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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-01-03 Public Testimony Transcript - Office of the Master Visionary SPP 18-200WINDWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAII PUBLIC TESTIMONY TRANSCRIPT JANUARY 3, 2019 Public testimony on the application of THE OFFICE OF THE MASTER VISIONARY (SPP 18-000200) was called to order at 9:52 a.m. in the County of Hawaii Aupuni Center Conference Room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo, Hawaii with Chairman Joseph Clarkson presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Joseph Clarkson, Donald Ikeda, Thomas Raffipiy, John Replogle. ABSENT & EXCUSED: Gilbert Aguinaldo, Donn Dela Cruz. ALSO PRESENT: Michael Yee (Planning Director), Malia Hall (Deputy Corporation Counsel for the Windward Planning Commission), Jeff Darrow (Planning Program Manager), Maija Jackson (Planner), Christian Kay (Planner), Alex Roy (Planner), Jessica Andrews (Planner), and Sarah Hata-Finley (Commission Secretary). And 28 members from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: THE OFFICE OF THE MASTER VISIONARY (SPP 18-000200) Application for a Special Permit to establish a spiritual wellness center offering 15 wellness retreats per year with overnight accommodations for up to 12 guests, and 2 weddings per year for up to 30 attendees on 8.063 acres of land in the State Land Use Agricultural District. The subject property is located at 27-996 A Old Mamalahoa Highway on the makai side of Old Mamalahoa Highway about 0.25 miles south of its intersection with Kula`imano Road, Pepe`ekeo, South Hilo, Hawaii, TMK: (3) 2-7-011:004. CLARKSON: At this time, we'll proceed to public testimony only on the remaining two items on the agenda. For those of you who were not here earlier, both Items 2 and 3 have been continued to future meetings, but because they were on the agenda, we will now take testimony on these items. The next item is Item 2, Office of the Master Visionary, SPP 18-200, and we have three people to sign up to testify on this. If all three of you could please come forward. Dwight Vicente, Jaerick Medeiros-Garcia, and Megan Silva, please. [Mr. Vicente was not present.] Let's be as quiet as possible, please. [Addressing the audience.] And, would you please both raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth on this matter before the Planning Commission today? MEDEIROS-GARCIA: Yeah. SILVA: [Nodded yes.] CLARKSON: Please, one of you decide to start first, and use the microphone, introduce yourself, and proceed with your testimony. 10V1111.11 1.1 SILVA: Thank you for having us. Aloha. Aloha, my name is Megan Silva or Megan Ugalde Silva, and I have a letter to submit later, but I have, I am a long-time resident of the lower Kula`imano area in which this issue has come up. I was born and raised there, and I received notification in regards of the desired development of a wellness center in my community in which I was born and raised since I was—in 1976. But, my family has been there since the time of the Great Mahele, actually, so my ancestors has inherited the property in which I grew up on from the, back, way back when. It would be safe to presume that since I've grown up there and live there, my friends and I have watched the many changes that has occurred since the closing of the plantation era, and we were the last generation of children who grew up with the very special time of, with plantation heritage in that area. We have seen how the closing of the plantation economy has affected families economically, socially, and culturally as lands have since been subdivided, sold, and developed. Those of us who were lucky enough to stay stayed, and we continued to raise our own children, and for many of us, our grandchildren as well. Because of its eloquent uniqueness and the pride and the respect of the plantation heritage in which we come from, it has been embedded in our everyday lives. From the way we treat our neighbors, our elders, and our children in our small village to the way we approach the world. The current means, to give a little background, I'm a teacher with the DOE, been working with the DOE for 17 years. I've worked both in this, on this island and outside of this island, so in my community and outside of my community, I've travelled quite a bit around the world and in doing so, my eyes have opened a little more to what I've become aware and which raises a concern for me with the development of a wellness center. My life and career path has allowed me to see different things, and actually it's kind of scary to see what the idea of a wellness center development, the ripple effect that it could bring to our small village. I'm writing this letter in the hopes of preventing that for many reasons. I'm not an engineer so I can't speak to the mechanics of how water mains work and things of that nature, but what I can tell you and speak to is my experience and experiences of my neighbors whom we've come to know each other as family, not by blood, but because we go back generations and generations. And, even today, when I talk about it outside of our home, refer to each other as family which is very unique from what I've seen from many parts of the world, and I'm very proud of that fact. I know that our water mains break all the time leaving us without water when there's storm. Storms, like this last storm, there was no water for at least a week, and I'm, like I said, I'm not an engineer. I'm just assuming that the infrastructure is not made for the development that is happening around us today. Next, there's the problem of traffic. When plantation closed 25 years ago, the State removed, there was a speed bump in front of the house in which I grew up, so the property I own is just feet away, yards even, from the house in which I grew up. There was speed bumps. People drove slowly in the area back then. You knew to slow down. There were tourists, but not much, you know, there were