of the committee and please everybody before we start to turn your cell phone to silent mode please because if it rings we'll ask who it was and it was that important we've done it to for those who have not been here before we've actually done it thank you mr carroll all right let me introduce the members of the committee first first we have our the vice chair of the committee a council member carol it  and council member mike vick to reno and we also have coming to or see council member cochran good morning right from the administration we have planning department deputy director michelle mcqueen good morning morning chair corporation council michael hopper good morning and then from our staff we have legislative analyst slash attorney greg our no good morning chad morning and then committee commission member wayne downey so we'll be calling you guys down thank you for showing up by members today we're working on p c ten amending the comprehensive zoning ordinance relating to short term rental homes we're going to start public testimony go over the ground rules for individuals testifying in the chamber please sign up at the desk outside the chamber door and is testifying from remote testimony site please sign up with district office staff testimony will be limited to the items the item listed on the agenda today pursuant to the rules of the counsel each testify or will be allowed to testify for up to three minutes prior to them and i'll be granting of fourth minute to conclude your testimony and will be using the lighting system the light will be green for three minutes yellow for one and when it turns red please and your remarks that gives everybody enough time and will give us enough time to hopefully finish this meeting today into that wants to testify please e mail the staff so we we don't miss them or speak up if if it seems that the e mail wasn't read and i want to acknowledge the ok members here we go first person to sign up to testify in the chamber is thomas followed by eric salvator below a chair aloa committee members i submitted written testimony that i believe is being passed out right now i'm speaking on behalf of the maui vacation rental association when this council created the short term rental ordinance three and a half years ago it did so in an attemp to reasonably control and regulate this use and i would assert that this ordinance has been successful in doing that for more than one hundred fifty applicants who have been granted their permits and overwhelmingly have been operating without causing any negative impacts to their neighborhoods but it's worth noting that for some applicants they remain stuck in the process and it has not served them well some of the changes this committee has already approved by consensus will help some of those applicants but we're going to have if we're going to have this ordinance fairly give everyone the legal chance to make this use then it still needs a few tweaks most importantly i believe that the automatic trigger for planning commission review whenever there is an existing permitted short term rental within five hundred feet needs to simply be removed the planning commission and you'll hear from them today doesn't really want to be the arbiter of that of that issue this trigger was waived for the first six months of this warden in sin that was very successful because a lot of people came forward and made application and we did see some clustering that occurred as a result of that what we can now look back on with three years of experience as we can see that where those clusters where there wasn't any change in neighborhood character and such so i think that was it that was good to allow that to happen so we could we could monitor it and i think that the fear that we had about you know trying to prevent that perhaps could be allied by the fact that that it seems to be working well on a different issue this council decided that short term rental permits would not be issued to a property but would be issue to the owner of a property this is not a a property right granted to a property that they can move on it's granted to the specific owner of the property and it should follow suit that condominium eyes parcels where the owner only owns his condo unit his permit should only go with his condominium unit it should not be affected by the other condominium owners on that property i have submitted at the end of my written testimony a suggested amendment to make that allow that to happen and i think it addresses any concerns that might come up about someone trying to abuse that the idea that there could be more than one permit on a given lot both of those issues directly impact applicants who have applications that are in progress right now and some of them for as long as three years and  doing all that they can to be compliant enforcement of the five year ban and it is an issue that impacts some current applicants and many would be applicants and i recognize that this is a touchy subject it has been argued that those who have not come forward to get a permit until they are forced to by enforcement actions are perhaps not worthy of getting a permit and therefore should be banned but i want to advocate that a fully permit it short term rental industry is a goal worth making some accommodation to accomplish yes there have been applicants who have not done all they could do in a timely manner to get their permits but i do want to point out it's a fact that the county hasn't done all that this law said that they were supposed to do and that was the last specifically said they need to contact people who are out there that are advertising without a permit and tell them how to get a permit and they need to do that every year and that hasn't been done yet so it's not fair to say to someone we're going to ban you when we haven't at least first given that that warning and that opportunity to come in mr project you know i was in the elevator this morning thinking about the work today and i said oh my god when i came here ten years ago i started talking about bed and breakfasts and here we are ten years later and of course now we're in i think we're in a better position because we kind of know and have experience as to how this is all working and of course that it's not all smooth but we still have to continue to try to improve these laws so that we get what we want and i think what we all want is compliant for it and so i'm trying to look at it from that angle because i think that you know we're going to want to have these kind of accommodations but how do we lessen the negative impacts and get people to come in and apply you know you make a big point about this five hundred foot one if it's automatically weighed in five hundred feet and they go to planning commission and you say that discourages people from applying and you did mention a little bit about you know your experience what do you think will change if we take that away i have to say that the five hundred foot rule is the most misunderstood part of this ordinance applicants potential applicants often call me for advice how do i get a permit and so forth and the most commonly what they'll say is there's already a guy within five hundred feet that has a permit so does that mean i can't get one or i should start with they assume that's the case ok so i can tell you right off the bat there are people who are not coming in to get a permit because they assume that they can't get one because of the five hundred foot rule i also attend all of the planning commission meetings and i can say that it has been said many times in planning commission that aren't we supposed to limit these to one every five hundred feet and i think it's important to note that that wasn't the council's intent the council's intent wasn't to say there can only be one for five hundred feet just that we need to take a look at them but those issues aside recognize that what happens when that trigger is clipped ok is that the applicant has to then do a second round of noticing so he has an expense sometimes in the thousands of dollars just to do the noticing for the meeting the applicant has to pay for the meeting meaning he has to pay another five hundred fifty dollars fee to to attend  to have that meeting held the applicant has to publish in the newspaper notice of the meeting although the council in in some of the actions here has taken that away once this gets passed but it it it and it also means at least another sixty days and usually ninety days and with a deferral sometimes years before the permit will be granted those actions just in themself say to someone well do i want to spend all this money do i want to take all this time to get to a result that is unsure because then falls under the purview of the of the planning commission to say yes or no and if he if he knew for sure that at the end of it there was going to be a yes he probably spend the money in the time but when he knows that there's the possibility of a no at the end of that again it's discouraging people from wanting to come forward thank you i know we have the pending commission folks here today and i'm really glad they're here because we can have a conversation with them but you spend a lot of time there and i know you money to closely what's happening can you tell us how to get approvals go is it more up to maloof and  agricultural district ok and almost all of those are have been approved because by the time the apple can find some self before the planning commission they first had to already show that their farm plan was in place in the agricultural uses were were up to snuff in the planning department did those checks so the bulk of what goes before them is those states but you use permits a much lower number of applications are those where they're actually hearing the short term rental application before them i believe at this point it's seventeen is all that they've heard to this point that have gone before them for the the short term rent a weapon cation as opposed to the state special use permit of those seventeen i believe that eight have been granted i believe that seven were denied and i believe that a few are still in deferral meaning that they they they haven't taken action the they haven't had enough commissioners to vote one way or the other and the applicant has been asked to come back so it's kind of an even split between the denials and the approvals for the for the in the u k sions when it comes before them for a short term rental thank you very much again i'm looking forward to car conversation with them thank you thank you members any questions to the test fire i have one you talked about the condominium ization condominium rise properties  is it your testimony that we should allow each person who has a property condominium eyes down a lot right now the ordinance we said there would be one permit per lot what we didn't anticipate was the number of residential lots in some cases agricultural lots that have been condominium mice where separate owners own each piece and what has been the practice to date is that those owners have to come in jointly as applicants for a short term rental permit sometimes one of the owners has no interest in getting a short term rental permit for his portion of the property where the other owner owner does and that in and of itself can kill the application so that's one issue the other issue is that each owner should be held responsible for his or her actions that is if one owner violates the law or violates the term of the permit that should not be affecting the other owner of a condominium ice parcel so it just makes sense to me that each owner should be able to apply for a short term rental permit for his portion is condominium unit and that's only single family homes and it would not affect any any family homes because the definition of short term rental permit is it must be in a single family dwelling ok thank you members and you for the question seeing none thank you mr crow and like you next up is eric salvator followed by mad shafer good morning everyone my name is our excel the door it's nice to see you again i was happy that we actually started this discussion on the topic of compliance versus and force mint and i think that's a very very important in terms of the intention that we set what is it that we're really trying to do here do we want to get people to come into this process become legitimate so a speaker legal whatever the terminology you want to use and help them become part of a system that we're trying to efficiently manage properly regulate and i think that we should encourage people to comply and i know when i was here last time