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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-09-01 Windward Exh C (Item 3 Kunimoto PL-SPP-2022-000015) WINDWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI`I HEARING TRANSCRIPT SEPTEMBER 1, 2022 A regularly advertised hearing on the application of RANDY KUNIMOTO (PL-SPP-2022- 000015) was called to order at 10:24 a.m. in the County of Hawaii Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawaii with Chair Dennis Lin presiding. COMMISSIONERS IN ATTENDANCE: Dennis Lin, Gilbert Aguinaldo, Lauren Balog, John C. Cross, Louis Daniele III, Wayne De Luz and Michelle Galimba. ALSO IN ATTENDANCE: Malia Kekai Esq. (Counsel for the Commission), Jean Campbell, Esq. (Counsel for the Planning Department), Zendo Kern (Planning Director), Clinton Mercado (Planner), Tracie-Lee Camero (Planner), Jessica Andrews (Planner), Janice Hata (Zoom Host), Alex Roy (Acting Planning Program Manager), and Melissa Dacayanan-Salvador (Windward Planning Commission Secretary) And 6 members from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: RANDY KUNIMOTO (PL-SPP-2022-000015) Special Permit to legitimize the use of existing personal tennis court facilities, a portion of an existing dwelling, and related improvements to provide compensated tennis lessons to the public on approximately 1.003 acres of land in the State Land Use Agricultural District. The subject property is located at 1625 Mele Manu Street within the Pacific Plantation Subdivision, "Pacific Plantation", Increment 1-A, F.P. 1927, Kukuau 2nd, South Hilo, Hawaii, TMK(3) 2-5-061:058. Secretary's Note: "—" indicates that there were technical and/or internet difficulties, which made the conversation inaudible. LIN: Okay, the next agenda item is applicant Randy Kunimoto, PL-SPP-2022-000015. Just to let everybody know this application has been withdrawn effective yesterday. So, the Commission will not be doing any action on this agenda item. However, I see that there are two (2) testifiers signed up for this matter so, if the testifiers would like to still testify on this matter, please come up. The first one I have here is Mr. Henry Lee Loy. KEKAI: They can come up at the same time actually. LIN: You guys can both come up at the same time, one on each side. The other person is Mr. Michael Bishop. TESTIFIERS: [Both came up to the table. One of the testifiers, Mr. Chairman?] LIN: Yes. 1 EXHIBIT C TESTIFIER: [I have some posters, could I put them on a chair or in front ofyou so you can see it] LIN: Sure. STAFF: [Placed 2 posters from one of the testifiers on the chairs for the Commission to see] LIN: I'll swear you in both at the same time if that's okay. Okay, I'll swear you in both at the same time. So, if you could please raise your hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth in this matter before the Windward Planning Commission? TESTIFIERS: Yes, I do. Yes, I do. LIN: Okay, Mr. Lee Loy, I'll have you go first. If you would please state your name and the area you live in and you have 3 minutes for your testimony. KEKAI: Oh,please hold the mic up. LEE LOY: My name is Dr. Henry Lee Loy; I'm a retired physician and I've lived at 1579 Mele Manu Street since 1996. Members of the Windward Planning Commission and fellow citizens, aloha kakahiaka. Good morning. We built our home there because we found it to be peaceful and quiet and close proximity to my office in Downtown Hilo and close to the Hilo Medical Center where I could quickly and efficiently get to and from at all hours of the night and day. I oppose the Special Use Permit application of Mr. Randy Kunimoto for a commercial tennis facility in a residential neighborhood. It is very difficult to testify against a neighbor. I wave hello to my neighbors and they all wave back. I've even waved to strangers, and they wave back to me too. If permitted for commercial enterprises, business will continue to adversely affect surrounding properties. Our property is one of those surrounding properties and we have been adversely impacted by traffic, noise, lights, and not knowing who's coming and going on Mele Manu Street which is a dead end. I'm a former athlete and I have the utmost respect for teachers and coaches. My Hilo High School basketball coach Al Manliguis taught me the four D's to achieving success. Desire, dedication, determination, and discipline are the key elements which I took and applied to my life's work and caring for others. No, I don't play tennis but it's in my blood. My grandfather was a champion tennis player in Phoenix, Arizona. Home of the nationals. He graduated from Mid-Pacific High School in Honolulu in 1915. Went to Detroit, Michigan