HomeMy WebLinkAboutpc 1-31-17 sp mtng gp minKAUAI PLANNING COMMISSION
SPECIAL MEETING
January 31, 2017
The special meeting of the Planning Commission of the County of Kauai was called to order by
Chair Keawe at 9:05 a.m., at the L-lhu`e Civic Center, Mo`ikeha Building, in meeting room 2A -
2B. The following Commissioners were present:
Chair Kimo Keawe
Mr. Roy Ho
Mr. Sean Mahoney
Ms. Donna Apisa
Absent and Excused:
Ms. Glenda Nogami Streufert
Mr. Wayne Katayama
Ms. Kanoe Ahuna
The following staff members were present: Planning Department —Michael Dahilig, Marie
Williams, Marisa Valenciano, Leslie Takasaki; Office of the County Attorney — Deputy County
Attorney Jodi Higuchi Sayegusa; Office of Boards and Commissions — Administrator Jay
Furfaro, Commission Support Clerk Lam Agoot
Discussion of the meeting, in effect, ensued:
CALL TO ORDER
Chair Keawe called the meeting to order at 9:05 a.m.
ROLL CALL
Mr. Dahilig: Commissioner Katayama, Commissioner Ahuna, Commissioner Streufert,
Commissioner Mahoney.
Mr. Mahoney: Here.
Mr. Dahilig
: Commissioner Apisa.
Ms. Apisa: Here.
Mr. Dahilig: Vice Chair Ho.
Mr. Ho: Here.
Mr. Dahilig: Chair Keawe.
Chair Keawe: Here,
Mr. Dahing: Mr. Chair you have four members present.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA
Mr. Dahilig: Mr. Chair, the department would recommend approving the agenda as is this
morning.
Chair Keawe: We need a motion to approve.
Ms. Apisa: So moved.
Mr. Mahonev: Second.
Chair Keawe: It's been moved and seconded, all those in favor. (Unanimous voice vote)
Opposed? Motion carried 4:0.
RECEIPT OF ITEMS FOR THE RECORD (NONE)
PUBLIC COMMENT
NEW PUBLIC HEARING
Zoning Amendment ZA-2017-3 relating to updating the General Plan for the County of
Kauai and technical amendments related to the definition of Development Plan.
Presentation of the Departmental Draft of the General Plan Update and the process to
update the General Plan.
Mr. Dahilig: Mr. Chair I do have so far 26 individuals that are signed up to testify. For
procedures sake the department would recommend going through the list and seeing which
members of the public wish to testify before the presentation for those members of the public
that will not be able to stay for the whole presentation.
Chair Keawe: We understand some of you have to leave for whatever purpose. We would like
to give you the opportunity to present your testimony before the presentation so the Director will
go through and read the names.
Mr. Dahilig: If I call your name an
d you do not come up to the podium I will assume you would
like to testify after the presentation, if you would like to testify now please come up to the
podium when I call your name, John Moore, Ann Walton, Dr. Doug Wilmore.
Dr. Doug Wilmore: Mr. Chairman, honorable Commissioners an
d citizens of Kauai my name is
Douglas Wihnore. I am a retired physician living on Kauai since 1991. I have reviewed and
worked on the General plan for the last 5 months. I find the preliminary draft full of many ideas
and proposals, some which are quite good. What I find is lacking is initial organization. For
example there is no major theme or foundation for the plan. We propose that this plan be called
Management Managing Our Sustainable and Resilient Kauai. This model was chosen because
we are a community in the middle of the ocean and need to enhance our sustainability. In
addition, in the future unforeseen and unpredictable factors will occur in our community and we
need a plan for such events in order to recover and rebuild. The goals which follow this vision
include that the island has a sound and healthy environment, that we have diverse and thriving
communities, and that we are economically self-reliant and prosperous. We have proposed about
a dozen topics that provide areas for specific policy planning and they will be discussed by
others in our ad-hoc group.
What is important about our proposal is that these policies in general must be adhered to during
county decision making and that law and regulations must conform to the General Plan.
Moreover, the county must monitor these guidelines to ensure that progress in all areas is being
made. We understand that the Planning Department proposes that this plan be broad based with
many un -prioritized suggestions to allow decisions to be made by the county council. We have
examined a number of General Plans from communities and cities in the United States and found
that there are no successful communities that politicize their planning as suggested by the
Planning Department. In fact the failure of the year 2000 General Plan is an example of such
lack of consensus building and monitoring within the county structure.
In conclusion, we suggest a model of a sustainable and resilient Kauai with goals that support
this model. Polices are needed to cover the major goals and they require planning however
commitment and monitoring are needed for this plan to be successful. We are all volunteers in
this endeavor and look forward to working with you in the future to develop a meaningful and
successful plan. Thank you for your consideration.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony Doctor
Mr. Dahili¢: Sharon Goodwin, Adam Asquith, Judy Shabert.
Ms. Judv Shabert: Mr. Chairman, honorable Commissioners and citizens of Kauai my name is
Judy Shabert. I am a retired physician and currently a fruit farmer. I live in the Waipake
Subdivision. First I would like to thank all of you Commissioners who give of your time and
energy to provide county officials with guidance in keeping Kauai such a special place. Your
job can't be easy and it takes special people to take on such an enormous task and all of you are
doing this as volunteers. Realizing all that you have given from your heart it saddens me to think
that $1,200,000 dollars was given to individuals who do not live on Kauai and were tasked with
telling us how the next twenty years of planning on this island would occur. I am very
disappointed.
If I was a high school teacher an
d this document was given to me I would return it to the student
and tell the student to cut it by two thirds and take out all the photographs which is just filler. If
this were the work of a doctoral candidate I would return it and ask for some original research
and ask the person to spend another year working on it. If our seniors at the neighborhood
centers saw this they would ask where is the beef. There are 20 policies listed in this document
but in fact these are not policies they are goals. I will give you an example, Nurture our keiki.
This is an incredibly admirable goal but it is not a policy which is a deliberate system of
principals to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. This is missing entirely in this
document. I feel this plan lacks a foundation and a process where there is a timeline for action _
and accountability to various departments. If this document as it currently stands is adopted by
the county we will continue to have confusion and manipulation of the goals stated in this
document for the next 15 to 20 years.
There are successful city and county plans available to use for guidance. I wish the group who
had written this had looked at them. The ad-hoc volunteer group which has been concentrating
their efforts on the Kauai plan for 8 months have reviewed many successful city and county
plans. Furthermore, they have considered how such plans can be specifically adapted to Kauai
with all of its unique characteristics. Since all of us are volunteers with the goal of improving
the lives of those of us who live on Kauai I hope we can work together to make this a plan of the
highest integrity, thank you.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Doug Haig, Carl Imparato, Felicia Cowden, Allen Rachap, Brenda Jose.
Ms. Brenda Jose: Aloha and good morning Commission Chair Keawe and all of our
Commission members, mahalo. My name is Brenda Jose and I am from Kauai, a native of
Kekaha and I am one of the CAC members that served on the General Plan. It was an honor for
me to do so and I was very enlightened with the opportunity and as I expressed to the
Commission members it was not always pleasant but it was always meaningful in my opinion.
Today what I wanted to do is share just a little bit of my participation and what I had hoped to do
as participating was to provide the background from a native Hawaiian female, mother of 2, wife
of 26 years, with a background in hospitality industry and community advocacy. I hope that
somewhere within this document and I am confident that it does, that voice leads to what you are
reading. I do have concern and I have expressed this throughout that we do not and we still have
a lot of work to do with the voice of our youth and of our young adults who are now raising their
children because honestly that is who this update will affect specifically. It is for the future and
so that is what my concern has been. Thank you again for this opportunity, if you have any
questions I will be happy to stick around for the rest of the and answer them but I just wanted to
make sure that I come forward and express my thanks for participating, thank you.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Kathleen Hurd,
Ms. Kathleen Hurd: We have very specific comments about our community and we hope that
you put that in context. We were hoping that you had the handout that has the map with the green
in it. That is my comments summarized for you and the map is important. Good morning
Chairman Keawe and Commissioners, thank you for your service. I am Kathleen Hurd, I live in
Hanapepe Heights. I am a member of the Hanapepe/Bleele Community Association and we
would like to focus our comments specifically on our community. Section 4, page 433 describes
the dramatic vista that opens across the cliffs and the fields to the ocean as you enter the
Westside of Kauai. This view is followed by the stunning sight of Hanapepe Valley and the
mountains from the Hanapepe overlook. These distinctive land forms provide the foundation for
the connections and barriers of the traditional ahupua'a boundaries, balancing access to resources
that in turn support functional communities.
The Hanapepe/Eleele community encompasses 5 distinct but interconnected traditional towns,
Numila, Eleele, Port Allen, Hanapepe, and Kamakani. Planning for these communities should
reflect the distinctive topography. Instead the proposed land use maps ignore the barriers
presented by the river and the cliffs. As presented the maps, the land use map for our community
suggests that a person could swim the river and climb the 100 foot cliff to the residential
neighborhoods within 5 minutes. You can barely drive around these barriers within the specified
time. The analysis is artificial and the recommendations related to this analysis are unrealistic.
Similarly, the land use maps in section 5 and the discussion of our communities in section 4
focus on Hanapepe Town not recognizing the critical power generation, transportation, fishing,
visitor, and fuel distribution activities that take place in Port Allen which serve the needs of the
entire island. These facilities do appear on the infrastructure and hazard maps but the Port Allen
Airport has been left off of all these maps. The critical public facilities, the location of critical
public facilities such as the fire station, the recreational center and armory are in the high risk
flood zone and that has been ignored.
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Chair Keawe: Can you wrap up your testimony please.
Ms. Hurd: Yes. The active agriculture in Hanapepe Valley is mischaracterized as natural...the
map on the back of my handout shows the recently designated important agricultural lands to the
east of our community. It emphasizes our separation from the South Kauai Community Plan
area but clearly the lined area should be in the planning activities for Hanapepe/Eleele rather
than in the South Shore Plan. Historically the plantation camps were part of the Hanapepe/Eleele
community and they should remain that way.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilie: Susan
Remoaldo.
Ms. Susan
Remoaldo: Good morning everyone. My name is Susan Remoaldo, I am a resident
of Eleele and also belong to the Hanapepe/Eleele Community Association. I will be addressing
the planning process, omission of planning areas, and community input. Stated on page B.5 of
the Kauai County General Plan, Appendix Goals for the Planning Process, the process was
designed to be inclusive, collaborative, innovative, and action driven. It further defines
collaborative as providing for all involved to contribute in a meaningful way towards shaping the
visions, goals, policies, and actions contained within the General Plan. The community should
see themselves and their input reflected in the final product. This is not true for the
Hanapepe/Eleele community. Our area has not had the benefit of a detailed community plan for
over 40 years. It was expected Section 4.4.2 of the draft describing our area would be more
substantial given community input beyond the 2015 visioning workshops.
Even more surprising on page 4-24 under Guidance for Community Planning, was the listing of
only 1 goal for a portion of Hanapepe Town focused on 1 specific industry. A fraction of a mile
apart the Hanapepe/Eleele area consists of 2 separate towns, distinct in character and
complimentary to each other. Eleele has a shopping center, school and credit unions, Hanapepe
a fire station, gas station, neighborhood center and sports complex. All the other Kauai
communities in this plan area listed separately as should Hanapepe and Eleele on page 4-22,
even though both are assigned the same small town place type. Port Allen is its own community
and more than an industrial hub with a harbor, power plant, and solar farm and worthy of its own
consideration. It is home to restaurants, manufacturers, other small businesses, a medical clinic,
pre-school, residential community, and low income housing. Hanapepe Valley was completely
ignored with no reference to its agricultural contributions and residential community as was
Burns Field, Port Allen Airport. Numilla, historically part of the Eleele community, has been
inappropriately placed in the South Kauai Community Plan by current planning boundaries.
Stated on page 9 in the summary of responses to community input discussion draft part 3,
"Miscellaneous, Desire for Detailed and Specific Community Planning Actions", the Planning
Department updated section 4 clarifying that the General Plan sets high level policy which is
then implemented through community plans. All district level recommendations and visionary
statements are preliminary and broad and will inform community planning. Hanapepe/Eleele
should not be placed...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms. Remoaldo: As a disadvantage in the General Plan process fox lack of a current community
development plan. The multiple pages of input from the Hanapepe/Eleele Community
Association offering more comprehensive descriptions and goals for our area should be
incorporated into the General Plan. If the process is truly inclusive and collaborative let us see
ourselves in the final product.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Jean Souza.
Ms. Jean
Souza: Good morning, Jean Souza of Hanapepe and an active member of the
Hanapepe/Eleele Community Association. The HanapepeBleele Community Association will
be submitting to the Commission over 20 pages of comments in three sections. Today I would
like to share with you 2 observations I have on the departmental draft. One, the maps continue to
be very small scale making it very difficult to accurately assess the true impacts of the proposed
General Plan and land use changes, and two, the walk shed concept which is the basis if the
neighborhood general future land use map designations is not suitable for all communities,
particularly Hanapepe and Eleele. In particular I would like to call your attention to figure 53 of
the Hanapepe/Eleele land use map on page 54 which I have provided for you. For the
Hanapepe/Eleele area I ask that you scrutinize the proposed conversion of a significant portion of
Hanapepe and Eleele's long time residential communities to a new neighborhood general
designation. We contend that the walk shed concept is misapplied in the residential
neighborhoods of Hanapepe Heights and older Eleele because the 5 minute walk distance on the
level land is actually a 25 to 30 minute hike is these steeper topographies.
