Opinion ID: 1137576
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Validity of the Amendments to the General Plan

Text: Plaintiffs contend that Ordinances 2840 and 2841, which purport to amend the general plan, are null and void. At first blush, HRS § 201-23 would seem to dispose of plaintiffs' contention: The general plan may be amended within any county by the director with the board or council approving the amendment by ordinance. The county may after consulting with the director amend the general plan by ordinance. [Emphasis added] However, Act 225, 1955 General Session, which authorized the creation of the commission which drafted the present Honolulu Charter, provided in § 6 that: Upon such ratification [by the legislature after approval by the electorate], the charter shall become the organic law of the city and county of Honolulu and shall supersede any existing charter and all laws affecting the organization and government of the city and county which are in conflict therewith. The present charter was approved by the electorate and ratified by the legislature. Act 261, 1959 General Session. Therefore the charter supersedes all laws in conflict therewith, including HRS § 201-23. Defendants recognize that the charter supersedes conflicting statutes, and rely upon § 3-204 of the charter [6] itself: 1. No ordinance shall be amended,    by the council except by ordinance.    2. Any ordinance    may be repealed by reference to its number or section number. Revisions or amendments may be made in the same manner   . Defendants contend that the general plan was enacted as an ordinance, and that Ordinances 2840 and 2841 were a proper exercise of the county's general power to amend ordinances. A. Plaintiffs argue that the general plan is not subject to the general power of amendment because such amendments are antithetical to Honolulu Charter § 5-509, which requires that the general plan be long-range and comprehensive. Section 5-509 provides: The general plan shall set forth the council's policy for the long-range, comprehensive physical development of the city. The general plan shall include a map of the city and shall contain a statement of development objectives, standards and principles with respect to the most desirable use of land within the city for residential, recreational, agricultural, commercial, industrial and other purposes; the most desirable density of population in the several parts of the city ; a system of principal thoroughfares, highways, streets and other public open spaces; the general location, relocation and improvement of public buildings; the general location and extent of public utilities and terminals, whether publicly or privately owned, for water, sewers, light, power, transit and other purposes; the extent and location of public housing projects; adequate drainage facilities and control; and such other matters as may, in the council's judgment, be beneficil to the city. The plan shall be based upon studies of physical, social, economic and governmental conditions and trends and shall be designed to assure the coordinated development of the city and to promote the general welfare and prosperity of its people. [Emphasis added] The meaning of long-range and comprehensive is clarified by reference to (1) expert testimony received by the charter commission in formulating § 5-509, and (2) the supporting data of the general plan submitted by the planning commission to the council. Shortly before adopting the requirement that the general plan be long-range and comprehensive, [7] the charter commission solicited and received the advice of a city planning expert: He believed that it should be the primary responsibility of the planning department to study, prepare and maintain a long range comprehensive general plan to guide the physical development of the city on a current basis, which would be recommended to the planning commission for further study and which in turn, if agreed on, would be recommended for adoption by the policy body. He believed it very important that the development and carrying out of the general plan be spelled out in the charter, explaining that such a plan should, of course, look forward to the needs of the community not for just one or two years but twenty years hence, and which would have to do with matters of traffic, police, fire, schools and playgrounds, land use, etc. Without a general plan, which is also a policy statement concerning zoning and subdivisions, there could be no long-range planning. Minutes of the 64th Meeting of the Charter Commission held March 25, 1957, p. 2, on file in the Public Archives, at Honolulu, State of Hawaii. In the supporting data of the 1964 general plan, p. 48, it is stated: Land uses proposed in this report and designated on Plate [sic] 39, the General Plan for the City and County of Honolulu, cover the next 20 years  as far ahead as it is safe to predict. B. To insure that the general plan would be long-range and comprehensive, stringent procedural hurdles were required to be overcome before a general plan could be adopted. These hurdles are: § 5-503.    The planning director shall: (a) Prepare a general plan and development plans for the improvement and development of the city.       § 5-505.    