with the planning committee meeting of june sixteenth two thousand and sixteen please come to order it is now and i know for actually and i know to a real clock my name is don coutts on the chair of the committee before we start can i ask i think might be to reno is excused and we have with us counsel chair mike white monitor good morning from the administration we have michelle mclean depart at the deputy director for all the items for the my area and p c twenty two regulating the construction of sea walls members on p c twenty two there might be some misinformation out there in the public on p c twenty two i know we are all very concerned about the construction of sea walls and know the effects of the construction of sea walls the intent of the chair and this one is to inform the basically what the council can do which is very little at this point and try to find out from corporation council what we can and can't do on this but as far as the actual construction of sea walls i am sure we're all just wanted to get that out there because i saw some information that in employee implied that we didn't know about the destruction of the house and how bad they are so we definitely do know that right for testimony for individuals i did testify in the chamber please sign up at the desk outside the chamber door if testifying from remote testimony site please sign up with the district office staff testimony will be limited to the items listed on the agenda today  testify will be allowed to testify for up to three minutes and you will get an extra minute in i'll be allowing the extra minute to conclude your testimony you will have a lighting system the light will be on for three minutes will be green for three minutes yellow for one minute and then turns red when it turns red please conclude your remarks thank you all right when testifying please state your name in any organization you may be and i'll call the next one as soon as i get the l  it was very it's startling to me that the planning commission actually passed this with a fight to well my concern at that time was that you know the general public is definitely always left out of the equation every time something like this happens especially when definitely there may be a possible impact or joining properties too when you're talking about s on it is evident for me sitting there that we need we need better advise million the planning commission because i don't know what the background of these individuals i know how it is and how troubling it is to sit there to review all these different types of applications but you know a lot of common sense has to come into making a decision pertaining to what's going on better than the general beach and it's not just him might be suffering on a real estate but it's going to be everybody that's going to suffer it is going to be the neighbors are going to suffer in around that area so i just want to ask this concert to take into deep diligence when you  you know as donna was saying that your limitations very limited on on this senate as they go to the corporate counsel i just want to reflect on the conclusions of law came from their own planning director on why this project would be adversely affecting adjoining properties so my own bet and on ads is make those strong  yale for grad school my background and culture resource management and i'm here today to speak a little bit about what i call the hopi iranian problem you know seawalls we all i don't need to speak about the detriment and you all seem to be educated on that seawall as we one hundred thirty acres just south of line poco that was a great move however i'm disheartened and discourage to hear that the county is not following through with their purchase of one point two miles of coastline north between coup and put them on a beach park this is a shame this land is a good provides an opportunity to take a step towards realigning not only the regional transportation wanna beach park with this purchase the public could control those thirty seven acres and one point two miles of coastline with how to publics control of this land the private subdivision road access road into the future this will only necessitate further sea walls and coastal hardening i implore the county to look ahead and use your power to influence and incentivize planning white just a quick question are you aware that the property you're talking about is not coastal yes it's just malka of the highway and i of the private subdivision row that's being built  followed by david duncan good morning council members my name is the lawrence born and raised in lyon are currently residing a country i know you guys been getting a lot of emails of all the f about seawalls saw i'm pretty sure everyone's well aware that seahawk seawalls are very detrimental to our resources and public beach access you guys know that but i'm here because i want to tell you guys mr cult you said earlier there's nothing much we can do and i disagree with that i think that if you the council members are elected officials really rally together and pressure the state i'm sure the legislators to stop wasting millions and millions of dollars each year on temporary repairs on one or any highway so waste of money and we need to put our foot foot down and i am willing to organize with you guys to pressure the states who are put the money towards realignment and move the highway up it's been in our community plans for twenty years behind on this highway people who live on the other side which are were born and raised in a residents are being pushed out and having to drive every day all manner tourists people are sitting in traffic all the time the hardening is getting worse we're losing public beach access i mean you guys know you see it it's going i mean it's just you put a wall here and then a couple years later we're putting a lot here because it's just you know like she mentioned earlier it's going to go see a lot as you are as you are we can't have that anymore saw b s let's let's let's get let's make some noise and told us state let's do it is there are always putting emergency proclamations on all these taken away places that we surf we can't go it's so hard to access now it's unsafe when we have our kids and we want to go surfing this certain surf spot we got to run across the highway and it's getting worse so please guys there's more that we can do legally as far as making laws what we can do but you're right we can certainly through eight sac and through other things pressure the state and i have a feeling we're in the process of doing that the other one is we have formed what is called a metropolitan planning organization that can take some of that reluctance back from the state back to the metropolitan planning organization which includes three of us as members and three department heads and the state department transportation so please come testify to that meeting on june twentieth it's just starting so we'll be getting to the point where we can we can take over the the priorities of the  so i just before i leave you know with the meeting i went on tuesday i do believe there needs to be more overstate maybe the concert should be involved but any time there is seawater decisions being made at the penny i you know it's we need people that we have a specific time and nine fifteen to nine thirty was the time so without objection i'd like to recess and i mean i'd like to bring up mr peet martin and then recess and set up this presentation that come back to there's three testifiers i want to testify after the presentation so if there's any object there's no objections i'd like to bring out to peter martin are going to either way anyway we all get it the other thing is i have a daughter allie like these young lady said have testified and she goes the problem with your company is a failure to communicate and i'm watching it right now too because i've watched my can and char talk and it's interesting with three minutes you can only speak so much but i know what he was thinking about this purchase which i'm against you guys  that land but i understood what wright was talking about is we want the highway gone in most areas not so to limit access just so we could remove the dam wall or highway and remove the revet mince and that the ocean do its natural thing and we have the freedom to do that here it was over twenty years ago and met with the free than all these folks on that to monitor the poly idea it's not over we can do it still but this darn environmental impact statement thing is killing things the you can get around it and do an emergency get money make a seawall and those with the gift and if you try to get the actual approval i sat on those me as we spent three million dollars for the thing i sat for ten years going over there and they spent three million dollars and there was no alignment we got to hold a wall and stop there but it goes me i probably ran up my time so thank you yes sorry the clock didn't start it's pretty close members any questions to test the fire seeing none thank you all right members