BARELY LEGAL

BARELY LEGAL: Apparently the ugly draft bill to allow illegal Transient Vacation Rentals (TVRs) on agricultural land which we reported upon twice in December is about to illegally rear it’s ugly head at today’s county council’s Planning Committee meeting if a post about it at Mel Rapozo’s newly re-activated Kaua`i Politics turns out to be true

He says that:

I heard a disturbing rumor today. I heard that there will be an amendment on the Council agenda next week that will grandfather transient vacation rentals on agriculture lands until the Important Ag Land (IAL) study is completed.

This info comes along with Joan Conrow’s coverage today of an issue we’ve been lax in reporting upon regarding this year’s ordinance grandfathering illegal TVRs in non-visitor destination (VDA) areas.

Conrow details how, despite the fact that the ordinance says that “any member of the public may initiate proceedings to revoke a non-conforming use certificate or to stop an un-permitted use.”, the Planning Department has been denying those members of the public- some of whom have been fighting TVRs on the North Shore for years- the names of the owners and the locations of the TVRs that are applying for the “use permits” required to get “grandfathered”.

The eligible TVRs, according to the ordinance, have to prove that they had been operating for a year as of the date the bill became law.

But three times now North Shore land use advocates Karen Diamond and former Planning Commissioner Barbara Robeson have appeared before the council with excellent presentations detailing the problems they ran into in finding out who was applying and showing pictures and documents that prove that many apparent TVRs they suspect are applying don’t meet the requirements set out in the ordinance.

To get a full description of their presentation Conrow’s post today is a must read.

Today Bill 2294 is on the council’s agenda. It would tighten up some of the language to force proper scrutiny from the planning department which has just illegally made up rules for the use permitting on the fly without going through the required HRS Chapter 91 administrative rules.

Diamond and Robeson testified at the first reading and the Public Hearing for the bill last year detailing the lack of access to the planning applications, presenting pictures and testimony showing certain owners- including some of those who were finally outed by Conrow today in seven pdf documents that are linked in the article today- would have to be fudging the facts if not outright lying on their application to be eligible for use permits.

Nowhere along the line has Bill 2294 mentioned anything about allowing TVRs on ag land which would be illegal under state law (HRS 205) as we detailed in December when then Council Chair, now vice Chair Jay Furfaro illegally circulated a secret draft of a bill to all seven councilmembers that would do just that by requiring so-called “non-enforcement agreements” between the offending ag land TVR owner and the Planning Department be created.

According to the Kauai County Charter “No bill shall be so amended as to change its original purpose”.

The stated “purpose” of Bill 2294 speaks only of changes in regulations for signage inside and outside the TVR and includes provisions for 24/7 contact information for management persons on the island.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens at today’s Planning Committee meeting which will be chaired by Furfaro but the correct process would be to reintroduce a separate bill. not to sneak in this provision without allowing the public the opportunity to have their usual four chances to testify.

If passed out of committee today the bill would be up for final “second reading” passage at next week’s full council meeting

The absurdity of trying to pass a law that actually directs a county department to not enforce and abide by state law is another one of those “only on Kaua`i” machinations that have marked county council and administration activity for decades.

And for those who are wondering what’s happening with our complaint to the OIP regarding the illegal circulation of the “TVR on ag land non-enforcement agreement” draft bill by Furfaro, we still cannot even get a confirmation that the OIP has received the complaint... much less find out if they are pursuing it... much less find out whether they have even opened a case.