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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-11-20 Leeward Exh C (SPP 14-169) LEEWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT NOVEMBER 20, 2014 ANEKONA ‘ŌULI KĀNEHOA A regularly advertised hearing on the application of VOLUNTEER FIRE CO. (SPP 14-169) was called to order at 11:35 a.m. in the West Hawai‘i Civic Center, Community Center, Building G, 74-5044 Ane Keohokālole Highway, Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i, with Chairman Brandi Beaudet presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Brandi Beaudet, Collin Kaholo, Thomas Hickcox, Barbara Nobriga, Keith Unger and Thomas Whittemore ALSO PRESENT: Duane Kanuha (Planning Director), Danny Patel (Deputy Corporation Counsel), Daryn Arai (Planning Program Manager), Maija Jackson (Planner), Christian Kay (Planner) and Noriko Sauer (Commission Secretary) And approximately twelve people from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: ANEKONA ‘ŌULI KĀNEHOA VOLUNTEER FIRE CO. (SPP 14-169) Application for a Special Permit to allow the development and operation of a fire vehicle apparatus garage and related improvements on approximately 3.132 acres of land situated within the State Land Use Agricultural District. The project site is located adjacent to the east of the ‘Ōuli Self Help Housing Project subdivision and west of the Anekona Estates subdivision in ‘Ōuli, South Kohala, Hawai‘i, TMK: 6-2-001: 075. BEAUDET: Third application on today’s agenda, Applicant: Anekona ‘Ōuli Kānehoa Volunteer Fire Company, Special Permit 14-169. Application is for a Special Permit to allow the development and operation of a fire vehicle apparatus garage and related improvements on approximately 3.132 acres. Staff, could you please proceed with presentation? KAY: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just, before I get started, you should have received a week or two ago a petition for a contested case standing on this application; we, as of last night that petition was withdrawn, so you should have that in your file today, email of 8:08 p.m. last night from Andrew Frogley. All right. Thank you. The applicant is Anekona ‘Ōuli Kānehoa Volunteer Fire Company. This is a nonprofit organization that was formed to support the 9 Bravo Volunteer Fire Company, which was formed in 2007 and has 14 volunteers currently. The applicant is leasing this particular parcel from the landowner, Hale Wailani Partners. So what we have here is the subject parcel outlined in red, and it is in the South Kohala District of the island. And more specifically, it’s located in the ‘Ōuli Subdivision, roughly seven miles west of Waimea and adjacent to the Anekona Estates Subdivision here to the east. Just for reference we’ve got Kawaihae Road running east to west here toward the top of the image. The different colors here indicate different zoning. For the ‘Ōuli Subdivision it’s all Agricultural 1 EXHIBIT C 1-acre. To the east the Anekona Estates Subdivision is a mixture of Agricultural 5-acre and Residential and Agricultural 2-acre zoning. The State Land Use for the subject parcel is Agricultural. It is, however, surrounded on the west by two sections of Urban designation; this is for the ‘Ōuli Self Help Housing development, as well as the ‘Ōuli Affordable Rental development. To the east, again, Anekona is a mix of State Land Use Agricultural and State Land Use Rural. The General Plan Land Use Pattern Allocation Guide Map indicates that the majority of the area, including the subject parcel, is Rural designation. We’ve got some aerial photographs of the subject site. Again, for reference this is Kawaihae Road running east-west. Access to the subject parcel here is from Waiula Drive, which comes down here off of Kawaihae Road, again, showing Anekona Estates Subdivision here, the ‘Ōuli Self Help Housing Project, which is adjacent to the subject parcel and across the road, looking at the ‘Ōuli Affordable Rental project. The next image just zooms in a little bit to the subject parcel. As you can tell, again, this is Waiula Drive coming in. Access to the parcel would be off of Waiula Drive roughly in this area. There is a rock wall on the western and southern portions of the parcel, separating that from the ‘Ōuli Self Help Housing. All right. The proposed use is a Special Permit to develop and operate a fire vehicle apparatus garage on a 3.132-acre parcel. The proposed garage is a 2,080-square foot, 20-foot tall, single-story facility that includes an ADA accessible bathroom and shower. Proposed uses include storage of two or more firefighting vehicles assigned to the company by the Hawai‘i County Fire Department, regular maintenance of the firefighting vehicles by Company 9 Bravo volunteers; however, any major mechanical work will need to be performed by the County Fire Department mechanical shop in Hilo. Additional uses include maintenance and