somebody made the comment that granting amnesty instead what would actually take the teeth out of enforcement and it was a statement that didn't make a lot of sense to me because if even though i know this council's been doing this for a long time and i know that amnesty was granted before but if we grant amnesty commonsense is going to tell us that aren't we encouraging the people who are standing outside the system now cut to come in and at that point we have no need to enforce them there in the system and that's what we really want to do we want to encourage people to come into the system i know that this this committee right now is looking at condition in terms of granting amnesty for them and i would tell you that that special condition exists in mali in a lot of places too if any of you had the had been fortunate or unfortunate to be in paey a traffic during the holiday season both ways you could have seen we were backed up for miles so you could see really really how many tourists were here and one of the comments that we got from the tourists all time i live in piii is there's no place to stay there's no place to stay we have a tourism industry that swelling people want to come and people want to stay but we're not providing them a place to stay so there's definitely a need and really based on that need in the same point there's about one hundred fifty of the four hundred permits for cation rentals granted i think that says something about this process is in these years in these years of doing this that we only have one hundred fifty people actually came for actually were able to get a permit some very difficult process and one of the reasons the process is difficult is quite often the rules and the guidelines are on clear and that a great case in point is this five hundred foot boundary limit you know if there's another vacation rental within my hundred feet and it triggers the planning commission now part of it as an applicant you don't know where you stand you're told ok here's the goal line but if you come near that goal i we're going to move  we're not going to tell you how to cross the goal line we need a definitive set of criteria about what an applicant needs to to do to get his permit and i think lots of times that's ambiguous amnesty period and why should we have another one it's it's an answer x on question it's a question i've heard often you know when i actually googled this i'm coming on to the stage much later than many of you and when i actually google when the county and how the county was informed of the ordinances do i think substantial i found was on the maui news besides the mounted county website itself and the maui news subscribership is not an effective way to communicate with the community from distant to six that i was able to get it reaches one quarter to a little over one quarter of the households on the island so we're leaving a lot of people without any communication later i was once asked well listen if you're going to go into a business shouldn't you take it upon yourself to find out what the regulations of that business were and i would really appreciate that question even though i wasn't allowed to respond but that's precisely what we did you know we never had a violation we never even had a warning but we did get a message on air b n b website and we contacted the county and in the county ordinance it says that it's the counties or karma to contact people who don't have a license and to show them how to apply for a license that's exactly the communication we had with the planning department that's exactly what we did somewhere in there between the initial communications the time that we actually got the permit in because it was six months there was a policy change in the planning office with regards to this five with the guards to this amnesty in this five year ban there was no ordinance change but there was a policy change and i feel that certainly myself a lot of people were not properly informed of the amnesty both in calling the planning department and in the way that it was given to the public versus via the media thank you you mentioned  the maui news who is not an effective way it was on our website i don't know any other way that we can do a push communication i totally agree and one of the things i did mention is besides the county website and that is the challenges that we face but i think that's why the language in the ordinance is also there the language in the ordinance says they have to county sees that somebody is advertising as if a condition rental they should contact that person and inform them on how to come in and apply that's the language of the but when that is actually done because it's one of the mechanisms that we're saying this is how we're going to inform the public when that is actually done and myself or other people in the public then follow those guidelines that dora shot to testify please make your way to the back and sign up hi matt shafer you know i've been here from the very beginning when this ordinance was flailing about and chairman couch put together a committee  the two sides on call it that and that committee met in a in a very friendly meeting and we worked out i believe what was the middle of the road it is now five years later and the principal issue that what was the principal issue then and the key to this ordinance then is still the same problem the lack of enforcement you can talk about compliance but the problem was the lack of enforcement so i thought about it and thought about it and i had a meeting with dod and discussed what i thought was a viable fix that protected than residential neighborhoods but allowed these being be said and short term rentals that to live within those residential neighborhoods i asked on because i have tremendous respect for the education and abilities of the planners professional planners and i asked don to arrange a meeting and he tried twice and both times we were cancelled not don and i weren't cancelled but the planning to parchman representative cancelled so we never had an opportunity for that idea to be considered by the professional planners so it gives me three minutes to come in here and talk about a change that would preserve the neighborhoods with beef wit sale be fair to th that gentleman previously talked about there needed to be further warnings an amnesty and whatever at one point recently and within the last year i gave the planning department a list of twenty five illegal  short term rentals vacation rentals and t v hours in may i met those twenty five of them so if you gave them amnesty are on top of what we already have now which are legal which are i think twenty seven  six short term vacation rentals because one of them was grandfathered and then i think twenty twenty three b and b s either in process or whatever you can see we had that substantial amount of operations going on i have no opportunity for the planning department to review this and i have three minutes to explain the procedure which i can't  proposal that you and mr couch do you get to get a little bit close to things i don't know if this is working it is ok what i'm going to ask you can you explain what you i guess the proposal that you and mr  working on yes it was really very simple it goes back to again that considering the vacation rentals has t v hours whether they're at b and b or whether they're a short term rental the way it's looking now the majority of those would be met oh somehow i meadows could end up with you know eighty b and b s and and if that if the quota is lifted could end up with who knows how many short term vacation rentals so in order to preserve the neighborhood it it it seemed logical that you would take the percentage of of residential units the total and which right now is about the the figure that the planning department is using is about sixty five hundred residential units in the key hay while a a plant and of those abouts six hundred of those are i'm just rounding number six hundred are and oh so that's about ten percent at the residential unit so ten percent of the permits would go to bed as right now we're way over that where if you if you consider two hundred really because there's one hundred b and b s and a hundred short term rental permits that are available if you took ten percent of each of those it would be twenty and in some areas which was which was pointed out in some areas like along the ocean there are a lot of homes that are short term vacation rentals already th that if there was no then the neighborhood objection would say you know the neighbor objection would still stay in that those could have a percentage of they could take all of them that you know there are issues in a long thread straight that's one that's the kind of thing that i would have hoped that the planner would have been able to say ok this isn't going to work this is go work but i didn't have that opportunity does that do you understand that that i did i made myself clear just to clarify so basically you on a you the residential plan to take a percentage of the residents and that percentage would be ten percent so ten percent would be allowed to have a permit and then you're talking about that if i just joke and anyways but they sag and i get what you're saying you do you want to isolate the t v ours and high density areas and allow them to operate freely somehow and then and the residential areas make it a percentage of the president's face off right which would preserve the character of the neighborhood and that's why it's to work that's really what the call was from the very beginning i believe that was the council's call it chest in the five years we know it didn't work out for some areas and and i'm sure council member cochran could be  related to her areas i'm just not familiar enough with that but i don't know whether that would work or not but it's a shame again that as a citizen that the planning to parliament in with the idea that that would allow that five hundred foot rule to go away if the number were limited or is that still your feeling that the five hundred foot rule should remain in place you know i have to tell you i eight above anyhow and there are there are two particular name two particular areas one that has five in the same like the four corners and i think you had a communication i know you had a letter from the that family that lives in that situation is not happy with it at all but but it's there so i can't say i've thought a lot about that i kept hoping that we would have access to as they said the professional planners and we were declined that access i've never met with on this issue i ha never met but the planning department i've talked to on the phone to get on with there have been changes but you know i've got plenty of scan in the game and it's it's really frustrating because the planners know better than i do it's certainly any of us that's what they're trained for and to not have that opportunity  just one last question if you don't mind my recollection is that the five hundred foot rule was one of the the main elements that brought overall agreement on the initial passage of this things ok any other questions i have one you're talking about up in molly meadows you know the character of the neighborhood is it your experience with the permitted ones permitted units whether they're be in be or short term mentally is the character of the neighborhood being diminished  well i don't have any on by street but i do and i just at a few days ago had a conversation with the person and his family his family home is among a cluster and he said to me you know it's by my neighborhood the character here has just changed it's just changed because there are constantly strangers here and he said that changes things for me and my children right members any further questions seeing none thank you thank you we have peter davis followed by david dante the question of the character of the neighborhood and whether it's changing i think it's very very germane and i've been a little disappointed in the previous times i've come before this council because the questions that have been posed have always been in terms of if the police been called is their wild partying or are these kind of problems and that is disappointing in that it's not that the changes the nature of the neighborhood that should not be the test the test should be is it a different experience living in the neighborhood for those who are homeowners there and the fact is that it is any time the home next to you gets converted into what is in effect a hotel in your neighborhood and the character of your neighborhood has changed this notion of doing