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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008-11-06 TECOMMERCE PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT NOVEMBER 6, 2008 E. COMMERCE ENTERPRISES A regularly advertised hearing on the application of CORPORATION (SMA 08-000027) was called to order at 1:51 a.m. in the County of Hawaii, Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawaii, with First Vice-Chairman Rell Woodward presiding. PRESENT: Rell Woodward ABSENT & EXCUSED: Rodney Watanabe C. Kimo Alameda Lani Bowman Takashi Domingo Frederic Housel Andrew Iwashita Shelly Ogata Ivan Torigoe, Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher Yuen, Planning Director Norman Hayashi, Staff Planner Phyllis Fujimoto, Staff Planner Jeff Darrow, Staff Planner Maija Cottle, Staff Planner And two people from the public in attendance APPLICANT: E. COMMERCE ENTERPRISES CORPORATION (SMA 08-000027) Special Management Area Use Permit to allow the construction of an approximately 2,000 lineal foot pedestrian path and landscaping. The properties involved are a part of the Pahoa Beach Estates Subdivision located along the western banks of Waipiele Gulch, Pahoa, North Kohala, Hawaii, TMK: 5-5-8:66 and 67. WOODWARD: The final agenda item is E. Commerce Enterprises Corporation’s application for a Special Management Area Use Permit to allow the construction of an approximately 2,000 lineal foot pedestrian path and landscaping. Jeff? DARROW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our next applicant is E. Commerce Enterprises Corporation. This is a continued hearing for a Special Management Area Use Permit to allow the construction of an approximately 2,000 lineal foot pedestrian path and landscaping. I won’t go into a lot detail on the presentation as this is a continued hearing. What I’ll do is just refresh the Commissioners’ memory about location. This is located within the North Kohala District of Hawi. More specifically we’re looking at the Hawi area. Unfortunately, we do have -. It’s a little dark because the color of the zoning is dark green. But we have Hawi Road that’s traveling in a mauka-makai direction; and the actual subject properties are identified along EXHIBIT C the coastline in black. This gives a little bit clearer picture here. Again the zoning is Agricultural 20-acres identified in dark green. This particular road is called the Uli Road that is the entrance road into the subdivision. There are easements that connect this road to Hawi Road. And then the particular properties we’re looking at is this property, as well as the property where the applicants have constructed their home. This is Uli Road ending with a cul-de-sac. The particular issues for this application is a 2,000-foot lineal pathway as well as one that is from the applicant’s residence to the gulch to be able to have access to Pahoa Beach. This gives you a little bit better picture. Again, the Planning Director and the applicants have been meeting together to try to come up with a resolution for the conditions; and I’ll let the Director go into more detail as to where they’re at at this time with their resolution. DOMINGO: Mr. Chairman? WOODWARD: Yes. DOMINGO: One question. Could you go back and show where the original access was supposed to be at, at what location? DARROW: In the first subdivision map, the subdivision is 7640 which was approved in March of 2003, it had a pedestrian pathway that would have been, this is general now, again, it would have followed the easements in from Hawi Road. And it would have come, I believe, back in this particular area on the neighbor’s property, and then it would come in this general configuration down the gulch, and then into the beach area. It was kind of a winding little pathway that they had on, it’s actually listed or shown on one of the exhibits in the, let’s see, well it might take a while for me to find it. When I find it I’ll let you know. Thank you. Mr. Director, if you could let us know where we stand at this time. YUEN: Yes. We actually have an agreement in principle on how to handle this; and it does require finally a vote by the Planning Commission still on the permit itself. It wraps up the issues with the violations, the fines and the permit. The exact language hasn’t been th worked out. We will have that to the Commission before the November 24 meeting; and so we’re simply asking for a deferral today. The applicant wanted to be able to talk to the Commission, I think that’s why they’re here, on their plan and to explain some things about the th situation, because they weren’t going to be able to make the November 24 meeting. That’s fine with us if they want to present something. We don’t have anything further to present, but we will have a resolution where the Department will have an amended recommendation for the Commission at the next meeting. WOODWARD: All right. If we could get Mr. Lim and the applicants. All right. If you’d all raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth today before the Hawaii County Planning Commission? LIM: I do. A. MOHAMMADI: Yes. R. MOHAMMADI: I do. EXHIBIT C 2 WOODWARD: Okay. Begin your testimony, please. Speak into the microphone and give us your name and address, and then you may begin. LIM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission. I’m Steven Lim from Carlsmith. I’m at 121 Waianuenue Avenue in Hilo. Seated to my right are Rachael and Ahmad Mohammadi, the