storage of Company 9 Bravo firefighting equipment, including personal safety gear, hoses, pumps, tools and related items. It will also be a training site for Company 9 Bravo volunteers and Fire Department personnel four to five times per month, and also a central gathering place and dispatch location for Company 9 Bravo when called out on emergencies, and finally, a central meeting location for the Fire Department units, if an incident occurs in the vicinity. Here we are showing the applicant’s proposed site plan. Again, this is Waiula Drive here. The ingress to the property would be here. The subject building again would be here, and it looks like there is a turnaround, gravel turnaround, going to be coming up to get the trucks in and out. The applicant’s floor plan and elevation again shows the single-story building with the two bays in the front of the building and one bay door at the back. Again, the ADA accessible bathroom and shower are here. We have images of the subject parcel. This is a view of Waiula Drive, looking toward Kawaihae Road. This again is the rock wall that indicates the corner of the property, so the property in this picture is going to be on the left hand side. Again, this is a view up Waiula Road toward the Anekona Estates Subdivision, so in this case the parcel is on the right hand side. This is a view of the proposed ingress to the garage sites, coming off of Waiula Drive. Right here where these folks are standing is roughly where the front of the garage is going to be. Finally, one of the issues on the parcel, the parcel is currently, there are no structures on it; however, there are abandoned vehicles and some unauthorized vehicle parking on the site. The applicant has proposed to clean those up as part of the Special Permit application. And there are also proposed conditions agreeing with that. 2 EXHIBIT C The Planning Director’s recommendation in this case is approval of the application, with conditions. That is the end of my presentation. I stand ready to answer any questions the Commission may have. BEAUDET: Thank you, Christian. Commissioners, any questions for staff? HICKCOX: Just for a point of clarification, this is to be used as a volunteer fire station, so it will not be manned 24/7? KAY: That is correct. HICKCOX: Thank you. BEAUDET: Any more questions from Commissioners? Okay. I’d like to call the applicant or its representatives up to the front, please. Okay, if I could swear you all in. Please raise your right hands. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth now before the Leeward Planning Commission? APPLICANT’S REPRESENTATIVES: Yes. I do. BEAUDET: Okay. If you could just introduce everyone at the same time. We’ll start with you, Greg. MOOERS: My name is Greg Mooers. I’m the planner for the applicant. To my left is Guido Giacometti who is the president of AOK and the applicant. To my immediate right is Chief Honda from the Hawai‘i County Fire Department, and further to the right is Captain Mike Shattuck, the captain of 9 Bravo Volunteer Fire Company for the last seven years. BEAUDET: Thank you. Please proceed. MOOERS: We have received the staff’s background report and the recommendations, and have a couple of comments we’d like to make. 9 Bravo has been operating this site, I will note, since 2007, and they are an extremely active group. Their last fire they rolled on was last Thursday. The last fire in our neighborhood was eleven days ago. So they are very important part of our community. And I think, the people behind me, I asked not to sign up to testify in deference to your schedule and the amount of time it would take, but they are here to support the application. We have reviewed the proposed conditions, and offer a couple of recommended changes that we’d like to see to clarify. Currently, looking at Condition 6, there is one thing that we would like to omit: This has to do with the operation of the truck in the neighborhood, or the trucks in the neighborhood. We do not turn the sirens on in the neighborhood unless the emergency is within the neighborhood, but they do use the emergency lighting when they are moving the trucks in the time of emergency. So what we would recommend is on Condition 6, on Line 5, is to omit the term “emergency lighting” so that the sentence would read, “Furthermore, emergency vehicles shall be prohibited from using sirens within the Anekona Estates, ‘Ōuli, or Kānehoa subdivisions unless the emergency is within the subdivisions.” According to our captain, safety protocol does call for the use of lighting; so if they are rolling on the fire, as they move from the garage out onto Kawaihae Road, they would have their lights on but no siren. So we would recommend the change. 