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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2005-02-18 TDEUTSCH PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT FEBRUARY 18, 2005 KRISTINA DEUTSCH (REZ 04-029) A regularly advertised hearing on the applicationwas called to order at 10:15 a.m. in the King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel, Kamakahonu Ballroom, 75-5660 Palani Road, Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i, with Chairman Fred Galdones presiding. PRESENT:William GrahamABSENT & EXCUSED:Rene’ Siracusa Jeffrey McCallEarl Fujikawa C. Kimo Alameda Francis Smith Hannah Springer Fred Galdones Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher Yuen, Planning Director Norman Hayashi, Program Manager Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner And 2 people from the public in attendance APPLICANT: KRISTINA DEUTSCH (REZ 04-029) Application for a Change of Zone for approximately 20.475 acres from an Agricultural 20-acre (A-20a) to an Agricultural 10-acre (A-10a) district. The property is located along the southwest side of Kaloko Drive across from the Kaloko Drive-Haleamau Street intersection, Kaloko Mauka Subdivision, Kaloko, North Kona, Hawaii, TMK: 7-3-26:11. GALDONES:Commissioners, we are under unfinished business agenda item number 3, applicant Kristina Deutsch (REZ 04-029). This is an application for a change of zone for approximately 20.475 acres from an Agriculture 20-acre (A-20a) to an Agriculture 10-acre (A-10a) district. Norman. HAYASHI:Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Commission. Good morning. Referring to the location map on the wall, the subject property is indicated by this blue dot or blue circle. It is situated within the Kaloko-Mauka subdivision and is situated along the south- west side or east-side of Kaloko Drive at the intersection with Haleamau Street. The various colors on the map indicate the current zoning of the area. The darker shaded green area is designated Agriculture 1-acre, excuse me, Agriculture 20-acres. We have other Agriculture 10-acre zoned lands that are in this blue, darker blue shaded area. We also have some Agriculture 5-acre zoned properties, as well as Agricultural zoned properties within the Kaloko- Mauka Subdivision. The applicant intends to subdivide the property into two lots, two 10-acre lots. They also intend to construct a single family dwelling on each of the lot at approximately $450,000 per dwelling. The property is currently vacant and it is situated at the elevation of 3,300 feet. The- we recently received the- from the applicant letters from the- a letter from the EXHIBIT B State Historic Preservation District indicated that there would be no historic effect on this particular property. The Planning Director is recommending approval of this particular application. At the last meeting which was- we were not able to hear this application, we submitted a revised Condition H as was recommended by the Department of Public Works and you all were- the revised Condition H was circulated to you. Are there any questions at this time? GALDONES:Commissioners? Commissioner Graham. GRAHAM:Norman, just for clarification, I found a couple of inconsistencies between the County background and environmental report as opposed to the report that goes with the recommendation, the one on the yellow. In the County departmental background and environmental report I noticed that it has on Page 2 up near the top, it’s talking about the building envelope it says, “The conditions have included a 60-foot wide ‘forest reserve easement’ along the…public street frontage” but the yellow recommendations call for a 100-foot, which I think it’s what- is what the County is doing. So the 100-foot is correct? HAYASHI:That is correct. The County Environmental, I mean, County’s Background Environmental Report was submitted with the application by the applicant. In cases, it may have been an oversight on the applicant’s part regarding the 100-feet versus the 60-feet. GRAHAM:And the other one was probably a similar thing. On page 12 of that same white paper it says availability of water. It says water is available via 8-inch line on Kaloko Drive and when you look at the yellow pages it says water available from a 4-inch line. Is a 4-inch line is what’s there? HAYASHI:In this particular case, yes, it would be a- one second let me take a look at that. According to the Department of Water Supply they indicated that it is a 4-inch line to this particular property. GRAHAM:All right, thank you. HAYASHI:Also I just wanted to note that as far as the background report, it lists the previous general plan designation for this area. Since the general plan was recently adopted I believe that this particular area is designated as other agricultural land, under the current- the new general plan. GALDONES:Any further questions, Commissioners, of Norman? Norman, there’s going to be two other items on the agenda in reference to any development at that Kaloko subdivision, and there is going to be reference to impact fees regarding the traffic there. Could you give us an update on the status of that- of any improvements that’s planned for that intersection. HAYASHI:I believe one of the applicants- previous applicants- was required to do a traffic impact study for that particular