Mountain View Village Community Meeting

[Radiopeg]

MOUNTAIN VIEW
LONG RANGE PLAN

COMMUNITY MEETING
October 18
6:00
Mt. View School Cafeteria

Join your neighbors in helping to
create a Village Center Plan
for Mountain View


Contact 430-1777 [?]

[kalakoa]

This is the part of "development planning" that confuses me.

The "village commercial" part of Mountain View is already obviously established, and even includes room for growth, why does it need a "long range plan"?

[Radiopeg]

For the same purposes that any community has a community development plan. Communities want to manage the appearance and functionality of their community. Growth, where is it and how does it look. Do we want open space? Do we want more businesses? More parks? One example was brought up by people opposing the new auto shop going in on a curve where traffic will put people at higher risk for accidents, and it is going in on a property that was residential. Mountain View was a thriving place at one time, and I would like to see it happen again, in an orderly, safe, manner. We need to encourage the infrastructure that will be supportive of this idea. We also want to know when we buy a property for one purpose, like a residence, that a new convenience store can't be built next door. Planning works on a lot of levels. We want community involvement, and want people's input to this embryonic plan.

Peace and long life

[kalakoa]

Ah yes, the auto shop. While that property is technically "residential", it's between the post office and the Telcom switch, neither of which are "residential" nor "agricultural"; subject property also includes frontage on Old Volcano Road, which would provide alternate non-highway access if any development were ever allowed to actually occur.

The fact that Mountain View has empty buildings and vacant commercial property suggests other problems with any "long range plan".

[dwedeking]

Kalakoa, Your forgetting that the small business owner/operator didn't build that. They didn't risk their capital (savings), design the product/service, sacrifice time away from family and friends to get their ideas off the ground. It's the committees and politicians (you know the ones that have VAST experience as owner/operators building something from scratch) are the ones that build these businesses that create local jobs and local incomes and independence. As you can tell by the economic boom times that we live in and the vibrant and exciting local economy (the connected and large corporations that can purchase the connected).

LOL, Hawaii can't even make grass skirts and coconut shell bras to sell to tourists, we get those from Bali. What a sham (unfortunately all of America is that way, you just see/feel it more here because the local economy survives on pension funders and .gov hand outs).

"Government is good at one thing: it knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, 'See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk." - Harry Browne

[kalakoa]

The "community development plan" is apparently incapable of fixing the underlying "zoning problem"; the PCDP is really no different/better than the old SUP, it just has more "process". Governments love "process", because it means "committees", which translates into "no decision, no responsibility".

Example: CV zoning is contentious because "we can't control what happens after the zone change" -- some of the people involved have discovered that you can't, in fact, restrict activities that are outright permitted by a particular zoning.

Simple fix: create a restricted CV zoning, or enact an "adjacency clause" that constrains border parcels (height limit, quiet hours, no "manufacturing" uses, more setbacks on the boundary with adjacent non-commercial zoned properties, etc). This seems to be what the PCDP is attempting to accomplish, but it would be far simpler to define NIMBY in the zoning code so that it's fair and equitable to all.

Long-term, if you make the development process difficult/expensive/opaque enough, you will only attract large corporate interests who have plenty of money and lawyers to engage you. Walmart has started building "neighborhood" stores; they could probably install one in downtown Mountain View if they wanted, even if the nice folks down at Planning managed to drag their feet for a few months.

[Clayton]

I remember that back in the early 70’s Mt View had an active commercial center that was a great asset to the community. I believe that the problem now is that a couple of landowners are sitting on these commercial properties w/o developing them because they are being taxed at a lower rate than if they where used as commercial property. If the community gets involved and the tax code changed (which will not happen w/o community involvement) then Mt View can once again have a valuable community center

[bluesboy]

can elaborate on what exactly that active commercial center was? what types of businesses/activities occurred there? where were these business located at? how has it changed?

[Radiopeg]

I have been told there was a moving house, and at one time a laundromat. I heard the laundromat closed due to waste water issues. Maybe others have more information.

Peace and long life

[Clayton]

When I was visiting a friend of a friend in Mt View back in the early 70’s I remember that there where several Mom & Pop stores off the main Hwy in the Mt View Commercial area. I talked to a friend from Pahala last week and she remembered a butcher shop with slabs of meat hanging in the window and a barber shop but could not remember what other shops where there, just that there where several.

Radiopeg’s mentioning a laundry mat there that had to close bec/ of waste water might have meant that there were sewage problems. I’ve also heard that there was a movie theater there