where he studied auto mechanics and moved to Arizona where he raised his family and had a successful auto mechanic business. My mother said he loved the game of tennis and I have old newspaper articles about him successfully advocating for more tennis courts throughout the City of Phoenix. He played regularly and competitively. Until he was arrested by the FBI and put in prison during World War II only because he was a Japanese ancestry. [testifier shown some emotions] 2 EXHIBIT C I'm certain that the greater community of Hilo deserves a tennis school. But this neighborhood is not the right place. If the Planning Director who wrote a favorable recommendation and you, members of the Windward Planning Commission grant this Special Use Permit it will set a bad precedent for allowing illegal enterprises or schools that have been around for say 12 years to get started and come in for approval after the fact. Why have zoning laws? I ask each of you as members of the Windward Planning Commission for your empathy and understanding and put yourselves in our shoes and deny the permit. Thank you for your time and kind attention and I will answer any questions that you have. LIN: Thank you Dr. Lee Loy. Do any Commissioner have any questions? Oh, go ahead Vice Chair Galimba. GALIMBA: I just wanted to ask if you could or explain your posters since you brought them. LEE LOY: Yep. I told to try and hold them up and talk but I found it kind of cumbersome. I have 2 photographs. On the far right is the large coverall building that covers Mr. Kunimoto's tennis facility. He said that it's fairly visible from the road but as you can see from Mele Manu Street it's huge. Um' this photograph shows speed bumps that were place there because the traffic became very heavy, and people were speeding up and down going to and from their lessons. In fact, there was an incident in which I was driving home one day, one evening in the afternoon. A car behind me tailed me and I put on my blinkers to slow down and turn into my driveway and this car overtook me on the right shoulder between my car and the telephone pole and sped up and went into Mr. Kunimoto's residence. I think it was a player,perhaps, late for his lessons and I turned around in my driveway and I drove up to Mr. Kunimura [Kunimoto] and explained what happened. I told him, I was not happy, and someone could have been hurt because residents walk up and down the streets, they walk their dogs, they push their strollers and that's why I took these photos. This is just 2 of several photographs that I have submitted in my written testimony to you. Thank you for your question. LIN: Thank you Dr. Lee Loy. I'll move on to Mr. Bishop here. BISHOP: Good morning members. LIN: Could you please state your name and where you live. BISHOP: My name is Michael Bishop; my physical address is 1485 Mele Manu Street and Chair Lin and members of the Board. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm here fundamentally understanding that Mr. Kunimoto pulled his application so, my written comments are on file. I am here to support the objection to any further application in the process of acquiring an after- the-fact granting of a commercial business in an residential neighborhood. The Planning Commission report or assessment had pointed out a number of flaws with code violations or causes for concerns. Such as increased traffic, such as unregulated sewage disposal, cesspools, ADA incompliances, parking restrictions, other violations that were noted on the Planning 3 EXHIBIT C Commission's proposal. I'm just hoping that Mr. Kunimoto understands the situation that the neighbors are facing with this. I don't want to see a tax burden being levied on the property owners that are neighboring because Mr. Kunimoto's evaluated sales of his property might generate that. Thank you for your time. LIN: Thank you Mr. Bishop. Um' at this time, I will bring up Ms. Fay Sakata. You can come up too sir. MALE PERSON.- Good morning, my name is Kris LaGuire, I'm an attorney— KERN: Use your microphone. MALE PERSON: Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Kris LaGuire, I'm the attorney for Steve and Fay Sakata, they are the Petitioners for Standing in this matter. I'm not sure if you want to take their testimony first or I did want to point out that I believe with the withdrawal of the application, the Planning Department had noted in its initial zoning determination that they told him cease the tennis operation, apply for a Special Permit and then he asked if he could resume operations, the Planning Department allowed him to do so. That's being going on since I think December of last year and in that statement from