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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-01-17 Leeward Exh B (AMEND REZ 17-219) LEEWARD PLANNING COMMISSION COUNTY OF HAWAI‘I HEARING TRANSCRIPT JANUARY 17, 2019 A regularly advertised hearing on the application of MARTIN M. OHAN TRUST (REZ 17-000219) was called to order at 9:40 a.m. in the West Hawai‘i Civic Center, Community Center, Building G, 74-5044 Ane Keohokālole Highway, Kailua-Kona, Hawai‘i, with Chairman Keith F. Unger presiding. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Keith F. Unger, Scott Church, Perry Kealoha, Sonny Shimaoka and Michael Vitousek ABSENT AND EXCUSED: Nancy Carr Smith and Faye Yates ALSO PRESENT: Malia Hall, Esq. (Counsel for the Commission), Michael Yee (Planning Director), Jeff Darrow (Planning Program Manager), Christian Kay (Planner), Alex Roy (Planner) and Noriko Sauer (Commission Secretary) And approximately eleven people from the public in attendance. APPLICANT: MARTIN M. OHAN TRUST (REZ 17-000219) Application for a Change of Zone from an Agricultural-5 acre (A-5a) to a Family Agricultural-1 acre (FA-1a) zoning district for approximately 5.966 acres of land. The parcel is situated south of Hi‘olani Street, at the end of Lālei Place, Oʻoma 1st, North Kona, Hawai‘i, TMK: (3) 7-3-005:112. UNGER: Item No. 2, Applicant Martin M. Ohan Trust, REZ 17-000219, application for a Change of Zone from an Agricultural-5 acre, A-5a, to a Family Agricultural-1 acre, FA-1a, zoning district for approximately 5.966 acres of land. The parcel is situated south of Hi‘olani st Street at the end of Lālei Place, ‘O‘oma 1, North Kona, Hawai‘i, TMK (3) 7-3-005:Parcel 112. Staff, your presentation, please. KAY: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to turn your attention to the screen. As the Chair stated, this is a Change of Zone application. The subject property outlined here in red is located in the North Kona District of Hawai‘i Island in the ‘O‘oma area. For reference we’ve got Māmalahoa Highway running generally north-south through the right side of the slide here, with Ka‘iminani Drive running generally east-west. And, again, we’ve got the Kona Acres Subdivision in this area and the ‘O‘oma Plantation Subdivision here to the south, so that the subject parcel is in between those two subdivisions. The applicant is requesting a Change of Zone from an Agricultural-5 acre zoning designation to a Family Agricultural-1 acre zoning district for approximately 5.966 acres of land. The applicant intends to subdivide the property into five one-plus acre sized parcels, of which the applicant intends to keep one or two lots for family purposes and sell the balance to help address required infrastructure costs. The applicant plans to extend Lālei Place through the subject property and 1 EXHIBIT B connect to Hane Street on the south side. This extension will be constructed to County dedicable standards and dedicated to the County. The County zoning for the subject parcel is currently Agricultural-5 acres as indicated in the light green color. Again, to the north we’ve got some Agricultural-1 acre zoning with the dark green and to the south the ‘O‘oma Plantation Subdivision is Family Agricultural-2 acres zoning. The State Land Use designation for the subject parcel and much of the surrounding area is Agricultural. And the General Plan Land Use Pattern Allocation Guide Map designates the subject parcel and surrounding area as Low Density Urban. Here is the Kona CDP Map for the area. The subject parcel, again, outlined here in red is located within the Kona Urban Area but not within the Transit Oriented Development Node, and is also located within Concurrency Zone “D,” which is indicated in this kind of light brown color. The red line here is showing the extent of the Kona Urban Area. Here is an aerial photograph of the subject parcel. Again, to the north of the subject parcel is the Kona Acre Subdivision and to the south the ‘O‘oma Plantation Subdivision. The parcel is currently vacant of any structures or improvements, and just vegetated at this point. Again – I’ll show you on this proposed site plan but – there is a proposal to connect Lālei Place with Hane Street through the subject parcel. And here is the applicant’s proposed site plan. Again, for reference we’ve got Lālei Place here to the north, Hane Street is generally here to the south. This is showing a proposed five-lot subdivision, again, with the roadway connection through the subject parcel. Here are some site photos of the property. We, this application was submitted in 2017, so these are 2017 photos. I did speak with the applicant and he said not much has changed on the property, so this is still a decent representation of what the property