More importantly we contend that the large size of the existing Hanapepe Town core proposed
now as neighborhood center continues to have many vacant commercial properties and under
developed properties. There is no justification for increased densities and more commercial
development in land surrounding the town core and areas such as Hanapepe Heights, the self-
help housing near the transfer station, the older Hanapepe residential neighborhoods Makai of
Kaumualii Highway, and the oldest Eleele residential area. In addition, the Planning
Department's application of its proposed designation of neighborhood general to places like
Hanapepe Valley and the high cliffs behind Hanapepe Town is also ill-conceived and not
justified. We need to support the town core of Hanapepe Town. We need to reject the kind of
urban sprawl that threatens this commercial core. We do not need to see the kind of urban
sprawl we see in Lihue where the older parts of the town continue to be abandoned in favor of
new commercial spaces. Such a move would be detrimental to the viability of Hanapepe Town
core now and 20 years into the future. It also threatens the majority of the residential
neighborhoods with medium intensity mixed use environments that are more appropriate in the
existing town core, thank you.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. DahiliQ: Just a reminder to the audience to please indicate whether you would like to testify
now or testify after the presentation, Juan Wilson,
Mr. Juan Wilson: My name is Juan Wilson and I am a retired architect and planner living in
Hanapepe Valley. I am also active with Lite Hanapepe/Eleele Community Association. When
this General Plan proposal is fulfilled I expect denser traffic, more crowded beaches, and a
reduction in the quality of the lifestyle we have here on Kauai. The guides for this plan seem to
have been developed and suburbanized. Unfortunately sustainability, self-reliance, and food
security are not addressed in this plan. Forget about addressing global warming, climate change
and ocean rise with this plan as well. Many now seem hypnotized by handheld screens and seem
trapped (inaudible) in suburban consumption. The suburban delusion seems to be codified in
this General Plan proposal. The bared soul of this plan is on page 1 in the introduction in bold
type face, "Growth is happening whether we like it or not". I reviewed the proposed plan as it
applies to Hanapepe and Eleele. The last census count of our area was 5,028 residents, an
average of 3.85 per acre. The proposed General Plan shows four expanding neighborhood types
and concentric rings to be filled in with suburban development. The unbuilt parts of these
neighborhoods total 616 acres. At the last census density, that's 2,322 new residents, and
increase of 47 percent. That would be a difficult adjustment for our community.
Lima Ola is an
upcoming project that the county is developing in a neighborhood next to Eleele.
Itis 550 units on 75 acres. That is 7.33 units an acre. A planning representative assured me that
Lima Ola was consistent with the new General Plan proposal. The Kauai census is an average of
3 people per residence. This would be 1,650 new residents at Lima Ola. That density applied to
the General Plan would be an increase of 13,545 people or 270 percent if this plan is fulfilled and
those areas shown on the maps are built out. This would be an impossible adjustment. The
newly expanded hazard area now crosses the highway. New disaster inundation maps split the
town in two, separated by flooded low land with many emergency resources under water if there
was a disaster. The area's only fire department is in that area. Dining facilities, certified
kitchens, senior centers, and numerous churches and the neighborhood center are in that area.
Clothing and building materials, Habitat Resale and the Salvation Army are in that area. The
critical National Guard Armory and its equipment are in that area. Some of these resources
could be relocated or duplicated on higher ground starting now if we were planning to do so.
But in a disaster all those...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Wilson: Will not be available.
Chair Keawe: Can you wrap up your testimony please.
Mr. Wilson: Wouldn't it be cheaper and better for Kauai to educate, motivate, and award young
islanders to have smaller families a little bit later because population growth is the only
justification for this plan and it's not going to work.
Mr. Dahili¢: Wayne Souza.
Mr. Wayne Souza: Good morning, my name is Wayne Souza and I am with the
Hanapepe/Eleele Community Association and the Kauai Community Coalition. I will give
testimony on the heritage resources specifically on historic places and visual resources. We
recommend that the section on historic buildings and structures be expanded to include historic
places. Kauai has places important to our history. A few examples are Captain Cooks Landing
in Waimea, Ipua'a in Eleele, the last battle site where Kauai seized being a separate kingdom in
1824 and the 1924 Filipino strike site in Hanapepe. We also recommend that the section on land
marks and scenic resources be changed to land marks and visual resources. Why visual
resources rather than scenic resources? Visual resources are more encompassing of Kauai's
beauty than scenic resources. Visual resources refer to all objects manmade and natural and
features, while scenic resources refer to impressive or beautiful natural scenery.
Visual resources of high quality or distinctiveness defin
e Kauai's sense of place for residence
and visitors alike. These resources include landscapes like the Napali Coast, geologic and
physiographic features like the Koloa cones and craters, water bodies like Wailua Falls,
ecological resources such as reef fish and the summer flowering of the gold trees in Waimea
Town, cultural and historic places such as Hanalei taro loi and Hanapepe Town, architectural and
landscaped areas such as Hanapepe Soto Zen temple and the tree tunnel. Open spaces such as
expensive coffee fields that separate Hanapepe and Eleele from Kalaheo and the small ag. field
across the highway from Kukui Grove Shopping Center that provides relief from the urban scene
and vantage points such as the high bluffs at Mahaulepu that provides views of migratory
humpback whales. These distinctive visual resources can be large scale or diminutive, stationary
to flowing, permanent to seasonal and even ephemeral, highly visible to cryptic, and natural to
manmade. Preserving views of such scenic landscapes and other distinctive visual resources are
vital to sustaining Kauai's uniqueness and identity.
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair,
Mr. Souza: Regulatory tools are the best means of protection, to be proactive rather than
reactive. The County of Kauai's visual resource inventory should be conducted and regularly
updated by a technical working group so that informed decisions can be made by landowners,
developers, community members, and government decision makers, Thank you.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahili�: Gabriella Taylor, Patrick Ono, Bruce Allyn, Cynthia Lazaroff, Jim Edmonds.
Mr. Jim Edmonds: Good morning everyone, Jim Edmonds and I am from Kilauea, we came
here in 1975 and moved here from Oahu in 1985. I formed Emerald Isle Properties in Kilauea
about 30 years ago and last year we decided to focus all of our time and energy on trying to help
the local people find affordable housing. We found out fairly quickly that there is no affordable
housing on this island and we began to call it a gradual tragedy because we are realizing how
much it is affecting the lives of so many people. What is affordable housing? I think we all
know it is a comfortable place where you feel you can relax, feel a little pride in your home and I
am beginning to realize that if we don't pay for something now, change the paradigm now we are
going to pay for it later. If you look at Oahu they have thousands of people living in the streets
now some of whom have jobs and can't afford a place to live. They are basically right now
buying containers and pretty much anything but dumpsters to try to put people in a dry place. I
hope we don't reach that place. Of course people here just stay on the beach.
So what are we going to do? Basically our housing department is doing everything it can to
provide affordable housing and the next project which has taken I think about 10 or 12 years to
evolve should put 3 bedroom duplexes on the market in about a year for right at a half a million
dollars. Those are the affordable units. The rest of the units will be more expensive. Somehow
we have to change the paradigm. We have to completely get away from the old sticks and
mortar construction and the intense planning that it takes and permitting. We need to build 1
large community. The best place right now is Hokua, Kapa'a Heights. It has been on the maps
for 50 years almost, it's very close to ready to go. I don't necessarily agree with the way it's
being done, it should be done all affordable but it is silly to take that off the map. So basically
all the work we are putting out is generating less than 10 percent of the houses that we actually
need for expansion. We have to go to the new, if you study the new maps, the new concepts that
are coming out they are a lot of tiny home communities that are being built. They are called
pocket communities now. What are they? If you look at them they are going back to the old
plantation communities that we used to have. How do you keep them from becoming an ugly
shanty town, by careful planning, making them all warm and inviting, eatable privacy,
landscaping, tiny homes, tiny yards, micro apartments.
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Edmonds: Basically if we can work on getting a new standard here making everything much
simpler this will give an opportunity to move into a better future. I have a little outline that I am
happy to give anyone who wants it that shows what our ideas are.
Chair eawe: an you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilie: Lynn McNutt.
Ms. Lynn McNutt: Aloha my name is Lynn McNutt, thank you for taking the time have written
this plan and have this meeting. I live in Wailua and I am very concerned about several things. I
think you are hearing over and over again that people would like to hear a theme in your plan on
sustainability and food security and that includes insuring we use ag. land for agricultural
purposes and as land goes fallow, if people leave the land, that it is brought back to active use to
grow food for the community. I am very uncomfortable with the request from the Planning
Division to provide water for private development because this will become a de -facto policy.
That is not appropriate. I don't like water from my side of the Moku being taken away and used
for other purposes without a discussion. Going through the expansion and PMRF, I would like
us to consider some non-military uses and I don't really see what PMRF's plans are incorporated
into this document, they are part of our community. It involves a lot going on, on Niihau that has
to do with maintaining the ecosystem.
I would also like to advise you to please make the ag. advisory group active again. The last
meeting we had we only heard about 1 part of agriculture, we did not hear about sustainable or
organic agriculture. And I would like to give you an example that bees, the apiary up at Kauai
Community College is creating a valuable industry here for Kauai and cannot get support
because we are too small. It is an 8 to 10 million dollar industry on Hawaii Island and our bees
are better and we can't get support from your help so I would really like to do that. And I also
recommend highly that you create hunting and fishing advisory committees because hunting and
fishing are a main part of security and sustainability and we need to have real conversations at a
county level. Mayor Carvalho brought up the county level thing when they had insights on PBS
Hawaii last week, all the mayors were there and they all said we need to address a lot of this at
the county level. Mahalo for letting me speak my peace.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilie: Tom Shigemoto, Greg Allen.
Mr. Gree Allen: Aloha everybody, thank you. I am here because of specifically Kapa'a Town
and its direction in the future. The plan says that we should develop in the flood zone in 3 nodes
around Kapa'a Town and we should eliminate Hokua Place. The Planning Director told me,
quote "because it is urban sprawl." It is specifically not urban sprawl; it is within a 5 minute
walking distance to the town core. It has been a place for 50 years that has been on the map to
be developed to become housing. I would suggest that we have a responsibility to all of our
brothers and sisters on this planet that when I got involved in this project, living here more than
half of my life and having all of my children born and raised in Hawaii, there was going to be 50
houses for a few elite. The county came to me and said would you please make it housing for
the public and at great risk I said yes.
To this day everything that my family has, has been poured into trying to move down this road.
My current partners are frustrated by the lack of planning from the Planning Department or the
lack of support for affordable housing. In this project there will be less than 800 houses although
it was designated for 2,000. Of the 800, 650 will be affordable houses, 650 will be townhouses
which by their nature will be permanently more affordable than a single family house. I just
want to point out that there is a housing shortage in general in Hawaii, that its greatest area of
shortage is Kauai, that we are a melting pot not a paradise only for the rich. As people move
here from the east and the west our Kamaaina are being forced out that as they state in the
beginning of the plan, "growth is basically inevitable", it is going to happen, things are going to
change so plan for it. I want to point out when you look at page 439, if you guys would review
it; the Planning Department says that they have concerns about the perceived impact on traffic.
We all know traffic in the corridor is terrible. Every resort and everything in Kilauea and
Princeville affects the same corridor. The only project that helps the corridor is Hokua Place.
We own the bypass road from the roundabout past the white tent church to the first bridge,
outright. We have allowed its use for years for free for our friends and family because we are
about the community. We are donating that road. Tell me what other hotel or anybody is giving
you that big of a piece of infrastructure. Not only that, there has been multiple traffic studies that
show that the road we build, Mauka to Makai, through the project avoiding use of the roundabout
will help traffic. So we help traffic and we provide affordable housing. We are out of the flood
zone..
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Allen: In the Planning Department's notes they say that there will be sites built that need
flood control. The sites they are talking about are the sites they are recommending. They are
recommending building in the flood zone. I will wrap it up Chair. I am going to say Hokua is
smart growth, it's out of the flood zone, there was a school built there for a reason, it supports the
town of Kapa'a within a five minute walking distance, it includes donation of the bypass, a new
Mauka road, a public pool heated open until 8:00 p.m., walkable, bike -able alternative
transportation. The sewer, they claim that the sewer infrastructure is inadequate, this helps it.
It's got green energy independence. It's got 66 acres staying agricultural for agricultural
sustainability. Please look at that page, 49 is their written removal of Hokua Place from the plan
and then they have a map that shows where the buildings are going to be going and the flood
zone.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Will M. Davis.
Mr. Will Davis: I would like to thank the distinguished and illustrious council members on
creating this plan. I am a licensed elementary teacher in Massachusetts and also have a
background in child protective services with a 100 percent track record with the judges. lam
also a licensed medical technician and former manager of the Chronic Disease Center for cancer
patients. I think the plan is beautiful. To me it's like a celebration cake. We may have to add on
11
more frosting to make it even better. For example the attention to global warming, there are
some species that may be lost in the mountains, bird species. But what I am talking about is
attention to the keiki. World Bank President Dr. Jim Young Kim, MD, former president of
Dartmouth College where I attended as an honor student, he has released several major things
including a report in 2016 that US and Hawaii school students have C grades in intelligence
scores in math, reading and science compared to more developed nations like Switzerland where
they have higher gross domestic product and higher A scores. Dr. Jim Young Kim is concerned
about this research that has come out in Lancet Neurology Medical Journal with 115 references
that shows basically, look at it like this, pesticide concentrations go up and student IQ scores
minimize. It's called an inverse coloration. Also, with precise accounting algorithms you can
show as pesticide concentrations go up, gross domestic product minimizes. I have a map here
which shows there is Hawaii which shows, there is Hawaii, you see red and green. You can see I
have equations, let's look as assets, liabilities and owner's equity. When we are talking about
our corporate assets, neurotoxic molecules which are floating in the ecosystem and through our
bodies creating cancers and IQ deficits using total elasticity of cost formulas, marginal costs are
escalating because of the problems in the biotech industry for new research.
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Davis: Right now the real vulnerable and most dangerous point is Waimea and there are
bills out in the paper this morning, HS 778. We need to create those perimeter zones to keep our
children safe from these dangerous neurotoxins which volatize and spread around for weeks.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahiliy: Jim O'Connor, Ipo Torio-Kauhane.
Mr. Torio-Kauhane: Aloha, my name is Ipo Torio-Kauhane, born and raised here, generations
back. I am the granddaughter of Maggie Kapule, great, great granddaughter of Keaka Kapule. I
am from Anahola. I am a Hawaiian educator, started a charter school in Anahola and I continue
to serve there today, Mahalo for having me. First I would like to say this is a beautiful
document. It is a wonderful starting point and I want to thank all of the time and energy and
manao that have gone into this plan. After reading this and I have read this twice and I'm not
going to get into the details of it but I just want to say this. This can be an opportunity for us, for
the people of Kauai, for all of us to truly create something together that we truly all own. And
that is not what I feel right now but the potential and the opportunity is there. There are some
really great ideas, they may not be policies right now but I would like to explore how do we
make something like nurturing the keiki and honoring the kupuna into policy? Those are some
really good starting points.
