do, but what the reason for this- frn~ having some basic dollar cut off is that we wanted to make sure that Agricultural Tourism is really an accessory to a commercial farm operation rather than something that's set up as an agricultural tourism operation where a tourism operation in the Ag district that doesn't really have any tanning component to it. So, that's the pwpose of it and it could be met by some vcritiablc investment and farming. SPRINGER: Thank you. 2 EXHIBIT E GALDONES: Any further questions? Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA: This is to the Director. I'm just wondering if- 1 know there's no place like Hawaii but are there other places in the nation that have considered Agricultural Tourism like what we're proposing and how has that pan out? YUEN: I'm not sure- certainly there are many places that have a lot of Ag Tourism type activities. Napa Valley wine tasting, you can go out to the vineyards and they're not just vineyards, they have wineries and people go wine tasting. It's quite a big thing. I'm not sure how it's regulated. I suspect that in many places it's pretty free wheeling, in the sense that there's not a lot of regulation to it. We thought about going that route. We have some concerns about it. I think what people in a lot of our neighborhoods would be- a lot of our farm areas are mixed, farms and residential so just to say that somebody- Just to say go ahead and do it, we weren't prepared to say that. But to get back to your original question, there's a lot of it, quite a bit of it elsewhere in the country and it's become a big thing and there is some elsewhere in Hawaii. To take an example of something that you would want a special permit for, I forget what it was called but in Central Oahu 1 think Dole has a maze, and they have agricultural products someplace and that's on a pretty big scale. Now, that would still- [don't know how that was done. 1 suspect it was done by a special permit and anything like that, anything of that scale certainly we would want to have a special permit here. ALAMEDA: Okay, thank you. GALDONF.S: Commissioner Graham. GRAHAM: 1 have another- I've been thinking about this a good bit since our last meeting and I have one other issue I wanted to bring to the Planning Director but also for the other Commissioners thoughts on. And the gist of the issue is- it's sort of, it seems to me that this would sort of bring tourism related destination pretty much everywhere throughout the island. Whereas now, you know it's much more pocketed and the particular situation that comes strong to my mind on this was way back in 1987, 1988 when Chalon was proposing a resort at Mahukona so we had these hearings up at North Kohala and the community was fairly slim on the issue but kind of I would say more than anybody else our resident kupuna at that time was Auntie Marie Solomon. And Auntie Marie Solomon came down and sort of said at the public hearing, you know- we can allow this resort at Mahukona because iYs going to save our folks ti-om having to drive all the way down to South Kohala and all and we can share our recreation area with the tourists and all. However she said, our places where we live and our villages and all of that we can maintain that as our own, not tourist places. So, and I think the community got behind that, I got behind that and the resort was approved. And, not too many years later Chalon wanted to do a restaurant at Upolu Valley. They wanted to do a parking lot and restaurant there and I and some others made it very clear that, given the testimony that came out of Mahukona, the community really was not looking for that. And they withdrew it. So, my concern is essentially, a blanket Agricultural Tourism is okay, essentially it makes tourism destination on a reduce Icvcl at least, spread everywhere within all the communities and that's a real concern. Maybe times have changed enough since '87, '88 that, it's not quite the same concem it was, 1 don't know but I want to put that forth for people to think about. 3 EXHIBIT E YU EN: Well certainly what you're saying is really valid. Scale is everything. Scale is really important and what we are- this is the balance that we looked at and this is what- at some scale it's not a big deal. On another scale it may have a significant impact. Tourists are pretty much in every region now to some extent. North Kohala, you know tourist do go to Polomu. 'they go through the little towns Kapaau and the like. The impact is likely to be right on the immediate neighbors of the Ag tourism project. And it is true, the downside of this is that you might be on a little road that's 12 feet wide and it's just 6 or 7 people on the road and somebody makes an Ag tourism operation and there'll be cars going back and forth. That is an aspect or the downside of this. The other part of this though is that we're, we want to have an agriculture and 1 think what we heard from people in agriculture is this is one of the things they need. Or many of them need to be competitive and be successful. GALDONF S: Questions of the Director? Seeing none, 1 have listed here 5 individuals who have signed up to testify on the subject matter and 1 would like to call them forward. Howard Yamasaki, Sandra Scarr, Deepa Alban, Howard Conant and Joe Alban. Okay, 1 would need to have you sworn in, please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the Hawaii County Planning Commission. Sir. YAMASAKI: I do. D. ALBAN: I do. J. ALBAN: 1 do. CONANT: 1 do. GALDONF.S: Thank you. Please state your name and your address and you may begin your testimony and I would like to start with the gentleman here on my far left. YAMASAKI: I am Howard Yamasaki, 84-5095 Hawaii Belt Road, Captain Cook. I am the President of the Big Island Fann Bureau and I have submitted testimony previously to this particular Commission. Actually I submitted it way back when, after the first two cancelled hearings. And so some of my testimony that 1 submitted at that time which I was remiss in revising for today's hearing, is that in the meanwhile the Planning Department had made a change on the square footage allowed from 500 square feet to a thousand and that was one of our recommendations. So you will see that in my report asking for that change but you don't need to make that change