cane trucks even. As children, we could play in the streets. Our parents had no fears of us walking up and down the street to the rivers. As you might be well aware, that EXHIBIT B 2 area has beautiful waterfalls, beautiful land, beautiful ocean that gives us food, life, play, and many wonderful experiences. Speeding is a large concern for one, okay, as I've had a nephew that was hit by a car there before. There was a car speeding, and it hit a telephone pole. Ended up in our yard. I had a car come through my yard in the past. Took down sealing wax palms, and this was before, this was about ten years ago and more when my nephew got hit by a car. Secondly, the influx of people that's coming to the area happenedI had a personal experience also with strangers approaching in a non -safe way. Many of us have daughters and children, daughters who've been approached for lack of better words by people of "scary" nature. Let's just put it that way. So, having something like a wellness center concerns me because I feel like it's going to destroy the essence of what makes our community a community. It's going to change the culture which already is rapidly changing, and it's taking away from the beauty of our small place that we love and we call home. It's my personal feeling that if we want to develop our small, tight rural community areas, Imy personal feeling, I feel like the development should stay where it came from. The idea of developing a small area should not be in our rural area. It's rural for a reason, and I feel like people who come to our area and they see how beautiful it is, how pristine the rivers are, how plentiful the oceans are, how it gives us life, how virile the lands are, which has fed my family, families for generations. With development, I fear that those kinds of things are rapidly going to change. I've seen this in other parts of the world, and it breaks my heart. I've seen other people who have said, man, just ten years ago, we could have our children walk up and down the street. Today, I wouldn't let my own children walk just to the river where we played for fear of these kinds of things—speed, stranger danger, and now with development, we don't know how it's going to affect our rivers, and oceans, and our lands. And, I have more that I have submitted later—letter. Thank you. CLARKSON: Please submit your written testimony if you haven't already. Thank you. To the folks at the front desk. MEDEIRO S -GARCIA: Aloha, thank you. My name is Jaerick Medeiros-Garcia. I'm also a resident of Pepe`ekeo. I sit on the Pepe`ekeo Community Association Board as the acting president. I live directly across of this application, and I seeI see myself because we do have a flower farm right across of these guys, and I see that they have been already having people over before even submitting this application. I also see people that come off their property onto our property to pick our flowers that we grow to, you know, support our families. They just invite themselves on our property, cut flowers, pull flowers, pick fruits, you know. They already been doing treatment there. Every day we smell marijuana coming straight from that property. You know, so, these folks only have been there not too long, probably about six years or so, five years maybe. But, I am a supporter of Bill 108, and to, that is to, in support of our ag lands and our residential area. I am against allowing them to have this Special Permit, because there's nobody to enforce whatever it is that they are requesting with this permit. They are asking for two weddings a year. Yeah, right. You think only two weddings a year going be—there's gonna be way more than that. Who is going to be watching for these things to happen? Nobody is going to be watching for that to happen, but we're going to deal with the consequences of people parking up our driveways, along the roads, which really don't have parking on the side of the road. To allow only 12 people, overnight accommodations as a bed & breakfast, I really don't EXHIBIT B 3 like that. I see in this application everything about saying how it's going to benefit our Planning Department by all these permit issues and all that stuff, what it's really going do is increase our property taxes, which we really don't need an increase in that. You just don't want to get rid of—we want ag to remain ag, you know. I've never seen no, nothing stating about security of our neighborhood or my family who live directly across the street. You know, there's no background checks on these people that's going to be staying overnight. You know, it's justI don't think it's right. I'm against it, you know? I followed [Bill] 108 all over the place, Kona, Hilo, back and forth, you know, and it's good enough to protect us from having these stuffs in our neighborhood, so, yeah I'm against that permit being issued to these people because there's a lot of things that we deal with that nobody else would see. So, and the water lines, we're going to add more to that, the pressure going be less. Not to mention, we have asbestos water pipes, that these are because, you know, during the war, they had to save all the metal, so they used these asbestos, so it collapses all the time. We always have water main breaks, you know. We're always without water. To add more to that, it's only going to be worse. But, I'm against the permit. Thank you for your time. CLARKSON: Thank you. Thank you, taking testimony is all we're doing today for these item agendas. Public testimony ended at 10:05 a.m. [Secretary's Note: Chairman Clarkson called a recess at 10:05 a.m., and the meeting was reconvened at 10:11 a.m. At 10:11 a.m., Chairman Clarkson stated that this application (The Office of the Master Visionary SPP 18-000200) had been rescheduled to the February 7th Windward Planning Commission meeting and that the application was on the Planning Department website.] Respectfully submitted, Sarah Y. Hata-Finley, Secretary Windward Planning Commission EXHIBIT B 4