principals of E. Commerce Corporation and the applicants in this action. Thank you for allowing us to present the applicants’ statements. They’re going to be out th of the country at the next meeting of the Planning Commission on November 24 I believe it is. And both the Planning Director and the applicants want to conclude this matter while Mr. Yuen is still in office; and so I think it’s going to be necessary to take up the revised conditions that we’re working with Mr. Yuen on and get that to you before the next meeting for your consideration. And since my clients couldn’t be here then we wanted to impose upon you today and make our presentation ahead of time on that meeting. So I’ll have Ahmad lead off. Basically what we’ve had is approximately five years of permitting. We’ve gone through numerous permit hearings at the state and the county level, and this is the very last permit that we need to get down to resolve the issue. I’ll let Ahmad go through some of the history on what they’ve been doing as a family in North Kohala, and then we’ll have Rachael finish up with the presentation. Thank you. WOODWARD: If there are no objections, maybe it would be best just to have them give their presentation; and we’ll open up questions for all of them. So give us your name and address and then you may begin. A. MOHAMMADI: Aloha, my name is Ahmad Mohammadi. We live in Hawi, PO Box 219, Hawi, HI 96719. Rachael and I have lived in Hawi for about then years. We love Kohala. We moved there and we are part of the community. We have a lot of aunties and uncles that have integrated us as part of their family. We are planning to live there forever and ever. It’s a wonderful place, as you know Lani you’ve lived there for a long time. I work with Hewlett- Packard, for HP, I run the sales operation for the State of Hawaii. My heart is in education. I believe in supporting the education initiative in Hawaii. And Hewlett-Packard has something that’s called philanthropy funds; and they’ve given me the opportunity to pick up eight to ten schools in the State of Hawaii that we can help with these students to go to one-to-one computing. And I’m planning to support primarily at least for half of those number of the schools in Kohala specifically and surrounding to provide the kids laptops so they can have technology integration. The reason I bring it to your attention is because I want you to know that I love Hawaii, we are a part of the community, and we’re constantly trying to add value where we can. And my wife will share with what we’re doing, what we have done on the project, where we are and what our plans are. Our family is glad to be here. We have ohana there that unfortunately due to a comedy of errors we run into this violation situation. And Mr. Yuen and his staff have been gracious enough to work with us, to educate us, and bring us along to where we can enhance the public access environment as well as put closure to this violation. R. MOHAMMADI: My name is Rachael Mohammadi, also 55-194 Uli Road. And I’m just thankful that I’m able to be here on it to present our view of things. Last time we didn’t have a lot to say; but just so you guys can see our face and get to know who we are and feel comfortable with us -. I guess last time you guys heard a testimony from someone that didn’t make us look so good. Hopefully we can recuperate from that. And what we have done is primarily we’ve EXHIBIT C 3 moved to Hawi, we feel in love with the climate, the ocean. We wanted to build our home there and so we proceeded to buy a piece of property; and because it was so big, there wasn’t a smaller chunk, we had to subdivide. So it took us about four years to get subdivision approval. And then finally we were able to begin building our home. As part of the subdivision requirements we, of course, had to comply with the Planning Director’s request for public access that was included in our subdivision plan. However, we had a run-in with our neighbor, which was a legal dispute, originally agreeing to give her land as part of the access along with three other lots that were going to be affected with the access. She changed her mind and had a legal run-in with us, which we had been in dispute with her for a couple of years. They kind of backed off. Now it looks like we’re trying, again, to resolve this. Anyway, the main thing that I want to say is that we’re doing everything we can. The first time we tried to do the access, you know, it didn’t work out. So then we, in order to comply with Mr. Yuen and so forth, we went ahead and started to do another access on another area of the same gulch to go down into the beach. We didn’t realize we needed to get more permits to do that; and so we proceeded to go ahead and go down and do that. Like Ahmad said it was a comedy of errors between, you know, the complaining neighbors and so forth. And we are going out of our way to see what we can do in terms of, we’d come up with the old access, it doesn’t seem to be a safe. Now we come up with a new access plan as revised that we’ve agreed with that seems to be even better. It will bring it down our personal, near our personal driveway, closer to our home in the drive that we used to take down, which we’re still taking down to the beach area. So it’s a lot safer. We go down there often ourselves to take walks and so forth. So what we were planning to do is utilize that new area for the access. In addition to that, I know that the