Leeward planners return site visit bill with negative vote

The Leeward Planning Commission is sending a bill requiring subdivision site visits back to the County Council with an unfavorable recommendation, but not before conceding the concept behind the proposal has some value.

“We feel in concept this has a lot of merit,” Deputy Planning Director Bobby Command said during Thursday morning’s meeting. “Practically speaking, it needs a lot of work.”

Planner Keola Childs outlined for the commissioners some of Bill 182’s biggest problems, including the lack of specific factors that would trigger the planning director or department staff to ask the subdivision applicant to redo the plan. The bill’s language would allow a future planning director to “be capricious,” Childs said.

A director could visit a site and say the land is “too steep, has too many trees or not enough rainfall,” Childs said, adding the specifics of those requirements are not laid out in the subdivision code. Further, planning department employees are not necessarily experts in topography, animals or rainfall, so it would be difficult for them to implement such criteria, he said.

“It’s perplexing to the staff and director as to how we would be able to carry this out without any standard from law,” Childs said.

Kawaihae resident Jo Tanimoto testified in favor of the bill, asking the commissioners to consider amending it to require site visits for other requests, such as items on which the planning director can make a “unilateral” decision.

“The county is called to protect, preserve history and culture,” she said.

Commission Chairman Thomas Hickcox asked whether the commission should, as a board, provide solutions to the perceived problems with the bill.

Commissioner Thomas Whittemore said Thursday’s discussion did that.

“It isn’t just a yes or no thing,” Whittemore said. “There are a lot of issues out there. The council could consider those and resubmit.”

Command said two possible ideas would be for the department to hire expert staff in some of the areas Childs mentioned, although that would be expensive, or for the council to narrow the bill’s scope.

South Kona/Ka‘u Councilwoman Brenda Ford wrote the bill. She said earlier this week she was frustrated with how the department has handled some cases in the past, approving projects that violate the community development plans.

The lack of a site visit by a planner was a key point in a 2012 appeal of a South Kona planned unit development. A judge ruled last year the department had not adhered to the Kona Community Development Plan.