My concern with this is pushing things forward before the time is right an
d I really do feel that
we need a time out. We should extend our timeline and this review process. We really need to
make sure that this is the people's plan. Going back to the community for more input and
feedback is critical. I do not feel like the voice of the Hawaiian people is in this. I love that we
are thinking about Wahi Pana but what does that mean and how do we intend to take care of our
Wahi Pana? As an educator I am have to say that that is the most disappointing, lacking piece in
12
this plan. The educational portion is so small that I can't even find it. It's like it might have
been a page and a half long and really it should have its own section because the education of our
youth and our elders and our people needs to be in alignment with this plan. If we are saying
that this plan is innovative and we are really setting ourselves up in the next 20 years, I don't see
how. We cannot rely on the DOE's plan. Essentially that is what it says; we are going to follow
the DOE's plan.
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms. Torio-Kauhane: Has anybody read the DOE's plan? We need to create our own plan. I
think there is a lot of potential.
Chair Keawe: Can you wrap up your testimony please?
Ms. Torio-Kauhane: And I want to offer to support this moving forward by taking it back to my
own community. I really want to see more Hawaiians involved in this process and more input
and I am happy to support that, bringing the community forward, Mahalo.
Mr. Dahili�: Patricia Wistinghausen.
Ms. Patricia Wistinghausen: Aloha and good morning everybody. I am here on behalf of the
organization Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action and I am going to be reading testimony
from Elif Beal who is one of the co-founders. This was also emailed to you for your reference
later on. (Testimony on file)
Mr. Dahilie: Jim Beaver, Jason Makaneole.
Mr. Jason Makaneole: Good morning, my name is Jason Makaneole. I am submitting testimony
from the Moku Council in the Puna Moku on behalf of the Poo Kanealoha nano Hano Smith
who couldn't be here today. It is the position of the Puna Moku aha Moku that the General Plan
update does not have enough substantial information in the plan regarding native Hawaiian
history, culture, language, and society. We are not just an issue of heritage as the plan contends
but a living people who are working very hard as others to update our traditional knowledge
practices, our society, our science, our language, etc., so that it has value and relevance in
today's world. The word heritage limits our contributions as native Hawaiians to just one or two
sectors of society, mostly the visitor industry, yet when we take a look at the totality of our
presence of our people on Kauai and Hawaii we are involved in every discussion from
ecosystems to cultural sites, from watershed to renewable energy. And as such we should be
named partner and given some space in the General Plan to see what current efforts exist in each
section and what unique contributions our people can make to each section.
Overall the plan should reflect looking at the issue through the lands of both the traditional
knowledge and western society however as one can see from the plans they fall short in each
section. As Hawaiians and native people I think our goal is always to increase the number of
places and domains where our language, culture, and participation in economy are relevant and
meaningful. However if we go with this plan as is, then Hawaiians by virtue of the plan will be
13
stuck as passive participants. No economic opportunities etc. beyond the scope of what is
outlined in the plan. Furthermore, I don't understand why none of the plan is in Hawaiian. At
least in each section there should be a least an introduction in Hawaiian language. We have two
official languages in Hawaii, not only one. So this would be the time, place and document to
show our commitment to the host culture.
There are
three schools on Kauai and one
school on Niihau where
they learn some level of
Hawaiian.
There is at least one nonprofit
on Kauai that also has...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Makaneole: Actively involved in teaching Hawaiian language as...
Chair Keawe: Could you wrap up your testimony please. I would ask you to submit the writing
that you have and we will certainly look at it.
Mr. Makaneole: Okay, thank you.
Chair Keawe: The Planning Director an answer to your question.
Mr. Dahilig: Just as a response concerning Olelo Hawaii as being one of the languages used in
the planning documents. We do translate at the end of the whole approval process a final version
of the plan in Olelo Hawaii. We have done that with our South Kauai and our Lihue plans and
we also do that with many of our other planning documents so we do that at the very end.
Chair Keawe: So a final version of the plan will be in Hawaiian.
Mr. Makaneole: There are some other points in here to look at.
Chair Keawe: Just submit it and we will take a look at it, thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Councilmember Yukimura, Rupert Rowe.
Mr. Rupert
Rowe: Aloha Kakou. I am here trying to understand the General Plan because we go
twenty years ahead but we don't go thirty five years back and try to figure out the problems that
are facing us right now in the plan. Traffic, number one problem, rubbish, number one problem,
resource, that is a problem with our water. It alters the lifestyle of our people. Secondly, all
these developers, when they come here to Hawaii never give any money for us to put back our
Heiaus, our culture sites. I am the Po'o of Kaneiolouma so as I speak to you I speak from the
level of the Po'o when we are looking at this problem. This island is 28 miles in a circle. What
is growth in a 28 mile circle? Your resources are limited. The Hawaiian does not really protect
its assets here, everybody else's assets are more important. We are going to come up with graves
pretty soon, it is going to be a big issue so we all have to be prepared for this moment, its'
coming very fast within 6 months. Secondly, development, you can't stop development but you
must have proper development. You have to slow down the growth right now and you can see
the traffic. Somehow we are all blind; we have things on our eyes, by our ear and our mouth so
14
we cannot
communicate.
There
is a problem. Let's
all
get real.
I am real,
that is why I am here.
That is all
I have to say.
Fix the
problem before we
go
forward.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahili6: Dee Crowell, Adam Asquith, is Adam here, lasf call Adam Asquith, Jeri DiPietro.
Ms. Jeri Dipietro: Good morning and aloha Commission. My name is Jeri Pietro. I am the
President of the Koloa Community Association. I would like to take just a moment to
acknowledge the recent and sudden loss not only to our community in Koloa but also to the
Planning Commission, the loss of Louis Abrams. I present this document with his wonderful
wisdom that he set forth in our community. (Testimony on file)
Mr. Dahilie: Dee Crowell would you like to testify now or later?
Mr. Dee Crowell: Good morning Commissioners my name is Dee Crowell, I am Vice President
of the Resort Group, owners of Princeville Development LLC. On behalf of Princeville we
thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony on the departmental draft. We would further
like to express our appreciation to the staff for many hours of work that has gone into the
preparation of the departmental draft. PRW is the owner of the majority of the developable land
of Princeville and portions of PRW's Princeville lands are designated as resort in the existing
General Plan. After reviewing the departmental draft we believe that there are several areas that
need further discussion and clarification, the most important of which is the use it or lose it
approach set forth in section 2, Actions for the Economy.
There are two issues with this proposed language. First, the language that is drafted is somewhat
ambiguous as it is unclear if the phrase "allow existing resort entitlements to build out" is
intended to be subject to the 2022 deadline. We recommend the sentence to ensure that the
requirement is clearly stated. Second, the 5 year buildout requirement is more appropriate as a
condition for a zoning district change. Such a deadline is far too short for resort developments.
Modern resort development is a uniquely long term process that virtually in all instances requires
much longer than 5 years to complete. Typically developers spend years planning the
development working with funding sources, planning partners, the community, and undertaking
various studies and planning documents that could include an environmental assessment and/or
and EIS.
We would also like to point out that the departmental draft does not define the word entitlement
or identify which permits and approvals must be obtained to properly be considered to have
obtained full state and county zoning resort related approvals. These items should be clearly
defined so that there is a clearer understanding. We also believe retroactively imposing the hard
deadline of 2022 or 5 year limit at this juncture raises the issue of predictability. The action of
this time limit was never predicted and important for a careful and appropriate development
plans. An alternative to this hard deadline approach should be to include a mechanism for more
time for developers who have commenced the process but cannot meet the deadline.
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
15
Mr. Crowell: The plan is to have all areas that are currently designated resort to be re -designated
agriculture. In some places it might be more appropriate to revert to other designations such as
residential as may be appropriate. Based on the foregoing we would like to thank the
Commission for allowing this testimony, thank you.
Chair eawe: Thank you for your testimony. We will take a short recess now for out ten
minutes and then reconvene.
Commission recessed at 10:11 a.m.
Meeting called back to order at 10:24 a.m.
Mr. Dahilig: Bridget Hammerquist.
Ms. Bridget Hammerquist: My statement will not be lengthy but I speak on behalf of more than
800 people that are now comprised friends of Mahaulepu. I would like to begin by thanking all
of you for what you are doing and thanking you for taking the time to receive our input. Friends
of Mahaulepu would like to support and whole heartedly endorse the statement offered by Koloa
Neighborhood Association presented here today by Jeri Dipietro. We, too, believe that Pa'a and
Mahaulepu are very worthy of preservation. A recent visitor from the East Coast commented
that she had no idea how wonderful the island of Kauai was. She said it doesn't feel at all like
Maui or the Big Island or Honolulu, Oahu, it's so Hawaiian still. I think we should do whatever
we can to preserve that in our going forward in our General Plan. In keeping with the comments
of the Koloa Neighborhood Association I would just like to add that one of the compelling
reasons to have the Planning Commission work with the planners a bit more on the need to
preserve Mahaulepu and Pa'a area of the South Shore is the fact that the dairy developers have
identified and submitted maps to the Department of Land and Natural Resources at their request,
they requested it from them. They have identified twenty nine kuleana parcels or land claim
awards and they have named the individual heir owners last known to have interests in those
parcels on the proposed industrial dairy site. I think that is worthy of more investigation. I think
the concept of the proposed large scale industrial animal agriculture just six tenths of a mile
upslope from Mahaulepu Beach must be considered and its impact must be evaluated in the
formation of the plan. I think the fact that the plan is absolutely silent on that proposed
development is an omission that can't be allowed to persist. It must be included, its impact must
be considered and it must be evaluated for its threats to our ocean and our drinking water and the
heritage that is so rich in that valley. The Heiaus...
Mr. Dahilig
: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms. Hammerquist: Thank you very much for your time.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahili¢: Adam Asquith.
16
Mr. Adam Asquith: Thank you Commission members. My name is Adam Asquith. I apologize
ahead of time for the showmanship but I understand there will be more time in the future for the
details about the issues so I am going for the gut reaction this morning. Only about 2 or 3 years
ago this Commission became the standard bearer in Hawaii for protecting the public trust rights
over our water resources. This is when a small business was denied permits associated with
bottling and selling 5,000 gallons of water a day from spring water purchased from Grove Farm.
The small business fought this decision and went all the way to the State Supreme Court, the
court sided with this body and said right on Kauai Planning Commission, you like every
government body are the trustees of the public trust and water resources. And if anybody wants
to use that water they bear the burden of first showing that none of the public trust aspects are
compromised by the proposed use.
So what does the draft General Plan before you say about our water resources? Well it is a little
hard to find but out of the Lihue Community Plan which is a detailed subset of the General Plan
it states that we are going to need about 3 to 5 million gallons a day additional water use to feed
the development in and around Lihue, Puhi, and Hanamulu areas. But apparently that is not a
problem because you figure 2.2 in this plan shows the state's sustained yield estimate from the
ground water in and around Lihue and that number is 35 million gallons per day, 10 rimes what
we are going to need, no problem. But when you go to page 2.55 someone wrote "groundwater
supplies were sufficient within all areas of Kauai expect Lihue which supplemented its water
needs with Grove Farms privately owned system." This must mean that Grove Farm drilled
more wells than the County Water Department and we are just using water from their wells,
plenty of groundwater. No, Grove Farm sells us water from public streams. Let me show you a
few examples of where our drinking water comes from, those are in the photos that I passed
around. These are diversions, old diversions that used to feed sugar irrigation systems; they now
feed our drinking water systems. Water from the north fork of the Wailua all along the face of
the mountains to Hanamulu stream are captured by Grove Farm and some of that water is sold
back to us for our drinking water and is proposed to be used to feed the development in and
around Lihue. The Planning Department is asking you to approve the expansion and purchase
and use of this water per this plan. I could have sworn that I heard this somewhere before, oh
yeah, the Kauai Springs case. Small business owner purchasing public water from Grove Farm;
comes to the Planning Commission asking to expand that use. The Planning Commission says...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Asquith: Planning Commission says no, not until you demonstrate no impact to the public
trust. Supreme Court says good on you Planning Commission. Now the county, purchasing
public water from Grove Farm comes to the Planning Commission asking can we expand this
use, the Planning Commission says... Supreme Court will say... So to put this in perspective and
proportional volume about 3m1's represents what Kauai Springs was asking to expand its use, 5
gallons proportional is what the county needs to fuel its development in and around Lihue.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony
Ms. Dahilig
: Ms. Goodwin would you like to take your testimony now or wait?
17
Ms. Goodwin: I'll wait.
Mr. Dahing: Mr. Chair that is all that has signed up for testimony on this particular public
hearing. The department at this time along with its consultants SSFM Consultants would like to
make the presentation on the departmental draft. They are going to be talking a lot so I would
like to not belabor the point here but other than just offer thanks on behalf of myself and my
deputy to Marie and her team as well as to Cheryl and her team and Melissa at SSFM. It has
been a 20 month long process up to this point just for the plan development, not counting a lot of
the technical plans that were done going 2 years prior to that so this is something that has been in
the works for 4 years. I think as you have heard the comments coming through there are still
things that need to be ironed out and we freely accept that so part of the process today is to try to
get all those items on the table so that we can actually do an analysis of this things for the
Commission as you are hearing this input come in. With that I just want to offer my thanks to
my staff and thanks to the consultants for being very patient and supportive throughout the whole
process and with that Mr. Chair, I would like to ask if it is possible to have Marie start the
presentation on behalf of the department.
Chair Keawe: We would also like to thank, on behalf of the Commission, for all the hard work
that you have put in. We know that it is often times difficult and we appreciate the outreach that
you have done, especially during this process and having this particular meeting. We are looking
at again, accepting more input and more manao from everybody. So again, thank you from all of
the Commissioners here for extremely hard work that you do. If you would like to proceed go
ahead please.