Planning Director also wanted a lateral access along the cliff line, so we are also going to give that as part of our way to resolve this situation. In this way, we had two ways of access through our property -. And hopefully everybody will be happy and we will be happy, and we will get this thing done. And I do want to appreciate Mr. Yuen all that you’ve done to work with us. I feel very confident we’re getting there and we’re going to bring closure to this soon. Hopefully all the members here will also consider our situation and we will get this thing in a good standing with everyone. We want to be the good neighbors with everyone and with the community. We want to do the best we can. So just to get an idea of where we are -. LIM: As a side note, I spoke with Mr. Herman Fernandez who was one of the people that came at the last hearing, made a presentation, a very strong presentation. He’s the neighbor across the Waipielu Gulch. And I explained to him the general parameters of the settlement agreement that we’re working on with Mr. Yuen; and I don’t know if he spoke after the hearing, but he seemed to be okay with that. So we’ll be keeping him in the loop also at the same time. WOODWARD: Do any of the Commissioners have questions for Mr. Lim or his clients? ALAMEDA: Mr. Chair? WOODWARD: Yes, sir. ALAMEDA: Thank you. Mr. Lim, you mentioned that the neighborhood kind of sounded like they were okay with the proposed plan or kind-of, sort-of? EXHIBIT C 4 LIM: I don’t Know if I can say he’s okay. I explained the plan to him, I showed him the map, and he didn’t say, you know, that’s awful or anything. I don’t know what Herman was thinking. But he’s, you know -. A. MOHAMMADI: May I make a comment on that? ALAMEDA: Sure, go ahead. A. MOHAMMADI: As you recall, one of the things that our neighbor wanted because public is going to be going down to the ocean, they wanted to make sure that the public area is enhanced, has grass and vegetation. They won’t be looking at the road and the ugliness, if you will, of the gulch, but rather they would be looking at something that’s green and beautified. One of the commitments that we’ve made to Mr. Yuen is, as a part of our violation recourse, we would provide some vegetation and greenery, and some trees and so forth, to make sure the place look beautiful. Obviously we live in Kohala, we don’t live in Mauna Lani where we can make it to the golf course -. But he understands that; and I believe that we if we take the effort I believe, as the bible said, if you love your neighbors then your neighbors will love you. If we take the initial steps and do some things, I believe that he will see that we are making an effort and we’re going to be okay. I mean, we’ve committed to Mr. Yuen we would do that. ALAMEDA: Thank you. I was just trying to think of the two top issues that you think have been kind of resolved with the new plan.So one was the vegetation. And possibly another issue that kind of was resolved? LIM: The other big issue was whether you would have vehicles into the gulch. And we have prior contractual agreements with the lot owners within our subdivision that they can do temporary drop-offs of materials with their car, they can take their beach stuff down to the gulch, and then back out. So we’re going to be working on a method with Mr. Yuen as to how that gets done and identify the vehicles that can do that. And that’s only going to be for a very limited purpose, that and emergency vehicles. ALAMEDA: Thank you. WOODWARD: Commissioner Bowman. BOWMAN: Are we going to have a chance to see what the amended -? YUEN: Yes. BOWMAN: Okay. Maybe I’ll save my questions for them cause I guess what you’re referring to as far as the vegetation, you know, Herman’s concerns were the road that was graded, and it was obviously very graded, and that he wanted the, you know, the vegetation. Is that the replacement that you’re talking about? LIM: That’s correct. The initial, and this would all be subject to a, what we were going to call a landscaping and erosion plan that the Planning Director would approve. We’re thinking at the base of the cut slope, what they call a toe of the cut slope, we’ll put trees there. And that’ll, you know, sprout out vegetations that will cover up much of that visual look. EXHIBIT C 5 BOWMAN: And then going all the way up there will be others? LIM: That’s correct. BOWMAN: And then we’ll be able to see physically the new, you said there’s a limited vehicular access for your lot owners. And then we’ll have that? LIM: Yes. We’ll show you exactly where that is on the map. BOWMAN: Okay, okay. Thank you. LIM: It will be an aerial with some, where they can walk and where the driving will be. So we’ll explain all of that and, you know, we plan to get that settlement proposal to Mr. Yuen by early next week, if not tomorrow; and hopefully he can turn that around with us and we can get something published to you just shortly thereafter. So it will include the proposed conditions of approval and a map showing you where that is on the ground. WOODWARD: Commissioner Housel. HOUSEL: Yes. I wanted to clarify, you said you were going to add a second access also? LIM: I mean we’re still talking settlement terms between us so there’s no particular deal. But essentially the overall thrust of what we’re doing is we’ve got what we call two cuts: The first cut which is straight down from their house, the shorter one; and the longer second cut which is the one that