because its already been changed. However, I will not read my whole testimony I just want to elahorate on certain issues. Number 1, as part of the Plan Approval application requirements 1 see that there is no notification of your neighbors as to your future endeavor. And if, lets say f live on the end of a thousand foot road, which I do, actually 1 live on the end of a mile and a half road and 1've got probably about 80 neighbors and if I allowed let's say 50 cars come up there everyday, they're going to think what's going on. So, my thing is that we don't have to do a Special Use Permit type hearing process but at least there should be a notification process of those within the vicinity who maybe impacted the most and since you already have a vehicle under Chapter 25, Section 25-2-4, which allows for notification but 4 EXHIBIT E disregard in the public hearing part of that process. That at least the neighbors will be notified and as part of that should be notited that they have comment period lasting "x" number of days, let's say 30 days, 60 days or whatever the thing might be while the Planning Department is undergoing approval process- Then aC least the neighbors will say okay we have been notified, we had a comment period and therefore we can either comment or not comment and the Planning Director and his statf can use that as a means of whether or not to approve or not approve the particular application. So this is one thing that we found that was lacking. The next thing is the criteria about verifiable growth sales of a number that was picked out from somewhere as being $ 10,000.00. But we arc saying that this is kind of hard to do because if you look at the properties, 1 grow macadamia nuts and coffee. From my coffee I can gross 6,000 per acre on my mac nuts the best 1 can do is roughly about 2,000 per acre. Let's say 1 have only 4 acres ofmacadamia nuts. Okay but [produce the best macadamia nuts in the world. But what would my gross income be $8,000.00 so 1 could never qualify under this particular regime of $10,000.00. Now you would cut me out but 1've got 4 acres of the best nuts in the world and the tourist want to come and sec it and they want to taste it and they want to take it home with them. But I'm stuck cause you have a number so, and every crop is different and every... and depending on how many acres you have, that's also different, say if I've got a hundred acres and I only produce 2,000 per acre that's 200,000. But if I only got 3 acres and [only produce $2,000, well I'm stuck now. Whereas if I had coffee and let's say 1 make 6,000 per acre then 1 only need you know, acre and a half or so to make the 10,000 criteria so, so what ['m saying is that this is a hard thing to do when you set a criteria like that. So in this particular case we're asking that unless you can come out with a criteria that is equitable for everybody then only the Schedule F should be used. Because at least the Schedule F tells you thaC you have done something to your land and you are actually reporting it to the government. But, in the case of a tree crop, macadamia nuts take 5 years normally to produce after planting. So that means you're saying I cannot do any Ag tourism? But yet you know these tourists have never seen a mac nut tree in their life and to show them a mac nut tree is something that they'll always remember. But it doesn't have to he making money for you at that particular time at the rate of $10,000 a year. So what I'm saying is that at least if you get something in the ground that you have shown that you are in earnest living as far as trying to make a living in agriculture, that this should be enough of a criteria for you to make the judtrtnent, which means that a Schedule F would be, to me if it's good enough for the Federal Government it should be good enough for the County Government. So anyway, something like this should be looked at because a Schedule F would say that you have put an investment into the farm to work it although it's not producing any money yet Same like coffee, coffee takes 3 years minimum to get the first cherry. And other crops like you take, like certain kinds of fruit crops might take you 8 years to get the first crop protit. What're you going to do in the meanwhile but yet people who never saw let's say a certain kind of a tree, hey, you can at least see the tree. Okay so, we're looking at probably this number value that is set, I'm not sure it's going to work as well. The last item that 1 would like to comment on is the maximum number of annual visitors which is right now set at 40,000. We have come up with a number of 6,000. That may be on the low side. This is, you know these numbers are negotiable and the low side is that 6,000 if you were to bring in visitors every single day, this would be 16 visitors a day, I'm talking 365 days a year now. i1t 40,000 that works out to be about 109 visitors a day for 365 days a year. But of course you're not going to have visitors every day, more than likely. So some days you may have a S EXHIBIT E: little more, some days you'll have a little less. So we were saying that a number like 40,000 may be a little too excessive. Six thousand maybe on the very low side. 1've got a lot of complaints by the tanners telling me why did you pick 6,000? Well, this is just looking at some reasonable number of vehicles that can come in, if you have a small car let's say 2 people come at a time, that's 8 cars a day. Now, your neighbors may or may not tolerate 8 cars a day going up and down their road. Especially if you have to share the cost of the maintenance of that road. So maybe this may ur may not work. In other areas if you're right on the road frontage it may have no impact on your neighbors at all. Because they won't even be going back by their lots at all. Your driveway access is the main highway. So, we're looking at different circumstances so 6,000 I do agree is a low number. Forty thousand I think is excessively high so somewhere in between might be a mean, if you have to set a number at all. Now, if you can get away from setting a number that will be better however, 1 know Mr. Yuen is not going to probably buy no number at al I because otherwise where do you draw a threshold between having a requirement for a special use permit or not. And generally by having numbers sometimes it makes it an easier task to determine whether or not you need a special use permit besides what the actual use is tor. So with that I'd like to close and thank you all Commissioners and Chairman for letting me speak fr>r this particular, most important 1 would say, ordinance that is before you. Thank you. GAI,DONES: Thank you Mr. Yamasaki. Commissioners any questions of Mr. Yamasaki? Commissioner lwashita. 