The county administration has announced it will no longer staff the citizen-led regional development panels that are set in county law.
The announcement by Planning Director Zendo Kern comes more than a year after administrators told the County Council that it would hold off filling vacancies in the six Community Development Plan action committees for three to six months in order to take a hard look at how the boards can best be used.
The newest pause is due to a realignment of employee duties and lack of staff capacity to organize or facilitate meetings for the “foreseeable future,” Kern said.
“In the absence of County led AC meetings, the CDP Team will engage in a forward-looking approach to help shape the future of this program. This will include a concerted effort to connect with you and the broader community to gather feedback, along with consultation with Corporation Counsel to assess the benefits and limitations relative to Action Committee engagement,” Kern said Monday in a memo to CDP committee members.
“This effort will focus on the applicability of Sunshine Law and County mandates that place constraints on AC community-based stewardship of CDPs, and the ongoing challenge to develop a robust approach to Community Planning,” he added. “In addition, the CDP team will continue to collaborate on other planning initiatives, including but not limited to the continued work of the General Plan Comprehensive Review.”
Kona Councilwoman Rebecca Villegas said she was “disappointed and deeply concerned” about the change.
“Today I’ve been inundated with calls and emails from concerned constituents, many of whom were volunteers actively participating on the action committees,” Villegas said Tuesday. “I have questions about the legality of the Planning Department suspending the provision of these services when the Kona CDP was passed by ordinance. In a time when the public’s trust in government is already tenuous, how can it be wise leadership, let alone legal, to eliminate services vital to the long-term planning for our island home?”
Several boards currently are operating with a number of holdovers whose terms have expired but remain active. One, the North Kohala CDP action committee, has only one committee member, who is a holdover. South Kohala has all nine slots filled, eight of them by holdovers.
The Kona board is also filled, but eight of the nine are holdovers. Ka‘u has eight of nine board seats filled. Hamakua has eight of nine seats filled with two holdovers. Puna has five of nine filled — enough to form a quorum — but three are holdovers.
The CDP action committees are community-based stewards of the community development plan to guide, promote and ensure plan implementation and updates. The island’s six regional action committees implement the CDPs that direct physical development and public improvements and may contain detailed land use and zoning guide maps, plans for roadways, parks, other infrastructure and public facilities, planning for watersheds and natural resources and any other land use matters relating to the planning area.