Ms. Marie Williams: Aloha Commission Chair Keawe and members of the Commission. First
of all thank you so much for holding this special meeting for the General Plan update and
launching the public hearing today, we appreciate it, we know you volunteer your time and this
is an extra day in your very busy schedules. Today we did transmit the Director's report and
several exhibits as well to all of you. I believe you have a copy, it might be a pdf electronically
sent to you. If you don't mind perhaps we can forego the reading of the Director's report and
launch straight into the presentation we have. First of all we have a lot of thanking to do as well.
We would like to take this time and on behalf of the project team we want to acknowledge those
that even made this project happen in the first place and that includes our Mayor who is actually
a very strong advocate for community planning. Recently he was awarded the Donald Wolbrink
achievement award from the Hawaii Chapter of the American Planning Association. And we
would also like to thank our county council and all the members of council from 2012 onwards
who supported funding for the various stages of this plan. We would also like to Mahalo you,
our Planning Commission, we have come before you several times over the past years to report
on our progress and the technical studies and you helped guide us along the way, and we want to
thank the many state and county agencies staff including our own Planning Department staff that
participated and helped in so many different ways. And also include in that thanks the
community groups, the stakeholders, and the landowners who participated. Finally and probably
most importantly we would like to thank all the members of the community many of which are
here, we see some new faces as well which is exciting, who participated in one way or another in
this process from the man in May 2 years ago who told me he could only give me 3 minutes of
his time to the people who have basically attended every single public event or CAC meeting
from the very start. This plan would not be before you, the Commission, today without the input
we have received. And as we all know we started out this process truly believing that our plan is
only as good as the quality and quantity of public input that we are able to obtain and put into
this draft.
This presentation will cover our update process and the content of the plan. At the same time we
did not want to overwhelm you with a 10 hour long presentation so we will be going over the
highlights of the process and summarize the important elements of the plan. Our project team
was of course led by Director Dahilig and Deputy Director Hull and it includes staff of the
community planning program, Ruby Pap who is the Planning Department's Land Use Extension
Agent from the UH Sea Grant was also a key participant and we hired a consultant team to assist
us in this update. I would like to take this time to personally thank them for their expertise and
knowledge they brought to this process. The firm we hired is SSFM International, Dr. Cheryl
Soon was our project lead along with Melissa White, planner, and our sub -consultants included
Opticos Designs, Charlier and Associates, SMS Research, PBR Hawaii, and UH Sea Grant. We
were also very lucky to have an advisory committee assist us in this process and they were
selected by the Mayor. This is another group that we owe much thanks, they participated in 17
very long meetings upwards of 4 hours each and workshops, read through hundreds of pages of
technical materials and basically did an all-around fantastic job advising us, the department, on
the process and content of this plan. We have several members of the advisory committee here
as well; I can't see all of them, but thank you for being here and following this process.
Before we even go into the content of Kauai Kakou, our departmental draft of the General Plan
update, we should first explain what the General Plan is and I know we bring this slide and this
presentation to you, the Commission, often but it makes sense to understand what this plan is and
what this plan is not. Basically the General Plan is the county's policy guidance for future
growth and development. It provides a strategy for how we can best manage growth using the
tools available to the county. Policy is implemented through other actions and other components
such as community plans which we will talk about more later on, but in short it starts at the
General Plan. When asked what is the General Plan of course we have to refer to the legal
mandates. First of all, all counties are required by state law in Hawaii to have a General Plan. It
is also a key component in our county Charter, it is a key guidance document in how our county
runs, and then finally, Chapter 7 of the Kauai County Code is where the General Plan is housed.
But at the same time when we began this process several years ago we did not only view it as a
mandate, something we had to do, we viewed it as a great opportunity for the island and we
hoped that the plan would ultimately capture the hopes and concerns of the community today,
that it would confront the emerging issues and trends facing us. That it could educate the
community, especially our youth, about the importance of planning in their lives, and also we
wanted to get buy in and better coordinate amongst our agencies and other stakeholder partners.
The process to update this plan actually start
ed 5 years ago in 2012 when we launched the
technical studies needed to inform this plan. These included population and housing projections,
a land use build out, an analysis, and infrastructure assessment. We also did an analysis on new
things that weren't previously discussed in our existing General Plan and that included climate
change and coastal hazards including sea level rise mapping, the issues of community health,
how our built environment impacts the overall health of our people, and we also integrated the
fL
county's important agricultural land study into the plan. At the same time there were concurrent
planning projects going on that also helped create a solid base for this plan including the
county's multi -modal transportation plan approved in 2013 and then 2 recent community plan
updates for the Lihue Planning District and South Kauai Planning District. Both were completed
in 2015.
I won't spend too much time explaining what we an from all our studies. We have actually
come to the Planning Commission and done very long presentations in the past but it's worth
understanding what our projected population growth is since this plan plays a key role in how the
county manages growth. We are growing at approximately 1 percent a year. This is actually a
slower rate of growth than we have previously experienced. In the past several years we have
found that it is actually our own natural increase which is births minus death that fuel the
majority of our growth. At the same time foreign migration adds to our growth numbers and to a
lesser degree migration from other Hawaii counties and the mainland is a component too. But
when the numbers are contrasted with the out migration of those born and raised here what we
found is that planning for growth meant that it also means planning for our own children to
remain on Kauai or return to Kauai and thrive. So that was a key component that we kept in our
minds from the start of this process.
The public phase of this project where we actually develop the plan's polices, actions, and land
use map began in 2015 and we developed a theme for this plan called Kauai Kakou. That was to
acknowledge that an ambitious plan such as this one, to even be developed and move forward, it
would take people coming together and understanding their role and how things can get done and
how problems can be solved, and also not just the community at large but government as well
and our many community groups and organizations. I will that this is a funded project of
approximately $800,000 and we designed a 2 year process with 6 phases. Obviously we are now
in the final phase where we will seek to improve the plan and get it through the Commission and
county council. For the most part this project has moved forward according to schedule and on
budget. I will also mention some of the project deliverables that are available online as well.
Now to speak to the public process we have Marissa Valenciano, planner.
Ms. Marissa Valenciano: Good morning Chair and members of the Commission. I just wanted
to reiterate what Marie said that the General Plan wouldn't have been possible without all of the
community input and participation we have received throughout the planning process. When we
started the public process back in the spring of 2015 it was clear that we wanted to make sure
that we could reach out to as many people as possible and also provide opportunities for every
voice to be heard. Over the course of about 23 months we did just that. This graph shows by
summary of the numbers the reach and extent of the public process that we had and to give you
some background the public process was intended to be diverse, inclusive, collaborative, but also
fun. The public process was generally broken down into 3 phases; a visioning portion, a policy
and land use outreach, and then finally led to the discussion draft in November 2016. In all of
these phases there were opportunities, many opportunities for the public to provide feedback.
We had different types of engagement, one of which was the face to face engagement and this
includes several rounds of agency meetings, we conducted community meetings in Open House
Island wide. We also had about 17 CAC meetings and we also met with the majority of the
20
neighborhood association groups numerous times for several rounds and we met with about 30
small group meetings and organizations individually and then we also met with landowners
about through about 17 meetings. To attract new participants and to provide a new forum of a
way to provide comments we set out to have digital engagement so we created an Instagram
account, set up a website, we conducted online surveys where we got over 1,000 participants, we
sent out email blasts to our (inaudible), and we also had a Facebook page where we would,
advertise events and also collect comments. One of the most exciting parts or our public
outreach process was engaging the youth. We got to meet over 600 youth participants from the
elementary, middle school, high school, and college levels. At the elementary school level we
received over 300 art contest and asking students to draw for us what they love about their
community. At the middle school level we participated in career day and were able to work with
the curriculum on the importance of planning and the importance of the General Plan. At the
high school we got to go to all 3 public schools on the island and we heard directly from high
school students about the issues and concerns and the visions they have for their community. At
the college level we got to work with students, faculty, and staff in the classroom and also during
pop up events.
Finally, we wanted to highlight some of the innovative ideas for outreach. Traditionally we
know that people will come to our meetings but we also found it important to make sure we have
outreach ideas that go out into the community and so we had pop up where we attended, we set
up our road show in pop up tents at the farm fair, the bike path, also at local farmers markets and
art nights. We also had (inaudible) workshops where we rolled out the maps and allowed people
to draw on it, post it note comments, and we had coffee hour talks which were just informal
conversations continuing CAD meetings. And then we also set out Pokemon traps to attract
youth and adults to come to our meetings. This wraps up and highlights the public process and I
am going to pass it off to Lea.
Ms. Leanora Kaiaokamaile: Good morning Commission Chair and Planning Commission
members, thank you again for your time this morning, for the record Lea Kaiaokamaile, Long
Range Planner. Today I will be providing an overview of the vision, goals, and polices of the
draft General Plan and briefly touching on the connection between these and the actions as
illustrated on this slide. One of the biggest challenges of any plan process is organizing the
visionary themes, desires, and concerns expressed into policies and then connecting them to
actions. This model that we have here was honed over the duration of the public process. The
team reviewed a variety of best management practice models from near and far, award winning
plan processes, we consulted experts, our own planning consultants as well, and continuously
sought input from all our planning staff and of course tested the framework with our CAC,
public and agency partners.
We started with the overall vision and goals which were overwhelmingly supported by our
community throughout the process. The vision and goals are supposed to be aspirational in
nature. These provided the desired outcome for Kauai for the 20 year planning horizon which is
2035. Just a little side note that there are distinct goals for the 6 planning districts and these can
be found in section 5 of the draft plan, Future Land Use, and are followed by specific actions for
each district. On the next tier down the cross section policies articulate the path forward to
meeting the community's visions and goals. A sector used here is a distinct part of a
21
community's economy, in this plan there are 10 starting with watershed followed by housing,
transportation, economy, heritage, resources, energy and sustainability, public safety and hazard
resiliency, and of course opportunity and health for all.
Actions on the bottom tier are the manner in which the policies will be implemented. Actions
specifically address the policies by sector topics. Actions can be carried out through permitting
and code changes, plans and studies, partnership needs especially where the county may not have
authority, for instance it might be a state or federal agency, and of course projects and programs.
There are also 6 policy maps within the General Plan. The land use designations maps are
directly directed by the polies of the General Plan. The purpose of the land use maps are that
they document the desired land use patterns for the 6 planning districts which are
Waimea/Kekaha, Hanapepe/Eleele, South Kauai which goes from Kalaheo to Poipu, Lihue, East
Kauai, and the North Shore. They distinguish areas appropriate for future development and
identify areas to be preserved. There are also new designations this time around as listed in this
slide but we will go over these in detail late on. There are also 5 other sets of maps, heritage
resources, hazards, infrastructure, public facilities, and transportation. The transportation maps
include transit and roadways and paths. All of these maps are meant to guide review of projects
such as subdivision development or other permitting projects to be used in the preparation of our
community and functional plans, to be used in preparation of rules or amendments to rules to the
CZO which is the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, SMA or Special Management Area, etc.
There are 4 overarching to goals to meeting the community's shared vision. First of all that
Kauai will be a sustainable island that grows responsibly to meet the needs of current and future
generations without depleting resources, that Kauai will be a unique and beautiful place
inherently understanding that stewardship and protection of natural, cultural, social, and built
environment assets are of value to the community. That we as a people work consciously to
increase health, vitality, and community resilience by improving the natural, built, and social
environment, and responding to impacts of climate change that we are already seeing. And that
Kauai will be an equitable place with opportunities for all, fostering diverse and equitable
communities with vibrant economies, access to jobs and housing, and a high quality of life.
The General Plan, as Marie mentioned, is the top policy or direction setting document per the
county Charter. It is a policy document and these polices are really what sets the direction
towards the vision. There are 20 as mentioned, these are cross sector and they hone in and
describe the cross sector issues expressed during the 18 month public process. The policies
direct our path forward to meeting the vision and goals. These are in no particular order as they
shouldn't be because they are all equal in some way or another or should be looked at or weighed
against each other. A handout was made available at the front desk and again I ask your excuse
and bear with me as I read through them because this really is the most important, I think,
direction setting part of the plan. (On file) We have seen through this entire process that
Kauai's residents care about planning and decision making and that we must share information,
encourage input, improve public processes, be responsive; and also look for ways to share the
responsibility for the actions. That is about it, as mentioned the actions related these policies will
be discussed in the next section. I will turn it over to Cheryl, thank you.
Ms. Cheryl Soon: Thank you Lea, greetings to all of you. I am Cheryl Soon and I work for
SSFM International. I am a professional planner. I have been practicing planning for 40 years.
The section that I will be covering is the sectors having to do with actions. I would like to go
back to the diagram that was first introduced to you by Marie and her presentation and relate it a
bit to your role as the Planning Commission. Certainly at the very top of the General Plan you
are responsible by way of your county Charter for looking at and making recommendations to
the council who is the ultimate adopter by ordinance of the Kauai General Plan. Implementing it
then becomes community plans so that you have sub areas that you are specifically zoning in on
in more detail and then the functional things such as water, transportation, waste water, etc. You
come in again very strongly in the regulatory box on the left with the Comprehensive Zoning
Ordinance subdivision and SMA activities. Capital Improvement Program is more in the realm
of the public agencies and the county council. And then the actions which is what I will be
focusing on is the, if you will, where the rubber meets the road where the action step is
occurring.
The General Plan in this system is a foundational document and it helps not only you as the
Planning Commission in doing your decision making but also agencies and partnerships may be
formed in order to implement the vision that was presented to you by Lea. This diagram that
both Marie and I have focused on is found in the document as figure 12 on page 12, so it's in the
General Plan document. The 11 sectors, what are sectors? Basically subject matter areas and we
have selected 11 of them. I will be presenting 10 of them, the last sector is land use and it has its
own chapter, Chapter 4, and it's one that you will spend a lot of time using should this General
Plan be adopted in order to make your decision making as the years move forward. The
inclusion of doing action elements is actually one of the areas that we have added to the General
Plan in examining best practices from around the nation as well as guidance from American
Planning Association, the Smart Growth Associations, as well as the State of California puts out
guidelines as to what should be in General Plans, increasingly has been moving us professional
planners in the direction of not stopping with just polices and goals but moving forward into
action items in our General Plans. So we have added this section into the General Plan which is
not in your current General Plan.