1WASHITA: Mr. Yamasaki we have a letter that suggests, as far as this last issue on numbers, that instead of trying to set a number that we use wnditions on the use limited to what is it 2 axle vehicles and if you want to have more, you know larger vehicles come in then that kicks you into a special use level. Do you have any comments on that suggestion? YAMASAKI: I think that may be one method that we may use you know if you did not want to set a number, a specitic number on it. But that will also have to be dictated by the condition of the roadway itself. 1 live on Kamehameha School's land and 1 mean a regular car could not get up there, you need a- you need 4-wheel drive, you also need mud terrain tires otherwise you will not be able to get to my property. That's a fact. So in those cases, I don't think any of these criteria would even work. So I limit myself' and my maximum number 1 can have of visitors is probably going to be zero. And, but yes something like that would work 1 think if you did nut want to use a number. IWASNITA: Thank you. GALDONES: Further questions of Mr. Yamasaki? Ma'am, please state your name, your residence address and you may begin your testimony. D. ALBAN: My name is Deepa. Address is 79-7346 Mamalahoa, representing Kona Joe Coffcc that's in Kainaliu. 1 think this is a great bill. It's terrific that you guys are trying to support fanners, trying to pass a bill like this. This actually encourages farmers to do agriculture instead of building more homes and develop land otherwise. But I do kind of, I'm concerned about all this restrictions and numbers that are so severe like 16 people a day or 10 people a day because if 1 get a busload which is 50 people or 40 people, that's I vehicle that's coming down 6 EXHIBIT E that road versus t have 15 cars coming down. So [think some of those restrictions are kind of unreasonable. It would be easier for the fanners especially as us guys don't have much help and you know we don't have the capability of hiring more people to do a lot of extra work. Since we do all our work ourselves it's so much easier for us, first of all it's hard to get people coming down to visit the fauns and coming off the beaten pathway so when they put a lot of restrictions it makes it a lot more difficult from the farmer's aspect. But [just want to thank you all very much for helping us get to this level. Thank you. GALDONES: Any questions of Ms. Alban? Sir, your name and your residence address and you may begin your testimony. J. ALBAN: I'm Joe Alban with Kona Joe Coffee, 79-'7346 Mamalahoa Highway, Deepa's husband. We farm coffee together on our property. I also think this is a great bill that is vital to the survival of agriculture in Hawaii. As farmers we have so many hurdles to overcome, not just in terms of cost of labor and expenses to produce our crop, but the fact that once we have produced our crop we are still isolated from the rest of the world. We have to find a way to get our crop to the consumer and that adds cost and puts us at a competitive disadvantage. But when the consumers are right here in our own back yard and we have that opportunity to sell to them directly it really helps to level the playing field and make agriculture more competitive here with other parts of the world. So I think that if fanning is going to survive and our products arc going to be competitive with products from other places in the world that we desperately need the passage of this kind of bill. Like Deepa, 1 am concerned about the kinds of restrictions that are being discussed and I think tome the most sensible approach is not to think of a specitic number in terms of visitors or vehicles but to utilize existing regulations, now I'm not a legal expert and 1 don't know all the existing laws but I would think that there are existing noise ordinances that should obviously apply and this would help to protect neighbors from those concerns. And when it comes to the traffic issues that should be dictated by access, the size of the road as opposed to a specific number of vehicles or size ofvehicle, because each farm is so different and the size of the fauns arc different and the access to the fauns is different That if we just arbitrarily choose a number of vehicles or a type ofvehicle it's not going to really be appropriate in every situation. Like Howard said, he may need 4-wheel drive or mud tires to get to his farm and that would be something that really is addressed by the road and the access because at some time in the future there may be a better road and better access. I think those are really the most, the primary issues I wanted to cover so thank you very much. GALDONES: Thank you Mr. Alban. Commissioners any question of Mr. Alban'? Sir. CONANT: My name is Howard Conant and I'm an organic coffee farmer in Kolo near Opihihale. Thank you very much for letting me speak in front of you. 1 already submitted quite a few pages of testimony and I think you probably recognize that I've done a lot of thinking about this issue for a couple of reasons. Our faun is located the end of afive-eighths of a mile, 4-wheel drive road like Howard Yamasaki's. Ag tourism is probably not in our future. It's 4- whcd drive, its way too remote. And so 1 felt that it was appropriate for me to address the issues because I could speak fairly impartially, yes I'm in agriculture but this bill probably won't affect us and so I really wanted to speak up as a spokesman for agriculture and try to convey a couple of messages that arc, so far have not been advanced. A little divergence, Sandra Scarr of the Kona Coffee Council was also scheduled to appear in front of you but she had an appointment 7 EXHIBIT E and had to leave. She, 1 have read, I'm a member of the Kona Council and I've read the Kona Council's testimony. She asked me to testify on her behalf. She's received and read all of