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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-03-02 TGP AMENDMENT PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAII HEARING TRANSCRIPT MARCH 2, 2007 A regularly advertised hearing on the AMENDMENTS TO THE GENERAL PLAN PROCEDURES was called to order at 10:06 a.m. in the County of Hawaii, Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawaii, with Chairman William Graham presiding. PRESENT:William Graham ABSENT & EXCUSED: C. Kimo Alameda Takashi Domingo Andrew Iwashita Alvin Rho Rene€ Siracusa RodneyWatanabe Rell Woodward Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher Yuen, Planning Director Norman Hayashi, Planning Program Manager Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner And 5 people from the public in attendance INITIATOR: PLANNING DIRECTOR Action on a draft ordinance regarding the General Plan amendment procedures. GRAHAM:We have an addendum to our original agenda so that after the Unfinished Business No. 1, we have a 1a‚ of Unfinished Business, which is an item we€ve carried forward over several meetings before. It€s asking for action on a draft ordinance regarding the General Plan amendment procedures; and this was initiated by the Planning Director. And maybe Mr. Yuen can give us a little rundown on this now; and keep in mind we have two new Commissioners also. Chris, go ahead, please. YUEN:Okay, this is an item that has been on the agenda a few times before. But for the sake of the new members, I€m going to go over this a little bit. In about 5 or 10 minutes time, I think I can give a summary of the changes that are being proposed to the General Plan amendment procedures. Just for a little bit of overview and background on this, the County Council in the latter part of last year initiated a bill to change the procedure for amending the General Plan. The procedure for amending the General Plan itself is a part of the General Plan. So this is an amendment to the General Plan. The basic concern expressed by the Council was that it took too long -- especially if the Council initiated a change to the General Plan, initiated an amendment -- because of the timeframe for the Planning Director and Planning Commission to review, that it would take up to 1EXHIBIT B seven months from the time the Council wanted to move on something to the time when they actually got it back and could vote on it. So the Council initiated this bill. Under the General Plan procedures you have a comprehensive General Plan review which happens every ten years and then you have interim General Plan amendments which can happen at any time, in which it can be initiated by either the Council or the Planning Director. The Planning Director initiates and conducts a comprehensive review. The comprehensive review is really supposed to end up with a revised General Plan. And we did one, the Planning Department started the last comprehensive review around 1999. It got sent up to the Council at the end of 2001 and was passed by the Council in February 2005. So the next comprehensive review should be done around the 2015 period. Frankly, revising the amendment procedures would not have been a priority for the Department at this time; but because the Council initiated this bill we looked at the amendment procedures anddidanalternativebill.Weweren€tinfullagreementwithsomeofproposalsbytheCouncil for the procedures and the timeframe. But we believe that the current amendment procedure could be improved, there could be more clarity to it; and so we have a proposed amendment. Now the bill that came to the Planning Commission from the Council has, the time for the Planning Commission to review that bill expired, and it has gone back to the Council with a negative recommendation from the Planning Commission. The County Council has not acted on it again. Our request would be for the Council to wait for this bill to come up and to look at them both together. And, you know, the bottom line is that our request is that the Planning Commission send the Council a favorable recommendation on the bill that you have before you to amend the General Plan amendment procedures. So let me just walk through the changes that are proposed in this bill from the current procedure. And you have the proposed bill in light yellow in front of you. First change deals with the comprehensive review. And if you have any questions about this raise your hand and stop me because it€s probably easier to deal with them as we go through them. The current language sounds like the Planning Director initiates the comprehensive review ten years after the last General Plan has been enacted. Because the comprehensive review takes a couple of years from the time public hearings, Planning Director formulation, going up to Council, this results in the General Plan getting revised actually every 12 years or so, best case scenario. So we wanted to change it. So it€s said that the Planning Director has to, it doesn€t give a time for the Planning Director to initiate the comprehensive review, rather it gives the Planning Director a deadline for getting the amendments to the Council ten years from the time of the last enactment of the comprehensive review. So the Planning Director has to plan a little bit and work backwards from that date and figure out all the timeframes. And what it is going to result is, is the comprehensive review is going to start sometime in probably 2013 and the package of the revised General Plan be forwarded to the Council in February 2015. That€s how that would work. The next meaningful change is that this gives an opportunity for the County Council to put amendments into the comprehensive review. The current process says that the Council can initiate interim amendments, but the Council cannot initiate amendments during the