looks like. Here is photos of the interior of the property. Here is a photo looking mauka and a photo looking more to the south and makai. There is an about twelve-foot paved path through the property right now, so that’s what you are seeing here. And, again, here is just a view of further makai just showing that it’s kind of overgrown and vegetated at this point. Here is a view of Lālei Place looking south to the subject property, which the boundary is roughly in this area, and a view from Hane Street looking north where the subject property is generally in this area. Again, both Lālei Place and Hane Street are County roads, and you can see with the striping and everything else, and these are the two roads that will be connected through the subject parcel. So I wanted to bring your attention to some documents that I passed out to you this morning. The first two are going to be in relationship to an amendment request to Condition M, which is a condition relative to fair share payments. So I’ll just give you a second – unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to get this out to you beforehand – so if you want to take a minute to kind of 2 EXHIBIT B look through the request, and I can go over it, and then we can talk about it a little bit more detail. \[Mr. Kay paused to allow the Commissioners to read the documents.\] Okay, sensing that – still need a minute or? Okay, so, essentially, the applicant made a request in th this January 10 email from Sidney Fuke that an amendment to Condition M be made to credit the cost of providing and constructing roadway improvements to the County dedicable standards, as the applicant believes that connecting Lālei Place and Hane Street provides a regional benefit by creating a new collector road that would increase connectivity and circulation in the area. So, the other thing that the request was is that if we agreed with it, would we go ahead and introduce it as an amendment request from the Director. After some discussion – and the second document that you have there is a 2002 Memorandum No. 02-33, and this is what we call a Planning Director’s policy memo, and what this does is provides us with guidance on different policies and how to interpret things. In this case this is related to how we would credit fair share, credit against fair share amounts for roadway improvements. So, I’ll get into this a little bit, but based on this memo and how we’ve been applying this since 2002, generally, the Director does not support the request, the amendment request, for the following reasons – in that memorandum then-Director Yuen advised when to credit the cost of roadway improvements in lieu of fair share payment: The memo goes on to say that fair share is meant to contribute to the regional impacts of a development. To allow a credit for infrastructure that must be built to make the subdivision work does not serve that regional benefit purpose. Therefore, roads that are necessary for the subdivision anyway will not be credited toward fair share costs; Improvements – just as a matter of information – in the past, improvements that have generally been credited against fair share payments have been more extensive, off-site regional roadway improvements or land dedication, and this is for a larger collector roads that are off-site; Credit can be applied to the extra cost, if the subdivider builds a road to a higher standard because the County requested it to be part of a regional road network that’s identified either in the General Plan or CDP or something like that. That’s not the case in this situation; I spoke with our subdivision staff yesterday and found out that in any case, because they are essentially connecting to existing County roads, the applicant would have been required to build the road to dedicable standards and connect both roads through the subdivision process anyway. So that kind of lends credence to the fact that this would have been a requirement to complete the subdivision anyway. So based on this memo, the request for crediting the improvements would not apply; Finally, with the condition as written, the applicant still has the opportunity to ask for a credit at a later date. But the Director is currently not comfortable requiring the credit as a condition of this ordinance. 