my information and she said she and the Kona Council agree with me. The only point that she wanted to make in addition and 1 hope you'll accept this from me on her behalf is that she wanted to try to persuade you to relieve some of the restrictions that were built into the proposed bill. That they were too restrictive and what the bill needed was accommodation rather than restriction. That was her main point. Looking at the bill as it's written, I was absolutely delighted that the Planning Department had taken on this issue. It was an issue that was, that has been needed for a long long time and has been not addressed. And I think they've done a good job. 1 personally if 1 had my choice would like to turn it upside down in a couple of ways and I've mapped out some of those ways but this is just the summary of ideas that 1've had on that. 1 think one of the most important things that can be achieved with this bill is to create a spirit. A spirit of the Ag tourism bill which would be reflected in a preamble; a preamble which is positive, supportive of agriculture, recognizes that the State Constitution and the County Charter, specitically admonish us to favor agriculture. Those are specific admonitions. I'm not an attorney but I have a itchy feeling that if this is a highly restrictive bill that creates a lack of opportunity and/or a loss of opportunity which now exists it could be challenged in the Court as being contrary to the State Constitution Admonition, that's mandate to favor agriculture and the County Charter's admonition, mandate to favor agriculture. So 1 view that as a fairly important issue. Also I think it's important because this bill could and should live for 50 years beyond when we're all dead and gone. But the only way it can live is if the spirit of the bill is accommodative to agriculture and it recognizes that agriculture is a way of life on this island. It's one of the things that sets this island and our lifestyle apart. It's one of the things that needs to be preserved. I spoke with a member of staff at the Planning Department while I was investigating this bill, Larry Brown, and we had a wonderful conversation. And he said to me, what we want to avoid is a Knott's Berry Farm and 1 agree wholeheartedly. But what we need is regulation not strangulation and I view these numbers that are in the bill as strangulation because they don't work &rr 90% of the farms that they'll apply to. My colleagues have already talked about the $10,000.00 limit and 1 think maybe you're persuaded already that that's not going to work. But the crop that comes to mind for me is Jaboticaba, that wonderful tropical fruit that takes 10 years to produce. So, the Jaboticaba farmer is a farmer nevertheless and he deserves the same benefits and rights that the lettuce farmer deserves who can get a crop in 5 or 6 weeks. Regarding the other restrictions, [would really like to see no number inserted in the bill as a number of annual visitors. First of all I think it's unenforceable. I think there's nobody who is going to sit there and count and so it's an arbitrary and artificial guideline or standard that can't be measured and can't be enforced. And there are other ways to do the same thing. Whoever drafted, Larry I guess and the Planning Director drafted this bill and they drafted a clause in it that said no more than 50% of the gross volume of this operation shall be in Ag tourism and 1 think that's an excellent way to regulate how much tourism takes place. So if you have a 90,000 acre cattle farm doing millions and millions of dollars you have the space and you have the venue to support a fairly large Ag tourism operation. Whereas if you have three quarters of an acre growing lettuce you obviously can't even provide your on site parking which is also another excellent measure of whether the site, the farm can support this Ag tourism operation. Definitely all parking should be on site. I think that's really clear. The turnarounds the parking should all be on site. That will help alleviate the constructive possible nuisance to neighbors. And that is the reason I believe for the 40,000 number or 6,000 number as Mr. Yamasaki suggests. What you're trying to do is make sure that your neighbors are not unnecessarily impacted by this 8 EXHIBIT E operation and that's a good goal. l think we really need to regulate that so that it happens correctly. But you know, tourism is not a noisy activity. We're not talking about cheering a football game. Tourism is a quiet activity. People walk around, you tell them about your operation, they're in relatively small numbers and the traffic impact can be mitigated by encouraging the Ag tourism operator to bring people in, in vans. In my write up 1 advanced the suggestion that maybe the size of the vehicle should be dictated by the size of the access road. And the example 1 use, if it's a 20 foot paved road excluding shoulders then perhaps 1.2 times the pavement would be the limit of the size of the vehicle and limit it to 2 axles. So you get a 24 foot van. A 24 toot van, 1.2 times the pavement width is the maximum length of the van that you can allow to this Ag tourism operation, that's what ['m suggesting. A 24 foot van might be able to carry as many as 12 visitors to an Ag tourism operation. Twelve visitors would normally arrive in 6 cars and so if you encourage a van what you're doing is saving the infrastructure and reducing the aggravatul nuisance to neighbors. And so that's a good thing. And so if you're going to bring a van, it brings to mind another thing. 1 have been told and ['ve read in the zoning code which 1 read on line, that anything that's not specifically allowed is illegal. And I can understand that and 1 can understand why in most zoning that could and should be the case. But let me you an example of why perhaps we should rethink this. Consider the internet 10 years ago in 1995 which was in its infancy. if there had been a Planning Commission or Planning Department who had control of the internet and they said only those things that are named are pcnnitted, all we would have today is a-mails and Spam. And [don't mean the kind you mix with eggs. It would be horrible and all these young geniuses who came up with this enormous creativity wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have the internet as we know it today. Now we don't have an internet kind of operation hereon this island but it's the same thing. This is an infant industry. 