comprehensive review. And this can be a little frustrating for the County Council because there€s this comprehensive review going on for which they had no opportunity to directly submit 2EXHIBIT B an amendment. So this gives the County Council notice that the comprehensive review has begun; and then the Council can put amendments into the comprehensive review, or propose amendments for the comprehensive review. They would do this by resolution. Then there is some tightening up of timeframes for the Planning Director. The first one is that the Planning Director has what€s called a public workshop on the new General Plan, actually we€ll have more than one workshop. But what it says is, and this is the time for the public to weigh in on this before it even gets to the Planning Commission and before it gets to the Council; and this simply says that instead of having a 60-day timeframe after the close of public workshops for the public to submit comments to the Planning Director, there€s a 21-day timeframe. Then the next thing that happens is that the amendments that are proposed by the Planning Director and the County Council goes to the Planning Commission. And, again, the timeframe for the Director to do this has been shortened from 60 days to 30 days from the deadline for public comments to submitting it to the Planning Commission. The next real change is in 8; and this actually doesn€t significantly change the timeframe for the PlanningCommissiontodealwiththecomprehensivereviewoftheGeneralPlan.It€sstill roughly a 5-month timeframe. But the current ordinance breaks it up into the public hearing portion; and then it says close of public hearing and shall act within -. If you look at the current 7 and 8, the current 7 and 8 gives a 90-day time period for the Planning Commission to hold public hearings and then a 60-day time period for the Planning Commission to take a vote and make its recommendation. This close of public hearing thing as people who have been on the Commission a while have noticed is a little bit confusing because of the State Sunshine Law. The Planning Commission continues to hearing public testimony on all agenda items, even though the public hearing has been technically closed. So rather than say the public hearing has closed and then we€re considering it and then you€re still taking public testimony, we just folded the whole timeframe together and said that the Planning Commission will do its review and recommendation in 150 days instead of saying that you have 90 days to do the public hearings and 60 days to make a review and recommendation. So the overall timeframe has not actually changed in this respect. Then there€s a change on the next page, on the top of the next page, that€s meant to clarify the extent of changes that the County Council can make when these amendments get up to the County Council. And the basic idea here is that the Charter says that all General Plan changes are supposed to be reviewed by the Planning Commission. Now what happens at the County Council, clearly the County Council can make wording changes, they could scale back the extent of the map change from, say, covering 100 acres to covering 50 acres, because those are not new amendments or new changes. But we wanted to really give guidance to the scope of changes that can be made at the County Council and make it clear that they can€t make a change that has the effect of being a new amendment without sending it back to the Planning Commission for a review. So that covers the changes to -. WOODWARD:Mr. Yuen -. YUEN:Yes? 3EXHIBIT B WOODWARD:I might ask you a question about the revisions to that section. I noticed that one of the things that has been stricken is the time limit, that there is no longer a time limit. Is that -? YUEN:Right, you€re right to notice that. As a practical matter we were concerned about what happens, you know, what happens if the County Council doesn€t vote on something within 120 days, and not to imply that the whole process becomes invalid, which is a debatable point under the current language. So knowing that the County Council may take time to reach an agreement or a consensus on voting the General Plan through, we felt it was better not to have a time limit for them, rather than to have a time limit that might be implied as essentially vetoing or voting down the whole process if they don€t come to a vote within 120 days. WOODWARD:Thank you. YUEN:Yes? SIRACUSA:Atthetopofpage3weweretalkingaboutthegeneralintentandsubject matter of the proposed amendments. I would feel a lot more comfortable with this, considering that there are community development plans that are being worked on right now and more to follow for the other districts, if there was an indication in there that changes to the General Plan shall not conflict with community development plans in either substance or intent. Would you comment on that idea, please. YUEN:Well, I think that would be burdening this too much to have -. The plans should not conflict with each other. But you may end up passing an amendment to the General Plan that does actually supercede something in the community development plan. The General Plan is more, if you were to put them in a level of importance, the community development plans have to be consistent with the General Plan. You know, these things are enacted by ordinance; and if the Council wants to make a change in the General Plan that does contradict something in the community development plan which is also enacted by ordinance of the Council, then the Council should be able to do that. So I would not recommend making a change like that. Okay? Going on to interim amendments, this is where the first change that€s other than -. Okay, in A, the current language says that the Planning Director is supposed to do a feasibility determination; and that€s