For decades, the public fought against developer-generated and wildly unsustainable growth that was drowning North and South Kona. In the early 2000s, residents turned anger into action, creating a land use plan based on Smart Growth principles. For North and South Kona, this meant passage of the Kona Community Development Plan (KCDP) — an award-winning land use plan made law to change the paradigm of unplanned growth. Inexcusably, the public’s hands have remained tied to a process that saps their energy and good will — with no results. Would the Roth administration prioritize and follow the KCDP as promised, or sideline it to death? That question was answered recently with the administration’s indefinite suspension of all county-organized CDP Action Committee meetings.
The KCDP was the brainchild of stakeholders ranging from developers and Chamber of Commerce reps to cultural practitioners, teachers, farmers and artists. The plan was meant to create a win-win land use map showing clearly where development could and couldn’t happen.
One windfall from 15 years of staying the KCDP course has been a slow-down of nonstop permitting and bulldozing that West Hawaii suffered before the law was enacted. Meanwhile, though, no implementation of smarter growth mechanisms have occurred, including the promises of an Open Space Network plan. All we see are promises, variance requests, pretend “KCDP”-compliant developer proposals, and an administration that seems to support short term vacation rentals and streamlining permitting more than affordable housing or stopping traffic snarls in a sustainable way.
Smarter growth can’t happen without key components of the plan being defined and implemented, including Transit Oriented Developments (aka “villages”) that provide small town amenities in more densely developed cores connected to areas of less dense development surrounded by open green spaces that connect one “village” to the next. (A key tradeoff for those populated village cores is the promise of having “green belts” around them — areas of plenty of protected and publicly-accessible green space with options for car-alternative transportation like walking and biking )
After years of monthly or bimonthly public meetings, the planning director now says the public should organize and hold their own meetings. Why would we take even more time from work and family to do the county’s job when none of our work has born fruit?
The public must push the administration to do its job of providing meaningful public meetings on a regular basis. Holding over existing AC members has helped insure that goals of the CDPs aren’t forgotten. Maybe adding legal limits to the time it takes to implement key components of the plan is in order.
In any case, giving up isn’t an option. As soon as the public turns its back, the move to “business as usual” — the contestant tug felt by everyone who’s been involved in the process — will take over, while the public’s hard work and hope for protective, sustainable land use planning will be laid to waste.
Janice Palma-Glennie is a resident of Kailua-Kona.