the rest of the folks are testifying on p twenty six and they pretty much everybody except for the last person i just signed up said that they're willing to wait till after the test after the presentation on people twenty six zero members i'm going to go to the district ok members without objection i would like to close public testimony on the district district offices because we have to use the phone so that so public testimony is closed for the district offices member  are on the phone he's going to give us a presentation he's the cheek chief executive officer of a company in san francisco that specializes in assisting local governments in monitoring and forcing short term rental regulations he has agreed to speak to us today on the short term mental home situation on maui to present possible solutions to compliance monitoring and foresman challenges are like to offer mr bender as a resource person today pursuant to rule eighteen a of the rules of the council given his special expertise on matter without objection ok and mr binns or is going to come up with a presentation and the gist of it for for my purposes of having him talk with you guys is to let you know that this is a nationwide issue to the point where there are several companies that that their whole business is in ordinance creating and enforcement capabilities so with that mr binns or would you please start your presentation only thank you so much majority of the listings are in the hotels and apartments shown in west maui and the hay mechanic area that's at the as you can see here there are still at these men out of property list that outside of these areas as well and so at that the little bit of a high level view of what we see out there and i thought it would be interesting for you to sort of get a sense of the capabilities we have because as you can see we can drill down pretty pretty detailed s so i think before we dive into the details of the solution i think it's important to take a step back and understand why h rules may be needed in the first place and it really comes down to the fact that manual compliance just talking about it is to get the context and the first issue that you face is that it's not like you can just go on one of two web sites and try to do the research there and just with the clipper ation the internet and  is that even if you had the resources to get all these different web sites and continues the looking at these web sites because you have to do it all the time and with that come and go you will find it very difficult to actually manage to be just given how many have quickly turned into a huge show like excel nightmare where you're trying to figure out which ones across the and which ones you're already to reach out to which ones they do which are to last year they disappeared and came back and so forth  a bit about specifically what the solutions could look like that potentially could be of help to you and i'll talk about before or thing that comes to mind that being think that i think could be helpful based on what i'm hearing as being  challenges specifically mally i think the first thing is finding the addresses and that's why we have developed some tools that allows us to continuously stand all of these different websites and then  where homeowners will just take down the listing once you catch them and then they will claim that i did never did anything wrong and then obviously it's hard to prove that they actually were operating if you did mangere check and interesting that you have nine database that you guys have to basically identify the non compliant properties show that we can send them a letter and basically tell them about the rules and how to get into compliance so it's just that automated essentially a permanent residence and they were doing children mental activity and we can see that the probably was read that nine months out of the year and was generating thousands and thousands of dollars eventual avenue it just feels like that might not be as i'd like to think calls because the last thing they want is basically having their house they're turned into a party house or like trash or anything like that in the neighbors obviously very happy because they just want to go to sleep or get the issue benefit is that by basically having all the calls go to one central hotline and you can keep tabs which properties are consistently creating issues for the grinch so that you can potentially revoke their permits of likes that's in order to get him to behave better and maybe screen their renters a little bit better than they have been in the past and that's just a great way to essentially deal with the bad actors because the reality is that of red tape generally a lot of people will just give up on it and just and not bothering to get a permit so that's something they want to think about also and it's worth noting that if you have simple  if you now have simple rules and you actually have complied march your tools that allows you to find all that does not comply properties easily and you will actually achieve the result you want which is obviously in forcing you to quotas to make sure that the neighborhoods much members and thank you members it's about time for mid morning break so we have to reset the room for back to our other  next presentation so then we're going to get public testimony and would like to give people a chance to move their cars if they need to so if we can get back here by ten twenty will resume public testimony so we're on recess until ten twenty when the planning committee meeting of june sixteenth two thousand sixteen please come back to order members thank you for the interruption there are sorry he had a little bit of a sales pitch i asked him to cut that down a little bit but he did so we'll get to that after the rest of the the testimony so we have three people signed up to in favor of the resolution to transmit council chair white's proposed amendments for circulation to the planning commissions for their review and comment i'd like  to compliment that presentation that we just sat through even though it did have a sales pitch and in some respects i think it was with us for this occasion but in terms of  of an outsider comprehending the range of issues and being able to quantify them and being able to specify technological interventions which meeting the binding department voiced some objections to council chair white's proposed amendments although they said they wouldn't object to them being circulated the planning commissions they would not object to them being circulated i've submitted some written testimony but the bottom line of my point of view is that there are lots of visible illegal advertisements for short term rentals and bed and breakfasts on the internet and when a member of the community submits a request for service which includes a link to an advertisement that doesn't have a permit number and when that request for service provides a valid address i feel that the department should have the duty to enforce not may or may not and the concern that if they don't enforce within the time lines suggested in the proposed amendments could look like selective enforcement i just like to point out that we already have the fact of selective enforcement because the department is currently under no duty to enforce they may or they may not enforce in response to a request for service so that means some people have to have a permit to operate some can operate without a permit some must pay taxes and some don't need to some have to maintain their property in compliance with code to make it safe for visitors and some do not some have to pay taxes and some do not anyway the remedy for that selective enforcement is to change and force me to make amends to enforcement shell commands and then to specify reasonable time limits so that there's accountability thanks for your consideration thank you dr dantes members any questions of the testify or seeing none next up is rooney committee tom curley speaking on my own behalf i'll try to be very brief i know you have lots of things on the agenda i appreciate the discussion that the committee had at its last meeting regarding enforcement of one permit short term rentals and i agree with the reservations that were expressed by the department that changing in may to a shaolin code is not going to effectively increase the effectiveness of in force meant i also agree with the department that setting specific time frames for place is both sometimes impractical and i don't think we'll have a significant improvement on effective enforcement as the department also expressed that last meeting it's been my goal for more than ten years to help achieve compliance prefer belief first by permitting but if that's not possible then by cheating compliance by stopping the non compliant use however i am most disappointed to hear the department state that they have stopped any and all proactive in foresman efforts because they saw no purpose in doing so because it might lead to a non complying operator making application during the