The planning commission shall:       (b) Review the general plan and development plans and modifications thereof developed by the director. The commission shall transmit such plans with its recommendations thereon through the mayor to the council for its consideration and action. The commission shall recommend approval in whole or in part and with or without modifications or recommend rejection of such plans.       § 5-512.    1. The council shall adopt the general plan or any development plan by ordinance.          4. Any addition to or change in the general plan proposed by the council shall be referred by resolution to the planning director and the planning commission for their recommendation prior to final action by the council. If the commission disapproves the proposed change or addition, or recommends a modification thereof, not accepted by the council, or fails to make its report within the period of thirty days, the council may nevertheless adopt such addition or change, but only by the affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of its entire membership. The general power to amend ordinances (relied upon by defendants) contains none of these protections. Plaintiffs argue that since the general plan was adopted pursuant to a process containing special safeguards, the general power of amendment which does not contain these safeguards should not be held applicable to the general plan. The effect of these special procedures, applicable only to the general plan, is that when the general plan is submitted to the council, the council is powerless to make additions or changes without first referring its additions or changes to the planning director and the planning commission for their recommendation. Without their recommendation, the council may adopt such additions or changes only by the affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of its entire membership. These stringent requirements for initial adoption of the general plan would be pointless if the council's general power to amend were held applicable to the general plan. For example, suppose that after the general plan had been prepared and recommended to the council, five of the nine members of the council proposed to change the plan. Charter § 5-512, subd. 4 would require that this proposal be referred by resolution to the planning director and the planning commission. Without the approval of the commission, the five councilmen would be powerless to adopt the change. But if the general plan could be amended as the defendants here contend, the five councilmen could join the other councilmen and adopt the general plan without proposing any changes, and thereafter, the five councilmen could promptly amend it in any manner they wished, subverting the limitation expressed in charter § 5-512, subd. 4. C. Charter § 5-512, subd. 2 provides in pertinent part: No    zoning ordinance shall be initiated or adopted unless it conforms to and implements the general plan.    This section attempts to avoid the danger that zoning, considered as a self-contained activity rather than as a means to a broader end, may tyrannize individual property owners. Haar, In Accordance with a Comprehensive Plan, 68 Harv.L.Rev. 1154 at 1158 (1955). It puts teeth into the requirement that the general plan be long-range by providing a test for courts to use in reviewing zoning ordinances, i.e., if a zoning ordinance does not conform to and implement the general plan, then the city did not have the power to adopt it. In the context of the present case § 5-512, subd. 2 would have prevented the city from adopting Honolulu Ordinances 2913 and 3131 without first amending the general plan, since clearly Ordinances 2913 and 3131 do not conform to the unamended general plan. To allow the city to amend the general plan (under its general power to amend ordinances) and then adopt a zoning ordinance contrary to the unamended general plan, is to allow the city to accomplish by two ordinances exactly what the charter sought to prohibit. D. The charter commission's first draft § 4-902 expressly gave to the council the power to amend the general plan: In addition to its other powers and duties, the Council shall: 1. Adopt and from time to time review and, if necessary, amend a general plan for the improvement and development of the City and County,          The charter commission eliminated this provision from later drafts of the charter. The charter commission's first draft § 4-909 provided: 1. The Council may adopt the General Plan as a whole or may from time to time adopt a part or parts thereof by resolution.    2. After the adoption of the General Plan or any part thereof, no public improvement or project    shall be initiated unless it conforms to the General Plan   .       These provisions were significantly altered before they eventually became § 5-512 of the charter: 1. The council shall adopt the general plan or any development plan by ordinance. The general plan and all development plans shall be kept on file in the office of the planning department. 2. No public improvement or project, or subdivision or zoning ordinance shall be initiated or adopted unless it conforms to and implements the general plan.         