away with the five hundred foot rule if you think the neighborhood changes if the house on one side of you converts to a hotel you're the one on the other side changes to now your neighborhood has really changed in terms of its character as to you what i would like to see in terms of the desirability of this is first a consideration by the council the fact that yes the gentleman from high it was correct there is a need in his neighborhood for more of this type of product more of this type of housing to be available in south maui there is no similar need i would like to see a survey sent out to reaching all the property owners in my meadows a one question survey saying would it be ok with you if the house next to you converted to a short term rental i think we all know what the answer that would be thank you thank you mr davis members any questions to the test fire seeing  if you want to testify please stand up in the back good morning sharon members and happy new year everyone i'm here to testify about p c tan and specifically in favor of the council chair whites motion which should be in your binders to add language to the enforcement section nineteen point six five point zero eight zero i'm not sure whether i've introduced this correctly as a motion looking at the any rate in particular the paragraph d which used the paragraph see outline is a method of requiring enforcement which i believe is humane and effective it requires that a member of the public report to the planning department an advertisement of a short term rental home that is believed to not have a permit and to provide the department with a valid physical address you know that's the biggest issue that the department has with enforcement of illegal rentals is that they could seal the owner's identity and location if a member of the public is willing to go to the trouble of finding that physical address and then if the planning department validates that complaint the language which the council chair is recommending would require the department to initiate enforcement first with a notice of warning but notice of warning would inform the violator they have to stop advertising or they would face a fine and if they don't stop advertising within that specified time limit then a fine would be imposed every day the advertising continues unless the advertising is not within the owner's control and that's an important caveat because there are websites that pick up information about people short term rental homes the owner of the property doesn't pay for that advertising and even if they don't want that advertising or they decide not to advertise that site may continue to be online for years and there's nothing anyone can do about it so to give consideration to the language in council chair white's proposal i'm in favor of it and i think it would solve the dilemma we're facing where there are more illegal than less than legal short term rental homes on maui this is not only affecting the permitted bed and breakfast in short term rental owners like myself but depriving the county of appropriate real property taxes and its share of members any questions to the testifier seeing none thank you i we have one more person that came up to testify airside up the telephone that's larry shapiro morning chair white council members it's nice to see you again i been here several times as you know to testify in favor of raising the right what is right now a very low limit and i believe in wife live in meadows we are not we don't have a vacation we don't have a rental that would be roof from a rental pool we want to rent the house out when we are travelling to provide some rental income to us to support us in our retirement the issues are as i mentioned before in prior testimony the issues that everyone who's involved in this issue have raised are all legitimate whether it's concern for neighborhood character of a neighborhood changing weather is concern for people like myself who want to have the opportunity to have a reasonable use of their property whether it's providing another alternative for vacation  visitors whether it's the people who are concerned about reducing the available stock of housing for workforce housing for the rental pool every one of those issues is legitimate but the question is balance and trying to accommodate all of the interests in maui meadows now you meadows has over six hundred parcels o er approximately three hundred and twenty to three hundred thirty acres it's a very very large area this is not a heavily congested area such as perhaps in la hina where the impact of some of these rentals can be much greater to testify about the negative impact in maui metals on the residential character of the neighborhood i have not experienced that i have not heard that from any of my neighbors i have heard that from testifiers here but it's not been my experience at all i have a across the street from me is a permitted pick asian well there are five permanent vacation members as i understand there been not one complaint against any of them there one of those five that have been grandfathered it has been around for a long time that's across the street from me i don't ever see those people it's not there have been no complaints i read even wrote a letter a years ago when they want get approval when they came in for this process and i sent a letter in because they haven't caused any problem during the issues at all we will not cause any problems for our neighbors the last thing i want to do is cause a problem  for our neighbors our respect our neighbors we want to do the right thing we want to be legal we do we want to obey the law we want to have the opportunity to apply to not to be respectful neighbors and part of the part of the community in maui meadows there was a survey done as you heard before from the mouth about his neighborhood association asking people what they think well there was it was interesting it wasn't the you know one side or the other it was actually a split people had different opinions and it was about evenly split and i think that goes back to the concept here of looking at what it is that is a way to accommodate maui meadows and my desire and the desire for a few other people to increase what is an unreasonably low limit five to ten per minute short term vacation rentals there's been testimony that there's twenty eight vacation rentals in magneto is that is not correct there are five short term vacation rentals and as i understand it twenty approximately twenty bed and breakfasts there's one hundred short term rentals permitted in the key hey mckenna area of maui meadows has been allocated five and that has been reached that one of those five was one that had been grandfathered in so to speak and in four additional ones and if just one of the point i want to make if you look at the numbers if we talk about the numbers that are in residential units in the entire areas about sixty five hundred or so it's not entirely accurate guaranteed that that's accurate but that's an estimate and if maui meadows has six hundred approximate units to be now we met those ten percent of those hundred allowed short term vacation rentals would mean that a fair allocation would be applying for a permit no well we worked on the application which is taunting we've gotten some of the paperwork together but we have not applied because there are no permits to apply for we want to apply we would never do it illegally thank you thank you thank you members mr chair white thank you mr shapiro for being here so based on your testimony or are you  would you be in support of the the assignment of a percentage of the permits to meadows based on their number of lots of versus the total number in the ke area which would have effectively increased the increase it to the ten you're looking for yes but i think part of the discussion excuse me the numbers get a little bit muddled because of the rational and fair to say well that's what units in maui meadows compared to the rest of the area ten percent so if ten percent of the permits were allocated to maui meadows i think that would be fair ok thank you thank you to any further questions seeing that i do have a couple one is that to follow up on mr guzman's comments are you operating now  rate yes and i do have to say honestly that i mean i don't know if this is all this trouble that we're going through is even going to be worth while there are people who have some wild numbers that come up and testify about the amount of money that you can make in the short term vacation rental that we have a very modest house we don't have a mansion so i my wife and i have been you know every time i come here it's like well you know should we really do that or are we really going to be able to you know rent it out for a long enough period of time to for enough money and all the hassle and tax changes and boosting the homeowners exemption to make it worthwhile but feel like well we should give it a try because we think it could you know possibly be a little bit beneficial to us it's not going to be a gigantic moneymaker that's for sure anybody else remembers seeing none thank you mr shapiro thank you thank you anybody else this last call anybody else willing to testify all right you have to sign up at the end after your testimony not gone down identify yourself and then sign up jim wayne from the animal the unofficial representative there just want to offer my i will be the catalyst to get those guys on board all those owners are trying i will help them i've gone through the permitting process and stuck in it i know it well it is daunting and i will be the catalyst to help get more  value thank you ok members any questions could testify or none thank you please sign up and return yours thank you right last call seeing now we have no emails last term and seven times this term to discuss the department's proposed amendments most recent version of the bill is the one attached to the request for legal services dated november thirteenth two thousand and fifteen so that's what if you want to see the actual build that's what we're you can find that we'll be working on the matrix summary of a memo as to the bill that has been updated with revisions agreed to at our november and december meetings it has today's date on it i believe right here that's what we'll be working off of you know lots of progress has been made we're almost there and we've got some a couple of items that we really need to discuss and and hash out as you heard but before we go to all of that i'd like to call up our planning commissioners mr the chair of the commission is county ball and also one of the commission members wayne downey we want to we'd like to ask some questions of you so come on up you have places noted here and you get to share mike so you can pick it up and you have to really put it close to your mouse everybody can hear you first of all happy new year gentlemen and thank you so much for agreeing to join us ok and you do have to talk into the mike very close so one of you go ahead and grab it right some of the moat the biggest request was from mitt member goodman who had to step out of the room for a minute but mr ball  can you tell us a little bit about the i guess the the you know not the character of the commission but the mindset of the commission is when you get short terminals and one of the reasons i asking and you don't have to look back here i understand you're one of the reasons i'm asking is the commission i know not under us chair but the commission sent us a letter asking us to stop  that was sent out as a as kind of a protest to the lack of affordable housing and may be offering a solution to that problem by  point where something had to be done so that until there were more residential units brought into the into tory for residents of the island we should cap it we should stop it we should have a moratorium on it to give inventory a chance to grow and not adversely affect the resistance of the island i supported it although i don't support the moratoriums in general but in that particular case i supported it because it is a serious problem ok thank you members i know mr goodman you asked for them to be here so i would start with you and then missed by so has some questions as well would like to thank the commissioners for being here today the reason why i asked chair couch for a some input was because we had received various testimonies as well as individuals who have contacted her office that has somewhat has said that there was no point going to the commission because of the fact that they would just be denied a permit anyway but it sounds as though there is there