We also found that in responding to public comments throughout the first few years of the work
that there was a frustrafion if you will with just vision. They actually liked a lot of the vision
statements and the goals that came of them, the seemed second nature. The response really came
in the realm of so what is happening? What are the results and who is accountable if the results
are falling short. So that was another reason that we felt for this community the inclusion of the
action items would be a positive thing in the General Plan. Other types of things therefore
associated with that were the implementation section is new in the General Plan and monitoring
is new in this General Plan and a lot of that drives from these action items. There are subject
matter areas, sectors if you will, that were not present in your previous General Plan but now are
fairly standard practice and one of those is the subject matter having to do with climate change
and resiliency, having to do with health, and somewhat of a refocus on the economy. In more
recent examination of the economy we looked towards the effect on people, the quality of life,
how do you afford to live and work here versus just to focus on economic development although
they are related, it is a slightly different orientation. And we also look towards more focus in the
latest best practices on sort of a special analysis and examination, for example you see number 5
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on shared spaces. So I guess to repeat, some of the topics on these 11 sectors have traditionally
been in General Plans and several others of them are new in this General Plan and they follow
best practices. I will go into them and give you a flavor for what is in them. This is the longest
chapter of the plan; it is about 140 pages long and actually has a lot of material in it. More than I
have time for. The last introductory comment I wish to make is that the organization of the
actions starts first with a description of kind of what is happening in the community now and that
derived from a lot of the background reports as well as the outreach in the community and
additional things that we received. But we organized the actions into 4 types. One, permitting
actions with code changes and a lot of those will fall in your lap, for example any changes to the
Comprehensive Zoning Code which are actions that are amenable to being plans and studies.
Some of the things I heard this morning might well be addressed for example in the
Hanapepe/Eleele Community Development Plan and others may be amenable to a functional
plan for water. Partnership needs, there are a number of actions that are most amenable to
working with partners, perhaps they have the legislative authority and it is something we need to
work with them, and then actual projects and programs. So 4 tools if you will, for implementing
actions.
We started on purpose with watershed because we felt this was absolutely the most critical action
area and it is divided into 4 sub -action areas. One, I am sorry is covered by the emergency
device, the upper Mauka areas, the forests, the replenishment of our water supply. The second
area is the aquifer stream's water body's drainage so as the water flows down from the Mauka
areas, and then the Makai and lower reaches. We have added into this area invasive species
because of the impact that they can have on any one of the 3 regimes in the water
sheds. The action items have been organized according to those sub -areas and the action items
in forest in the Mauka areas heavily fall in the area of partnerships because that is an area that is
specifically under the responsibility of the State DLNR, in particular, although there are
responsibilities for all of us. But to make sure that we have county watershed tasks force
working as partnerships and liaisons to others. In the key action areas for aquifer streams and
waters we are looking for some code actions that could allow green infrastructure for drainage as
one very important action items. And to make sure that each of the community plans include
protective actions for the water bodies located in that geographic area and to support volunteer
environmental groups and organizations who are helping to protect the watersheds.
The key acti
ons in the shorelines and the coastal waters are very much a county responsibility
working with the state regarding coral reefs to make sure there is no runoff going into the coral
reefs from development and that we can restore areas that are currently being compromised. As
well issues having to do with public access, open space, natural resources, again supporting the
implementation of community based subsistence based management activities. In the area of
threatened and endangered species we looked for addressing the development impact from
threatened and endangered species which actually help protect our resources in the ecosystem
and supporting efforts to complete habitat conservation plans so again, moving back to the 4
types of actions for each area.
The next area, and again, this was chosen to be highlighted early on, is the area of housing. Over
and over again we heard from the community about the impact of housing and the other effects
of not being able to be housed in the way they are choosing, people having to double up, people
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being on the threshold of not having housing or moving past that threshold. So we look at a
large number of sub -areas in this action area, those having to do with affordable housing, infill
housing, new communities, housing for agricultural workers, Hawaiian homesteads, elderly and
assisted living, houseless, and the impact of resort uses on the housing stock and the way it is
used. I am not going to read all the key actions under these but we have selected a sample of the
many that were discussed in the plan, there is just a huge subject area to be moving forward with
on this island and I think you heard that in a lot of the testimonies this morning as well.
The area of land transportation is a traditional element of a General Plan but we look at it in
particular the relationship between land use and transportation. We have looked very much
towards a compacted land use system that would in some cases reduce the amount of travel
necessary and in other cases might shift it from having to be in an automobile to being
amendable to being on a bus, a walking trip perhaps or a bicycle trip. So there are a number of
key actions that would be needed. I will not belabor this one only because the multi -modal plan
spells it out in great detail and that was used as our guide post going into the development of the
General Plan and was to incorporate many of the ideas, the principles, and the goals that had
been previously laid out in the multi -modal plan and adopted by the county council. There are
issues having to do with certain roads and road design standards supporting completion of the
actions that were laid out by the Kapa'a Transportation Solutions Report coming up with a short
range transit plan for the island and how the service can be expanded both in where it goes as
well as frequency and providing amenities to the transit system, things sometimes as simple as
putting in lighting when people have to wait for the bus early in the morning, benches, and
schedule information. Making sure in the pedestrian realm that we continue the excellent
program and work going on for Safe Routes to School so more children can walk to school than
currently are and making sure that the pedestrian projects that have been identified in the
community plans can move into fruition. And considering and putting into effect a Safe Routes
to Parks Program kind of modeled on the Safe Routes to School Program. The bicycle program
recommendations are for an island wide network to implement a program possibly for bike share
where bikes are left on the sidewalk for someone to pick up who is a member of the program and
ride to another location. And then the excellent continuation of the excellent Shared Use Path
Program that is currently underway extending it East Side, West Side, and South Side.
The area of critical infrastructure as Lea had mentioned was extensively debated in our meetings
both with the CAC and out in the public. The issues of giving water, potable water, to domestic
uses, making sure that the goals for infill housing are possible because there is enough water for
them to be built, very important issues to do with rainwater catchment and grey water recycling,
expanding the waste water systems to all communities and creating new regional waste water
treatment solutions for South Kauai and Kilauea and other areas that have an abundance of
cesspools that are no longer allowed. And then continuing the goals reducing the volume of
solid waste and there is a long list of items and programs towards these key action items.
Shared spaces is somewhat of a new umbrella term but it covers what occurs in town and village
centers, what happens at parks, what happens in the linear parks and trail system, what happens
in state parks and what happens in privately owned recreation spaces, golf courses for example,
looking to make sure that the resources that are shared spaces are built and maintained, that there
are playgrounds and green spaces at all levels of income in order to give youth a healthy place to
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play, proving more opportunities for disabled and elderly to use the parks and ensuring that any
new large residential development that is built creates a range of civic spaces and parks.
The economy, we had 3 sub -sectors that we discussed here, tourism as you might imagine
engaged a lot of discussion as to whether or not we were at our peak, whether or not we could
sustain having any increase in the visitor industry, and was this the time in which we needed to
essentially draw a line. And we did in the plan basically saying to revitalize rather than expand,
do not expand visitor destination areas or provide for new resort areas, that we anticipated to be
the most controversial thing that we were saying because it has so many ramifications. To
develop alternate transportation options for visitors so that they were all just using a rental car,
that they were perhaps using a transit vehicle or bicycle, and to promote sustainable tourism and
cultural exchange. In the area of agriculture which also had a fair share of discussion time
devoted to it is protecting agricultural lands from being converted to other uses through the IAL
system and other regulations and code changes, to protect and restore the irrigation systems that
are becoming older and less usable and to incentivize and provide assistance to farmers for
diversified agriculture and locally grown food products.
Looking at small business we had a couple of excellent sessions with people who are running
their own home based cottage industries and it may be in the area of fashion, food, there are a
large number of economic clusters that really might be just 1 or 2 people working in them and
they are becoming increasingly important staple in the economy on Kauai. So lessen some of the
restrictions regarding home based business, to support and invest in incubators and facilities
where the creative industries can meet up with each other and share their resources and their
creativity. And then to leverage some of the Kauai made products through the tourism industry
and markets. I did hear the comment this morning and took to heart the objection to the use of
the word heritage. What we were looking at here is both buildings and structures and sites and
resources and land marks and scenic resources so I think we have a lot of the same objectives in
mind but there may be some issues regarding the use of terminology and statement, description
of how we were stating these things but we will go back and look at some of the wording and see
if that needs changing. To preserve and restore sites when necessary, to preserve customary
access to sites, of course there is court case law regarding that which you are well familiar with.
To create natural and landscaped buffers between certain sites and their adjacent users and to
promote partnerships that will not only preserve but also raise awareness about the importance of
sites.
In the sector Opportunity and Health for All, I guess will just for a moment remind you, the
presentation just before me by Lea when she went through the 20 policies and they each had
little icons, what happens in the sectors is sometimes you would have multiple icons so these
actions may be addressing multiple polices from the General Plan. This one having to do with
opportunity and health, we look at social equity, access to education and training, and
community health looking at opportunities where the county can help prioritize its programs in
those areas, establishing ratios for different categories of housing, workforce housing,
elderly/disabled would need additional analysis than we were able to do in the General Plan
timing, and to deepen our relationships with the Kauai Community College on Workforce
Development. And that is so critical to be able to give a quality of life here for people to be able
to live here, work here, and by their goods here. In the health services one of the early items that
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was contracted by the county looked at the health of the county as a whole, community heath, to
do an impact assessment so we are looking at how the land use code can support healthy
community design and how to increase access to healthy foods and work with the fast food
restaurants to offer healthier options. This touches on some of the testifiers that I heard earlier in
the meeting and the importance of food sustainability to us. We connect that also health.
Energy sustainability, supporting the goals for having a 50 percent renewable energy by the year
2023, just 6 years from now, and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year
2050 by the use of renewable technologies, conservation, and efficiency. A goal by the way that
is a state wide goal as well although Kauai is the farthest along of any of the islands in reaching
these goals. We look towards accelerating the transition of alternate fuels in the transportation
sector as another method. The next area has to do with public safety and hazard resiliency so the
traditional areas of police, fire, and emergency services have not expanded to include hazard
resiliency and preparedness for weather and other disasters that could hit our shores as well as
global warming and climate change adaptation. I am sorry that Ruby was unable to be here, she
was prepared to give you a lengthier presentation and I think that will probably have to be
rescheduled because she is out sick, on climate change adaptation and all the work we have put
into that in the plan.
To summarize, there is a matrix of how on the top the 4 goals, the sustainability goal,
stewardship goal, health and resilience goal and the opportunity goal, and then the 11"' sector
area is down on the column on the left side and then the detail samples of the summary of some
of the actions that fit within them. There is a much longer appendix H which summarizes all of
these but this summary chart is very useful and it ends my presentation. I will turn this over to
Melissa regarding land use.
Mr. Dahili¢: This may be a good time to take caption break.
Commission recessed at 11:25 a.m.
Meeting called back to order at 11:37 a.m.
Mr. Dahilig: Before we get into the land use portion I just wanted to remind everybody that is
you haue not testified yet to please sign up because I will only be calling names that are signed
up on the testifying list and that is here with Lea just be sure that everybody has an equal and fair
opportunity to testify if they would like to. Our intention here is to go through the future land
use portion of the presentation and at that point we will go right back into public testimony. The
intention and the recommendation from the Planning Department is to keep the public hearing
open so we are not asking for any action today on this, rather it is meant to have everybody drop
the input on the table so the Commission is hearing everything and get everything on the table so
we can start those discussions on how to refine the draft. Again a reminder if have not had an
opportunity to sign up for testimony please sign up, we will be calling it immediately after the
conclusion of this presentation.
Ms. Melissa White: Aloha Commissioners my name is Melissa White. I am a Senior Planner
with SSFM International, the lead consultant on the project. It has been a real pleasure working
27
on this project and before this to have been involved in the Lihue Community Plan update
process. I will be going over the future land use section of the plan which is in Chapter 4 and as
has been mentioned this is a very important and lengthy chapter. I will do my best to provide an
overview and will direct you to the actual content in the chapter where things get very detailed.
The chapter includes an explanation of the county's land use policy as well as the process for
updating the land use maps. It also includes an overview of each planning district, the land use
changes that were made, as well as preliminary visions and direction for the community planning
processes for each of these districts.
I will start off with the county's land use policy. As we have heard from the speakers today the
county is moving toward a directed growth policy and they are taking steps to ensure that future
growth is directed to existing communities or areas immediately adjacent to them. They are
putting in place policies that encourage mixed use development and infill over extending
community boundaries and this approach is directly supportive of the General Plan policies that
call for managing growth to preserve rural character. To provide local housing and a range of
affordable housing types, to make strategic infrastructure investments so that infrastructure is not
extended to areas beyond existing communities, to design healthy and complete neighborhoods
that are vibrant where people can meet each other on the street and interact, and to help business
thrive through promoting vibrant town centers. The directed growth policy is enacted partly
through the population and housing projections and the population and housing projections show
that Lihue is expected to absorb most of the future growth. This is partly a factor of just natural
trends but it is also a policy decision where Lihue is the main job center of the island and it is a
natural area for the concentration of affordable housing where people can work close to where
they live. South Kauai and East Kauai are the next highest areas to absorb growth and there is a
conscious decision to limit growth north of the Wailua Bridge as much as possible with the
North Shore experiencing very little growth. The West Side, Waimea, Kekaha, and
Hanapepe/Eleele collectively have about 10 percent of the future growth allocated.