grace period that seems just in can grow into me and there also was even more disappointed to hear the deputy director confirm that the primary enforcement efforts being take taken place by the department occur only after an applicant submitted an application to see if they can reject that application that is not helping in any way shape or form council member bice asked me at the last meeting is there a better solution to this and perhaps the folks at host compliance in the presentation they made might offer an alternative to our proactive or complaint based in forcemeat method we've long discuss the merits of removing the responsibility of identifying the short term rental in the noncompliance or terminal places from the department and letting a third party perform this function so perhaps there is someone who can do this as i stated in my previous testimony identifying non permitted advertisement is very very easy it's a little bit more difficult to match that to an address but in ten to fifteen minutes i can i can match almost any advertisement to an address the hard part begins when you then have to initiate contact and you have to get the non compliant operator to do what you want to do be it come in and get a permit or be it stop operating and that requires an ongoing effort it's not a one time and done thing so perhaps a company who would give monthly reports and would do this on an ongoing basis and keep a database of of all this maybe that's the approach that we need i don't think the presentation gave us all the information we need but i would encourage you just to talk more with these folks and maybe look for other folks that offer a service similar to this thank you thank you mr crow and members any questions to the test the fire seeing none next up is mark rooney and we have marjorie boehner who signed up but i don't see her here hello everybody my name is mark rooney i am testifying today as an individual on p c twenty six the vacation rental in foresman agenda item as part of any vacation rental enforcement amendments i asked the department of planning experts to immediately start allocating manpower resources to thoroughly audit each existing vacation rental case file and provide the public with transparent case studies of existing vacation rental cases as part of any vacation rental enforcement amendments i asked the department of planning experts to consider imposing a five year employment ban on any planning staff employee who fails to professionally perform their county government job duties as part of any vacation rental enforcement amendments impose a five year employment ban on any planning department employee who fails to approve who approves of faulty vacation rental permit application as part of any vacation rental enforcement amendments in the five year ban on the employment of any planning department employee who renewed a faulty vacation rental permit and as part of a five of as part of any vacation rental enforcement amendments impose a five year employment ban on any planning department employee who overlooks deficiencies on a vacation rental site visit as part of any vacation rental enforcement amendments impose a five year employment ban on any planning department employee who ignores non conforming nanda permit it non inspected or non approved conditions on a vacation rental property site inspection of five year employment ban this would make vacation rental enforcement amendments less onerous with less lopsided bias in favor of vacation rentals amended foresman to include consequences if maui county government employees violate the ordinance it's time to stop calling this the planning committee and start calling it another catering service specializing in the issuances of licenses to steal imagine if you observe a bank robbery and you live next door to the bank and you're told the number that you're supposed to call to complain is the getaway driver that's the way it stands right now this notion about somehow solving all the vacation rental problems through enforcement is pure make believe please don't fool yourselves into believing that with enough increased enforcement the vacation rental issue will be solved from my vantage point no meaningful in forstmann exists to police even the permit it vacation rentals please recognize the failure of these vacation rental ordinances please recognize the professional ineptitude of the planning director please recognize the professional gross negligence of the planning staff i support repealing vacation rental ordinances i support an immediate moratorium on the issuance of any new vacation rental permit and i suggest a thorough review of each and every vacation rental permit already issued revoke permits that are found to be irregular repeal all vacation rental ordinances and restore the peaceful enjoyment within single family residential neighborhoods repeal all vacation rental ordinances and potentially increase the inventory of long term rental homes for working residents and that's about all i have to say i welcome your questions where do you live i live in maui meadows next to a licensed vacation rental and ship it which is twenty feet from my bedroom window thank you very much i kind of thought that might be the case thank you mr victory  thank you thank you mr rooney last call for marjorie bone are ok anybody else wanted to testify ok and we've also checked with the district offices and there are nobody there's nobody there waiting to testify as well so members without any objection we are close above a testimony  public testimony is close ok members first item is p c twenty six were proposed amendments to the comprehensive zoning ordinance relating to the imports meant of bed and breakfast alms and short term mental homes members we last consider this item on our community committee meeting on june second two thousand and sixteen the subject matter of the general communication is proposed is a proposal to make revisions to the enforcement provisions of both chapter  ordinance for three one five and consistency between chapters one thousand point six four and one thousand point six five the proposals from council chair white and i plan to turn floor were doing him to explain and discuss the bill so chair white thank you very much chair and you know we've had a lot of discussions in this chamber with respect to the challenges within foresman and the issue i think is one that is critical both from a financial standpoint from a property tax and from the collection of t t and g t for compliance but i think it's also a very important issue with respect to honoring and respecting the time and energy that the permanent owners of both b and b s and s t r ages have had  in going through the process and following all the rules i know there have been some concerns that maybe the shallots a little too strong and the timeframes established maybe a little bit too strong  but at the same time this is an issue that we seem to have a bit more of a flagrant disregard for for the law than we have had and other areas so i think it is appropriate for us to take a look at having something that it is a little bit stronger and has a little more teeth than maybe other sections of the staff or the ordinances  and i think it's appropriate for us to have the planning commission review it they may feel that the language is a little bit too strong but let them come back to us with with their suggested modifications i think it's good to have their input i know they have some some very specific experience with the permanent process members consider simply passing this on to the commission because i think it's a good start and and they'll do their due diligence the department will have an opportunity to offer their suggestions their concerns and i think the presentation this morning was certainly a very a very good proposal or opportunity and i think it makes sense for us to take a look at other providers as was suggested by one of the test fires but in any case we've got to get in force been under control we've got to provide a way in which to help the department get their arms around it i think providing some some teeth to the ordinance and providing them with some technical assistance from  you know you saw the presentation and you saw that is not county y it just a county wide issue it's a nationwide issue in quoting other countries canada and canada in there as well and it is t you know you can find advertisements on the internet but as he mentioned there were one hundred twenty different sites sixteen major sites and we have some issues with we have about close to about one thousand permitted vacation rentals in their i mean not vacation rentals in areas where it's permitted use without needing a permit so therefore they don't advertise with a permit number because i don't have a permit number and so to have to sift through all that i think it is a little bit more onerous then than just looking at some websites and that's why they you know i'm a tech guy you know that so i think  having the computer do it would help