the Planning Department said if your Special Permit is denied you must cease all tennis operations immediately. So, hearing yesterday afternoon that his application had been withdrawn, I just want to make sure that either the Planning Department or the Commission can assure that not just the Sakata's but the other neighbors that if the operation continues that there would be an immediate notice to him to cease and desist. Because by withdrawing it, I'm assuming that prior notice of being required to get the Special Permit might allow him to just resume and we have to start all over again. The Sakata's filed their zoning complaint in November 2020 and then the Planning Department acted on it in November 2021. So, that's the reason I was here and wanted to inform the Commission of that and I'll let Mr. and Mrs. Sakata address the Commission unless you have any questions. LIN: Thank you Mr. LaGuire. At this point, since the application has been withdrawn, the Commission will not be doing any decision on the petition. However, any questions regarding the operations or the application itself will be directed to the Planning Director. But I will take testimony if you still want to provide your testimony. Okay, if you're both providing testimony, if you could raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter before the Windward Planning Commission? SAKATA'S: Yes, I do. LIN: If you would please state your name, the area you live and you can provide your testimony. F. SAKATA: Fay Sakata, I reside at 1617 Mele Manu Street and I'm a next-door neighbor to Randy and there's a vacant lot between my home and his home. My husband is going to give a statement but, you already received our letter that was posted and if you have any questions that you'd like to ask I'm more than happy to answer any questions. Thank you. 4 EXHIBIT C S. SAKATA: I'm Steve Sakata. We live right next door 1617 Mele Manu Street. You have a letter that we submitted. But let me just touch up on some highlights in that letter. There are also some photographs that should be in your record that shows Mr. Kunimoto and the neighbors there and there's another photograph of Mr. Kunimoto and our house that's right next door. It's very uncomfortable testifying against our neighbor because we have to live with them after all this is done. But the Covenant does say that there is no commercial business that is allowed in this area and so he has been doing this for 17 years now without a permit and we assumed he had a permit. Just because we know him personally, he coached our daughter, we worked with his parents really well, we worked in tournaments and all that and we just trusted him and he's a good friend. And so, when we found out that he didn't have a permit and he's applying for a Special Permit. Over the years, we've been trying to talk to him about the noise and the traffic and he always would give us, he'll say okay, we'll work on it. He'll do things like he'd cut down his schedule for a few days and he goes right back up to 9:30. 7:00 o'clock in the morning to 9:30 at night, 7 days a week and it got to be really frustrating. Somebody told me that Randy had told her that he doesn't want to talk to me anymore about my concerns about the noise and traffic. So, it's very frustrating that we couldn't talk to him anymore. Like Dr. Lee Loy had said that the traffic has been getting worse and worse over the 17 years. He's doing really well. He's really a good coach, his business just grew and grew and grew and we've been talking to him all this time. But it just kept growing and it is getting out of hand. He says there's eight(8) students per class and there's 8 classes but what you don't understand is if there's 8 students, 8 cars come up. Four(4) cars out of the 8 drop-off students and 4 cars goes down. In about 45 minutes later at least 4 come up to pick to their kids and then 8 goes down and then there's another 8 coming up. So, you have 80 to 100 cars all day and if you look at the picture this one here, the cul-de-sac. When these players drive into his driveway, they come up upon our side of the driveway of the cul-de-sac. They don't make a nice safe turn; they go right in front of our driveway. So, sometimes we have to realty be careful how we come out of our driveway because the cars come up to in front of our driveway. And there are times when a lot of cars get backed up because of, I don't know, the timing of it. There are three (3) cars dropping off kids in the cul-de-sac which is illegal and they're waiting for the other cars to come out and so that bottleneck at our cul-de-sac gets really bad. Because it's a dead-end street, right. And Randy as I