1 indicated by some of the attachments to my letter that organizations have been working on this tirr quite a tew years. The Hawaii Island Economic Development Board did these maps that 1 included in 1991 and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the CF,TAR has been conducting Ag tourism workshops for 3 years that I know of, maybe more, I haven't been able to find out exactly. All these things have been illegal. They've all been illegal to date until this courageous attempt to regulate and to define Ag tourism and that's why I think the Bill is great and it's really needed. 1 would really like to see when I said I'd like to turn it upside down, I would really like to sec young geniuses, entrepreneurs, people who haven't thought about Ag tourism before be able to come up with creative ideas. And if in this Section 25, we said the only things that are illegal are those that are named because 1 think we can name them. And then let people come up with creative ways to enhance our island lifestyle. I think it would be a totally new approach to zoning. I think that this new approach would have tax dollars flowing into the County coffers and there would be plenty of money to regulate the very few who need regulation because they were out of control. It wouldn't happen very much because agriculture generally is a small business. But it's changing and that's why 1'd like to see our thinking expanded. It's changing during that same period 1995 to the present, the size; I'm interested in coffee so 1 know these statistics. The size of a coffee faun on this island, not just Kona but island-wide has known ti-om 3.2G acres to 5.86 acres over l0 years. Who would have thought? Nobody could have imagined that because it's such a labor intensive activity. 5o since we couldn't plan that we can't effectively plan the gross volume that a farm should have or the total number of visitors that we should pernit. Also, switching gears a little bit, agriculture is about food. Coffee is about food, honey is about food, vanilla is about food. How can you have Ag tourism that doesn't allow the operator to serve food. To me it is like saying, well you can go to a football game, but you can't wear a hat. There are all kinds of examples I can use for that. I believe that 9 EXHIBIT F. Ag tourism should be allowed to serve food and that the gross volume testis an excellent way to regulate it so it doesn't become a restaurant. Sure you don't restaurants on Ag lands. But if you said 50% of the gross volume of the operator can be Ag tourism you could also say 25% of that 50"/0 or a half of that 50% could he in the service of food. How can you offer people a cup of coftce and not a donut? How can you offer people a taste of honey and not a cracker? I mean, and the length of time that a visitor visits a farm generally stretches over several hours. During that time they need a little bite to eat and we should be able to provide it and we should be able to think of a way of providing that and allowing it in a way that doesn't restrict it to the point where we can't do it at all. 'That's sort of negative admonition is what I'd like to see avoided in this Bill. Also if we're going to have tour operators bring small vans to our farms we should be able to charge something and right now you can't, it's illegal to charge for a Cour and [think that's wrong. I mean, now let's go back to the first paragraph in my write up where 1 said we have one employee, my wife and myself and one employee run our farm. She's a full time gal and she's covered with worker's compensation and medical insurance. Those two insurance policies cost us $7,100.00 a year for one employee. That's shocking. That's why we have only one employee. And 1 believe that the 3 of us do about 6 jobs on that farm. Now if you limit the number of visitors to, let's just say 16 a day just for argument sake and each visitor spends $10.00 buying a product that's $500.00. Well, guess what, your employee costs you 220 by the time you pay him a fair wage and all the benefits so the 16 visitors a day isn't going to pay for someone to man your Ag tourism operation. That's why 1 think that those sorts of limitations should be stricken from the Bill and allow private enterprise to determine what's necessary to make it work. You know the world experienced central planning in the Soviet Union and it didn't work. The central planners tried to insert themselves in between free enterprise and business and it absolutely didn't work but we do need regulation, we do need thoughtful regulation to make sure that it works well for everybody. We need to make sure that neighbors are not aggravated, but they do live in agricultural zones and agriculture does have impacts. Pigs smell. coftce pulping takes place in the evening. It takes big diesel trucks to pick up mac nuts and the likes so there is an impact on agriculture and I believe that the Ag tourism bill should recognize and allow for those impacts. As Mr. Alban stated there should be noise abatement provision for this Bill ifthere's not already in the community. And I'm not privy to that. You can't start before 8 and you can'Y do anything until 6 1 believe that's already included in this Bill which is good. It protects the neighbors. And I think I'm winding down pretty soon. GALDONES: Mr. Conant you have much more to go otherwise ['m going to call for a recess if you have a long more ways to go? C'ONANT: Two or three minutes. That's all. I just want to say about impact on neighbors, not all farms share their roads with 80 neighbors. Our farm for example, there are only 2 neighbors that share our road and its 5/8ths of a mile long. And so, that's another reason to make certain that the bill doesn't include provisions which don't apply equally to all and that will disadvantage some at the expense, for the benefit of others. And I think the other comments that I had, have already been addressed. The Schedule F is a good example of being able to put the horse before the cart you know. The horse is the agriculture the cart is the tourism. In order to file the Schedule F you have to file a Federal Tax Return and that's happened over the previous 12 month period either fiscal year or calendar year. And so you already demonstrate by submitting a Schedule F that you are a bona tide farm and you've done it in the past. It's not that 10 EXHB[T E you can stmt a faun and start an Ag tourism operation immediately, you have to file a Schedule F. I think that's good. That's the way it should be. And with that ['ll close my comments. GALDONES: Thank you. Questions of Mr. Conant? If none, thank you very much. Mr. Yuen'? YU EN: Well the purpose of this hearing is to get feedback from the public and from the Commissioners on a Bill that we will eventually forward up to the County Council. 