is some type of i guess standard it when you when you look at an application that you go through like a checklist that you're required to go through to and if they've met all of the requirements then it's basically you know you're gone you're you're your past i guess that's my number one question and i do have a follow up question ok great and mr grossman your mike is a little low we have grounds for denial we can't just deny on any anything that we wish we have to follow the ordinance and there are specific things in there saying this is what you could deny it on  a little bit adversarial i guess the the mood in the commission the mood in the in the commission meeting but it's not necessarily that just it's that in general it's not just on cannot see a big issue if we had more training on that we do get you know into sexual harassment training and that sort of thing but there's nothing really on the how you do what do you do as a commissioner and you know that you're representing you know the public and you're still you know we shouldn't be fighting with them necessarily when they're there or accusing them of things i mean they're there because they put a permit through and we're trying to see if we can get that permit the right guess if you will but if there's things like neighbors that don't want it there i mean we have to listen to the neighborhood specially we don't live in that area i think recess planning committee meeting on thursday january twenty first please come back to order sorry members we had some technical difficulties so we've got that fixed mr goodman who can you do your follow up because you know we have a question with by miss by so yeah thank you but yes just just getting back on the i guess the the rationale or the basis of denial i didn't quite get the i guess a standard is there a standard like you or maybe the planning department or corporation council can read that out to me i'd like to hear what the standard is or denial and whether that was a you know this is a commission is what you know they have to hit in order to pass and you know so i kind of want to hear that and basically know that you guys are going through that process i didn't quite get that feeling when you were explaining whether you guys were actually going through a process so i'm a i'm a person of process i always like to see you know from a b c and this is how we got to the conclusion and my main concern was what are you as a commission you are i guess you have the jurisdiction to impose policy and you know like a moratorium if that was an idea that maybe we should reduce these t v ours so that we can have the opportunity to create more housing more long term housing i'm not sure how that process went and whether that in fact happen so that these are the type of questions that i want to flush out in and see whether you know it did happen and whether you had a process and then the second prong of that was was this whole idea of policy there's a interestingly enough the restrictions in standards on granting or denying a permit are in one thousand point six five point zero three zero in title restrictions in standards of the council through its ordinance has given these standards for both the department and the commission to nancy it says short term mental homes shall conform to the character of the existing neighborhood in which they are situated prior to issuing a permit the department or applicable planning commission shall consider the following and then that it gives a list can you read th term homes and that includes the fact that the association if there is an association must provide a letter to the commission explaining to them if if the if the c c and r s allow or or or prohibit the short  of home use number two is existing land use in title means in uses number three is the a political community plan number four is community input and number five is potential adverse impacts including excessive noise traffic and  also all of the testimony that's received those are considered it's considered evidence essentially that the commission can consider in addition to any testimony that's provided at the actual hearing and then the commissioners can deliberate it's  neighborhood testimony in things like that or other evidence for that to be part of the record and generally the findings of fact with lucian's of law will reference make references to the records such as exhibits in the staff repor t or transcript you know evidence much in the same way you would have in a court hearing it's called a contested case hearing which is a whole proceeding before the commission and so that's essentially how it's treated  this is these are the criteria that you will find in the code and i think one issue the commissioner about was alluding to was that this is the same for the commission in for the department the ones the commission see though based on the council ordinance may sometimes be those one of the criteria for commission review is if a certain percentage of neighbors have actually protested or came out in opposition so that if that's the basics the basis for why it's heard  sometimes you'll have more testimony against the against the application then you may otherwise have if it was a regular application or even one that was in five hundred foot feet there may be no opposition there with soever  so again as part of the criteria community input and potential adverse impacts including excessive noise traffic and garbage are factors the commission has to consider along with anything else listed in the ordinance but that's generally how proceedings happen in front of the and in front of the planning commission based on my experience and there is a criteria it is it's not based on you know personally i don't like this person or i you know i don't like short term homes in general the each applications are viewed based on whether it meets or does not meet the criteria yes there's just a question in the criteria because it's a discretionary permit and that's what counsel has provided here but any denials would need to be based on evidence in the record and not something that can be criteria to make sure that we're following those procedures to make you know so we don't open ourselves up to future problems if you will appeal you talked about the more  former member of the of the commission and in a sense you got enough votes to to be sent up here for you just use more of i think well i think some of the members felt that yes it should be shut down but some of the members probably sent it up because they wanted dadt affordable housing to come to the forefront and and one of the ways we could communicate that would be zero letter of moratorium so that's where that came from as far as the process you know i i really don't think the process is broken i think that you know we have the process in place people can come in and testify that that's happening but i think the process is there i think the commission should get more training because as you know we get two new commissioners every year most years so i think those new commissioners coming in we get the standard county training and you know we don't get training specifically on the strength the invocation thing it's fairly new to everyone so i think a little bit more from the from the planning department on that topic specifically would be helpful to all i think i answered a do it's not easy to make those decisions and i know you certainly empathize with what we're trying to deal with because it's not easy to decide people fate and many of them it does decide their fate because they made an investment and they want to see a return on the investment but when they can't get a permit they can't do it i too and i want to thank member guzmn for asking the questions about the  it very distressing i felt and i got a lot of calls and a lot of e mails from people saying well if this is that we did feel about it and what do you expect and that's why i asked mr crawley earlier on the score of approvals and disapprovals because i wanted to see and it seemed like there was fairness regard of of what's been said and you know when people hear a commissioner said well i don't want to vote on that because i don't like any of this it doesn't sound very good and that's what they comments here about the character of the neighborhood and i i know you for a long time ok residents like i am and you know and we all know that the character of our neighborhoods has totally changed i you know i want a home in a in a residential area that's been there for forty some odd years and we've been there over forty something years and that neighborhood is nothing like it was when we moved in originally it was all original owners there were no it was just owners and it was wonderful it was idyllic you know we all know each other we'll spend time together kids feel safe today it's a totally different neighborhood there's vacation rentals i'm i'm sure many of them probably questionable and people coming and going and somebody said well we want to know our neighbors and i'm laughing because we don't know our neighbors either they're here today and gone tomorrow and we see people and we wondering do they live here don't they live here you know strange people up and down the street everything's changed on maui so i don't think this is all that unique to people there have been big cases in rentals i think this is happening in many many places except if they're exceedingly rule and you know it's amazing how people that want to stay in as places it's just amazing you know they find these things in the boonies i don't even know what they're talking about in they're going to stay in some t v or or something that we don't even know exists we think it's so you know this is going to out our neighborhood and it's a shift in that we live here and it's not comfortable but somebody else the question how would you feel if the house next to you were asking to be  t r i tell you i have had long term neighbors that i wish were vacationing rentals because they've been a nightmare and i've been so glad when they went in fact when the police came to get them because we had a crack house next to us i would have gladly taken in s t r in exchange for that so you know it's very controversy and i think the part that my disappointment is you know when i got involved in all of this with the bs that b and b s and i still stayed to help i hope that we can work this out the missing piece that we wanted and we based our approval in a passing of the bill on was enforcement and we all know that what's happening there and we all know the story just yesterday in this star advertiser there was an article about the honolulu city folks hiring thirty retired inspectors to come back to help them get their situation under control and we may have to look at something like that because if we're going to get this in the control enforcement is the key and i understand when neighbors make complaints they should be addressed but they should be investigated and we should try to deal with it i don't want anybody living in a nightmare situation i've asked many of the people come to testify to explain to me specifically what is going on next to them and if they find offensive and some of them are very articulate and do a real good and other they're just they're just not comfortable in our neighborhoods to india we have people parking on the street well let me tell you you want to see parking on the sheet i don't care where you go you can go to monaco you can go to  to wherever you go and people are parking all over the street we have a real problem and yet our permits require parking on the premises so it's not just the planning department trying to do it with  t but even the police i mean what they're going to go down the road at night and take all the cars that are on the street where these people going to go so this is complicated but i want to again thank you for you know listening thank you for coming to talk to us i think it's important that the public hear what you guys have to say in explaining you know what you believe through and how you do it and i would like to see you as a man these laws so that they work i do think that they  offer different kinds of accommodations in today's travelers one them in light of what we're seeing coming down the road in our economic forecasts i'm terrified about what is going to happen here in terms of money and so  careful that we don't you heard i visit our industry that we don't make people lose jobs and yet we have to be careful we don't want to hurt our residents so we walking that line so i'm just curious you know do you does terminable yes i agree