not really the right description of what the Planning Director does in an interim General Plan amendment. You know, generally, say there€s an interim General Plan amendment to change an area from Extensive Agriculture to Low Density Urban with the idea that you€re going to do a Residential subdivision, generally ideas like that are feasible. It can be done. The question is whether it€s a good idea or not, based on overall kinds of planning considerations. So the wording here is simply to change it to, simply that you make a recommendation, not feasibility. Feasibility is not really a good word for what -. Just to give an example of, you know, the kind of thing that we dealt with a minute ago, if we were to do a feasibility study on the proposed rezoning amendment that we had, well, it€s feasible but it doesn€t mean it€s necessarily a good idea. So then the timing is that the time for the Planning Director to review the County Council initiated General Plan interim amendment is cut from 120 days to 60 days; and this should be enough for the Planning Director to make a recommendation. And this is in line with the 4EXHIBIT B Council€s desire to shorten the timeframes, that they have an idea about an interim GeneralPlan amendment that it not take up a huge portion of the 2-year term that they have. So this is one timeframe that has been shortened. It clarifies that the Planning Director can suggest changes and modifications. C is basically the same, no I€m sorry, C is a little different. There was an inconsistency in that there was a requirement for public notice in the comprehensive review, if the Planning Director proposed to change a designation of land to Open or Conservation but it was not required for an interim General Plan amendment initiated by the Council. We think out of fairness to the landowner and given the potential impact of a change like this, the landowner should be notified. So we put this into this process. Okay, then the proposed amendment gives the Planning Commission 60 days to consider the proposed amendment after receiving it from the Planning Director and sending its recommendationuptotheCountyCouncil.Thisiscomparedto90dayscurrently. Youhave,thecurrentpracticeisyouhave60daystohavethehearingandthenanother30days to make the recommendation. So that has been shortened slightly. Then F that you see on page 4 is the same concept that we discussed before, which is to clarify what the extent is of the changes that the County Council can make to its own amendments once it gets back up to the County Council. Then we get to interim amendments proposed by the Planning Director. D is the same notification to landowner requirement. E actually I think we€ve lengthened the timeframe for the Planning Commission to consider amendments initiated by the Planning Director. And then F on page 5 is the same concept of clarifying what the scope of changes are that the County Council can make. So with that explanation we are asking that the Commission send a favorable recommendation on this bill to the Council. GRAHAM:Thank you, Mr. Yuen. Do the Commissioners have any further comments, questions? Commissioner Siracusa. SIRACUSA:Yes. I noticed that one part that wasn€t changed which I would probably have liked to see changed was on page 5, No. (3), General Public, (b)(i), a filing fee of $500 if a member of the public wants to initiate; and to me that amount of money is designed to discourage public initiation. And then (c)(i) is that the Planning Director unilaterally can reject that application, even if they pay their $500, without any hearing at all; and I have a problem with that also. YUEN:Well, this comes from the fact that the County Charter says that only the Planning Director and the County Council can initiate changes to the General Plan. All this does 5EXHIBIT B is provide a formal mechanism for the public, which may include a landowner, to initiatea change and have it either accepted or rejected for further processing. The landowner ora member of the public that wants to do a General Plan change can also ask the County Council to do it; and then the County Council can initiate it by resolution. Now there€s also nothing that prevents the public from trying to persuade the Planning Director to initiate a General Plan amendment without paying $500. But, you know, this is different than a rezoning in that a landowner can initiate a rezoning under the Code but the Charter says that only the Planning Director or the County Council can initiate a change to the General Plan. So if the public wants to initiate a change to the General Plan, they basically have to persuade the Planning Director or the Council. If we didn€t have a procedure like this, that would be their only recourse. The only point of this $500 thing, this $500 application, is to formally, is a formal way to make a request and to get the Director to say, yes, I€m going to do it or no I€m not going to do it. But there is also an informal route to do this both withthePlanningDirectorandtheCountyCouncilthatwouldnotinvolveafilingfee. GRAHAM:CommissionerDomingo? DOMINGO:Isortofagreewithyou,Mr.Yuen,inthefactofthematterthatIhave regarded the General Plan as a primary planning document for the County. It€s somewhat sacred, so to speak, because, you know, it is a General Plan that sets the direction of growth; and the General Plan states its policy in which the direction of growth is dictated upon, you know, with all the studies and comments and whatever that is attached to it. And that€s why I consider it a sacred document. And if the public wants to initiate a General Plan Amendment, then it can be done during the review process and their point be made known, whether how strong it€d be or what. Because if you just leave it up to the public and anyone who cannot afford a $500 fee, there will be a number of proposed boundary amendments to consider; and that would create an unwieldy situation which the Department would have a lot of work to do. GRAHAM:Commissioner Domingo, are you suggesting that this whole section about general public initiating amendments not be included? DOMINGO:No, no I€m not suggesting it. The fact of the matter is if they want to they can. But the fact of the matter is they need to pay for that filing fee. And I think anyone who€d be faced with that would certainly think very seriously about whether or not it should be done. And what I€m saying again is that if anyone would like to propose any amendments that can be done by the citizen review process as hearings are being conducted. GRAHAM:Thank you. Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE:If we€re ready, I€m ready to make a motion. GRAHAM:Do we have any questions for Mr. Yuen? WATANABE:Oh, do we need to take any testifiers? 6EXHIBIT B GRAHAM:We do not have any testifiers signed up at this time. Is there anyone here in the public that wishes to testify on this matter right now? Looks like no one. We have no one. So, Commissioner Rho, you have a comment? RHO:I have a quick question. I probably just missed it. On page 4 at the very top, the Commission has 60 days to send it back to the County Council; and then on the bottom of page 4 when the Planning Director does an amendment the Commission has 120 days. And I think both were increased from 30 days. I just wondered what the reason was for 60 and 120, and -? YUEN:Well, both were actually 90. Under the current ordinance there€s 60 days for the public hearing and then there€s 30 days for the Commission to make its recommendation. So you go through the mechanics of after 60 days you say move to close the public hearing and then you have 30 more days to take a vote and send a recommendation. You don€t have to take thefulltime,butthat€sthetimelimitsunderthecurrent.Sothat€swhyIsaythecurrent timeframe is 90. And what we did in this is that we rolled the two timeframes together and we made it 60 days for the Council initiated ones and 120 for the Planning Director initiated ones. And frankly the reason was the expression by the County Council of a desire to tighten up the timeframes a little bit so that they, if they initiate a General Plan amendment then they€ll get it back -- it has to go to the Planning Director and the Planning Commission per the County Charter -- but they want to get it back within, you know, a reasonable timeframe. And certainly any General Plan amendment is important and nobody should feel rushed to do it. By the same token 60 days for the Planning Commission is going to be a minimum of three meetings for the Commission to consider and take a vote on the amendment; and we felt that that was enough time for the Commission to review something where they basically have an advisory power on something that does eventually have to go back up to the County Council. GRAHAM:I might also add just a comment for the new members of the Commission, that Commissioner Iwashita who€s not here today took an active interest in this particular item, this General Plan Amendment revision. And his concern more was that he felt as Commissioner Domingo said before that the General Plan is an important long-range document; and I think he was somewhat concerned about tightening the timeframes a little; and his feeling was more that we don€t need to take steps to facilitate these processes since they are long term and shouldn€t necessarily be more easily modified. So I just wanted to advise you guys that he did take an interest; and that€s my understanding of the general tone of his concern. Any other comments? Commissioner Domingo. DOMINGO:It seems like the amendments and the bill is designed to facilitate the processing of the General Plan review; and I guess with this it would probably require additional personnel to fulfill that task. YUEN:Well, I don€t think that the, you know, we have vacancies that we€re trying to fill in the Planning Department now. These changes themselves don€t cause more work. And on this basic subject of facilitate/shorten, I do think that besides the timeframes, there are changes that are made in here that clarify existing procedures and are an improvement. My last pitch on the timeframes would be that I think that the timeframes that are being proposed here are more than reasonable for the Director and the Planning Commission to review and think 7EXHIBIT B about General Plan amendments. They are not timeframes that result in something that€s being railroaded through the Planning Commission or through the Planning Department. GRAHAM:Thank you, Mr. Yuen. If we have no further comments, we can go for a motion and a vote on this. Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE:Yeah, I move that a favorable recommendation be forwarded to the County Council for the Planning Director initiated revisions to amending the Hawaii County General Plan procedure, based on the Director€s recommendations. DOMINGO:Second. GRAHAM:Moved by Commissioner Watanabe and seconded by Commissioner Domingo. Do we have any discussion on this motion? We can go toa vote then. Jeff? DARROW:Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The motion before us is to send a favorable recommendationtotheHawaiiCountyCouncilforthePlanningDirector€sinitiatedGeneralPlan Amendment procedures. Commissioner Watanabe? WATANABE:Aye. DARROW:Commissioner Domingo? DOMINGO:Aye. DARROW:Commissioner Rho? RHO:Aye. DARROW:Commissioner Siracusa? SIRACUSA:Nay. DARROW:Commissioner Woodward? WOODWARD:Aye. DARROW:And Mr. Chairman? GRAHAM:Aye. DARROW:The motion passes five to one. GRAHAM:Thank you, Jeff. 8EXHIBIT B The discussion ended at 10:40 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Sharon M. Nomura, East Hawaii Secretary 9EXHIBIT B