1 don't what the Commissions view of it is right now. I can tell you that after hearing the testimony in considering this a little further the moditications that I would like to make will impart that we allow Ag tourism with proof of investment that would implanting crops that should yield the equivalent dollar amount when the crops are mature and that would take care of the fruit crop situation. I'm not inclined to accept the suggestion that we just take a Schedule F or we have no dollar limitation because this is supposed to be something that is helping a commercial fanner make a little money. And so, the example of, there are certainly people that arc in tanning and they make 5,000, 6,000 dollars a year but it really is designed to help the person whose, fanning is a major part of their income rather than just aside-tine and to help that kind of operation. So I would like to keep a dollar amount in there. The number of visitors is an arbih~ary number in some respect. 1 do think that there should be a number. The wmment that is made about a large operation, remember that what this bill does is it carves out an area where you can operate with minimal regulation. That is plan approval, you don't have to come to a Planning Commission, you don't have a public hearing, you don't have to put notice in the newspaper but you will be sate and assured that you have a legal operation. One of the difficulties has been that there are, people start up little Ag tourism operations, sometimes their neighbors object and then we get into a major Donny brook over do you need a permit, come in for the pcnmit, the contested case hearing and the like. And we wanted to have, to give this room to operate a level that you clearly can operate at and you don't need a special permit. Now, the bigger operation, the operation that wants to have a restaurant, they can operate, but they have to get a special permit. We do think that there should be a level that you don't need a special permit. It is a big deal to get a special permit. We know that there's a lot involved to it. For the people on the outside it's even more of a daunting challenge. ['d lower the number from 40,000 but my suggestion would be 30,000. The suggestion about a notice to neighbors has pros and cons. My own feeling is that when we have something like this that's a plan approval that doesn't call for public hearing 1 would ratherjust, I would rather not give notice to neighbors. What happens is that they will have, they may have lots of objects but the way this is written is that you have the right to get your plan approval even if the neighbor doesn't want it. You have to t<~Ilow the standards, you have to have the off street parking and loading, you have the hours of operation. If the neighbor comes in and doesn't like it, they will, the operator will have to abide by those conditions if they operate past 6 o'clock at night the neighbor can bring that as a violation. But if they come in to us and say we just don't want it, we have to, the Department has to say, well I'm sorry even though we gave you notice and the opportunity to comment, we would try to be polite about this and say, well, there's nothing we can do about it. And so, that's why, if we're going to have level that is just allowed then 1 would say no notice to neighbors. The final change 1'd like to make is that reading through this 1 realized that what we've done is we've also defined agriculture tourism in industrial and commercial zones. This is a completely different animal. You may want to have agricultural tourism of say, there may be a sugar mill could be an industrial zone and you could have agricultural tourism in it. That's really a 11 EXHIBIT E completely different animal than what we've been talking about and some of the things that we've put in here are kind of restrictive and may not actually apply to those so what I'd like to do is, 1 don't have the exact wording for this but we would change this so this strictly applied in the Ag zones. if we wanted to look at any kind of regulation in industrial or commercial zones we would do that separately. So this will be rewritten so that it will only apply in the Ag districts. So as far as what the Commission can do, if the Commission wants to mull this over some more before sending it up to the Council the Commission can defer. If the Commission wants to suggest changes or to adopt what I just outlined orally what would suggest to the Commission can make a motion and 1 don't have the exact wording but, we would work on the wrn-ding and then send it up to the Council because the Council has the final say on this. IWASHITA: Mr. Chair. GALDONES: Commissioner Iwashita IWASHITA: Thank you. t just might comment on, given the testimony we have heard today is that, 1 you know, it's, I'm not an Ag guy. My grandfather was a farmer so that's as close as I got. But, what I'm hearing from the testimony is that they're really supportive of the eftbrts that Director and the staff have gone through to go down this road. 1 really think that that is really important. What I'm hearing is that from the people who do it, the Ag people that they would like to see a larger opportunity in terms of how this goes forward and what it allows real farmers to do if they want to supplement their income with Ag tourism. I guess the suggestions that 1've heard, seen, from anon-Ag person, seem reasonable to mein terms of the farmers' perspective. And that, I'm not sure, I guess from the regulatory perspective Mr. Director, I'm not sure that it really raises, those suggestions raise real concerns trom the regulatory side. In other words, if the whole object of going down this road is to make a bright line, if you will right, in terms of what will be allowed, under what circumstances, that again if the objective is to open up a door here that allows fanners a clear path to develop and be creative about the kinds of Ag tourism that they want to operate on their farms. 