recall, in the paper that he submitted, and another customer said that he has an alternate site that he is giving lessons at. So, with that, I'm thinking why he doesn't use the alternate site for all of his classes and stuff instead of in a residential area. At any rate, he says that he puts up signs, slow down, don't tailgate. But they tailgate and they don't slow down. We got humps put in but, they speed between the humps and sometimes they just zoom right over the hump. As Dr. Lee Loy said, we walk our dogs down the street, we got hit almost a couple of times and had to yell at them because they're not paying attention. They make a turn; they go make a wide turn and we are walking our dogs. That's why, I explained all that to Randy and no improvement at all and so it gets more frustrating, more frustrating and the sound. I read the report from the Planning Commission recommendation about Randy will work on the sound but, 5 EXHIBIT C when you look at the map there is actually a forest, a small forest between his lot and ours. And yet we can hear the sound. The recommendation says something about maybe he can put more foliage. But you already have a forest. So, I don't think the sound comes right through right, so I don't think you can prevent that part of it. So, the traffic, the noise is a big issue as far as I'm concerned. My wife stays home and does work at home and so, she hears it all day long. So, we don't have our privacy, peace and quiet and all that kind of stuff for last 17 years. I don't want to, I'll just going to end up here and I just want you guys to put yourselves in our shoes. Would you like to live next to a tennis court with a full-blown business going great, a lot of noise, traffic. This is the situation we're in. So,please consider our situation here. Our thing has been going on too long, without a permit and I don't think this business belongs in our neighborhood. Thank you. LIN: Thank you Mr. Sakata for your testimony. As I stated before because the application had been withdrawn, we are not going to be making any decision unless another application is submitted and then you guys could submit for another petition to be in a contested case but that's only if he does submit. So, at this time, it's going to be whatever actions that the Planning Director has discussed with Mr. Kunimoto regarding his withdrawal. LAGUIRE: Thank you very much. Can I ask the Planning Director a question, if that is possible because of our concerned that I raised earlier about if he continues to operate. What Mr. Kunimoto had said that he met with Mr. Kern. KERN: I'm happy to answer that. Yes, we just found yesterday of the withdrawal. So, he will have to cease operations. I'll be talking with him; I'll give him a short transition period so the students can be notified. It's not so much for him on that transition, it's for the students. LAGUIRE: Okay. KERN: And then he'll need to cease operations and if he doesn't, he'll be fined appropriately. LAGUIRE: Thank you very much, appreciate that. KERN: Yeah. LIN: Okay, so, based on that, that's all the Commission will be hearing today, so — DE LUZ: Chair, can I just say something real quick, is that okay? LIN: Sure. DE LUZ: I just want to thank all neighbors and great presentation. I know it's tough, I've been in that situation before, but I commend you guys for taking the time, making the effort to come out and speak to us. That helps tremendously and I think that zonings are put in for a reason and we all adhered by it so, we always feel like the other one should too. So, um' I know the word 6 EXHIBIT C "grandfathered" gets used a lot. But appreciate you guys testifying and giving us a great presentation and thank you. CROSS: Chair Lin I have a question. LIN: Go ahead. CROSS: If I could ask. The speed humps that were installed. When were they put in and at who's expense? F. SAKATA: Those were installed by the County in 2018. They're actually seven (7) speed humps and the two of us went door to door and there's seventy (70) lots. So, we went to each neighbor, we spoke with them and even for those landowners that don't live there we had to send letters and communicate to everyone not just on Mele Manu but on the side streets Cristiano and all the side. And we actually got over 70% approval that all our neighbors all agreed that it was a problem and the County put it in. So, thank you[giggling]. That was a great, yeah, it's really served us well. Thank you. LIN: Anybody else? Okay, thank you very much. LAGUIRE: Thank you. The item ended at 10:48 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Melissa Dacayanan-Salvador, Secretary Windward Planning Commission 7 EXHIBIT C