Tourism the focus of council’s ongoing General Plan debate

The Kaua`i County Council’s Planning Committee hopes to have its last

discussion today concerning updates to the county’s 1987 General Plan.

The

council wants to schedule a vote at next week’s meeting, but first must agree

on a revised Chapter 7.

For more than two years, the county Planning

Commission, community activists and business and community leaders, and now the

council have been massaging Chapter 7, which deals with the island’s economic

future.

Last amended in 1984, the revised chapter focuses more on tourism

than agriculture, which was a highlight of the 16-year-old plan.

Late

amendments were prepared this past week by the Planning Committee’s chairman,

Daryl Kaneshiro, and fellow council members Gary Hooser, Ron Kouchi and Randall

Valenciano.

Kouchi and Valenciano have filed a joint amendment deleting

land-use maps.

Critics have said the maps were taken as a right by

developers.

Valenciano has proposed an amendment to adopt the projection of

24,000 to 30,500 average daily visitors in the year 2020 as recommended by the

state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism report,

“Population and Economic Projections for the State of Hawai`i to 2025.”

The

Planning Commission recommended using a figure of 32,000 visitors a day for the

purposes of planning facilities at Lihu’e Airport.

Some Citizen Advisory

Committee members favored a range that went as low as 19,000 visitors per

day.

The numerical projections are relied on for estimating needs for

infrastructure improvements and other proposed developments over the next 20

years.

Hooser proposed an amendment that would delete language supporting

redistricting “a limited amount of land on the Wainiha-Haena coastal plain from

state conservation to agricultural.”

Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be

reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and[

HREF=”mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net”>dwilken@pulitzer.net]