1 don't think they're going to, as a matter of self preservation, they're not going to do anything to damage their real source of income and so the regulatory side of it 1 think should be looked at as relatively minimal. I think that's the sense I'm getting of this whole scenario is that we want to allow it, we want minimal regulatory interference, we want to provide clear parameters so that the Department knows, the farmers know what can be done, what is allowed but not be too restrictive is I guess what I'm hearing and it sounds all reasonable to me and so that, it seems like you know maybe it can, ['m not sure what the language and how it should be structured Yo allow that but, to the extent that it can be allowed and not open Pandora's box I guess. And 1 don't know what Pandora 's Box is in this scenario. But, I'm supportive of those suggestions being made by the testimony. MONTGOMERY: Is somebody from the audience allowed to say anything. GALDONES: You can, through public testimony. MONTGOMERY: Can 1 step forward? GAEDONES: Sure. 12 EXHIBIT E MONTGOMERY: (inaudible) GALDONES: However, I would like to have Mr. Yuen address Commissioner [washita's statement. YUEN: I will have to have, to be comfortable 1 would have to have some scale, some limit to the size of the operation other than a percentage of gross. The extreme end of Pandora 's Box would be a tour bus every 10 minutes which wuld happen. And that would, if we had an operation on that scale, we would want to see a special permit. 1 WASH ITA: Could not this kind of concerns be addressed in the conditions that you're allowed to impose when the permit is applied for? YUEN: The difficulty is that we don't want to impose conditions on an ad-hoc basis. That if we have a level, if we have a maximum number of visitors we want to apply that to everybody and not have somebody come in and say, and us have to sit there in the office and say oh we think your operation should have a maximum of a hundred visitors a day but this other one can have 500 visitors a day. IWASHITA: 1 guess the kind of conditions that 1 was thinking about basically is on the suggestion made, would be on the type of vehicle that's allowed. In other words, there should be a standard nn 3 axle buses, nothing more than 2 axle vehicles allowed and if you want to do anything more then you come for a special permit. That kind of relatively easy enforceable regulation seems to me more practical. YU F,N: Well, there are places and there are people that can have tour bus. You could have good highway access, you could have a good place for a tour place to come and pull off and I don't see a reason to ban tour buses generally. We have a condition that does talk about safe access that we would look at the access but say, you have an orchid farm on the volcano highway and you have a big lot and you have a place for a tour bus to pull off and visitors to come out I don't see a problem with having a tour bus there. I WASHITA: I guess that Akatsuka Fanns and those kind of op- they operate on special permit right° And if you're looking at, as a practical matter, 1 have had clients that they're with this tourism industry and it scans to me that if you're going to operate on, it's your intent to operate on a scale where you're going to have bus loads of 50 people at a time come into your operation on a regular basis and you have a deal with Jack's tours and all the other operators to, you know, for those people to come it's not going to be a big deal for you to do a special perniit to get that operation approved. I would think from the County's perspective that that's the kind of operation that you want to have some oversight over more than what would be generally allowed under the intent of this Bill that's why 1 think that can be a limitation. If you want to have busloads of 50 people coming at a time from the tour, from the ships that come in or however, right the Japanese tourists arc flying in do their thing that you ought to get a special permit to run that kind of an operation, if you're going to do that. Yl1EN: You could have bus once a week for example or twice a week and 1 don't know that, that's the kind of thing that 1 would say if you have decent off street loading I 13 EXH1B[T E wouldn't require a special pcnnit frankly. So that's the kind of line, in my mind, of where, what I would draw here. Yes, if you had 4 or 5 a day you would exceed the numbers that we're talking about and you would have to get a special permit. GALDONES: Ma'am is your testimony going to belong? I'm trying to determine if I want to take a break now or later cause we've been sitting for 2 hours. MONTGOMERY: Well we've been here since this morning ourselves. I'll be fast very fast. GALDONES: Okay, can you please; I need to have you sworn in. Could you please raise your hand`? Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the Hawaii County Planning Commission? MONTGOMERY: 1 do. GALDONES: Could you please state your name and your address and you may begin your testimony. MONTGOMERY: Yeah, it's Marcy Montgomery and I'm 83-5294 Painted Church Road. I'm the Executive Director of Heritage Ranch which is anon-profit organization. We're doing a variety of projects here but I also represent abou120 different farms who are trying to get together to do an Ag Tourism project. I'm not going to express an opinion but I just wanted to express a concern on their behalf: When you think these things through and you try and make these definitions you've gotta think in terms of the fact that some of these fanners only have 2 acres. And if they're making 6,000 an acre on coffee and so they've got a 12,000 income they may trod that they're making more than 50% of that through an Ag tourism program once they really get it going. So I'm worried about all of these restrictions like the other fanners are saying is that you have to think in terms of all scales of farms and make sure that we're not somehow crippling the