Cafe

[Bob Orts]

quote:

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Originally posted by JerryCarr

Does anybody know of a community that size ANYWHERE that does not have a grocery store, cafe, service businesses, gas station, or even a convenience store? Like Carol, I grew up in a much smaller community that had all those things plus parks, a police station, full service public library, public swimming pool, and a small historical museum.

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There probably isn't any. But keep in mind that outside of Puna and Kau, nobody understands what's being discussed. They see HPP as a private housing subdivision. To outsiders, it's not a community like Honokaa, Kailua, Hilo or Capt Cook, it's a private residential subdivision. You might as well be asking for the right to raise cows in Kona Village Resort or to allow garage sales in Mauna Lani Resort. That's why the fuel tax sharing plan is such an uphill battle, because all they are hearing is giving tax revenue to private developers for private streets in private subdivisions. To some degree, they think that the people didn't want these commercial development within their residential streets otherwise they would have had dedicated commercial areas.

It's not impossible to change the thinking, but since infrastructure needs require state approval, you have to convince not the few local district politicians, but all the others. As for commercial zoning and approval, they look at that as a pure local issue and they won't get involved unless it threatens their political position with their voters.

I was in Honolulu last week and I can tell you, there is little support for any fuel tax revenue sharing for private subdivisions, and they find it hard to believe there is no commercial zoning within reasonable distance. Unfortunately, they are applying the same standards to other counties and they look at the areas outside the private residential subdivisions and they don’t see anything out of the ordinary. They are so very reluctant to meddle in the internal private subdivision affairs; which is how they view areas like HPP.