tremendously so i just want to say you know we some people have been bashing on the planning department about not doing  enough in force meant including me and you find out the how difficult it really is to really get get down to some good enforcement because it just takes a lot of people time to the point where there are small table companies that do this as just their own sort i mean source of business is enforcing short term rental vacation rental ordinances throughout the country throughout the north america so i want to say to the department you guys have been doing its best i think you can with what you've got we haven't been able to give you enough because of funding and whatnot but i think that this is  a prime example of the fact that it's bigger as mr chair white said it's bigger than than just that just a few folks in the department can handle so thank you chair white department do you have any comments thank you chair assuming that this does move out and go to the commissions today i wanted to ask which version is going to be transmitted  because the latest version that was posted corporates the changes to nine hundred sixty five that were already adopted so that makes the correct cleaner but there are there were two two provisions i found that were in the original draft that weren't included there redraft i didn't know what if those were intentionally excluded or if you wanted to put those back in ok which we're sure the members were talking  there's a date on the top june thirteenth request for legal services that's i believe the one we're going to be working off of the one you were discussing right off on looking at that bill  first sentences of subsection be read permit renewal application shall be submitted to the department and within ninety days prior to the permit expiration date then it continued in this is a sentence that excluded right now if the renew application is complete the expiration date may be extended while the renewal application is being processed if the renewal application is incomplete the permit may expire on the expiration date i can't really give a position on that particular statement but that that was in the earlier version but not in this version i didn't know if you wanted that to be part of what's transmitted to the commission's ok i will check with the staff why the why that so i guess it would be up to our preference and we would ask for your comments whether you'd like that language in or out i'm not going to take a position on the language but i figure why not keep it in there so that it can be on the table for discussion because if it's not put forward then it won't be able to be discussed when it comes back to you so if it is something that you wish to consider  will comment on it through the process but i would say to go ahead and include it just for the sake of having it on the table for discussion members of the chair why you're this is staff's recommendation whether they feel it should be put back in or i'm not sure what the implications of having it in would be if it would seem to me if the department would like it to be considered by the commissions they could certainly make that recommendation that we could share and this as is ok i'm fine with that too and if the partner wants that back in we can have them put that back in recommend that i'm fine with leaving it out as well ok and we'll do the same for the other comment then we don't need to we don't need to discuss it at this point we can just include that in our recommendations when we d and then two that's the notes i have from last meeting right throughout the there are a number of shall and a number of specific times that we have a concerted weight but again we're fine with that a proposal going to commissions we can discuss it more at that time and i also have a note that on do you one where it says the permit number shall be terminated within seven days i have a note here that you were you heard the apartments they're fine with us sending it down there they would prefer to shout to may but i think they can discuss that planning commission and come back with a recommendation to us so it would for years and now we're coming to some kind of what i call reasonable conclusion i would like to see the and the problem i see here is this this is not coming back but i mean just by sound i leave you know b s all of the terms you want to use have been tremendously detrimental to the people we call team and the illegal ones i will definitely agree and somehow some way getting enforcement to be really proficiency would be the answer to all those questions i mean there's no question why do we hire somebody like this guy nice commercial to write to write him picked up in it or some other organization i think would also take all the planning commission like that gentleman said we're planning not think we should planning department employees been banned for five years from working if they made a mistake we have someone is totally outside of the spectrum and let them go find in bring it back to us or bring it back to the planning department i know you're looking kind of squinting mister but what he was saying is if these guys give permits if they do something you know  his term improper is the word i heard many times then they would be banned for five years of employment that's pretty sure pretty harsh should somebody make a mistake and i like to see anybody who can walk  water come see me i got upon the here call cannot i like to see him walk on that water first so these are the things that concern me that you know i want something that can be enforceable that would take this problem out but i go back and i'll i'll finish it up by saying i don't care what we do in enforcement i don't care what we do with rules and regulations until we have the inventory we're going to have a problem and there's no is potts or somebody every expert or even when i was in oregon i sell right now because we have so much inventory they're not getting the prices they want to for i love that aspect i love that aspect so i think we've got to really start doing these band aid to find putting these together i think it was due i'm not saying that you weren't trying and all of us have been trying but i really believe the bottom line is we need to build and until we build we will have this problem as a continuum because when there's a lot of inventory a lot of this will disappear discussion with the planning commission so i can support this i being supported being sent all the only regret i have by the time he gets back here i won't be sitting in this seat in my successful women wherever he was she may be would have to make that decision and i hope we see this me really good step to finding one of the solutions that we have it's not going to solve everything we still have looking at making permuted simpler and a lot of other things that we will look at it in the future cheers amendment and being sent to the planning commissions for them to take a look at we have looked at them and looked at them and looked at and i think some new highs will be very helpful you know they over so there is some time if everybody would encourage the agenda's be done i would certainly like to be here for this because you know i've invested many much much time and set through hours and hours and hours of dealing with this  and my greatest wish of course is that we will be able to get this under control and that we can have legal vacation mentos and  form so of commendation so that our visitors have a choice but we cannot have it destroying in our neighborhood we just can't do that and the only way we're going to do that is with important so it was very interesting this morning to listen to the  gentleman i would like to discuss step further with him i didn't q that it was time to ask a lot of questions because we were on the time limits and we came in iceland there were moments when we could hear very clearly what he was saying and there  moments when i couldn't quite it kind of really make out clearly what he was trying to say so fortunately we had the written power point i don't know how will that will come across with the people in the viewing audience but i'd like to have the opportunity chair to sit with with him and maybe in the meantime we can kind of look around and see if there are other companies this is one you've got in there is more people are very copy candy you get an idea and you start something and of course somebody finds a better way to do it for less and that's our job is to look for is there anybody who can do it better for less but i kind of like the idea of the company being we're out of they would be responsible for enforcement because they have a clean slate they don't know who's married to who did it and lives next door they don't they don't know any of that so they have a clean slate they can look at you know the rules and force them here it's very difficult because we all know each other and you know we i haven't i neglected to call on corporation counsel i know corporation counsel has some issues with some of