small, small fanner who has the potential to do some really excellent things in Ag tourism. And 1 know that you're talking 30,000 above and then it goes into Planning and that's tine for the big ranches but what about all those little fanners. YUEN: When you say that they might make more than 50% from tourism, what would they be- If they sell their own products to the tourists we don't count that as Ag tourism income we count that as faun income you see. MONTGOMERY: Well, there are- YUEN: So what will their Ag tourism inwme be? MONTGOMERY: Well there are some farms that have been talking about maybe offering like a cooking lass and a variety of other types of things that, like we said, maybe we haven't even thought about yet. You know, there may be things that spin out of this that are really quite wonderful and do really good things for the tourists who visit and also kind of regenerate the local economy. So I'm just expressing a concern, not to put so much restriction on this that the small farners aren't able to he creative and also somehow they look aC their tax forms and all of a sudden they see that number creeping up to 50%. Are they then supposed to cut back and not 14 EXHIBIT E run that part of their business an}~nore, that doesn't really seem fair to the farmer. So I'm not sure why it's tied so much to the percentage of commodity as compared to the service, as long as it's all tarm related. Yeah, cause like Knott's Berry Farm probably has zero dollars in commodity sales. So that's not really a fair comparison. So Pve just been sitting here, listening and worrying about all those little farmers who aren't here to speak for themselves, who only have the 2 or 3 or 4 acres, who may spin something out of this that's rea]ly quite good for their economy but then are going to feel that kind of restriction. GALDONES: Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA: Are we going to do a recess if that's in order? GALDONES: If there's no question of Ms. Montgomery so [can excuse her. If there are no questions, 1'd like to call for a short recess. RECESSED: The Chair called for a recess at 6:30 p.m. RECONVENED: The meeting reconvened at 6:35 p.m. GALDONES: Will the Hawaii County Planning Commission be back in order. Commissioners are there any questions or any comments? If not, Mc Yuen. YUEN: Yeah, t have a suggestion and this is because the Commission has spent some time with this both at the previous meeting and today. I sense that the Commission may not be satisfied with all aspects of this but what I would request is because this does go to the Council if the Commission would make a generally favorable recommendation and then the Commissioners can add any comments to that, that they might want to make, or any suggestions. I would like to ro-work the Bill along the lines that I discussed a minute or two ago and then we will send it up to the Council with the changes that 1 discussed and with any comments and suggestions that the Commissioners might want to make along with, what 1 would ask for is a generally, favorable recommendation. GALDONES: Commissioner Springer. SPRINGER: In addition to the opportunity to give public testimony at the time that the County Council hears this measure would the testimony submitted to us go forward to the Council as well? YUEN: Do we generally summarize it or do we send iC up, the testimony? HAYASHI: We send the testimony up. Wait, not necessarily, we can send the testimony up in this particular case. YUEN: I think that would be a good idea. We'll send up the written testimony and we'll scud up a copy of the minutes when we have it. ALAMEDA: Question. IS EXHIBIT F. GALDONES: Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA: Thank you Chair. Also, the comments that you said that we could add if we were to go forward and make a generally, favorable recommendation, how would we add those comments and where? YUEN: Well, I'd suggest the Commissioners just make them on the record right now and we would- rather than trying to take a vote on and trying to say whether these are comments of a majority, 1 think given the amount of time we've spent on this. And the fact that thcrc arc a lot of different parts to this, if the Commissioners just want to make comments that go up, we would just summarize them as comments of the individual Commissioners and send them up to the Council. GALDONES: Commissioner Iwashita. 1 W ASH ITA: I'm ready to make the motion as suggested by the Director. GALDONES: Motion is in order. IWASHITA: [move that the Hawaii County Planning Commission express its general favorable recommendation on the Ag Tourism Bill as presented by the Director and that it be rcdrattcd in accordance with the testimony and comments of the Commissioners and forwarded to the County Council as so amended. SPRINGER: Second. GALDONES: It has been moved by Commissioner Iwashita and seconded by Commissioncr Springer that the amendment to Chapter 25, Zoning Code of the Hawaii County Code relating to Agricultural Tourism be given a generally favorable recommendation to the County Council. IWASHITA: That's correct. GAI,DONES: Further discussion. IWASHITA: For the record Mr. Chair. At the suggestion of the Director 1'd like to make a record that 1 believe the suggestion of a preamble recognizing the importance of agriculture as expressed in the State Constitution, the Charter and other laws, that it be rccogni~ed and that that is part of the purpose of presenting this ordinance. GALDONEiS: So noted. Further discussion? Hearing none, Norman. HAYASHI: Mr.lwashita. IWASHITA: Aye. 16 EXHIBIT E HAYASHI: Ms. Springer. SPRINGER: Ycs. HAYASHI: Mr. Alameda. ALAMF,DA: Yes. HAYASHI: Mr. Graham. GRAHAM: Aye. I IAYASHI: Chair Galdones. GALDONF.S: Aye. HAYASHI: Motion carries. GALDONES: Thank you Norman. For those of you, who have testitied this afternoon, thank you very much for sharing with us. And as you heard what the vote will be, we'll be forwarding it to the County Council. And at that time, whatever the draft will be, then you will have again the opportunity to express your comments to the County Council as the drafts come up, as presented to the County Council. Thank you. This discussion ended at 6:40 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Lynette Sanemitsu, West Hawaii Secretary 17 EXHIBIT E