3 EXHIBIT C Also, on Condition 7 these are volunteers, they all have fulltime jobs in other areas, and so their training primarily takes place in the afternoons. But we would like the opportunity on weekends for people who miss trainings to have an opportunity to train on equipment so that they can use the equipment out on a fire; we don’t want people going out on a fire, trying to use equipment they haven’t been trained on. What we would like to do is to change the constraint on the hours of operation between 4:00 and 7:00 p.m., and say between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. But in recognition that we don’t want to have an eleven-hour training, is it we would add another word, or another sentence, so that the proposed Condition 7 would now state, “Training of 9 Bravo volunteer firefighters shall take place no more than five times a month and be limited to the hours between 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., provided there would be no more than three hours of training on any particular day.” So this would allow the opportunity on weekends when many of the volunteers are not working to train at that time, but that they would not train past 7:00 p.m. and there would be no more than three hours of training on any one day. I will note that we are not aware that there has ever been a complaint for noise for the training during the last seven years that the 9 Bravo has been in operation. And three of the four of us live in the neighborhood. One of the conditions I just want to go on record, you know, Conditions 4 and 5 are particularly related to the mitigation of the existing conditions. As staff pointed out, there are currently abandoned vehicles, some junk and some unauthorized parking on the subject parcel, and we are committed, as we are with the current landowner, Hale Wailani Partners, to remove those. I just want to go on record saying that I think Condition 4 is adequate; Condition 5, I think, is expensive and may not really achieve the goal, which is provide fencing along the road. However, we do not have any complaints or objection to this condition, because Mr. Frogley, the individual who had filed the contested case, has indicated that he would pay for the fencing along that. So if he is comfortable with that, that’s fine. We think the signage is going to work well once we get a contract with a tow company and start pulling vehicles out there; people are not going to be parking in there, if their vehicle is towed. But we do not have a problem with Condition 5 as written, and the only changes we recommend are the ones to Conditions 6 and 7. And I have provided staff with a copy of these proposed changes. BEAUDET: Commissioners, any comment or questions of the applicant before we move forward? KANUHA: Mr. Chairman? BEAUDET: Yes, sir. KANUHA: Staff has no objections to the proposed amendments to Conditions 6 and 7 as advanced by the applicant. BEAUDET: Thank you. Any more comment from the applicant? With that, we have one member of the audience who has signed up to testify. I’d like to ask Andrew Frogley to please come forward. Please raise your right hand. Do you swear now before the Leeward Planning Commission to tell the truth on this application? FROGLEY: I do. BEAUDET: Thank you. Please state your name and your address. 4 EXHIBIT C FROGLEY: Andrew Frogley, P. O. Box 6510 Kamuela. So, as Greg pointed out, I initially petitioned a standing in a contested case. Based on my review of the Planning Department recommendations and AOK proposed agreements, I withdrew the petition. KANUHA: Mr. Frogley, can you get yourself closer to the mike? FROGLEY: Sorry. KANUHA: Thank you. FROGLEY: Okay. So I just wanted to confirm that I’m in support, and support this application, Bravo 9, and I really appreciate everyone that has worked so hard on this. Greg just noted that the fencing, which was one of the concerns I had, to stop further problems with car parking on the property, it’s 100 feet long, it’s eight feet tall, it’s high priced at 50 dollars a foot; and I will confirm right now on record that I will take care of the 5,000-dollar payment to take care of the portion of the fence. But I would like to see this stay as a recommendation within the -. Anyway, thank you. That’s it. BEAUDET: Are there any other members within the audience who would wish to comment or testify? With that, I’d like to ask for a motion to close this portion of the public hearing. HICKCOX: So move. BEAUDET: Second? WHITTEMORE: Second. BEAUDET: It’s been moved by Commissioner Hickcox, and seconded by Commissioner Whittemore, to close this portion of the public hearing. Applicant, is there anything that you would like to further summarize based on Mr. Frogley’s comments? MOOERS: No. As I said before, we are not opposed to the condition. And we’ll be prepared to answer any questions that the Commission may have. BEAUDET: Commissioners? I, just for a comment, I think it’s, my day job sometimes I need to respond to these types of emergencies at Parker Ranch, and I’d just like to commend the effort of this community in support of this type of storage and training facility. I think it’s a critical part, given the types of fields that we have on the ground up there, and just commend the volunteers for their dedication to preserving life and assets. So, and, Mr. Frogley, you know, your willingness to add to this is just as appreciated, you know, that’s collaboration at its best when you can see this type of activities taking place in our community. So thank you. MOOERS: Thank you, Commissioner Beaudet. BEAUDET: Staff, any suggestions on the revisions to those conditions? 