area identifying what the impacts would be. I’m not sure which application it was, and currently we’re checking to see whether such a report was actually submitted. So, at this time, I don’t have any more information. And we don’t know what 2 exactly the improvements would be, although the Department of Transportation indicated some of the general kinds of improvements that would be required, they would like to see required for this particular intersection. GALDONES:Commissioners, any further questions of Norman? Hearing none, will the applicant or -. Excuse me, Commissioner Springer. SPRINGER:Norman, while in the agricultural designation the requirement to retain 80% of the land covering forest- does the forest cover, is the forest cover considered an agricultural activity, maintaining the forest cover? HAYASHI:Well, forest cover could be considered an agricultural activity but I think the intent- the reason why we require that forest, retention of the forest- that area- a percentage of the property- that was based on the resolution that was adopted by the County Council. So that is the Council’s mandate that this particular area, whenever we rezone properties within this area that that particular condition be imposed. SPRINGER:Thank you. GALDONES:Seeing no further questions of Norman, will the applicant or his representative please step forward. Good morning, Mr. Mooers. Could you please raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter now before the Hawai`i County Planning Commission? MOOERS:I do. GALDONES:Could you please state your name, residence address and you may begin your testimony. MOOERS:My name is Greg Mooers. My address is 62-2365 Kanehoa Street, Kamuela, 96743. We have received the background report and recommendations and agree with everything that staff prepared. I would point out that since there are two others on the agenda today- similar situations that the – historically, the resolution the Council passed was passed to preserve the forest because there were people in Kaloko who had been doing wholesale grading in their property…(inaudible) and other sources of agricultural pursuit and they were concerned about water shed and the Alala, and other things. And at that time the Council did prepare a resolution that supported the rezoning of these properties from Ag-20 to Ag-10, provided they were willing to accept some pretty aggressive forest preservation plans, and those have been currently been adopted. The other, I think, potential benefit of these is the fact that the Department of Transportation usually talks about how dangerous the intersection is but that intersection improvements doesn’t appear anywhere on their plans as far as, you know, being on the books, so that clearly responsibility is going to fall to, I think, the County as it’s intersection here. The Council has normally been preparing, preparing impact related fees of this kind for number of years. And they’ve been applying them, 100% of those funds to the intersection rather than distributing them to police, fire, or whatever. But, you know, the funds are probably, I don’t know what the amount of that fund is now but it’s set for improvement of, for the last number of years so …(inaudible). 3 GALDONES:Mr. Yuen. YUEN:Could I just add to that? In the new General Plan we did refer to and include those Council resolutions from the mid-1990s that call for a retaining forest cover in connection with rezoning the mauka areas in Kaloko. It’s a- the Council resolutions really have a couple of parts to them. One was discouraging rezoning in mauka areas of Kona above certain elevations but then making an exception for Kaloko mauka if you have this forest cover to it. So, what I’d like to do also is include- that should be, if this is, if this gets a favorable recommendation of the Council we should include that in our report to the Council and mention that, that this is, in fact, consistent with the- these conditions are consistent with the new General Plan. GALDONES:Thank you. Commissioners, any questions of Mr. Mooers? Commissioner Graham? GRAHAM:I think this question might better be put just to the Planning Director but I wanted to ask when Mr. Mooers is here in case there’s any discussion he’d like to contribute on it. We do have a letter, which is our Exhibit D from the Police Department, that talks about concurrency and the traffic on the highway there; and the Police Department is saying essentially that the development should follow the County’s policy on concurrency and that they’re concerned about the traffic to Mamalahoa Highway is going bumper to bumper in the morning and afternoon hours, that’s our Exhibit D. You know personally my sense is that is, you know, would be somewhat fair at this point if these small rezonings to change the…(inaudible) in this area and all, but it does feel like I don’t like to let this, contrary to the Police Department which has a lot of truth to it and so…(inaudible). So I was wondering if the Planning Director would like to make any comment. YUEN:Well, a couple of points on this, one is that there’s site specific issues for Kaloko, just the design of the intersection particularly. The strategy for solving that is- has been to collect these fair share assessments into a fund. I believe the fund is now a little over 300,000 