from my perspective that we made a mistake when we passed a short term vacation rentals i think we need to take a step back at this point  and consider the impact that it has on residential neighborhoods might meadows is a perfect example of why we meadows came to the council and lobbied the council in order to put a cap on the number of short term because rentals in the neighborhood they got it passed that's a monumental effort to get the council to agree to something like that that cap has been hit and it's been circumvented by a loophole in the law that allows not only five vacation rentals short term but eight additional b and b s in the neighborhood because the cap was only specific microcosm that's what's happening all over the place other neighborhoods are not is organizing as monumental and even the residents of mali meadows are giving up we have a case that's currently before the commission it's been denied twice before it up for a third time for reconsideration the staff recommendation is to approve and the vote is up in year it's been deferred twice because we don't have five votes against a five four it's not a party of my meadows we're told it's a subdivision next to you meadows that attached itself to maui meadows through purchasing a lot  meadows as a driver so there's seven or eight lots maybe ten lots in that subdivision all of them could be t v safety on it and access through and past sixty three homes in maui meadows to do not imagine the character of the neighborhood changing and there is so much money involved in it that they use there's so much money involved in it that it's unstoppable this point their attention ten thousand dollars a night is what they can get for a vacation and you remember when we did that big fat fine we were hoping that that would stop a lot of this but i don't know what the effect of it has if you've got a ten thousand dollars a night place a thousand dollar fine a day which is all we're allowed to enforce it's cost to do business i mean it's it was good for the county because we could get some funds but you know yeah we need that as a side we need to be able to up that amount but we can't so anyway miss cochran but we're not quite finished ok sorry that's the illegal properties i'm trying to is there follow up with that query to department this  a written response because we're still looking at it but part of the problem is that the h r s that deals with those types of foresman actions really require that the that the case be fully adjudicated before those liens could go through and we look at that and i don't know if that would really be much quicker than what's being done now which is to file a complaint in court which would happen again after the after the person has been cited for short for a violation and all of their appeal rights have run out meaning that they've been cited they don't go to the b v a or they go to the b v a and lose they go to circuit court and then they lose and then the issue is collecting the fines after that and right now it's done is the complaint would be filed in court and a court order be obtained and we looked at the rest which allow us some collection procedures and it didn't seem to necessarily be any faster than going to court because you for the lean to actually enforce the lein you generally would need to go to court anyway so we did look into that it didn't seem to be all that much faster it also doesn't deal with the problem of still only being able to find find a thousand dollars per day under the charter limit so you can't find somebody ten thousand dollars for a violation for example and so really the non judicial lean potential  which maybe we could add to one thousand nine hundred thirty altogether didn't seem to necessarily speed things up beyond what's already allowed by one thousand nine hundred thirty which is to go into court and if the person has been non responsive meaning they've been served with a violation and they have not appealed then the court can issue an order right then and they're basically saying you've got to pay all these fines and then that becomes a lien on the property so that's basically a judicial lien and so the non judicial lien option didn't seem to  based on what h r s allowed to be much faster of a process to do that and again that's in collection of fines so as far as an foresman you still need to have the notice of violation issued so if the the issue is the properties that are not being issued a notice of violation of the non judicial lien issue wouldn't necessarily help that's something that would be involved with that something that would be involved with actually collecting the fines after the notice of violations  after all of the appeal rights are exhausted in after that situation ok so i just i mean lenient someone's property is the is a big hammer to put down somebody to kick them into you know where they need to be right and that qantas is not preventing we are still able but as you said it doesn't expedite anything which for me isn't a yeah i'd like it quick you know certain quick to the point but as long as we're able to do such practice we can lean but we have to generally what has to happen first is the court they have all their appeal rights have to be exhausted so they've got to go through you know the board of you can't you can't issue a fine on somebody and then when their property right away in less you give them a chance to go to court and challenge the basis for the fine so there's a thirty day timeframe after their issued a notice a violation for them to appeal to the board of variances in appeals if they miss that and then they the people were served and did not appeal within that adequate time frame and then what happens then is if a judge issues an order in that case that basically finds them in violation and upholds the fines then those fines can then be  made into a judgment what's called a judgment and then that judgment can be attaches a lien to their property at that point and because to do a non judicial lien you have to go through much of the same process i think basically a court has to order it in about the same way i didn't see much of a huge difference between the two two paths that would justify additional legislation that there may be something we could look at for one thousand nine hundred thirty in general to deal with all violations but right now that section says that if there is no appeal and you go to court all you have to prove in court if is that they were served with the violation that they and that they the there are fines that are still outstanding and they haven't been paid so basically there's it should be really basic when you go to court and we've done that in certain cases and got judgments that way it does take time for it to for it to be issued and particularly if there's appeals for that to go through but it's not a matter of you issued a notice a violation and then as soon as the interview is issued you start leaning their property that's that's generally not something that's that's permitted you would do that after the appeal rights are or are exhausted and if there's a lot of cases and i don't think there are but if there are cases that have big fines out there that you know that have been served on people and again this is for other departments too not just the planning department then then that's the process for that is that they come to a corporation counsel after after their attempts are unsuccessful to gain compliance the department sends a demand letter and if there's no response the demand let or transferred to litigation where litigation can file a complaint in court and obtain a lien potentially so again that's something we looked at with in connection with that request it was my suggestion you know in in chambers to look at something like that and i did look at it and i today i'm reading through and mr very familiar with west maui and thank you for all the work that you do there here reading all the mainly the people down from poole manor to banyan tree and i believe there's some residents there that put forward a petition has that been circulated to you folks at all are you familiar with some petition that's been generated in the area of town known ok but reading a lot of their testimonies it has to lot in the line area managers homes mainly down on that area they've been demolished and then now comes this mcmansion and you know so i think those kind of things come to you and you know dilapidated and you know it's safety reasons we need to demolish this building and then up comes this and we're going to retire here live here the rest of our lives but then here comes this two balcony whatever it is and ok doesn't look like a single family home basically but it had gone through some of the department and gone through commission level but yet in the end here we have sitting on our beaches these types of dwellings supposedly single family dwellings i take it but yeah now they're coming in for permits short term runnels whatever whatevers and here we have this start this ball is really now to all these t v ours in that area of town and now because that me read it now i'm in i love ok and this you know i mean it's starting to snowball mr donny and i totally agree with you i take your philosophy on this big time so i'm just asking this commission you know where is it i think you know she has she is addresses on french street where this has actually occurred so what do you folks look at i mean i think and mr donny you've been on the commission too from that point you know and i remember the halls that managers home there is beautiful with the drive around circle that home was it had a tennis court on one side it was your greed and white typical so you know i'm here so i'm just wondering where is it on your behalf that you have a say and you know you kind of take this into consideration that you're really changing the character and charm of our historic district basically you know i'm sure you have your punch lists of rules and regulations and things you need to check off as to is this fit for demolition is it not is it would have you suggest some comments from did maybe that a lot of those don't even come to play a commission we won't see every demo permit that sort of thing that comes through as far as the historic aspect of it the county has their person that's in charge of making sure that the store components of the structure stay or whatever or not significant so they say yeah tear it down no problem as far as building something i mean we don't build a house we don't really you know we're not going to get into that so much as if it were a condo complex and say we get into that more than it is just a single family home however we have gotten into think if it can come back around to the enforcement side that you started on we did talk to some in the department when we were asked to look at the ordinance again after it was in a year or two it was brought back to make sure everything's running smoothly and all of that and they the biggest problem that we heard was that there wasn't enough manpower kind of with accounts or vice it was talking about th didn't have enough men are in force so you can create all that fines and all the stuff you want but if they're not getting you know if they're not going out forcing it because they don't have the manpower to do so waste time so i think that's something that if it's just a temporary hire to they get a handle on it or whatever then you know we've got to come up with some solution there for the enforcement because as far as we heard the testimony  the at the planning commission that they said they needed a couple more people i think it was like two more people like not twenty so i think those are some other solutions to this issue because for me i would like to see an even playing field with the fuel that are coming in and taking the heat from from the county did not getting treated the same as somebody just throwing up their website and  continue to operate without a permit county is doing a disservice to the public doubt and to the people that come in and try to be legit  commissioner you know when i when an application i heard the word bias before and i'm kind of concerned about that because the commission doesn't make policy we just administer the policies that have been adopted the council makes policy and that's why the letter relative to the mark taria came to the council for you folks to consider because we cannot consider category and that brings up the other question you know when you have a case like that where it's involved in a hotel use the income that goes into the property devalue it's created