5 EXHIBIT C th KAY: Sure. It was as written in the email that went out November 18, but I will re-read them for the record. The Condition No. 6 talking about, as currently written, to omit “emergency lighting” on Line 5, so Condition 6 will read, “Sound levels shall follow Department of Health rules for residential areas (55 dBA daytime), HAR, Title 11, Chapter 46 (Community Noise Control). As represented by the applicant, there shall be no sirens,” now omit “or emer-,” I’m sorry, “no sirens or emergency lighting on the proposed VAG. Furthermore, emergency vehicles shall be prohibited from using sirens,” and then what we are omitting is “or emergency lighting,” “within the Anekona Estate, ‘Ōuli, or Kānehoa subdivisions unless the emergency is within the subdivisions.” And then the proposed language for Condition 7 is, “Training of Bravo 9 volunteer firefighters shall take place no more than five times a month and be limited to the hours between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., provided that there will be no more than three hours of training on any particular day.” BEAUDET: Applicant, does that follow with -? MOOERS: Yes. BEAUDET: But I have a question on the change for Condition 6 relative to emergency lighting, because I thought the applicant said that anytime the vehicle is in motion its lighting needs to be on. So you said omit “emergency lighting.” KAY: I’m sorry, there are -. Yeah. ARAI: Just to clarify, the applicant’s email indicated that he would like to remove the word referencing emergency lighting on Line 5 of Condition 6; because on Line 5 the emergency lighting makes reference to the emergency vehicles; on Line 3 where it makes reference to emergency lighting again, that’s actually on the proposed access, vehicle access garage. So we would like to see the restriction continue to be applied to the vehicle access garage but not to the use of the emergency vehicles. I hope that clarifies it for you. BEAUDET: Yeah, it’s clear now. Thank you. MOOERS: Chairman Beaudet? BEAUDET: Yes. MOOERS: Chief Honda just made a point, and I think it may be something we want to include, I think we may be overlooking this on Condition 7, when we are talking about the constraints on the training of 9 Bravo, is what we are talking about is training here on this site; in other words, if they train somewhere else, if they get called in to Hilo for some special training or something, then that wouldn’t constrain it. I think what we are worried about is impact from the neighborhood. So I don’t know if staff can recommend some, maybe where it says, “shall take place,” can we say, “on the subject property no more than five times” so that it’s clear that if they get called to another station or to Hilo, that they can train there? We are basically talking about we are not going to use this site for training. KAY: May I suggest that “On-site training of Bravo 9 volunteer firefighters” and then the rest continues? 6 EXHIBIT C MOOERS: That’s fine. KAY: Okay. Does that work for the Commission? Okay. Are there further questions on conditions? BEAUDET: Any further questions form the Commission? Okay, with that, I would like to ask for a motion to action? WHITTEMORE: Mr. Chair, I’ll make a motion. I’d like to move that the application for Special Permit Docket No. SPP 14-169 be approved based on Planning Director’s recommendation and proposed conditions to include the amendments to 6 and 7. BEAUDET: Second? NOBRIGA: Second. HICKCOX: Second. NOBRIGA: We both did, same time. BEAUDET: It has been moved by Commissioner Tom Whittemore and seconded by Commissioner Nobriga for a favorable, for approval of Special Permit No. 14-000169. Any discussion before we move forward? With no need for discussion, staff, would you please take the vote? KAY: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Whittemore? WHITTEMORE: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Nobriga? NOBRIGA: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Hickcox? HICKCOX: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Kaholo? KAHOLO: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Unger? UNGER: Aye. KAY: And Chair Beaudet? 7 EXHIBIT C BEAUDET: Aye. KAY: Okay, the motion passes six-zero. Thank you. BEAUDET: Thank you. The discussion ended at 11:59 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Noriko Sauer, Secretary Leeward Planning Commission 8 EXHIBIT C