and there is a- one of the assessments they were supposed to do some kind of design for improvement. I don’t know what the end result is going to be with that. The incremental addition of a few more lots is not going to greatly affect the situation at the intersection there. As far as the overall situation on Mamalahoa, one- again, scale is really important in all of these decisions. Just the scale of having a few lots or even if you take- even if you were to take the trend in Kaloko and say that all of Ag-20 lots in Kaloko go to 10 acres and for the lower elevations, the few remaining lots that have not be rezoned from Ag-20 to Ag-3 to Ag-5 get rezoned you’re not going to see- you’re going to see- you’re not going to see a large number of additional lots up there, nothing that really effects the- has any significant effect on the amount of traffic. The other thing is- as far as administration policy on concurrency, when we discuss this and when it resulted in the veto of the Clifto’s rezoning that was specific-, we specifically said that we were exempting a residential. If you- actually if you applied concurrency to residential in Kailua-Kona you’re going to do something counter-productive, which is cut off the future supply of additional homes in the area, at least through rezoning. So we were very cautious about saying that- we look at residential as part of the traffic solution and not necessarily part of the traffic problem. 4 SPRINGER:Mr. Chair. GALDONES:Commissioner Springer. SPRINGER:My fellow commissioners know that I have a grave concern regarding traffic, in particular in this area between Kalaoa and Kailua. And- one thing that ameliorates my concerns for Kaloko is that it’s- has been a longstanding point of entrance and leaving the Mamalahoa Highway. And so drivers on the road are familiar with traffic coming on and off of it as compared to developing a new point of ingress and egress onto the Mamalahoa Highway. Drivers on that section of road anticipate the needs of their fellow drivers coming or going off of Kaloko-Mauka Subdivision. Thanks. GALDONES:Thank you. Seeing no further questions from the Commissioners. Is there anyone here from the public to testify on this subject matter now before the Hawai`i County Planning Commission? Seeing none. Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA:Can I just- I didn’t hear us swear- did we swear the applicant in? GALDONES:Yes. ALAMEDA:Oh, okay. GALDONES:Thank you. Hearing no one from the- seeing that there’s no one here from the public to testify, Mr. Mooers, do you have any closing statement? MOOERS:No, sir. GALDONES:Commissioners, Planning Director recommends a favorable recommendation to be forwarded to the County Council. The pleasure of the Commissioners? Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA:Mr. Chair I move that- I move to send a favorable recommendation to the County Council on applicant Kristina Deutsch -? GALDONES:Deutsch. ALAMEDA:For a change of zone from Agriculture 20-acre to Agriculture 10-acre for approximately 20.475 acres of land be forwarded to the County Council. SPRINGER:Second. GALDONES:It has been moved by Commissioner Alameda, seconded by Commissioner Springer, that the application from Kristina Deustch, change of zone application REZ 04-029, be given a favorable recommendation by the Planning Commission and forwarded to the County Council. Discussions? Seeing none, Norman. 5 HAYASHI:Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just for clarification purposes does the motion also include the revised Condition H that was previously circulated, and that relates to the drainage condition that’s recommended by Department of Public Works. GALDONES:Thank you for bringing that up -. ALAMEDA:Correct. GALDONES:To our attention, Norman. Commissioner Alameda, that would also include the amendment to proposed Condition H? ALAMEDA:Yes, that would also include the amendment to proposed Condition H. GALDONES:Does the second agree? SPRINGER:Yes, I do. Thank you. HAYASHI:And also another thing is the statement that the property is consistent with the General Plan designation- the current General Plan designation. GALDONES:Yes. GRAHAM:Norman. GALDONES:Commissioner Graham? GRAHAM:I just wondered with regard to Planning Director’s comments about what we should send along with our recommendation to the Council, whether that would be included also, as to whether that was what you’re intending about the new General Plan, and whether that included with the full comment being made. HAYASHI:Yes. GRAHAM:Thank you. GALDONES:Okay, and also the motion will show that the background report and the recommendation as amended is part of the motion. HAYASHI:Yes. GALDONES:Seeing no further discussion, Norman? HAYASHI:Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA:Aye. HAYASHI:Commissioner Smith. 6 SPRINGER:Aye. HAYASHI:Commissioner Graham. GRAHAM:Aye. HAYASHI:Commissioner McCall. MCCALL:Aye. HAYASHI:Commissioner Springer. SPRINGER:Yes. HAYASHI:And Chair Galdones. GALDONES:Aye. HAYASHI:My apologies, I missed the seconder. Was that Commissioner Springer? SPRINGER:Yes. Thank you. GALDONES:Mr. Mooers, you will be informed in writing of today’s actions. The discussion ended at 10:36 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Lynette Sanemitsu, West Hawai`i Secretary 7