The land use map update approach was extensive and included technical approaches as well as
public input. This is kind of an overview of what we did and what we consulted. I won't go
through everything but basically we started with the population allocations and buildout
projections contained in the technical studies, we looked at what was already entitled and we
talked to the landowners about their immediate plans within the General Plan horizon. The
recently completed South Kauai and Lihue Community Plan included land use maps and areas of
change so we were able to consult and incorporate them in a way that was consistent with the
island wide land use designations. We applied place types and looked at the neighborhood
center boundaries in the districts that had not recently had a community planning effort and this
was building upon the place typing approach that was adopted in the Lihue and South Kauai
Community Plans. We developed hazard maps and infrastructure maps and overlaid those upon
the proposed land use maps to identify areas where development may be appropriate or may not
be appropriate. We applied central and neighborhood general designations which are new
designations to areas identified for growth and that includes existing communities in accordance
with the directed growth policy and areas that were identified for growth in the Lihue and South
Kauai Community Plans. We also updated and applied General Plan land use designations for
areas outside of those designated central and general areas so the land use designations in the
2000 General Plan have been updated.
m
Just to start with the place types, in the General Plan there was a category called Town Centers
and each of the existing towns had a town center boundary. We used that as the basis to identify
the existing settlements on the island and then we talked to the communities about what form and
character is appropriate for them going into the future. So the place type map is based on the
results of that outreach and as I mentioned it did take place as part of the Lihue Community Plan
and South Kauai Plan as well. Within Kauai there are 4 place types identified, the large town
place type is reserved for Lihue which is an urbanized area with more than 4 neighborhoods.
Most of the other existing communities that are sizable are in the small town category. There is a
number of villages that are more small main street with surrounding residential that pretty
quickly transitions into agriculture natural areas and then there is a number of cross roads which
are just a couple of locally serving retail uses in a largely rural context.
Coming to the land use map, this is the island wide view, as Lea previewed before there is a
version for each district. We reviewed and updated the land use designations shown on the land
use map and there are 12 on the current General Plan land use map, natural, agriculture,
homesteads, neighborhood center and general, residential community, urban center, industrial,
transportation, military, university, parks and recreation, and golf courses. These are intended to
depict the generally desired land use patterns into the future they are not specific to parcel
boundaries. They are a guide for future land use. There are some updates to these designations
since the 2000 General Plan, in the agriculture designation this update distinguishes between
those lands designated as important agricultural lands and non IAL lands, for the first time. The
natural designation replaces the open designation from the 2000 General Plan and it
distinguishes it further to apply only to undeveloped areas. So these are areas that are not
suitable for development or have limited development capacity due to a variety of factors. Urban
center is now limited only to Lihue district and it applies to urbanized areas that accommodate
intense urban uses. Lihue district also adopted an urban growth boundary through their
community plan process. This has the function of delineating the areas appropriate for urban
growth.
The neighborhood center and general designations are new and those are intended to enact the
directed growth policy by identifying Lite existing and in a couple of cases new centers that are
appropriate for mixed use and urban walkable dense development. The neighborhood general is
applied to areas within a quarter mile or 5 minute walk from neighborhood centers. The resort
designation in accordance with the policy not to grow resort inventory, no new resort areas were
added and it was either removed or reduced in certain unentitled areas where there was little
community support for resort expansion such as Nukolii. Further restrictions are required in
remaining areas without entitlements which Cheryl explained in the actions for the economy
sector. Homestead is a new designation that is not intended as a growth tool it simply
acknowledges existing rural residential areas that exist in Kalaheo, Wailua, and Kapa'a.
Residential communities similarly is no longer intended to be used as a growth too, it
acknowledges existing residential communities more than a quarter mile from existing centers as
well as planned and entitled developments. Parks and golf course, the definition of parks is
unchanged although golf courses are now broken out and military, industrial, and transportation
are the same definitions as they were in the last General Plan. The university zone is not on here
and that is another unique designation that was added to this General Plan and it applies on to
CCC at this point.
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In order to implement the land use maps as the main tool for spacial policy in the General Plan
permitting actions and code changes are required. The zoning programs needs to be
implemented that comprehensively redistricts and rezones lands in a way that is consistent with
the fixture land use map as well as the updated community plans. We need to build upon the
place types in future community plans as a way of delineating areas for appropriate growth and
we need to look at how to update zoning and development standards to be place based. Lihue
and South Kauai have set the groundwork for how that could be accomplished. Support state
land use boundary petitions for a new urban district consistent with the future land use map.
Finally, under plans and studies, use the community planning process to update and refine the
future land use maps as needed. How the land use maps are used by the Planning Commission
and other parties is it identifies existing developed areas and lands that are appropriate for future
development, on the other hand it identifies areas that should be retained in a natural or
undeveloped state. It guides preparation of community plans and it drives the preparation or
revision of land use ordinances and rules such as the CZO, the zoning maps, the Special
Management Area, and the subdivision ordinance. This plan and the land use maps will be
consulted any time projects are undertaken with state or county lands or funds, the will be a
guide in the review of subdivision and permit applications because it is required that these types
of proposals be consistent with the land use patterns and policies shown in the General Plan. On
their own they cannot be used to prohibit a land use that is allowed by the CZO or by permit
however.
That part describes the land use map updating approach and the designations and then this part of
the presentation explains how we applied these policies to each planning district and how we
looked at updating the vision and guidance for each planning district. Much as we did with the
land use maps we used our technical studies, the 2000 General Plan, and a bunch of information
that we collected from existing data as a reference. We then factored in a huge amount of
community input that was gathered through place typing workshops as well as CAC workshops
and community events to look at what should the vision be, the preliminary vision or each of
these communities that can be refined and built upon through the community planning process.
What is the place type, the degree of change, and the town center of each of these places. Then
we looked at developing community vision statements, policy opportunities and priorities for
consideration in the community planning process, and land use map changes. These will feed
into the types of plans that come next, community plans, functional plans, and regulatory
changes.
The community vision workshops that we undert
ook were in the planning districts that had not
recently undergone a community plan, East Kauai, North Shore, Hanapepe/Eleele, and
Waimea/Kekaha. We did walking tours and presentations where we confirmed the boundaries or
in some cases altered the boundaries of the town center and now call neighborhood center. We
identified the degree of change in that community to 2035, developed the preliminary vision
statements, and identified other specific ideas and priorities. What people told us about how they
saw the community's character, skill, and form now and in the fixture fed into what place type
was assigned to that community. The amount in which that community saw its self -growing and
evolving was its degree of change and the core areas that constitute the community identity and
30
that seem to be the priority for revitalization are the town centers or neighborhood centers and
walk sheds which are the neighborhood general designation.
I am going to go briefly through the land use maps for each district and I am going to call
attention to some of the major land use map changes that have been proposed in this General
Plan. In Waimea/Kekaha there were 2 areas west of Waimea Town that were changed from
residential community to agriculture, they were not adjacent to the existing town center and so
input suggested they should be removed from development consideration. Sixty acres of resort,
it was changed to conditional resort to allow for the community planning process to determine
the appropriateness, scale, and extent for that development. Initially we had removed it and
reverted to agriculture when the public review draft came out and significant community input
led us to allow for provisional designation to be further vetted through the community process.
In Hanapepe and Eleele the neighborhood center in general designation were added to Port Allen
and Hanapepe in a way that was consistent with DHHL, Hawaiian Homelands plans as well as to
connect the Lima Ola proposed affordable housing development, Port Allen. We designated the
Lima Ola area to residential to accommodate that and we applied new neighborhood center and
general areas to Port Allen to acknowledge its role as an existing and future center. Finally,
there was a lot of input in the West Side communities in general that existing mill sites had
potential to be either industrial areas or to be redeveloped for commercial so we changed that
designation to industrial
In South Kauai we basically imported the designations from the South Kauai Community Plan.
There is a new neighborhood center at the Poipu mixed use gateway, these new neighborhood
center and general designations were applied to Koloa and Kalaheo as other existing centers and
we removed residential community from 60 acres in one area. In Lihue we identified a number
of new neighborhood centers within the urban fabric of Lihue, the town core Mauka of Puhi.
These are all consistent with the existing and proposed growth areas identified in the Lihue
Community Plan. The urban center designation was applied to basically the fabric that connects
each of these centers to acknowledge that it should be filled in with urban development as well.
Residential community was removed from areas along Kipu Road, East Kauai, major land use
map changes, so the urban center designation around Kapa'a Middle School was changed to
agriculture. We heard about this earlier, this is the site of the Hokua Place development that has
been proposed. Once again to be consistent with the new neighborhood center designations we
removed the urban center designation and replaced it with neighborhood center or general as
appropriate. The portion of the area behind Coco Palms in the flood zone was changed from
resort to natural to acknowledge the hazards that exist in that area. And to acknowledge the
Department of Hawaiian Homeland's proposals for Anahola we updated the designations to
create a new neighborhood center at Anahola Town Center and acknowledged a small existing
center at the post office. We also in response to community input designated a new
neighborhood center at Kaphi and adjacent areas where there are already some existing uses that
could be built upon.
In the North Shore we applied neighborhood center and general designations to Hanalei an
d
Kilauea. Input suggested that there was strong support for expanding the Kilauea Town Center
and that has been articulated in previous plans. The residential community designations Mauka
of the highway near the Princeville Airport have been changed to transportation so the residential
11
community designation was removed. Other parts of that were changed to agriculture. Finally,
the resort designation Makai of the highway in the next phase of the Princeville development
was limited by policy as explained earlier in the presentation through a time limit for that
development to proceed. And that is all I have for you, thank you very much.
Ms. Marie Williams: Thank you Melissa, we are almost done I promise, moving on to a very
important part of the plan, implementation, which is found in Chapter 3. First of all
implementation is something we had at the forefront of our minds the entire planning process.
We heard loud and clear from the community and in fact many agencies as well that the existing
General Plan though a wonderful plan, very strong policy it did set, that implementation actions
were just not reported upon in a manner where people understood what progress was being made
or progress was not being made. Every effort was made through this process to bring
implementation and actions and education about how this plan is implemented into the draft
before you. As a result you have what Cheryl explained in Chapter 2, as you can see it is set up
by sectors and sub -sections which show how the policy is moved forward through actions.
Again think of the 3 tools that are available as a county, we have the permitting and code
changes, those are implemented when development proposals are reviewed before this
Commission or the State Land Use Commission and it can also inform future zoning code
amendments as well.
Second, we have partnership needs and this acknowledges that the jurisdiction for many of the
solutions that we are seeking in this plan do not necessarily lie with us, the county, that we do
need to do a better job coordinating and reaching out to the state, with the federal government if
need be, and also draw on the wealth of capacity we have on island with our community groups,
our neighborhood associations, and other nonprofits as well that we all have to take a role in
moving the plan forward. Then of course we have programs, plans, and studies, for example as
we have heard many are concerned about they have a desire for more specific updated
community planning for their towns, we still have 4 development plans that are close to 40 years
old. And so this plan will be implemented through that specific planning work as well. And
then finally of course projects. Not only does this plan include specific projects and I am
speaking about capital projects of island wide importance but also provide guidance for how
future projects should be selected and/or designed as well.
All of the actions are summarized in appendix H of the General Plan. We have an action matrix
that not only shows policy conformance but also who the lead agency is that basically assigns
who is responsible for this action and we have it all in one place. Finally, for the first time ever
this plan does include a provision for reporting on performance, on the impact of this plan and
what happens with this plan is actually contributing to what is going on, on the ground, or what
this also does is it helps us keep track of what is going on, on the ground, that is out of our
control but might need to result in changes to the plan. And so Chapter 3 includes performance
measures for both the goals and vision and also for every single policy as well, process measures,
and measuring outcomes. What we are proposing is also creating an online dash board where we
can update what progress is made in real time in a way that is accessible to anyone. For the more
comprehensive evaluation we are proposing the creation of a Kakou committee that would be
comprised of those stakeholders that have a role in moving forward actions to come together
32
every 2 years
to
evaluate and report
on the progress
they are
making and also
assess is this plan
in fact taking
us
further to our goals
and the vision.
We have definitely heard a lot of concern about or worry that this plan is, once it's approved,
locked in time for the next 20 years and that is not necessarily true. This is a living document,
we don't have to change any law for this to occur it is actually set up so the county at any time
may in fact propose to the Commission and then take to council amendments to the text or the
map or any other provision of the General Plan. And of course as you know any private
landowner can submit an amendment to the General Plan land use map 4 times a year as well so
there are amendments to the plan that goes on. We anticipate that through a more
comprehensive evaluation process that that will provide the feedback loop so this plan can
respond to what is going on and it can also help us change course if need be. With that I would
just like to wrap up the presentation and quickly summarize that the document before you
represents a process lasting several years and is the outcome of many hundreds of hours of
outreach and thousands of comments. We sought to be innovative and inclusive in our outreach,
the organization of the plan and the content of this plan. At the same time we realize and respect
that there is a range of opinions on Kauai on just about everything and as a result no one person
will agree or embrace every single recommendation in the plan. In some cases hard choices
were made and others we sought the middle ground. We also acknowledge that no plan or
planning process is perfect and we look forward to the public's recommendations and the
Commission's decision on how this plan can be improved upon, thank you.
Mr. Dahilie: Mr. Chair at this time if we could proceed with those that have chosen to testify
after the presentation, John Moore,
Mr. John Moore: Aloha, my name is John Moore. I am the Director of the Hawaiian
Sustainability Foundation. I have been writing policy for the last 25 years. Today I am here to
represent the Kauai Community Coalition which was born out of the neighborhood associations.
Six months ago we brought all the neighborhood associations together and 40 of the leaders of
the neighborhood associations decided to work together with the county to try to come up with a
more comprehensive vision for the General Plan. There were 13 sector groups that divided it up
with the different topics and they all met separately and then we would also come back together
to integrate those polices. For example one of the groups that I was part of, the vision committee
which had a dozen people on it, we me 9 times in the month after the departmental draft came
out and each meeting went from 3 to 5 hours. So you can tell that a lot of brilliant minds went
into working together with what the Planning Department had already created and we came up
with our own set of suggestions. As you have already heard and you will continue to hear many
of the people from the neighborhood associations will be continuing to give you the suggestions
that we have come up with.
What we concluded was that the departmental draft is a collection of nice ideas, of good ideas
. It
has good research, it has good outreach to the community but itis not a plan. A plan means you
decide on a specific direction and once you have decided on a very specific direction then you
set policies to get to that one direction. What we have now is most of the work has been done in
terms of all the action steps and good ideas but we haven't a definitive direction in a plan and so
that is what we worked on and we want to continue to work with the county. We ask the
2
Planning Commission to put a pause on going forward with the departmental draft so that all of
us can sit together and define what it is we want for 2035 on Kauai. What is it that our
grandchildren will have? And once we come up with a definitive direction then we can measure
if our policies and actions are making progress towards that defined goal. So we would ask you
to work together with the community and the Planning Department. We want the Planning
Department to have more authority in helping us define the future of Kauai, thank you.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilia: Ann Walton.
