LIHU’E — Members of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, the body charged with the task of reviewing the General Plan Update, have one more meeting before their job is finished and the weighty document is out of their hands. The process
LIHU’E — Members of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, the body charged with
the task of reviewing the General Plan Update, have one more meeting before
their job is finished and the weighty document is out of their hands.
The
process of review took over two years but members say that in order to make the
GPU really work, the most important steps are yet to come.
“The plan is
basically just a plan, you know? It’s the implementation of the plan — that’s
where the meat, the enforcement is going to be,” says Kelly Gooding, Kaua’i
County Farm Bureau president and Lihu’e resident.
It will take the
consultant hired to draft the GPU another month or so to incorporate the CAC’s
comments into the text. From there, the document will go to the Planning
Department and then the County Council for approval.
But even if the plan
is approved, implementing it will be no small order, members say.
“We’ve
done a good job with the vision and the values so we know what the community
wants in general but how to convert from that vision into the new zoning
regulations, that’s going to be the more challenging thing,” says Amy Awtry, a
retired teacher from Kapa’a.
A lot of the action items recommended in the
document call for sweeping changes in land use policy and review of older
plans, but members say that the ball is now in the county’s court.
“And it
remains to be seen how government is going to pick up the ball,” says Louis
Abrams, a Lawa’i Realtor.
The ball the county is poised to pick up may be
too unweildy for them to handle, members say.
“If you look at all the
implementing actions in each section of that GPU, in every situation the first
thing is implementing action— ‘The Planning Department shall amend the County
Zoning Ordinance’ or ‘The Planning Department shall amend the subdivision to
incorporate this,’ — if you count how many amendments they have to make,
technically or physically it can’t be done,” says Lihu’e architect Avery Youn.
CAC members wonder too whether the implementation can be monetarily
done.
“Then the decision whether it (the GPU) is followed up or not will
probably fall to the County Council and if they are actually going to provide
the money to make these changes. That’s what it’s going to boil down to,” says
Youn.
Certain proposed policy changes outlined in the plan, members say,
are as massive as the GPU itself.
For example, the ag and open review of
the zoning ordinance, that in itself is a project just as big as the GPU.
“I would say the majority of all those implementing actions will not occur
by the time the next GPU is started again,” Youn says.
Awtry says she
wonders if the Council will even bother to approve the document since it will
put such a strain on the county to implement.
“And if so, you know, we’re
back to square one, right?”
While the implementation of the GPU remains a
question, many CAC members say that they have made a good deal of progress in
reviewing the plan.
When asked about what was solid in the plan, many say
that the vision of the community is reflected very well within its
pages.
“To keep some of our viewplanes from being obstructed and to move
more heavily into agriculture and less so in tourism — those things are very
clearly laid out,” says Awtry.
“It’s very utopian — that’s we were
directed to do. We got to dream a bit. It’s good to have a goal,” says
Abrams.
“I told my soccer players, ‘Start now with how you are going to
feel if you win.’ You need to have that to get people to focus in.”
Youn,
who was involved in the last GPU process in 1982, says that the amount of
public participation this time around was more than he has ever seen
before.
Abrams would agree, saying that much of this was due to high tech
delivery methods such as e-mail and fax available this time around.
“This
concern and involvement and excitement about (the GPU) is that natural process,
which is the information age,” he says.
This is not to say there was
consensus reached among the public.
“If you had only two people in the room
you’d still have trouble. We just have a multiplier effect here,” says Gooding,
likening just getting all the CAC members to the meetings to trying to ‘herd
cats.’
“If you are trying to go for a consensus that’s very difficult,
because you have different prospectives. But you can always add to it,” Gooding
says.
“I think (the public) needs to be reassured that this is just the
first step,” says Awtry.
“The important work is yet to come, because we
have the broad strokes but to make that picture really clear we are going to
have to have the details, and that’s what we are really lacking.”
Other
CAC members agree that there are pieces missing in the GPU discussion draft as
it goes on to the next step.
Cheryl Lovell-Obatake, a kuleana caretaker in
Nawiliwili, says a lot of things concerning Native Hawaiians were missing from
the onset of the GPU process and have not been rectified.
“Comments from
the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (are missing). Why didn’t the mayor select an
OHA representative to be on the CAC? I requested that the Planning Department
inform OHA of the Discussion Draft, and allow OHA to legally review, and
comment on the rationales, and policies of each chapter, making sure that the
County’s policies comply with present, and changing state laws,” she
says.
Others say that there were little or no provisions for infrastructure
or housing put into the GPU draft.
“You’ll notice there were no bypass
roads on any of the maps,” says Youn.
Awtry says that much of the
infrastructure concerns were the jurisdiction of the state, but still were the
areas where a lot of the work needed to be done.
Youn says that the
projections made on housing were based on tourists rather than residents.
“It seems like the housing needs of the people who live here were somehow lost
in the shuffle or not addressed,” he says.
Even with its many puka and
implementation problems, members say that the document as is will still dictate
future land use matters for the island.
“I do believe that the plan, the
way we have it out here now, will go for the basis of a lot of future
planning,” Abrams says.
Youn points to one map in the GPU that shows all
the private development proposals to be incorporated as part of the GP land use
map.
“That more or less will tell you which way that town or village or
area will grow,” he says.
And for the private landowners whose proposals
get put into the GPU it is like a green light for their project, even though
they still need to apply for land use change and zoning.
“Their chances of
getting it are a lot better now, as compared to if it wasn’t part of the GP,”
Youn says.