the language but i believe that can be handled at  timeframes and also potentially conflicting or a confusing one thousand five thirty the important ordinance but i agree with you with planning and with the committee members that those issues can be ironed out for ther maybe not but it so i would i just implore them to bring this back as quickly as possible but you know i think it's also important to point out that you know i understand her counsel issues with us but we're the policy making board and this is this is one of those items for me that is really a thorn in my side because i see guys basically ignoring the laws and doing what they want and so for me this is an issue that requires us as policy makers to provide the department an opportunity to have some have an ordinance with some teeth to it that would make their job easier and i realize the time frames may make things a little bit tougher but at the same time i think it's important for us to send a message to the commission as well that we mean business and we want to solve this we want to have the ability to provide that plenty department the tools with which they can do an effective job of  effectuating compliance and tagging those folks that aren't following the rules i think the idea of giving them some additional help with the computer monitoring through one of these companies is it should be a great help to them and take some of the real time consuming work off their hands so anyway i appreciate your asking for others planning commissions a proposed bill amending the comprehensive zoning ordinance relating to enforcement procedures for a bed and breakfast homes and short term rental homes incorporating any non substantial revisions and filing of general communication fifteen dash five second ok it's been moved by member carolyn seconded by member white to recommend the adoption the proposed resolution any further discussion seeing not all those in favor ok members if there is no objections i'd like to take the last item out of order and consider it now for the reason that we have a presentation by ms owens the objection to doing p c twenty this miscellaneous communication p c twenty two was referred to counsel to the committee at its meeting by the counsel to the committee and his meeting on may twenty sixth last year the communication is a subject matter repro to review the count own i think everybody knows who she is thank you chair and other members of the planning committee for having me here today i do think everyone knows me but just for the record i'm tara owens i'm a coastal geologist for the university of hawaii sea grant program and i serve the county of mallee planning department as well as the greater county and and the community as a technical advisor on these erosion and coastal management related issues i thought at the request of the planning department i would take a few minutes to summarize some of the trends with their ocean the range of responses and bring up some recent with some from maybe like the fast past five to six years to think about as you as a discussion starter and i should probably also mention because i've had a lot of questions lately from the public in the community that you know since the planning commission is the regulatory authority for shoreline activities and developments we don't often have this opportunity to communicate with council about the issues that are coming up in the permits so we it's a golden opportunity and we're here to support any discussion so this winter the big news was we had a lot of big waves if you were a surfer it was a fantastic winner if you were a shoreline property owner or manager this winter in certain circumstances were very difficult  this is an example that you've probably seen in the news lately and was one of the issues that was recently heard by the planning commission this was on a beach in west marilee back in september so the end of last summer you can see some dry beach out front but you can also see that the buildings in the background are getting pretty close to the to the shoreline and there's an erosion scarp right along the edge of those buildings the building farthest in the background is valley isle resort and that is because the previous winter we had some issues where the buildings here at royal connor were close to becoming imminently threaten and the state and county allowed them to take some temporary emergency measures that were environmentally friendly using environmentally friendly materials to put a barrier that was buried in the beach however because of the winter that we experienced largely related to the el nino conditions in the consistent large swells we had this when are we lost a lot of beach there was a lot of erosion and you can see the impacts on the buildings that are very close to the shoreline there you can see on the left as well  with the summertime conditions and this isn't a new issue as you probably know and i just have a sampling of items that have been in the news in just the last few years that kind of highlight the issue again he has lost more than four miles of sandy beach in the past century forces of nature threaten roadway walls no match for waves west side beaches and properties face erosion from large sure new research predicts a doubling of coastal erosion by mid century in is something we think about i think in the future but really in reality the issue is here we're faced with it right now on a daily basis the kahan example is just one of many that we're dealing with on the ground right now there are other areas in other regions that are have structures that are facing eminent threat from close allusion this is the most recent article that was published in june on june fifth this is related to previous council action and last year's budget cycle you funded a study that the planning department managed looking at the viability of beach restoration income in front of those properties we just saw those condominiums and just as a about a month ago our consultants which are major coastal engineering firm from the mainland who do lots of these types of projects they discovered a lot of beach quality sand offshore so the cool thing from a science perspective on that is that you know the whole area one of we've seen shorelines eroding you know since the seventy's and you always have to ask the question well where is the sound going and a lot of times we can't answer without doing additional studies on how we think we found all of want to provide sand and there's a lot of it out there upwards of three hundred thousand cubic yards which is which is a massive and the implication of that is that we  do have options now we have options to help protect these buildings and t ok so backing up a little bit just some statistics you've maybe heard this from me before but studies by u s g s and new age have shown us that eighty five percent of maui shorelines are experiencing long term  lost and most of that beach loss is corresponding to areas that have been armored in the past ok so what's happening why do we even have coastal erosion well there's really a combination of things that are happening the main underlying natural cause leading to coastal erosion is sea level rise sea level is rising has been rising we can measure it at our tide gauges so you can see if you look at the data for the cancun tide gauge the water levels are steadily going up over time as that happens shorelines have no choice but to retreat and move in the land where direction so our beaches narrow  as a response to that also of course seasonal conditions most of you who live here are mowing understand our beaches have strong seasonal signals but as their chronic erosion reduces the width of the beach over time those seasonal conditions begin to have more and more detrimental impacts on properties and beaches and then of course storms that come along episodic event and then finally because we have a lot of coastal development that you know back in the sixty's and seventy's was built very close to the shoreline we've responded in hawaii statewide to erosion in the past by armoring building sea walls and revetments and so that is a human impact on the sand supply and can exacerbate the erosion problem so i'm just going to go into a little bit more detail on each of those sea level rise being the natural cause that we're facing here so maui sea level has risen nine inches over the past century yeah and that's measured from the tide gauge of course we expect those numbers in terms of rates of rise to increase into the future with with climate and heavier and it pushes it down on the flexible with the sphere underneath so if you have an island and here is the water and the island is sinking the water level goes up relative to the island and that affects maui as well more than the other islands of which which is why we have higher rates of erosion here on maui and the data and in the graph at the very bottom there is data from the tide gauge so you can see the variations in water level since the forty's but you can see that the trend is