on that property is so significant how does that affect the surrounding neighborhood when real property tax values step particular property devalue it at resort hotel  but when they do their assessments for the surrounding neighborhood property next door is that capable of becoming the same kind of cation randall and would be qualify if they got their permit t fact or assessments within the neighborhood those are all questions i think that need to be considered as well and before we go too much further i did want to mention that what mr downey said we have to take into account you know this is this council you know what we are split on some cases and in this case we are split but the majority came up with the policy that we are going to allow short term mental homes under certain conditions and we spelled out those conditions  part of it the intent of the council in this committee was things that are going to the planning commission basically our neighborhood complaints if there are complaints in the neighborhood we were very confident that the planning commission has been able to ferret out frivolous complaints versus legitimate serious complaints they've done it over and over and over again for a number of years and we felt the biggest reason to go to the planning commission was to ferret out these frivolous complaints and what was added was the trigger to the five hundred foot rule triggers far as if there's another one within five hundred medicaid goes to the commission and so those are the two reasons why we wanted to do old commission and those are the ones that i'd like to just stress upon you know the chair of the commission  that's what our philosophy was and that's what our charge was to the commission is is that a frivolous complaint and is it affecting the character of the neighborhood if there's one within five hundred feet of the other those a sense or what we're talking about so i just wanted to get that on the record i remember that from the very beginning when we first started this so it's key that the commission is aware of that and not to expand on  change but changing the policy of the county council or adopting you know some of their own filters in there so that some of my concerns issue we've seen it where it doesn't work and we see it where it works and but say on the west side huey after erode there's a bunch it seems to work because nobody complains and that's how they all got there but if out and protested against the occasion rannells right near it being b s they don't have a problem with the owners on the property right a lot of people don't understand the difference between the  b's the owner lives on property and rents the property out while these there so that so we've seen it work in so that i don't think there is really a solution for that clustering problem i think we leave it to the neighborhoods to  decide because they seem to come out and answer the call if you will and whether they like it or not and we're not talking one person comes out and protest in that situation there was i don't know five or six percent bunch of you i have a question i'm looking at a memo did you like twenty of twenty fifteen and this is in regards to your requirement by plenty department state department a tax and county real property that's supposed to give us yes that's correct can you hear me ok we did get a response from the planning department that had the testing with regards to them and their notices a violation and warnings and they've gone out so that should be  had testimony that suggested that we use instead of the five hundred foot distance that we use it a valuation trigger based on the assessed value and the the figure that was suggested was the trigger that anything under eight hundred thousand would come to the commission anything over eight hundred thousand would not have a i've a concern that there are a lot of affordable rentals that are there are a lot of rentals that occupy properties that are have a greater value than eight hundred thousand but is that something that you all would support and if so but what level of valuation would you feel might be appropriate as a as a trigger to avoid coming to the to the commission is there i think you're closer to my local style in a neighborhood you get along your neighbor next door is applying for something you don't make waves you try not to complain certainly don't come before the planning commission and testify against him assuming you go and live with them forever you know as your neighbor i think you have you need to make the system easy enough for people to express their opinion without being intimidated by others and the easier your make it the more you'll get what the feeling of the neighborhood is to i know there's an argument if to well if it's a three million dollars house you know it's never going to be part of affordable housing so who cares the problem with that approach is that if it's reserved only for the three million dollar homes then people with the money i think that it that would be probably a very complicated thing to implement as far as the valuations and things like that i know i'm not sure the closer to my point i'm not sure that that would that would solve or or  hurt anything but i think as far as the affordable rannells goes i mean that would be a very sad little band aid on trying to end most of the vacation rentals they we've seen are not going to be affordable rentals in i have when i say affordable i don't mean by county affordable standards i mean by most of these things are very fancy that are being rented out so  normal working family would not be it wouldn't be in the rental or for that let's say some of them yes they come through and there they could potentially be but the majority i think are are they kind of set up for fix this if if you're killing off the topic and going on to affordable housing that's really not going to fix affordable housing i don't think you know really help but so the solution for that would be build more  you yes i don't want to follow up on mr couch is questioning about the five hundred foot rule and how within that if it's triggered then it's an automatic or hear from the commission so  i've heard testimony that i believe there were fourteen applicants and were already approved or passed through and i've heard from the department that for some  their explanation you are inundated with applicants and it's those down your process it and slows down your commission and dealing with other issues and so when i'm getting back to the five hundred foot rule there's been a proposal to delete that and basically have the commission not have that review i've always believed that the commission is like the public you serve as the public concerns so how do you feel about deleting that five hundred foot rule trigger of review going back to your comment on we're too busy to deal with  them is is not true at this time maybe in past commissions we typically we're ending now to a collage you know we we hardly go to five i mean so it's not that we're too busy for it so i don't know who gave you that comment but we don't it's not like we're there you know at five o'clock every other tuesday and we're going to be by work so we could dismiss that the five hundred foot radius i think is very critical and it's not for th intent to get to apply and then there's a five hundred foot rule that says if you're within five hundred feet you go to the planning commission no matter what i think mr newsmen is talking about that triggered that says if you're within five hundred foot from another one you're going to go there always is the favorite and nobody's suggesting we take out the five hundred foot notification rule and i think that the reason the five hundred foot trigger rule was suggested to be pulled out was specifically talking about the automatic five hundred feet that basically if you're within five hundred feet it was automatically subject to review of the commission and what was your opinion whether that should be deleted or is should still problem is if it's a big land you know a little neighborhoods you hit a bunch of people but if it's a big property five hundred he only had one neighbor maybe so there's been comments to us about extending that that and people have given us thank you richard thank you moose bison well it's interesting but you know mr goodman again and yourself clarified this five hundred foot thing and  i think we're clear now what the issue is and what we recommended i just want to make sure because of the double five hundred for writing and you took care of it thanks members any other questions of the commissioners i would like to release them and also give a break to people to move their cars hopefully it gets real quick to your last point that you said that it's been brought to your attention to actually expand that five hundred foot for property so i live in a very rural area to my neighbor is further than probably that five foot but i would like to be notified you know if they're seeking some kind of made of that sort because there will be impacts because of the rural and country character of where i live you're going to have people visiting vacationing and want to romp around and explore things here and there which probably going to be running through my backyard and what think the public really appreciates knowing the process that you go through and the decision making process a year you're faced with so i do appreciate you being here and i would like to thank the chair also for asking the commissioners to be here he's well very informative thank you ms bison along those lines i too would like to think it goes again for coming today and for the hard work they do when i watch those commission meeting and it's just unbelievable what you guys you know your endurance and what you do and mr ball i'm sorry to hear that your term is about to end because you know again a new commissioner will have to get up to speed and i am glad that are going through this right now because what we have to confirm the new commissioner we have a lot better questions that we can ask you know when the commissioners come for confirmation sometimes we're not really sure what we need to ask them and  has been very enlightening for us and i hope that whoever it is understands the terrible job that they're taking on if you know really it's a hard job to be a planning commissioner and i don't think sometimes people understand you know the stress and the heart wrenching stuff you have to do so anyway thank you very much again miss cochran thank you and thank you gentlemen for being here and the service the volunteer work that you've done for this community and just real quickly in regards to training or you folks think we need to decommission as opportunities to go to certain things and would love to go to more buddy i think it becomes a budget very concerned for the planning department so i don't know if that could be worked out with the with the planning to part because there are things that we would like to go to that we can all go to so we have to choose certain amount of embers that can go so i think if that was addressed and we were able to go to things that a lot of times are off island is the biggest problem but they're also the budget is so tight that we couldn't even go to the one we all couldn't attend the one our money so it's that you know problem that we have to deal with as far as the commission commissioners want to go to those things to learn but opportunity does it right most times because we've been told it was budget and it makes sense right if there's no further questions or comments for the commissioners i'm going to take like just a five minute break so we can clear the room and people can get their parking situation taken care of and i just want to say thank you so much gentlemen for being with the planning committee meeting on thursday january twenty first two thousand and sixteen please come back to order right members thank you for the discussion with the commissioners it was really informative received those there as of the end of july i believe i saw them and when she brought it up i started looking for and i can't find them but the council has received them or not this committee is it would normally go to the council   kindly given us and the first first item that there's three issues that you know planning commission triggers what is going to trigger the plan review by the planning commission one of those the five hundred foot if there is one within five hundred foot of another the one that mr guzman was talking about  then there's also a five year wait period concerned and the look back provision