Notice that: (1) The reference in the first draft to adopting anything less than a whole general plan was eliminated; and (2) At the same time, the restrictive clause in the first draft § 4-909.2 was expanded to prohibit adoption of zoning ordinances contrary to the general plan. Clearly then, the charter commission considered giving the council an unlimited power to amend the general plan and to adopt zoning ordinances. Ultimately, however, the charter commission rejected the sections granting the council the power to amend the general plan, and wrote into the charter a specific prohibition against zoning ordinances which do not conform to and implement the general plan. E. Defendants place great reliance upon charter § 5-515: 1. Prior to the adoption of the general plan or the subdivision and zoning ordinances, or any amendments thereto, the council may hold a public hearing thereon at which interested persons shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to be heard.    2. Prior to recommending the adoption of the general plan and any development plan or any subdivision or zoning ordinance or any amendments thereto, and prior to the adoption of subdivision regulations or any amendments thereto, the planning commission shall hold a public hearing thereon at which interested persons shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to be heard.       [Emphasis added] Defendants argue that or any amendments thereto refers to the general plan in § 5-515, subd. 1. A careful review of the legislative history of § 5-515 and of the other pertinent sections of the charter compels this Court to conclude that the amendment process must meet certain strict procedural hurdles. Looking at the totality of the problem before us with the whole of Honolulu as one indivisible unit, we conclude that the better and correct interpretation of charter § 5-515 requires that in the process of amending the general plan, not only a public hearing is necessary but the council, the planning commission and the planning director are required to follow a course of conduct consistent with the safeguards that were required in the initial adoption of the general plan. This interpretation will not only meet the spirit of the law but fulfill the true intent of the laws covering the general plan. We conclude that the city's general power to amend ordinances is not applicable to the general plan. The purpose of Honolulu Charter § 5-509 was to prevent the deterioration of our environment by forcing the city to articulate long-range comprehensive planning goals. The purpose of Honolulu Charter § 5-512, subd. 2 was to prevent the compromise of these planning goals. These sections of the charter allow less room for the exertion of pressure by powerful individuals and institutions. To allow amendment of the general plan without any of the safeguards which were required in the adoption of the general plan would subvert and destroy the progress which was achieved by the adoption of the charter's sections on planning, and by their effectuation in the 1964 general plan. We hold that the safeguards specified by the charter as applicable to the adoption of the general plan must be followed in altering the general plan. The record in this case shows that the county failed to follow a course of conduct consistent with the safeguards that are required in the initial adoption of the general plan. These safeguards require that alterations in the general plan must be comprehensive and long-range. More specifically, if the city believes the general plan of 1964 is obsolete, then comprehensive updating of the 1964 plan's studies of physical, social, economic and governmental conditions and trends is in order. If new study reveals, among other things, (a) a housing shortage that was underestimated in the 1964 general plan, (b) the most rational solution to this housing shortage is more apartments, (c) some of these new apartments should most rationally be in Kailua, (d) the land set aside in the 1964 general plan for apartments in Kailua must be increased to meet this need, and (e) the acreage in question in this case is the best site for additional apartments (rather than some other site, or rather than some other use for this land to fit some other need underestimated in the 1964 plan); then the general plan may be amended to permit a change in zoning. The vice of the amendment to the general plan questioned by this suit is precisely that it did not consider these alternatives. Since the trial courts' grant of summary judgment for defendants was erroneous, we reverse. Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment should have been granted with regard to the 11 acre Bishop land. We remand for entry of judgment for plaintiffs and against those defendants concerned with the 11 acre Bishop land. With regard to ordinances 2840, 2841 and 2913, as they affect the 35 acre Castle land, a trial is necessary on the issue of laches, therefore the case is remanded to the circuit court. If laches applies, with regard to ordinance 2840 and 2841 or with regard to ordinance 2913, the judgment should be entered for the defendants concerned with the 35 acre Castle land and the validity of said ordinances 2840, 2841, 2913, as they affect the 35 acre Castle land shall be a legal fact and be unquestioned. If, however, laches does not apply, then judgment should be entered for plaintiffs.