going up is certainly a factor this is looking at historical changes in global sea level you can see the red blue and the green lines are all sources of data and then the gray cone is t long story short we're still suggesting that based on the current science it is a reasonable planning target to think about one foot of additional sea level rise by two thousand and fifty and three to four feet by twenty one hundred north pacific swell they're in the red window trade wind waves in the blue window over there kona storm waves and green salts well in yellow and of course depending on where you're shoreline is relative  and the orientation of your coastline and the impacts and exposure is different but beaches respond to those events and as long as there are sand in the system the cartoon there on the right shows you that you know ok you have your dunes and your beach we have the high waves come if there are sand available on the beach and within the dunes the beach can adjust the sand moves offshore the waves the water become shallower the waves become smaller they break farther away from the shoreline and it takes the pressure off of the of the coast and the development behind it once those big waves disappear the sand is brought back up on to the beach and the beach recovers and this is the natural cycle as long as we have a healthy beach system with san up on the beach and in the near shore area but of course chronic erosion is leading to conditions where we don't have those nice natural buffers anymore this was this is kind of poly area near the sheraton and that sort of a typical condition this winter because of the winter we probably the beach at the sheraton in march is actually starting to recover at this point as the south swell we go from the the the winter wave regime to the south swell regime and sand gets pushed back in this direction but it shows you the large variability of the beach there and how important it has it is to have a nice buffer to accommodate that i mean the final cause of erosion the third one that was on my list was how humans how we  graphic shows you basically two out of the three potential impacts that are associated with armoring so on the left side you have a normal beach as sea level rises the beach retreats as long as there's nothing in the way like roads and buildings or or some sort of natural geology like clay the beach will maintain its beach with as it moves landward however if you build some sort of  impediment to that process like a sea wall or event mn a couple of things can happen you impound that sand behind it that's like the sand dune there that's meant to feed the beach and you no longer have the ability to feed the beach and so it begins to narrow it also creates an energetic environment so the waves come in they hit the sea wall they reflect off of the sea wall and because of all that energy the sand grains are carried away and over time they become lost the third thing that you can see from this cartoon is that and this is the major concern that has come up lately with with with the case that was just at the planning commission of hola loni is that there is the potential to impact neighbors and that leads to key military impacts so you have an armoring device but you have to an armored properties on either side as the waves reach the shoreline they they bend around that structure and the erosion on either end of the structure is where it where and then often that leads to additional requests for armoring and on down the coast so it's the domino effect and that's one of the biggest concerns so this just kind of as a natural a real life depiction of the process sealevel rises you can armor to protect the property on the left hand side of the picture or you can allow the natural processes to continue to protect the beach it's very difficult to do both although there are some options  and we're attempting to do that and west maui and also one other one other issue that has come up with with sea walls and particularly a lot of the older ones that were built in the sixties and seventies and very issue so these don't even last forever and maintenance is required for sure ok so that brings us to what do we do you know oceans the problem we know how we've handled it in the past but what else is there ok so here's a range of options essentially and then you know there aren't that many options on one end of the spectrum you have do nothing that would be the option of letting buildings infrastructure fall into the ocean which is unlikely to be supported in most cases to the other end of the spectrum at the bottom of the list this list which is armor essentially hold the line protect the development with permanent rock  strategies between and these are the ones that the planning department prefers to focus their efforts on managed retreat we have setbacks on maui that are based on erosion rates i'll come back to that in a few minutes adaptation elevating structures that zone that's not something that's generally incorporated into our architecture here in hawaii but it could be especially on maui very common in other coastal communities around the world  and we also do a lot of doing restoration on maui and so i just wanted to share a few of the recent cases some of these you probably have familiar with others maybe not and then you can continue with discussion question the answer in the planning department long before my time here ike a guy arrived in maui to take on this role in two thousand and ten but the time i arrived here there's been a lot of discussion at the council and within the county about what to do at the waste water treatment facility because it is a very vulnerable area with higher asian rates and the decision was made rather than to relocate to to protect an arm or so this is the facility around two thousand and eleven  ultimately did with this the planning department is is probably you know given the decision to armor i think we mitigated the impacts of that armoring to the best of our ability and instead of building armoring out on the coast you can see the existing rock or event from the seventies there instead of similarly building a structure that would tie into that and build be built right along the water line in front of the beach the planning department really worked hard on designing a structure that wouldn't have at least immediate impacts so the structure was built and buried as close to the wastewater facility as possible this is when it was in construction so a big trench was dog the rocks for the rock or that were dropped into that deep trench and then covered back up with beach sand and we did a restoration project at that point so we removed all of the old invasive and it's a nice usable beach that has been restored at least for the foreseeable future many of you from familiar with the highway issues there were testimonies on that this morning this is not something that's been within the county's purview these are state projects they have been done under emergency proclamations but it does highlight an issue we have critical infrastructure that is high and highly vulnerable to erosion and in spite of the armor these roads are still very vulnerable to impacts from coastal hazards and it's very possible that we could lose this road with just one episodic event or parts of it and i think the community is pushing for just more planning to finally eventually realign the highway and to the degree that the county has control over that they're they're hoping we can participate so that's a major infrastructure we've had projects for single family homes this is an example from stable road on the north shore this is looking at photos from two thousand and six to two thousand and nine prior to a beach restoration project there these homes these are single family homes that were coming weighed up six homeowners and they went through the permitting process to restore the beach so they brought sand from offshore a pretty small quantity in the grand scheme of things and they built some temporary growing which eventually turned  before the final grinds are permitted and this is a photograph from may even after a winter of big swells the condition of the beach is very nice there so we consider this a successful  project another property on the north shore this is the area if you know blue tile beach house you can see it in the photograph there and were there two properties east of that toward hina this is one of the most recent approvals by the planning commission for shoreline armoring this was done approved just a few months ago and hasn't yet been built but this situation is different than the west mowing situation in that  there is no existing sandy beach the upland geology is is very steep it's all clay backed and all of the properties along this stretch of shoreline are armored except for the in this case except for the one applicant's property so the applicant came in for a request to build a rocket mint on their private land and the planning commission did approve that project there's a lot of conditions to clean up