Ms. Ann Walton: Aloha Planning Commissioners, my name is Ann Walton. I have for over 20
years worked on policy and planning in natural resource management and watched this process
closely and been engaged for quite some time now. As a representative of the Kauai Community
Coalition I would like to commend the Planning Department staff on developing a plan that
represents great strides since the 2000 update. I know what you have been through, I have been
through it many times myself and I appreciate all the hard work and dedication to this process.
We also recognize the critical foundational pieces that typically bookend any types of planning
documents are missing from or inadequate in the departmental draft. Specifically there has been
no commitment to 1) the model or framework as John mentioned for the plan, 2) binding
policies, 3) milestones for measuring progress, 4) measurable targets to be achieved by 2035,
sand 5) a robust monitoring and evaluation plan that focuses on measuring results.
To better understand the importance of the foundational pieces an analogy that mirrors what it
takes to build a sound General Plan is that of building a house. The first decision in building a
house is to determine what model best serves the builder's needs. A mansion with high building
and maintenance costs, LEED certified greenhouse that may require significant up front
investments but pays off and is more sustainable over the long run, or a beach shack that is
inexpensive to construct and maintain but wants to rot the next Iniki. We have yet to identify the
model the General Plan is working under that is best suited to Kauai such as a green growth plan,
Ahupua'a, or even a climate smart model. After selecting the model comes the blue print which
addresses the basic infrastructure of the house determining where to place the walls, plumbing,
electrical, etc., all in an integrated fashion. The blue print should reflect the intention of the
model whether a mansion, a LEED certified house or a beach shack or in our case, a green
growth Ahupua'a, climate smart or other kind of model that this plan seeks to be. Then the
foundation is poured and that is where the commitment is made to build according to the model.
Our foundation is represented by a complete and agreed upon final General Plan. The house is
framed and inspected to meet the established standards, the plumbing is inspected, the electrical
is inspected. The house is not inspected for the wall paper, the light fixtures or the door knobs,
but rather for the soundness of the foundational components. A house is not just inspected after
it is completed but rather along every step of the construction process and likewise a General
Plan requires regular monitoring and evaluation preferably every 6 months. We don't have a
model or blue print for the new General Plan. In order to strengthen these critical foundational
pieces that ensures the General Plan directs us towards the future that we collective desire we
recommend that 1) the Planning Commission pushes the pause button, 2) the Planning
Department goes back and strengthens the foundational components of the plan...
4
L!
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair,
Chair Keawe: Go ahead, wrap it up.
Ms. Walton: And 3) the Planning Department streamlines the plan by selecting and prioritizing
these actions that help us build the model we want, 4) the Planning Department builds a
monitoring and evaluation plan that recognizes the importance of accountability and the need to
achieve results. Whole countries, islands, states, counties, and communities have dared to push
the pause button, identify a new model and make the commitment. If we all do this together it
will happen. We can either apply duck -tape to this old house patching up the holes or build a
new more sustainable model for our remote island community as a legacy to the generations who
will follow us just as others have chosen to do around the world, Mahalo for your courage to do
the right thing.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Sharon Goodwin.
Ms. Sharon Goodwin: Good afternoon Commissioners, Chair, and other Commissioners and
other staff and the audience. My name is Sharon Goodwin and I am part of the Kauai
Community Coalition and I live in Wailua Homesteads. First of all thank you Planning
Department for your good work, you have many, many good ideas in the plan but what I
particularly found missing were these 2 words, the public trust. The plan states that 3 to 5
million gallons of water will be required to support the development near Lihue and all of this
water will be coming from our streams. I humbly request that the Commission return the draft to
Planning so that the words public trust and their concepts can be imbedded in the plan. One
thing that needs to happen with the water that is required is under the public trust water required
for that growth must first be allocated to that public trust. And then as the applicant, the
Planning Department, must demonstrate that there is no reasonable alternative water source
before approving the development that will depend upon our stream water. Planning must then
assure that there is no impact to the streams and stream users before that water is allocated to the
development. Public trust purposes have priority over private commercial uses which do not
enjoy the same protection and I take quote from page 8 of Sproat's book, Ola I Kawai, A Legal
Primmer. The Hawaii Supreme Court ruling in April 2014 in the Kauai Springs vs. Kauai
Planning Commission states that the public trust creates an affirmative duty of the state and its
political subdivision to take that public trust into account in the planning and allocation of water
resources and to protect public trust uses whenever feasible. Please Commissioners, follow your
duties as public water trustees following the guidelines of the court and let's make sure...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms. Goodwin: That we do this in the pono way. I humbly request this. Thank you very much.
Mr. Dahilig: Carl Imparato.
35
Mr. Imparato: Aloha Commissioners my name is Carl Imparato and I am speaking on behalf of
the Hanalei to Haena Community Association and the Tourism Working Group of the Kauai
Community Coalition. We all know that tourism is the life blood of Kauai's economy but it is
also true that the greatest threat to Kauai's character, communities, and quality of life is too
much tourism. In 2008 Kauai's residents voted by a 2-1 margin to slow the expansion of tourism
but since then county government has nothing to slow the tide, it encourages more and more. So
here we are 8 years later, the draft General Plan does not acknowledge the tremendous amount of
future tourism growth that imperils Kauai. The draft cooks the books and sweeps growth
problems under the rug buy assuming the for the next 20 years the tourism growth rate will
plummet to less than one tenth of the growth rate of the past 5 years. And if you saw this
morning's Garden Island they talked about the 2016 growth rate is close to 3 percent, that the
average daily visitor count will exceed the plan's 2035 estimate 2 years from now in 2018.
There is a really big problem and it's not being acknowledged. There is no consideration given
to what level of tourism growth will not impede Kauai's infrastructure, undermine the character
of our communities, or degrade resident's quality of life. There are no policies or actions to try
to keep tourism growth below that level or for what to do if and when growth exceeds the
unrealistically low level projected in the plan. There is absolutely no attempt to manage the
amount of tourism growth. Instead of providing policies to limit tourism to a manageable
appropriate level it is business as usual; facilitate as much tourism growth as the outside world
creates. This situation is particularly bad for Hanalei through Haena where residents are already
far outnumbered by tourists, tourist traffic already overwhelms the roads, the bridges, and the
parking capacity of the area. Expanding tourist activities are crowding residents out of parks and
beaches and the safe evacuation of the tsunami zone is no longer possible due to the large and
ever increasing number or tourists and tourist activities. The plan is also deficient in terms of
public safety. It proposes that development incentives apply even in tsunami evacuation zones
and it refuses to give priority to traffic cahning and local safety in our neighborhood.
Finally, the plan does not acknowledge that local community's concerns and visions should be
paramount on issues from community development and character to bike paths that would
impact the taro loi, to protection of important view planes. There is a critical need to restore
balance on Kauai but this draft of the General Plan does not do that. In our group's written
comments we proposed close to 2 dozen policies and actions to restore that balance, to manage
growth...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Imparato: To protect the character of Kauai's communities, increase public safety, protect
the quality of life, and respect community's desires. So I urge the Commissioners to read these
comments and to direct changes to the daft General Plan and I thank you very much for your
time.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Felicia Cowden.
Ms. Felicia Cowden: Felicia Cowden for the record. I was involved in the last round of the
General Plan update. We didn't have a consultant then so I had a lot of experience with what did
happen. I have been participating as a citizen throughout much of this. I do want to commend
the Planning Department for how much outreach they have attempted to do. They have done a
very good and responsible job. The community hasn't been responsible enough to show up. I do
think that is part of the challenge that is here. I want to speak primarily to agriculture but I have
a few other comments I just can't help but make. One of the things that I saw in the last General
Plan is for the most part the North Shore was able to achieve its lowered growth elements and we
replaced a lot of our population. The element that I saw evaporate the most, which was the most
to me critical community which is our Hawaiian community, and we need to be very careful to
not allow that to happen.
Now I am going to go to farming because that is what I am really into. The quadrant that I live
in which is the north east area we have a lot of local food production which is diversified
agriculture and it is not mechanized agriculture. What is real essential with that is hands on the
farm. Certainly having equipment is good but it really takes a lot of people to do the work and
there is both the need and the desire for people to live on those farms. I am not putting down that
a lot of them are sort of estates maybe that people don't even live in and I know that the county
makes a lot of tax revenue on that but one person isn't interchangeable with the next and there is
a whole generation of people that are going to be displaced from this island because they aren't
economically aggressive. What they are is really passionate about the food, really passionate
about the land, really passionate about caring for the land. And when I look in the plan and it
talks about agricultural housing, the farm worker housing that we do have available right now is
not adequate. It is not something that is realistic for it to be built. I think 2 houses have been,
one isn't even completed yet, have been built since that has been put together. Those are both
for people who actually own the farms; we need something closer to what they used to have in
the plantation time. We had someone earlier talking about tiny houses, that is kind of really what
is appropriate and the people who are so connected with the land that is what their life is about,
they are alright to be in simple housing. I think that when we allow for healthy farming and a lot
of food production it creates resilience for Kauai and so we need to be able to prioritize people...
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms. Cowden: Who want to create food, I could talk for hours but that is enough, thank you so
much. You will hear me later.
Chair Keawe: Thank you fox your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: If we could take a quick pause to switch the tape out at this point because the next
testimony may take longer.
Chair Keawe: Let's continue.
Mr. Allan
Rachap: Thank you, my name is Allan Rachap, I am a resident of the South Shore of
Kauai. I have lived there for 17 years. I am a retired financial consultant and I welcome the
opportunity to speak to the members of the Planning Commission. I have a recommendation that
Kul
in spite of all the hard work and effort that went into this plan and the many good features of it, I
think it needs to be rejected by you and sent back to the Planning Department because of their
failure to give consideration to the implications of an economic event that could have as serious a
consequence to this whole island as Hurricane Iniki. I am talking about what would happen if an
industrial dairy were to be put into operation on the South Shore of Kauai in Mahaulepu as is
now planned? There are very credible highly credentialed experts who have studied the matter
and come to the conclusion that from an economic perspective it would be a disaster on the most
important element of the Kauai economy and that is the visitor industry. We are talking about an
operation that is just a couple of miles up wind of the largest most important visitor destination.
The job loss would be tremendous. How can you spend all this time thinking about workforce
housing when hundreds of workers could lose their jobs according to these experts and the entire
real estate tax base which funds everybody on this diose would be decimated by reductions in
real estate values according to these experts.
I have expressed my concerns to the planners at both the South Kauai Plan sessions and in the
General Plan sessions and they don't want to look at it. They don't want to look at the 800
pound gorilla that is in the room and I think you Commissioners need to remand this plan back to
the Planning Department to consider the potential implications of what would happen if that
industrial dairy is allowed to operate in the Mahaulepu Valley and what are the effects on the
economy and what are the effects on the water resources. If the visitor industry is crippled as it
according to these experts will be...
Mr. Dahili�: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Rachan: Is not going to really make much of a difference. So I think you need to have them
study it.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahili¢: Gabriella Taylor. Next is Tom Shigemoto.
Ms. Gabriella Taylor: Aloha, my name is Gabriella Taylor. I have been a resident of Kauai for
43 years, happily a resident of Kauai for 43 years except I am getting concerned now because of
the direction that certain important things are going. I have testified earlier on into this process
and I am part of the Kauai Community Coalition. I am presenting the problems, this is called
Shared Spaces in the sectors, I am presenting problems and solutions that are intended to keep
our beach parks pristine and ecologically viable. Our sector requests that these comments be
included in the General Plan. There is much more information about this sector but I have
chosen to do this because of the time constraint. You will see that through these things that I am
reading the most important aspect of it seems to be regulation, enforcement, and monitoring of
what we want to see because many of these that have laws that are just not enforced and the
monitoring is essential as Ann suggested, every 6 months.
Degradation of marine ecosystem includes the beaches, reefs, marine life, an
d water quality.
Number 1) runoff from pesticides and fertilizers, oxybenzones, sunscreen, and walking on reefs
needs to be regulated and enforced. Coral reefs are dying along our coast, beaches are receding
�I3
through climate change that must be addressed as ocean temperatures rise and beaches recede.
Number 2) beach parks are overcrowded to the point that insufficient parking at Ke'e Beach has
resulted in shuttling, will this happen to our other beaches? Tourism has a huge impact; growth
of that segment which is actually 30 percent of our total population on the island on any day
should be regulated. We ask that a moratorium on future permits for resorts and timeshares be
instituted, 3) vehicles park and drive on our beaches, it is unsafe for beach goers as well as a
source of pollution and noise. Prohibit all vehicles from the beach and enforce it. Unleased dogs
are running around the beaches disrupting people and soiling sand, enforce the leash law, 5)
recycle bins and trash cans are missing at beach parks, an example would be Kealia which I go to
every day.
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms. Tavlor: Creafive educational signage is needed to remind people not to litter, to recycle, and
not to remove the safety tubes which are there to save people from drowning. Education is
important for the keiki, get education about marine and respecting nature into the public schools.
Chair Keawe: Can you wrap up your testimony?
Ms. Tavlor: The last thing would be over -fishing, regulate and enforce over -fishing.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahili¢: Tom Shigemoto followed by Jim Beaver.
Mr. Tom Shigemoto: Good morning Chair and members of the Planning Commission, for the
record my name is Tom Shigemoto. I am currently employed by Alexander and Baldwin
Properties Inc. As you have heard the General Plan update means different things to different
folks. You have heard a lot of testimony, a lot of issues have been raised, and God help you in
addressing all of them. Having said this I want to commend the planning staff, the Planning
Department, the consultants, and my colleagues on the CAC. I served as a member of the CAC
and we put in a lot of time and effort in trying to get the best plan forward. And as I said
everybody looks at this plan in a different light, they look at their own district, they look at their
own issues and they are presenting them and ask I said, bless you if you can address all of them.