3 EXHIBIT B If, if you, so, I say all this to say you still have the opportunity to consider this request, and you can, if you so choose, you can add the language that the applicant is requesting. We just wanted to give you our stance as to why we wouldn’t be supporting that language. So, finally, there are two additional pieces of information that came in. An email from Edward th Konopka that came in on January 15, and, basically, Mr. Konopka’s concern was, again, about connectivity, requiring connectivity through the property to the subdivision, and that also there should be a requirement that there should be no gates on this. Again, in speaking with our subdivision staff, because we are connecting to County roads, we would not allow a gate. So this will be a through-road in any case whether it’s – and it would be required to be built to dedicable standards – whether or not the applicant or subdivider plans to dedicate them. So, essentially, they would have to connect anyway, they would have to build it to dedicable standards, and we would not allow a gate. And, finally, there was an email chain between Mr. Sid Fuke and Ms. Ellen Lubrano, and it’s just a back-and-forth. Again, the concern, the most recent concern was about impacts to the surrounding neighborhoods of additional traffic and then construction noise during construction of the subdivision. So Mr. Fuke addressed those concerns in his response. With all of that, the Director is recommending to forward a favorable recommendation to the County Council for Change of Zone Application No. 17-000219. With that, I’d be happy to answer any questions the Commission may have. UNGER: Great, thank you. Commissioners, any questions? Can you clarify, is there water available, is there sewer available, or are those going to be part of the construction process? KAY: There is not sewer available in the area, so there is a condition requiring a wastewater treatment system meeting the requirements of the Department of Health, so likely be a septic tank. UNGER: Septic tank, okay. KAY: Yeah, correct. UNGER: Okay. There is some discussion on sight distance on the construction of the road. Can you comment on that? KAY: So, when we initially forwarded this application to the agencies, Ki Emler was the engineer at that point here. So he provided as part of his response kind of a drawn-on site plan that showed some of the issues that he saw with sight distance and everything else, so that will provide some guidance when they come in for subdivision. And there is a condition in there that speaks to sight, it needs to meet sight distance requirements as their, constructing the road, the connector road. UNGER: Great, thank you. 4 EXHIBIT B KAY: You’re welcome. UNGER: No other questions. Thank you. KAY: Thank you, sir. UNGER: Would the applicant like to come up at this time? Please raise your right hand. OHAN: Good morning. UNGER: Good morning. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth before the Planning Commission? OHAN: Yes, I do. UNGER: Please state your name and area of residence. OHAN: My name is Martin M. Ohan. I live at 76-6223A Mikilana Street, Kaiua-Kona, Hawai‘i 96740. UNGER: Thank you. You can proceed with your testimony. OHAN: Okay. Thank you very much, Commissioners, for the opportunity to speak before you, and I have enjoyed the opportunity to speak with the Planning staff over the last several years on this project, and I’m here to answer any questions that you might have. This is basically an infill parcel in between two existing subdivisions, and the area is right around 1,000 square \[sic\] feet, and we are providing what I think would be connectivity between two additional adjoining subdivisions, which I think enhances the neighborhood, and, that’s pretty much it. I’ve owned the property for quite a few years, and because of the concurrency and other development sort of issues that have happened the last four, five years, it’s been on hold, but I expect that I’ll be moving forward sometime this year. UNGER: Thank you. Commissioners, any questions? VITOUSEK: Yes. Just curious, the second round of human skeletal remains that was identified on the property in the report, was that, how was that handled? OHAN: All of that was handled before I purchased the property, so I just received the documentation from the archaeological study. And I don’t know if the Planning Department has any comments, but all of that was taken care of somewhere around 2000, 2001, and -. VITOUSEK: Does Planning Department have any idea that, it says in there that there was a set of skeletal remains that was identified and treated under a burial treatment plan, and then there was an archaeological inventory survey that happened after that that found more remains, but there wasn’t a clear resolution. 