Good morning, welcome to the planning committee of April 16th, 2025.

At the record, we feel like all members are present with exception of Council Chair proposals, excuse, and Council Mr.

Kuoli is on his way.

We have one, two, three, four bills.

So we'll start with the first bill.

Clark, please meet us in.

Bill number two nine four five, a bill for an ordinance amending Kwaika Coai County General Plan 2018 relating to a parcel located in L Kauai.

County of Kauai Planning Department applicant GPA-2025-1.

Move to approve.

Second.

Actually, I don't think I'm on the committee.

Second.

Okay.

Move by Council Mair Cavallo, second by Councilmember Cowden.

I'll suspend the rules unless anyone has any particular questions for our planning department.

Well, why didn't they all come up?

You guys bothered to come, so come on over, planning.

Looks like we got a guest also.

Yes.

Our Ian.

It's like old time being up here with you.

Thank you.

Um committee chair, uh, members of the council of Kinal on behalf of the planning department.

I have with me Alan Clinton, who's a senior planner uh assigned to this project, and then we have representative from the landowner, Ian Jung.

Um ultimately the Yokey folks have four bills, and we're on the first bill, but all four bills work in concert with each other and are working to essentially up zone a particular area of LALA for residential use.

Um just to give a primer to it, um, the planning department has signaled to landowners where it is clear that the development is going to either meet affordable housing tiers or ultimately look at increasing housing inventory that is aimed at the local market that the planning department is willing to, if we're able to come to an agreement, um initiate and lead the zoning amendments.

Um, in all facts of land use and life in general, when government gets involved, it's going to be a longer process.

This is the one exception.

Um when you're going through an upzoning process whereby you need to upzone all four categories of state land use district, general plan, community plan, and the zoning district.

The plan department being the lead actually can shave two to three years off that process.

Um this is clearly one that's aimed at housing, and so we've initiated that.

We actually have a few more bills coming your way as somewhat of a forewarning that are similar in nature to this.

But um, I'll turn it over to Alan to give a bit more detail on what the project is.

And then the Ian to go over really in detail what habitat for humanity is looking at.

Okay, um, Alan Clinton for the record planning department.

Um really already covered the main elements here and the main reason why we have these four items organized this way is because we're limited by the 15 acres of state land use district counter and amendments that we can change from AG to urban at the county level that we can register with those folks.

So because of that, we are working with the landowner and recognizing that it's a 22-acre parcel.

Um, but because we can only address 15 acres, a mass majority of the parcels already in the correct general plan designation of residential community.

But in fact, it's the right side of the parcel, the east side that is the ideal 15 acres from the standpoint of the survey that was done, mostly because this accounts for the drainage plan from Limaola to the north side of the project area.

So that's really the reason why is just because the county of Kauti General Plan and the West Kauai Community Plan, a small slitter of the eastern portion of that parcel is not currently aligned appropriately with the right land use designation.

So that's really their main reason why we have four bills instead of just two in front of you today.

Um beyond that kind of currently kind of already went over the primary organization.

We have the general plan amendment, community plan amendment, state land use district boundary amendment, and a county zoning amendment.

So as was already alluded to, this is mostly the align everything with our existing planning processes from 40,000 foot view down to about you have any other comments or do you want to add?

Okay, and then we'll go to questions.

So good morning, committee members, uh, members of the council Ian Jung.

I'm actually a board member on Kawhi Habitat for Humanity, so I'm here not representing them in a legal capacity, but more on behalf of the board.

So first off, we'd like to thank the planning department and you guys for taking a look at this bill and this opportunity for additional housing.

As many of you know, the way Habitat treats their projects is we look at targeting that 80% below of Kauai's area median income.

So we do service you know a really needed area of the community for affordable housing.

This particular project, when we looked at it, um we were the prior landowner reached out to us on the land committee with Doug Haig and I, and we realized that this potential property had a huge opportunity to not be adjacent to the county's Limaola project, but also become our phase three of um the LA Luna project that we had phases one and two as part of the habitat projects.

So this would uh tack on the potential for 84 additional uh affordable housing project units uh with an immediate opportunity for 20 because we got a water commitment for units that could go in right when we get through this process as well as the future subdivision process.

So this property is perfectly aligned to have additional residential use because on the top portion of the property it's the county's Lima Ola project, and immediately to the west is um an existing residential community of affordable housing as well.

So we feel that this is a huge opportunity for habitat, and we really appreciate the planning department working with us to look at this piece of property and work through and navigate this process with you folks.

Awesome council members, any questions?

Council Member Collins.

Yes, so you kind of probably already said, but did this go through the land use commission?

Did they already say yes?

Are you able to okay?

Alan?