From my perspective the plan tries its best to address everything that has been raised and the
CAC that I sat on, I represented the development, major landowner constituents. If course I
never would try to influence the process by taking care of our lands but I try to provide some
insights into the challenges that we as an industry face and we left it at that.
Today I am wearing my A&B hat and presenting to you some comments or requests on the lan
d
use plan. This is with regards specifically to the Eleele/Hanapepe area where most of our major
land holdings are. We are recommending or asking for 4 changes to the plan. First the
transportation designation that has been established for the area around the port, if that could be
revised to industrial because transportation gives it the connotation that only uses related to
transportation would fit but if it was industrial, industrial uses can serve port facilities as well.
The second is expanding the neighborhood general area shown on the map. We also presented,
39
as your staff mentioned, we presented plans to the department, our long range plans, and some of
it has been incorporated but we felt that there should be a little bit more to accomplish some of
the elements that we have long range plans for. The third is the extension of the residential
community to the edge of Wahiwa...
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr. Shi eg motor I will wrap up. Using concentric circle boundaries makes it real difficult when
you apply for district boundary amendments to get your long range plans in. Thank you very
much for your time.
Mr. Dahilie: Jim Beaver followed by JoAnne Yukimura.
Mr. Jim Beaver: Good afternoon Commissioners, I am Jim Beaver. I am a member of the Board
of Directors of the Kikiola Land Company. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak
today. We have been involved in this process all the way from the first charrette that was held in
Kekaha and Waimea. We have been to the public meetings, we have been actively involved
with our community in making the points that we think are pertinent to this process and we
appreciate the feedback that we have received from you on some of the modifications that have
already been made thanks to that feedback. Today I am here to talk about affordable housing.
Kikiola Land Company has been in business in West Kauai since 1884. We own the land
between Waimea and Kekaha including Waimea Plantation Cottages. It is a family business and
we are proud to have been the stewards of this land for 6 generations. Over the decades we have
worked with our neighbors to improve our communities, we have created jobs, we have provided
the land for the Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital, we provided the land for Waimea Valley
Middle School, the county sewage treatment plant, recreational facilities, and other community
resources. We believe the communities of Waimea and Kekaha have a great future. We are
surrounded by state parks, we have some of the most spectacular scenery in the islands, we have
a boat harbor, we are the sunniest place on Kauai, and we are rich in culture and history. We
honor that history but we are also looking to the future.
Waimea and Kekaha will thrive in the future. Kikiola wants to continue to contribute to that
success but we need some assistance from the county. We cannot evolve without affordable
housing. The current General Plan includes residential housing designations on Kikiola's Mauka
land, most of which lies unused zoned agriculture. You heard from the consultant earlier that 2
residential designations on our land have been removed from the General Plan update, we
believe that is not the right decision and as you have read the comments that have come in so far,
the people of Waimea and Kekaha support us on that idea. We believe as West Kauai grows
over the next decades families will need housing. There is not enough infill land available.
Constraining the land inventory will make land more expensive not more affordable. Waimea
cannot grow to the south because of the ocean, Waimea cannot grow to the east because of the
Waimea river, it cannot grow to the north because of the mountains. The only place it can grow
and make affordable housing available is to the west on Kikiola land.
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Mr.
Beaver:
We ask that you retain
residential housing
on the West Side of Waimea, we are
flexible, we can move it from where
it sits on the current General Plan and make it amalgamated
and attached
to the town of Waimea
so that it can grow
naturally in the future, thank you.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: JoAnne Yukimura followed by Matt BernabeI
Ms. JoAnne Yukimura: Before I start and before you start timing me I just have a question.
Will the power points and the presentations made today be on the web?
Mr. Dahili�: We are uploading everything online as a record.
Ms. Yulcimura: Thank you very much and thank you for the presentations. Mr. Chair, members
of the Planning Commission, thank you for your diligent work today and the work that you will
be doing on the most important document for Kauai County and that is the General Plan which is
meant to be a strategic plan and a road map to the future that we all want. I also want to thank
the Planning Department staff, the consultants, the CAC, the Citizens Advisory Committee, and
all the citizens who have been participating in this process because there has been a lot heart, a
lot of time, a lot of intellectual power for 20 months and that has been a huge effort. I want to
talk about 2 things I really like about the plan, I will give a disclaimer and then I want to focus
on what I feel is a core piece that is missing.
I love the 4 overarching goals, a sustainable island, a unique and beautiful place, healthy and
resilient people, and a community of equity and justice. Those are really good overarching goals
for us to aim for into the future. I also like a lot of the restrictions on new resorts and unentitled
resorts. That is a bold step and it is very important. I disagree with Mr. Imparato to a certain
extent because I think there have been some real substantial steps taken in this plan and we
should look at that carefully. I want to say that I haven't done a detailed look at the land use map
so I want to reserve my comments, I may have a lot of comments in the future. The core missing
piece, to me, is strong policy statements which I feel are the meat of the General Plan. I don't
believe you can do them in one paragraph of generalities and that is what I believe we have in
the 20 statements in section 1.2. The General Plan is mainly a policy plan but the department
draft is mainly an action plan and I think it is very dangerous to have an action plan without
sound policy. It's like equivalent to not having a plan if you just do this list of the actions
without a really clear idea of where you want to go and how you are going to get there.
For every area, transportation, housing, man
aging growth, we should be asking does the policy
statement give us guidance and does it give us guidance in the right direction. What I have
passed out to you which is entitled Comments on the Discussion Take 2, which I later learned
was going to be called the Departmental Draft, I have taken the 3 areas, policy 1, Managing
Growth...
Mr. Dahilig: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
41
Ms. Yukimura: Policy on housing and policy on transportation and I have tried to show how
they are inadequate in really giving us direction and addressing the complexity of the problem.
So I hope you will look at that carefully, my main request is that you take your time and use it
wisely so as you try to understand what is before you, help our communities understand the
issues. I actually recommend you take 1 topic at a time and spend 2 or 3 hours in a meeting on
each topic. It is a lot of work but I think that is what is going to be required to get a clear good
plan.
Chair Keawe: Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Dahilig: Matt Bemabe followed by Paul Massey
Mr. Matt Bernabe: Matt Bernabe for the record, Happy New Year, first time since the New Year
that I have been here. I like a lot of the things I heard today as far as the testifiers and some of
the stuff I like in the plan, acknowledging that we need to focus on some different economies and
not just tourism. I would like to testify on something one of the testifiers talked about earlier and
that is the water trust, at least the public trust in regards to water. I would like to see stronger
language in there on that, that would be good so that is another vote for that. I am just going to
stick to some of the things that I am constant with and I think we put all our baskets in Lihue and
I think we need to diversify the towns. With Donald Trump now being the president we may not
get that TIGER grant because it may not hold water with him. I was at the Governor's lunch
when we told the Mayor in praise, you had 20 reasons not to do it and you did it anyway. It
didn't fit the criteria, you made it fit the criteria. Well there is a new sheriff in town and what if
we don't get that money? What if one of the republicans that I heard sends a letter that says look
into this TIGER grant in Lihue? Because I have heard that, I have been hanging with them, I
went to the inauguration on a field trip.
These are the kinds of things that are going on now nationally that you guys need to take into
consideration because we have roads that are literally breaking ball joints all over this island but
yet we continuously put all our resources and focus on ripping up stuffthat is really good and
really doesn't have a function. I have already pointed out how we could have applied that
TIGER grant what we need for it to Kapa'a because that is our main economy and they are
grumbling about our traffic. I think you should reject this and put a little bit better thought into it
but I just wanted to take this opportunity to point that out. And, if we are going to try to grow
our own food we need to export something so that we can offset the other costs of the stuff that
we import. I have done the math and talked to the experts. If we reduce what we import on
some of the items of food the other items will go up exponentially and we are going to end up
paying it anyway. Let's get some export out.
Mr. Dahilie: Paul Massey
Mr. Paul Massey:
Aloha, thank you for the opportunity to comment on this plan. My name is
Paul Massey, I am a resident of Kalihiwai and my work is in agroforestry and agricultural
education. The Long Range Planning Department and their consultants have done an impressive
job in engaging the community in this process and I want to thank them for their hard work on
that. My comment today echoes some of what Felicia said already, specifically related to
42
proposed action on farm worker housing which is sparsely addressed on page 2-32 of the plan.
The plan affirms that, quote, "The lack of housing for farmworkers is a major impediment to
finding and supporting the labor necessary for agricultural enterprise", unquote. However it goes
on to suggest only, quote "modest improvements" unquote, to the existing farm worker housing
ordinance which in its current form represents an insurmountable barrier to many new and
existing farm operations on Kauai where the high cost of land prevents most small farmers from
being landowners. Non -farming landowners who wish to provide farming opportunities on their
property face regulatory requirements that dis-incentivize them from providing residential
farming options. The farm worker housing ordinance requires significant improvements to serve
the actual needs of small diversified farms on Kauai and the plan should not seek to largely
preserve a policy that has failed to provide affordable and feasible agriculture worker housing for
small scare farms. Thank you.
Mr. Dahilig: Mr. Chair that is all the oral testimony that has signed up fox this morning. We
also distributed a number of written testimony as well as written testimony that has been
submitted today. I would ask just for the record that information be put as part of the official
record for the Commission as well as we will make copies and put them online as part of our
ongoing virtual record of the process. Where we go from here Mr. Chair, our intention is to take
the comments from the public as well as the written testimony and actually go through another
round of draft amendments. We will be working with our staff and our consultants to actually
come up with a second departmental draft based off of what we have been getting in. I do want
to still encourage the public to continue to send testimony in via plankauai.com or drop it off at
our office because we will continually be receiving that information. I think at that point what
we would ask the Commission is that it defer this public hearing until a date set and that is
largely incumbent on our ability to incorporate the changes that we are prompted by the
discussion today as well as the written testimony, get that to a publisher and then get another set
of drafts out again.
Chair Keawe: We have one other person, did you sign up?
Mr. Dahili¢: Paul Massey was the last person but maybe...
Chair Keawe: Come in, you want to testify?
Ms. Beryl Blaich: Aloha Commissioners, I am Beryl Blaich. I am a resident of Kilauea and I
am speaking for myself and I am addressing open space preservation. You are terribly kind to
take me when you are so hungry. I appreciate the dedicated skilled work that has gone into this
plan so far by so many people and I am also appreciative of the thorough comments from the
public regarding the plan. And I want to thank the Planning Department for adding a section on
access to recreation which addresses some of my concerns about preservation of Mahaulepu. I
hope you are going to read and take to heart the testimony I have just provided from Suzanne
Kashiwa Iida and I also hope you will pay good attention to the written testimony or the written
comments of Wayne Souza who wrote really a thorough assessment of the heritage resources
section.
!fci
While thinking about this plan and I went back to some materials provided in a workshop on
rural planning that was sponsored by the Office of State Planning in 2006, they brought experts
and they provided all kinds of information and tools about planning and we are adopting a lot of
them in this plan in an effort to remain a rural place. Once of the first principals that were stated
by these experts was that you have to plan for both development and preservation so I think this
plan does well with planning for development. And I think for sound economic reasons and to
better protect the environment the plan is directing residents into more urban lifestyle
particularly in Lihue with commerce nearby and educational resources nearby, with less
dependence on cars and with parks and tree -lined streets and all those amenities. With this kind
of development is a substantial lifestyle change for the people of Kauai and to compensate for
this change I think we have to pay attention to that first principal and plan as aggressively for
land preservation. Because our rural lifestyle is more than just driving through a beautiful place
or knowing that we have preserved some historic buildings and some sites. We have to be able
to go out and experience the natural world as our predominant connection to nature. We have
lost a lot in the last 30 years and the plan talks about how the trend is toward lessening public
access to privately owned areas because of liability, privacy, and other reasons. So I think we
should try and address the trend and address the landowner's needs particularly for liability so I
am suggesting we set up a liability defense fund using some landowner money and some public
money.
Mr. Dahilie: Three minutes Mr. Chair.
Ms.
leave the
Blaich:
website as well as
through a
The rest
of my suggestions in there are
about how to help acquire land and also
what lands
we should
be looking at acquiring, thank
you very much.
Chair Keawe: Thank you fox your testimony. Is there anybody else that we missed? If not we
may be able to get to lunch soon.
Mr. Dahilig: Just to reiterate Mr. Chair, our intention again is to take the testimony placed on the
record orally today as well as what has been submitted written and we will still be receiving
testimony consistently throughout this process so I do not want to give the impression that if you
submit something tomorrow or a week from now that we won't make an effort to try to
incorporate that into the next draft. But I think given what we are hearing Mr. Chair, our
intention is to make some adjustments, make some changes, and also provide that opportunity for
my staff to maybe address some of these items and preemptively do it either by having a
response saying we have considered that but we may not be adding that into our
recommendations or we have considered it and here are the changes that we have done
correspondingly. We would rather go through that process with the Commission, I already see
some of that shifting, so it would be our recommendation that the Commission defer the public
hearing to a date set, we are not asking for closure today.
Chair Keawe: The issue is to leave the public hearing open.
Mr. Dahilig: Yes,
leave the
public hearing open and then we will provide a notice via our
website as well as
through a
meeting with the Commission
through Sunshine Law.
!C!
Chair Keawe: Commissioners, do you understand the issue and what we have before us?
Mr.
Mahonev:
I make
a motion to defer
the public
hearing to a date set to access more material
and
incorporate
as the
Director said.
Chair Keawe: Is there any discussion? We need a second.
Mr. Ho: Second.
Chair Keawe: All those in favor. (Unanimous voice vote) Opposed? Motion carried 4:0. We
would like to thank all of you for taking the time out of your schedules and coming to provide
testimony. We will certainly consider all the comments that we have heard today and thank you
very much for that public input, we appreciate it.
Mr. Mahoney: Move to adjourn.
Mr. Ho: Second.
Chair Keawe: Moved and seconded, all those in favor. (Unapimous voice vote) Motion carried
4:0.
ADJOURNMENT
Chair Keawe adjourned the meeting at 12:59 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted by:
Lani Agoot
Commission Support Clerk
OApproved as circulated (add date of meeting approval)
( )Approved as amended. See minutes of meeting.
45