5 EXHIBIT B KAY: Right, so, if you look at the – sorry, this is Appendix B in the background report, this is a May 8, 2002, letter from State Historic Preservation Division, the subject is “Replacement Pages, Archaeological Inventory Survey Report – in the third paragraph it speaks to the additional bones that were found. So it says, “Your letter indicates that the bones that you found at 21,798 appear to be remnants of the individual that was dis-interred and that you plan to recover these remnants with the lineal descendant and a mortuary representative. Please contact our Burials Program manager \[Kamanao Mills, 5887-0010\] when this is to be done.” The other piece of information that came in – pardon me \[looking for the document\], sorry about that – it was a February 2001 letter from Mike Matsukawa indicating that, “the burial remains on the parcel were removed pursuant to the directions/approval of the Burial Council. This brings the issue of the identification and relocation of the remains, as well as Burial Council approval, to an end.” But I see now that this was actually done prior to that second round of bones. We did send out the application for review; from SHPD we didn’t receive any other information. The assumption is that it was complete, but I can follow up on that and certainly make sure that, you know, if it hasn’t been done, that it’s done. VITOUSEK: Great, that will make me a lot more comfortable— KAY: Understood. VITOUSEK: —just knowing that it was resolved and— KAY: Yeah, I’ll follow up with that and contact you. VITOUSEK: Thank you. KAY: You’re welcome. And then, you know, it still has to go through the grading process and subdivision process and everything else, so, if it hasn’t been done, we’ll make sure that it’s done prior to those processes. VITOUSEK: Was there SHPD review of the grubbing of the parcel in 2005 whenever that occurred? KAY: I don’t know the answer to that question. I’ll check on that as well. VITOUSEK: Okay. UNGER: Thank you. Any more comments from the applicant? OHAN: Just some updates on the sightline adjustments on the proposed five-lot subdivision. The property lines were amended to show better sightline and that would be, satisfy the Department of Public Works. And, you mentioned water commitments, so those have been obtained and paid for, and you should have a letter in your packet regarding that. Other than that, the grubbing took place prior – I think, in 2001 or 2002 – prior to me purchasing the 6 EXHIBIT B property; so I think they allowed the grubbing to take place after the archaeological study was completed, so, that took place and I think it mentions that somewhere in the study that it was allowed to go through. Thank you. UNGER: Great, thank you. No other questions? \[None.\] You may be seated, thank you. At this time we’d like to open up the hearing to public testimony, if anybody is interested in testifying on this agenda item. Seeing no testifiers, Commissioners, I need a motion to close public testimony. SHIMAOKA: I motion that we close public testimony. CHURCH: I’ll second it. UNGER: We have a motion by Commissioner Shimaoka, second by Commissioner Church. All in favor? COMMISSIONERS: Aye. UNGER: Opposed? \[None.\] Motion passes, public hearing is closed. Commissioners, at this time the floor is open for a motion. SHIMAOKA: Yeah, I move that a favorable recommendation be forwarded to the County Council on the application for a Change of Zone, Docket No. REZ 17-00\[0\]219, based on the Planning Director’s recommendation, which shall be adopted. KEALOHA: I’ll second him. UNGER: Motion by Commissioner Shimaoka, second by Commissioner Kealoha. The floor is open for discussion. I support the project, I think for all the reasons that were listed by the Planning Department; it’s infilling; it’s what our Community Development Plan calls for; the infrastructure is there. I’m not a proponent of making any changes to the fair share. I guess the policy is helpful and certainly guidance. But, in general, you know, I’m concerned about fair share, and, you know, as these subdivisions continue on, do we have enough money for parks, police, fire, etcetera. So I’m a proponent of the subdivision not making any changes. The motion on the table does not call for those changes, so, to be clear, if we do approve this, it’s without including any money spent on roadway development to go towards the other fair share requirements. KAY: Just so I can clarify, is that, was that your motion, Mr. Shimaoka? SHIMAOKA: Yes. KAY: Okay, thank you. UNGER: Hearing no other comments, roll call, please. 7 EXHIBIT B KAY: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Shimaoka? SHIMAOKA: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Kealoha? KEALOHA: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Church? CHURCH: Aye. KAY: Commissioner Vitousek? VITOUSEK: Aye. KAY: And Chair Unger? UNGER: Aye. KAY: Thank you. Mr. Chair, motion carries, five-nothing. UNGER: Thank you. To the applicant, you will be notified in writing by the Planning Commission. Thank you. The discussion ended at 10:03 a.m. Respectfully submitted, Noriko Sauer, Secretary Leeward Planning Commission 8 EXHIBIT B