the shoreline in front as well with that project the recent one that just was heard in april and as of tuesday at the planning commission was this one in west maui in the qana area associated with the pictures that i showed at the very beginning of shows an artist's rendering of the what was the proposed armoring and effectively the the planning commission did approve the proposed armoring however there are conditions as mitigation to eventually participate in a regional scale beecher international project which was the county's preferred alternative and possibly once that project if and when that project  successful to remove the armory  as you know we came to the council the year before requesting money to do a study to look at the county's preferred alternative of beach restoration the time we didn't know if there was even sand available off shore as i mentioned we've now we we did a sand survey our consultants did an excellent job they did a lot of geotechnical work they they did so in our surveys in the whole region they did fiber coring to look at the sand quality and we've come up with a long story some of these beaches time and time again and they're still finalizing the study by looking at some b trust ration concepts so this is looking at the whole kahana region within there are all these condos that i've mentioned valley aisle and they're looking at something like maybe one hundred thousand cubic yards of sand producing a hundred foot wide dry beach but that likely we will have to build growing structures as well to continue to control the erosion on this beach going forward so that the investment is protected and one last recent initiative  show that is being managed by the planning department is to look at our existing set back policy ok so as you know we adopted erosion based setbacks in two thousand and three that was a big deal at the time very progressive we fifty years times the erosion rate plus twenty five feet or there are a lot that setbacks as well and it's the greater of either one so just a quick deconstruction of what that what that means fifty years at the time was considered the life expectancy of a structure so a coastal home or a building or is or might last fifty years turns out there are engineering studies that indicate coastal structures last much longer than that the current thinking is about seventy years on average so that number may be deficient the second term here is the historical erosion rate the historic erosion rate  may not always capture the issues associated with episodic events and coastal storms and also does not incorporate future increases in sea level rise and then finally the twenty five foot factor is basically a minimum setback so if you have a area of coast that has a very low erosion rate almost zero for example then your setback would end up being twenty five feet by this equation however twenty five feet is allowing a structure to be built within five feet of what the state considers imminently threatened twenty feet so a twenty five foot setback doesn't make a lot of sense from a coastal hazards perspective so those are some of the deficiencies we've been looking at those for for a good while the last couple of years in the planning department long story short at least at this point the department's recommendation has come to improving the formula by increasing the multiplier by fifty to seventy years  increasing the minimum setback from twenty five to forty feet which the state has done and kawai as well and then adding an additional factor for future sea level rise and right now we've based those numbers on anticipating a three foot rise by twenty one hundred and there are many many other details associated with this that i won't discuss today but we're happy to answer any questions and i appreciate the opportunity being here today thank you  this department do you have any further comments no thank you chair ok members you have any questions because i have a couple comments once we get through question member victory no thank you we've seen the results you know what will we be replenished beaches along waikiki forney a small period of time which then again the same goes back out and now they're looking  at replenishing again and these are millions and millions of dollars a lot of effort and time put in what make you sated if we replenish which is the most optimum way of solving the problem multiplicity of people that need to be a part of multiple you people need to be a part of the not just one segment i didn't create the problem of the problems here so we need to all work together and we got a sharing across  trusted ation is only one tool and in some places beatrice ration may not make sense and it may not pencil out economically or even environmentally so that is a site specific the station that that has to be made for wakey key of course waikiki constitutes like something like forty percent of the tourism revenues for our whole state so economically it penciled out for them beach restoration is not a final solution in that it maintenance in mind and so essentially what you're doing in waikiki is case and if we pursued it for kahana as well your going to continue to experience or asian so what you do is you continually recycles the sand that makes its way offshore back up onto the beach again and that has to be included in the long term plan and the cost estimates and all of that so there's a very good question these projects do take a lot of planning you have to look at environmental impacts you have to look at of course community interests in terms of the design that can come with sand only or with structures like grind s the important part is to be preparing and planning for these projects if they're desired ahead of time one of the biggest problems we're facing is that we are ignoring the issue until it becomes an emergency and then our planning options are very limited and then it comes down to basically only being able to armor to protect buildings if we're not going to  back across the board no doubt fell on deaf ears but it is becoming more reality today that if we do not share their large enough chunks of land that eventually and not too distant future those i think changing the said back rules maybe once again it's like the answer i mentioned earlier about inventory is futuristic we've got to make sure it doesn't happen so we've got to do it now to prevent it from happening but what do we do with those that exist today exactly and that's the exact problem we have right that is it so now that i've solved all the problems but no but i game thank you i guess there's one more question i have for you i have been told by some experts all shoreline replenish marine seems to need to be also based on one year's shore not just on shore that if you can see it all in two more which is the word to use i can't think of it but it's like a living instead of these deep pockets because when you have deep pockets we tend to palm and take it out healthy b for it to operate according to its natural function of the natural cycle needs to have not only sand in the upper part of the beach where we recreate the dry sand beach but also in the near shore area so when you restore a beach and you design a beach restoration plan you're talking about putting sand in the upper beach and in the lower part of the beach profile under the water as well yeah i think that's what a lot of people do not understand they did you just replenish the near shor ok i have a little bit of a discussion here that i wanted to mention to you guys you know i mentioned a little bit before the testimony but embedded in the special management area assessment process is the imposition of setbacks for development activities that fall within close proximity to the shoreline additional restrictions apply to developments and our activities within the shoreline setback area as we are talking about structure to the process including h r s chapter two of five a the special management area rules for the maui planning commission and the shoreline rules for the maui planning commission i provided the political charter provision the list of sections were adopted under the authority of state law h r s two five a dash forty nine each agency is charged with carrying out this part shall adopt rules necessary to implement or comply with this part by july one  hundred all rules shall be adopted under chapter ninety one under the charter the planning commissions and not the council are designated to quote act as authority in all matters relating to coastal zone management lot close quote as  charter section eight dash eight point four so in ever in our evaluation of the need for additional council oversight we got to keep in mind the limitation of the council's authority in this area i would like to ask the deputy deputy corporation federal state and county rules and regulations management of activity and the shoreline area is the purview of the planning commissions at this point under the charter the council though has oversight obviously over the general plan community plans