caused most of the issues with erosion and danger to the public. So at least if the present settlement proposal goes through as planned we’re going to block off that second cut, the long cut, which is the harder part to resolve, and let that go natural again. And whatever portion, the public would be walking down the shorter cut which is nearer to their house. HOUSEL: Okay. So ultimately you intend just for one access? LIM: That’s correct. R. MOHAMMADI: And the lateral. LIM: And there will be lateral across the front of the cliff also. HOUSEL: I see. The lateral, is that a vehicular access -? LIM: That’s a pedestrian. HOUSEL: No, just a walking trail? LIM: Yes, yes. EXHIBIT C 6 HOUSEL: Okay, good. Thank you. WOODWARD: Commissioner Alameda. ALAMEDA: I was going to say, you know, the two big issues that I had were just the vegetation and the access; and so, you know, it sounds like the plan is in the works. And when the Commissioners are ready I could make a motion to defer to the next meeting. BOWMAN: I just had one more question because I don’t know if I’ll be at the next meeting. So I wanted to make sure I’m clear. Your vehicular access will be for the lot owners, the three other lot owners? A. MOHAMMADI: Yes. BOWMAN: And they will just drop their things down there, and bring their car up, and then drive back down to pick it up? I mean -. A. MOHAMMADI: Lani, the strategy there was, especially like in Mr. Walker’s situation, his wife can’t walk so we provided that so they can drop off their guests, drop off their equipment if they’re going to have a party or something or get together, which very seldom we can do that in Kohala, usually the windy situation that you’re familiar with. But that was the purpose, just dropping off people, dropping off if they have some equipment and stuff, and going back up. BOWMAN: But it, again, it’s only for your lot owners? A. MOHAMMADI: That’s correct, that’s correct. BOWMAN: I mean so that would double the amount of trips up and down if -. I don’t understand the rationale. A. MOHAMMADI: Yeah, we’ve been there for about ten years and only maybe once or twice in the last four or five years somebody from the lot owners wanted to drive down there and drop off somebody. It’s not a place where it’s, it’s not a place where you’d want to go down there and spend a lot of time. Obviously Rachael and I walk down once in a while to sit down, read the bible, and pray and meditate. But other than that, you know, it’s just not something that people are going to be driving up and down every day. BOWMAN: I guess my question is why have them go down, drop people, go back up and then get them again? I mean if it’s only for your lot owners why don’t you just have them have access down there? A. MOHAMMADI: If I may try my best to answer, then Steve you can make a comment on that. Our neighbors did not want to see cars down there. And so one of the things we decided to commit to was to go ahead and put this specific language, and then let the County know what kind of car our neighbors are driving. So if they see, if our neighbors see somebody is going down here, they know it’s the neighbor and it’s not, you know, somebody else. So we’re taking these precautions to develop a relationship with our neighbors, as they say love your neighbors EXHIBIT C 7 with all your heart; and, hopefully, God willing, the aloha spirit will work out and they’ll come around over the years. BOWMAN: Okay, thank you for the clarification. WOODWARD: Any further discussion, or questions rather? Okay, Commissioner Alameda, you were going to make a motion? ALAMEDA: Sure. When is the next meeting? th WOODWARD: November 24. ALAMEDA: Okay. With regard to applicant E Commerce Enterprises Corporation’s Special Management Area Use Permit 08-000027, I move that we continue or defer this agenda th item to the next meeting. On December 15? th WOODWARD: November 24. th ALAMEDA: Oh, November 24, okay. WOODWARD: Any discussion about the motion? DOMINGO: Mr. Chairman? WOODWARD: Yes, sir. DOMINGO: I’ll speak for the motion. I’d just like to add that at the beginning I thought that this was a real challenge for me in making a decision as to whether it should go or not. But to the credit of the Planning Director and the applicant’s representative, you know, they’ve been able to agree, they came to a solution in principle; and I’m glad that, you know, they’re working to that end. And hopefully by the next meeting things would be all written down and ready for us to make that decision. Therefore, thank you very much. WOODWARD: All right, Mr. Darrow. DARROW: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The motion before us is to continue this matter until the November 24, 2008 hearing. With that I’ll take the roll. Commissioner Alameda? ALAMEDA: Aye. DARROW: Commissioner Bowman? BOWMAN: Aye. DARROW: Commissioner Domingo? DOMINGO: Aye. EXHIBIT C 8 DARROW: Commissioner Housel? HOUSEL: Aye. DARROW: Commissioner Iwashita? IWASHITA: Yes. DARROW: Commissioner Ogata? OGATA: Aye. DARROW: And Mr. Chairman? WOODWARD: Aye. DARROW: The motion passes seven to zero. LIM: Thank you very much. On behalf of Ahmad and Rachael they can’t be here as I said at the next meeting, but they really appreciated their chance to give their presentation. Thank you. WOODWARD: Thank you. LIM: Aloha. R. MOHAMMADI: Thank you. The discussion ended at 2:16 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Sharon M. Nomura, Secretary EXHIBIT C 9