Planning Director's Letter to the Puna CDP Steering Committee

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PUNA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PLAN STEERING COMMITTEE ISSUES (Taken from a letter written by Hawaii County Planning Director, Chris Yuen, to the Puna CDP Steering Committee on November 13, 2006) The Puna Community Development Plan has potentially such a broad scope that it is useful to step back and look at some of the current trends and community needs. We need a focused set of priorities and goals. This letter tries to suggest some critical issues, from the standpoint of land use planning. The most basic function of a community development plan is to serve as the guide to county government actions. This has to be done in the context of an overall community vision, after determining the general goals of the community. That stageÏof hearing what people think is important and what they wantÏhas been the reason for much of the work in the plan to date. The main tools to implement a plan are regulatory tools, such as land use controls, and financial tools, like spending money to build roads and parks. The government can offer incentives, but the incentives often involve reducing regulations, or spending money. Finally, the government can act as a catalyst for private action. Because of the Planning DepartmentÓs main powers involve land use regulations, this letter focuses on the uses and limits of those regulations as a tool in shaping the future of Puna. The private subdivisions created from the late 1950Ós to the early 1970Ós create the land use pattern in Puna. We have about 48,000 lots in these subdivisions. The owners of each of these lots have a legal right to build one house per lot, and current county and state laws make it possible to build more than one home on most of these. At present, perhaps a quarter of these lots have homes on them, depending upon the subdivision. Clearly, there is a vast potential for future residential develo PunaÓs population grew from 5500 in 1970, to over 31,000 in 2000, and continues to grow at an even faster pace in the six years since the last census, because of the vacant lots on these subdivisions. The land was originally cheaper because of the vast supply of lots and and poor infrastructure. This will remain true, and the trend of the population moving into these subdivisions is likely to continue. The reform of the county subdivision code in 1968 put an end to the era of rampant subdividing that created the Puna lots (although some subdivisions already in process were finalized in the early 1970Ós.) Current subdivision requirements for water, roads, and drainage systems mean that any new residential or small agricultural lots will be more expensive than the typical market prices of Puna lots, even ignoring raw land costs. Land use regulations in HawaiÓi, like the county zoning and the state land use commission, control growth and development in most areas of the state. This is not true