so that's what we're going to discuss starting on page eight and that and by the way members it's the chairs intend to go till noon and then recess the meeting to february fourth ok any objections to that we're going to get to that point ok so the matrix ok while he's looking for that the first thing is the planning commission target the we discussed mehmet  for density cap on the twelve three meeting we have no you know the question was if there's more than five within five hundred feet you don't get any more and there was no consensus on that so the next question is how do we want to handle this five hundred foot density and this is not the five hundred foot notification rule that's always going to be there no and they're concerned about their effect of this on a football housing and you know i've had the opportunity to visit a lot of the buildings that are involved with this and many of them are very somebody with a lot of money is not affordable to most people and we've found out that people here are definitely not rich i mean income ways hallways people are i'm always people are suffering and we don't have a lot of money so i think cost is the big deal so i like that idea i'd like to discuss it a little bit more i'm not you know one hundred percent in support of it but i'd like to hear a little more discussion about the kinds of homes that are getting permits are they really possible of fordable housing or are they more high end i think we need to take a look at that i think it's a real easy solution if that would be one of them wanted to create tyria at least one of the criteria ok department do you have any stats on that no we don't have stats on that do you have a kind of a feel we've discussed this a little bit before and i believe what we expressed at that time was that in general it does seem to make sense that it would be targeting these higher end properties but there is the concern that it it in a sense it makes the prayer it would make the process more difficult for the little guy who has a modest property let's the main house is in long term rental and they want to rent out the cottage short term rental it's not a high end property at all but maybe it's a desirable location than then that person is going to have a more difficult time getting a permit or would have to go to commission first is the big high end guy that that doesn't and while that property does have a long term renter in it which is a positive thing they want to make a little bit more money off of the short term or whatever their reasoning may be to do it to put the little guy through a more rigorous process than a high end property doesn't really seem fair  and the other the other comment i think that was expressed before is that even though the higher end properties aren't ones that we see for our our working families would be living in that every unit matters to a degree you know there are some that would remain empty if they weren't allowed to short term rent and we understand that but if some of these higher end properties were not allowed to be put into short term rental and they had to go to long term rental as their other option if they didn't want to leave it empty then someone would move into that and you know that's one more unit that's occupied by a long term resident maybe freeing up the unit that they had been in and in a sense every unit in in the inventory matters thank you yeah i'd like to respond based on my personal experience with some of these units you know i visited unit a couple  months ago well hardly a unit property that is you know fabulous and we're probably talking ten million dollars ok or more i may be conservative i'm not in the real estate business and you know but for me i got time for me to talk about millions of dollars in housing but i build my host from forty five you know it's difficult but maybe eight hundred thousand dollar they cannot feel it didn't care they still have a property and tons of money we're talking about people with lots of money so maybe that's the better end to get all of them out of the crisis and maybe the eight hundred thousand dollars is is  a problem for the you know the modest family that has a bigger and it or unit in the on the one in use or whatever but i think it bears discussion on both sides and i understand fairness we don't want to make things hard for people that you know are having a hard time already but i don't see any sense in dragging these multi million dollar properties through this when they're either going to get a permit and operate and bring a lot of economic help to us or they're just going to let it sit there because they can afford to live there and then it ties up the whole mess in the commission i don't know i just i'm not really sure just call on all the other members you know i have some serious concerns about two things one for both housing issues and affordable rentals and that is our  councils i'm sure number one one of the number one issues we have a lot of number one nations but the other side is putting somebody through extra expense who is at the low end  not you know but in letting the guys who've got a lot of money who can afford the extra spend let them go is not i don't think that's very fair and i certainly wouldn't support it unless i had heard some good arguments for doing that and that's what we're here to discuss but right now i'm leaning that i don't like that dollar amount thing for me i i think maybe we have to make a decision as a community  you know we made a decision as a council and that was that we wanted to support now we have the results a little bit of the results of that action and so i think we've got to do something and if this community message is we don't want it well then they don't want it you know i'm not sure ok and that's again the chairs thought is that's why the five hundred foot notification rule is a little bit more important now you know as have them come out either in writing or come out with well you know that could be touching with the commissioners this morning you know they have obviously at the moment they sent us the letter on the we're pretty much convinced that this was a bad thing for affordable housing and we haven't been able to determine that maybe it has an impact but is it a significant impact how many about it's my understanding eighty thousand sixty thousand single family homes fifty thousand somewhere around there single family homes of those that we have one hundred fifty with permits for short term mental homes that's a that's a you know a small amount relatively now if you if you take the don't i don't think the the communities concerned about the hundred fifty permitted rentals it's the unpermitted rentals that i think are the challenge and that's why and enforcement is is an ongoing topic she's correct in saying that it really wouldn't be fair to make the process harder for someone based on the you know the amount of money they've invested or or has accrued under their watch so i  think i'm i'm back to feeling comfortable that the testimony from the commissioners this morning was very clear that they're neither bogged down nor do they feel that it's a challenge for them to be dealing with the ones that are required to go through the process based on the five hundred foot rule so it seems to me that the process as it was set up is still working and so i'm ok i still have some concern all so i was surprised at what the commissioners commission chair ball said that they don't seem to be over overwhelmed with apple applications but my still my concern is there's a bias there you heard some of it there  and they've given us a letter saying no more so certainly if i were an applicant and i heard that i have to go before a commission that says they don't want anymore however their actions or don't speak you know they're fifty fifty i don't know i still have a concern about that and unless the neighborhood complaints might might thing is if if they're required to go and a lot of these are getting neighbors say yeah we'd like it let's go continue on why we put him through that it whereas it would be more the exception to say hey there's a problem in line up on front street and there's a petition already in writing on and saying hey we don't want these then that's obvious you know but if it's one of those where people are fine with it or have no concerns one way or the other why do they have to have the extra expense to do that for for me that there's a significant difference between a b and b and s taro yes because a b and b is a homeowner  do something with their home for that situation i have i have no concerns because they're there all the time right and they're there to take care of issues and this and want this to sound heartless but if you have the capacity to have a second home that you can place in a rental you also have the capacity to sell that place if it's not in the right place and go purchase one that's not within five hundred feet so you know it's an investment if you don't like your investment being in chevron go invest in something else and eighteen t so we're not we're not prohibiting anyone by having the five hundred foot rule what we're doing is we're protecting the neighbors and protecting the neighborhoods and i understand there's the ability to go in and voice your concerns but it's not it's not a comfortable thing for a lot of people to do so i'm going to err on the side of caution because i this isn't an imposition on a neighborhood no matter how you cut it and so and going back to my earlier comment this is part of the initial deal and i'm i'm just not comfortable setting that condition or that provision aside at this point in certain areas because you know we got we have the ocean front issue in certainly in my district where there there that's what they're for kind of thing and you know to have them go  had occurred on the floor today i think that based off of what corporation counsel has indicated on the record that there is a process and there is criteria is that the they follow and there is finding of fa conclusions of law and there's an appeal system so it would be very difficult for i would say in an individual to express their bias if in fact they have to use evidence to show that these are one of the show that proof is has been presented that one of the criteria is was not met so i am confident in mr hopper's explanation of the process and i believe he's also the deputy that is assigned to that commission as well the other fact is that we haven't gotten the enforcement under control and so i see the commission as being that extra gate the gate keepers at this point and tell we get the enforcement on board and so the five hundred foot automatic review from the commission it sounds as though you know when i asked a question that they're more than willing to proceed with that process and then they're not inundated with it being at conflict with reviewing other issues so i am satisfied at this point and  i also agree with mr white on the language that there be no change at this point but i'm also on the other hand very interested in hearing more about any type of other options that you may propose ask new person asking you have to and you have to notify your people within five and your foot of your property and now you're permitted so know someone within that five hundred foot now once they come in  that's the issue right now whether that person needs to automatically go to be automatically have to go ok it's automatic at this point and the question is do we want to remove that move that part for the new person correct but apply you have to give notice to people five hundred feet around you ok if there is one within five hundred feet of your property basically in that notification notice you automatically go to planning commission no ifs ands or buts but mister clarify both the initial owner both the first person who applies and the second person within the five hundred feet have to provide notice to the owners in both cases it's just that the first person may or may not have to go to the planning commission depending on the criteria like protests but the second person they have to provide their notice and they automatically have to go to the planning commission so both of those owners have to provide the five hundred foot notice if they didn't do the same thing there but the second owner because they're within proximity of another short term mental home automatically no matter what if there's a protest or not a protest they have to go to the planning commission rather than protestors or not that's going to determine if you go to plan on the first shot was the second guy's automatic