LIHU’E — Linda Fayé Collins, Avery Youn and others are encouraging every area of the island to come up with their own community development plans to allow further resident input into how and where land-use changes are made. “I’d rather
LIHU’E — Linda Fayé Collins, Avery Youn and others are encouraging
every area of the island to come up with their own community development plans
to allow further resident input into how and where land-use changes are
made.
“I’d rather foster the process,” said Collins, president of Kikiaola
Land Company.
Without development plans, developers will tell people what
they want, and with development plans the community can tell would-be
developers what the community wants, said Youn, an architect and former county
planning director.
But Kaua’i Planning Director Dee Crowell worries about
creating another layer of “stuff,” saying that counties like Maui and Honolulu
need community development plans because their general plans don’t include
land-use maps similar to those in the Kaua’i General Plan Discussion
Draft.
GPU Consultant Robin Foster agreed with Crowell when he said
implementing new community development plans isn’t necessarily a good
idea.
Most of the members of the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) working
on the Discussion Draft, though, feel the community development plans are
excellent vehicles to allow communities input into the details which will
eventually shape the future of their neighborhoods.
Collins sees the
General Plan as general, with the community development plans dictating how and
where development should take place.
Further, she would like the state
Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism to pay for
development of regional plans.
Amy Awtry said communities want input on
growth issues affecting where they live.
The eighth and final chapter of
the Discussion Draft deals with implementation of the plan, and the section on
community development plans currently suggests “Priorities for the funding and
preparation of Community Development Plans shall be decided by the County
Council, based on the recommendations of the Planning Department and the
Planning Commission.”
In other issues at Tuesday’s CAC meeting, many
advisory committee members still are reluctant to “sign off” on a version of
the General Plan slated to be forwarded to the Planning Commission for further
discussion next month until some more solid data is available on housing needs,
traffic circulation and other matters.
A discussion took place on the
inclusion of language in the draft regarding “big-box” stores being allowed
only in Urban Center-designated areas.
The big-box stores “have done a
number on local businesses,” said Ann Leighton, who added that if she had her
way neither Big Kmart nor Wal-Mart would be in operation on Kaua’i.
Foster
said it might be a problem to include language indicating there will be no
big-box stores allowed on the island.
Herman Paleka said the young people
on the island need places to play, and Louie Abrams, in a discussion about
parks, said the county is acknowledging that they have lots of
“postage-stamp-sized” parks that are expensive to maintain.
There is the
possibility of consolidating those smaller parks into fewer, larger parks which
would be easier to maintain.
Leighton, an avid bicyclist, asked if the
island is going to play into the vision of the automobile as the only mode of
transportation. Further, she is calling for a manned police substation at
Kapa’a, and another sector patrol for the Kawaihau area.
Glenn Mickens, not
a CAC member but a concerned resident, said the car is here to stay, and the
county, state and citizenry have to address road issues.
Don Heacock, also
a concerned member of the public and not a CAC member, said the plan’s vision
for the island’s streams is flawed. “We don’t want to maintain them. We want to
restore them,” he said.
Further, Heacock feels the vision for the island’s
streams is that none should be on the list of quality-impaired bodies as
defined by the state Department of Health.
Crowell expressed concerns for
the timetable regarding forwarding the General Plan draft to the Planning
Commission.
The original timetable was for the CAC to review the
Discussion Draft this month, and forward it to the Commission in time for it to
schedule public hearings on the draft plan in March, Crowell said.
But as
another CAC meeting is planned for either the first or second Tuesday in March
to look at the final draft before it goes to the Commission, the Commission may
not be able to schedule hearings until late March or early April.