and zoning there are also tools in the building code and subdivision ordinances that can be used to affect development along the  ok so members we are somewhat limited actually hardly limited as to what we can do my question would be to corporation councils can we  imagine some things that we can do is there or i don't want to there's a way we can make an ordinance to say you can't have seawalls or unless there's just extenuating several planning commission meetings where we have considered seawalls and we're dealing with existing structures and hardship has to be proved to be the criteria in the rules it's fairly easy to see if seen the pictures so you're managing both protecting private assets or public assets and meeting a fairly strict legal criteria there are also  mandatory conditions attached to that but to your question on whether the council could mandate new seawalls you would do it through different probably different ways you would you would potentially  difficult to maintain but that is something that has happened before does that help protect the shoreline or is that just too much some fish ponds some existing fish ponds there are some places where fish ponds may be serving the purpose of reducing wave energy although those end of themselves as well along with any other structures we propose also have the potential for other impacts affecting downdraft properties but the idea of a fish pond is similar to that idea of a breakwater and so that is one option among many and you know things we can do to mitigate that from happening but at the expense of losing beaches or whatever i would say that any of the tools that we're currently using whether it's armoring restoring we cannot keep up with the rate of steel rise and eventually we have to abandon buildings that the coastline ok and then that that also leads to the nother question about whether is this a county or state issue as far as protecting the shoreline protecting the buildings on the shoreline or should it be the owners i guess this is more of a policy question and maybe a question or should it be the owners who who pay for it i mean they're the ones who put the buildings up so close to my maybe at the time it wasn't so close to the shoreline i mean i'd i'll ask an owner of a building that's pretty close to the shoreline the keeps going back and forth  where should the responsibility lie to help it come up with the funding for this mitigation but since you're  i'll make it clear i'm a representative of a no direct had well to that point and to the kind of holly beach operators association has for a number of years been working with deal in r and i believe with taro coming up with a beach nourishment plan for kind of poly and for i believe the last i'm not sure that it's been ten years but it's been quite a number of years we have been putting  money we've been contributing to a fund my recollection is that the total budget is summer in the neighborhood of ten million dollars half of which would be spent by the state and half would be spent by the private landowners so i don't know exactly what the numbers are but it is it is very much a responsibility of the land owners that are adjacent to the ocean but at the same time because of the  going on behalf of our behalf of my own or i'd be more than happy to point out that the state of hawaii and the federal government and the county of maui over the term of his ownership have made as far as him who owns what and where the jurisdiction lies so that the dividing line between private property hard or county oversight is at the upper reaches of the the watch of the waves so it's generally the debris line but it's on the shoreline and i'm dealing are is responsible for certifying what that line is but a private property owner the owners boundary  seaward boundary is not fixed it changes seasonally as the shoreline itself changes so the county doesn't have a legal responsibility to ensure that private property remains  with the barriers those barriers again weighs on of in their their crumbling concrete crumbles and so waters so i don't know it's it's are we kicking the can down the road by saying oh yeah let's let's a couple members or a member of the planning commission to hear i don't know what their discussion was for this last this last one for comment for the seawall i know some people didn't support  with the planning commission but i did want to add to your question about who should be paying i don't i won't give you an opinion on that but i can share that in other places in the united states and around the world there is there are federal contributions there are state and city and county contributions to be transformation projects given that it is in the public's interest to protect the public resource so that isn't unheard of and i just wanted to throw that out departments recommendation for that was for the planning commission to defer taking action on the estimate and shoreline permits for the holy men because we still wanted to pursue the studies that terri's presentation referenced to see nourishment would be because beach nourishment is also way of protecting property but as tara just noted it also maintains the public resource whereas the armoring really only protects the private property and so even though they are both types of solutions for erosion they have very different outcomes one being a much more publicly beneficial  one i think that the owners of the properties along that stretch of beach are realizing that even with the revet mint that was approved it is still a relatively short term solution with a whole lot in particular they have subterranean parking which makes it even more difficult for them because you know we've talked about managed retreat or elevating structures and some of their properties have actually had water come into their ground to their to their ground level we talk about well what if you were to vacate the ground level and you just move your butt they have subterranean parking on top of that so it just compounds the problem and it puts in the timeline for them much farther ahead than it might have been otherwise so i believe they are realizing their shape and situation of their property isn't such that they could move back  there are a number of owners who have given their passionate story have this you know their savings is invested in the one unit that they live it's their full time residents that's all they have you know it's not as if they have other options like it's a second home or something like that so but i think they are realizing that it is a relatively short term solution even with the  for the education of the council members who were not at the hearing on tuesday i think the planning commission actually came up with a fairly good strong mitigation component solution but they needed the commission realize that we need some sort of protection so they did go along with the seawall read that mitt temporarily believe it or not with conditions very strong mitigating environmental review and the implementation of a regional beach nourishment project for the nine condos out there they would have to contribute to that regional beach nourishment all the way through and when the is completed there is also a condition in there that they remove the seawall re that meant at that time so this i think was a good compromise to help the condo protect their property and to move forward in a mitigated fashion that will not proliferate seawalls on down the line you know they are very financially strong medication components and environmental conditions so that was the conclusion of the commission on the net this past week all right thank you members any other questions or comments it's a very sticky issue and you know it's one i wish we had we had more control over but we don't  are obviously very different conditions as miss owen said that they're all site specific my concern with asking them to remove the rock repentant when the beach  the kind of polys very different very dynamic beach with sand moving back and forth all the time but we had a situation where the west and jim might remember how long this is how long ago this was  sand came right back when cheriton was threatened they put in sheep piles straight up and down and the sand came back so the question in my mind is me if you get to a point where you have to put a rabbet mint in i can i can understand the the the requirement to nourish the beach and continue to do so but for me if the if we're accepting the fact that we should be protecting the properties then why remove the revet mint if we are requiring that they replenish the beach  potential discussion at the towards the end of the year just to see where we are with the con on a thing and what else we can potentially do but i also want to take to heart some of the testifiers testimony saying maybe we should  quickly i do not have any final comments in less than most ok so thank you for the great presentation members without any objection i could do for this item and item number thirty three i'm sorry i couldn't