no but if you removed it oh yeah if we removed it right then right i mean raptors and they get in a protest and anti then they will be going to plan a correction it just might have the same i mean it's not quite the same because if there are no protests then they don't have to go to the planning commission i'm saying if you remove it right if we remove and there are no mr ball hit it on the head for west maui because they know exactly where he's speaking out an appeal of there's a cluster right everyone in that little cluster behind those are all what they all want to be but now you go to the other end of town you have a lot of residential yeah you have a hotel there yeah you have commercial but it's the real down home rooted local people that live there that are whoa what is all this infringing on right so now you have protests and you have people that aren't too happy with the character of the way the tourist turned so and they have that right and hopefully an avenue in order to share their thoughts and feelings about that so the notification is the notification there's no tough it's my get two of you that say keep the five hundred put in i have one that's not sure miss by so you have a comma yes i want to take us back to do here and we're going to give it to them because we felt i felt and i think it was the general feeling of the committee at that time and i'll speak for myself rather than for anybody else but we felt that the commission being community based community representatives people who are not in elective office and don't have to worry about getting voted on or whatever that with the police to go and they delve deeply into dealing with testifying and neighbors and you know this to two hours of different people come and express their opinions and whatever and we felt that that was a good place to put that this isn't because they would focus and have the time but i think that developed and it was it was mentioned today was that there was some concern about bias and people feeling uncomfortable going there because you knew it when you have a commissioner who says well i'm not in favor of any of this and i'm not going to even vote on it because i can't it makes people uneasy and we want people to have a fear hearing and that's what we charge the planning commission with and i know they're trying and you know we're all human beings and heavens knows we make mistakes and we see the wrong things sometimes i know i know i do my share but you know the whole idea is to give people a fair shake and we felt that that was a good place to put it where they would have the time and energy and the background and the support to delve into all of this we will we don't want and this is ok and that's not ok and i think that's the problem that we have with this five hundred foot rule is that when people go to the commission they're beginning to develop some fear that they will never succeed because of this leached bias and we've got to face it that's what's on the table yes mr hopper just a bit of a quick historic note it looks like the five hundred foot planning commission review requirement if there's another b and b with or with sorry with if there's another is to reach within five hundred feet and looks like i was carried over from the bed and brecht ordinance upon which the i have heard from mr carroll mr carroll i meet thoughts on the five hundred foot this is not the notification this is more the this is the automatic go to the planning commission if there's another one within five hundred feet of you were approved and two are in limbo and six were denied or something of that sort do we have any numbers of that add on to the july thirty first i think the all those that we were given were prior to july thirty first do you have any sense of what's happened since  i can't i can't recall any that have been denied that's not to say that none that there haven't been denials but none none come to mind it's usually a significant thing when the commission denies r one was my recommendation planning department had no actually preferred not to do it so this is something we're going to do the planning department recommendations first and then we'll come back to that  complain and so when you have an automatic trigger it really is i guess more neighborly to allow the administration or the government to step in and say hey let's review this instead of your neighbor blowing the whistle on you i can totally understand that yeah i used to there was a there was a d v r that was next to me and i never complained a night and i didn't i just took it but i hated it being there but i didn't blow the whistle and it so happens someone else did but i completely understand that concept so to have an automatic trigger to allow the minister or the government to to review and bring in the public for review or input i think is justified so my response to that would be if you have the automatic trigger the five hundred foot the people are still going to get notified and they still have to come if they don't come in there is a apparently no opposition even though they don't come up with the concept is blowing the initial whistle nobody wants to be the person  going to do it if right they get the know they're going to get the notification any right right and so if i received a notification saying hey the government is requiring this to be a public airing then i am going to go to  sending my initial complaint and that being held public and my and my neighbor who i've known for thirty some years will then take that against me and somehow and so of course i don't want to be the first person to blow the whistle i'd rather have a federal i mean the government do it and then i come in and say hey you know look there's problems here you know to i think you miss  wanted to clarify again and every applicant needs to notify us within five hundred feet the first operator within five hundred feet would only have to go to commission if there was protest the second one that would come in automatically gets triggered to go to commission in either of those cases if there is protest or if there's another one operating when they go to commission they have to send out a notice of public hearings so that's a second notice that neighbors get for those that go to co so the first time around they're told you can submit comments to the planning department the second time it's a public hearing before the planning commission and so like some of the members of said the planning commission being sort of them the public forum for them and like you were alluding to that that could be a very different context for people to to express concerns they might have rather than just that one and only one notice of give comments to the planning department so yes every applicant has to notify property owners then as they go to commission do a second notice of that public hearing so that's a second opportunity for neighbors to be  informed but usually chair that if you're triggering that second you know five hundred foot rule you're really living in somewhat of a dense area where there is that operation v ours around here and sometimes you get pressured into your neighbors by not saying anything so it's kind of like even more so you need a second notice to allow for that ability to come forward and say look i live in a dense area and i am the only single person that wants to protest at the hearing then allow that to happen because i think there needs to be a i guess a higher threshold when we're talking density more than one within five hundred feet i mean what are we going to make out i mean let's just go ahead and do zoning that at that point you know i think there has to be a heightened level of scrutiny so thank you thank you members i see that at this point the five hundred foot rule looks like it's we're not going to make any changes that will just double check that at the next meeting  lers have their own house and right now we only allow one per lot what with the chairs recommendation is to say one per condominium ised d m k so that if there's two  lot then those two each get their own separate s t r each is now the department has said that that's going to add density to it the first guy is going to be fine the second guy as it stands now will have to get the five hundred foot rule issue and the density will be determined there it's not any different if you've got a you know twenty thousand square foot lot you can to minimize it so there's two ten thousand square foot  not any different than if they were an actual separate lot so that that's what the church recommendation department you look like you want to say something thank you chair as the department has expressed  before condominium ization is simply an ownership mechanism it doesn't change the development potential of the property it doesn't change the density of a property it's simply an ownership mechanism it's easier and parcel the county doesn't enforce condominiums we don't regulate those lots any differently than we do any other lot and so to allow each condominium unit to have its own permit is treating that lot differently than any other lot there are giving the example of a property that conduit into two units is it easier example but there are lot condo to form units and so each of those would be allowed a permit and that squad rubel the density that that we typically envision for these it's not every property is going to be eligible or should be eligible for for one of these permits it we don't think they had a condominium i lot should reap more benefit from this ordinance than a lot that hasn't been condominiums and i guess my response would be if they subdivided it that that's not going to increase typically choose to sub divide if they could it's more desirable than a condominium mechanism than having you know you have your year common elements that are jointly owned by the different owners it's usually because subdivision improvements are expensive or the lot isn't large enough to be subdivide well members this isn't going to go quickly either mr white well i would just suggest that as one of the test fires earlier stated these are permits that don't go they're not awarded to the parcel right whether it's a t m k whether we call it him care or a lot this is a permit that is awarded to an individual right and so i while i understand the department's concerns i i don't share the level of concern because the any even if there's four lots once one of them gets a permit the others are going to have to go right go through the process just like anyone else would and you know we we tax all of these individual you know tax the lot we tax the individual condominium unit whether it's a single family home or whether it's a condominium so still trying to remember what the question was we have it down here it was written by i don't partment gena want i was the deputy who was here at the last meeting and i recall her saying that there was something she wanted to look into but i can't remember what the question was when she'll be back here on the fourth but not necessarily i wouldn't count on a specific deputy and so cases if there is an outstanding question on this i'm not sure what it is it's seems like a decision by the committee if they want to have a  proposed amendment if you choose to go forward with it that means that each c p r property would be entitled to one s t r each permit as if it were a lot and we would also want to clarify then how notice is given and that those different units would be considered separate lots so that when that second one comes in for its permit it would go to planning commission that's what your intent is because that that should be clarified because when you talk about surrounding property owners within five hundred feet i could see one   good point will bring that up see if we can come up with some language that the notification needs to be clarified how's that ok we can see if we come up language for that and then since there is not consensus we'll have a vote on that at the next meeting when we when i can get the  right language so staff and i will work on potential language for that members yes charge just wanted to let you know that yeah i i concur with mr white on that and in terms of also looking at cleaning up the language for it notice it's very reasonable right to look at that issue so yeah we can what we'll do is we'll see come up the language and then we will have agreed on it at the next at the continuation of this meeting with that members it's a little bit after noon and i without objections i would like to recess this meeting to february fourth at nine o'clock right this meeting is in recess