The County of Hawai’i has not much more luck getting Pu’uwa’awa’a Ranch to comply with its rules and regulations than the state has had. The most conspicuous area of noncompliance has occurred in the area of building permits for structures and improvement.
In November 1985, county employees from the Departments of Planning and Taxation visited the ranch to investigate “alleged violations of the county’s building grading, and zoning codes.” They found there an airstrip and two hangars, a guest house and a party house on the shores of a large reservoir, and two sheds – all constructed without building permits. “Please advise me on how you wish to pursue these violations,” Rodney Nakano wrote Planning Director Albert Lono Lyman. The airstrip and hangars, the houses and one shed were built sometime after 1973, Nakano informed Lyman. The second shed was built around 1979, he said.
(Building permits do more than assure the county that structures conform with county standards. Copies of the permits are forwarded to the Department of Taxation, so that real property taxes can be adjusted accordingly. Because no permits had been applied for, real property taxes on the improvements were not made from the time they were built until after the 1985 inspection, when they finally were added to the tax rolls.)
Lyman followed up with a letter to ranch owner F. Newell Bohnett, informing him that, with respect to the airstrip and hangars, “you must submit a special permit application to this office within 30 calendar days.” With respect to the other buildings, “please secure building permits for these structures,” Bohnett was told.
Bohnett followed through on the special permit application for the airstrip, winning the Planning Commission’s approval in April 1988 – some 14 years after its construction. The permit is conditional upon Bohnett agreeing not to use it “for any commercial purposes not directly related to animal husbandry, including, but not limited to, pilot training, commuting to other airport facilities, sightseeing, hunting, etc.” Bohnett is also to make an annual report to the county of the number of flights per month and their purpose, among other things.
Bohnett’s reports for 1989 and 1990 are identical except for the dates. They report between eight and ten flights a month from O’ahu to the ranch – notwithstanding the ban on “commuting to other airports” contained in the permit. (While Bohnett has his private landing field on the Big Island, he does not have one on O’ahu and must resort to using “other airports” for his commute to the ranch.)
And the request, back in 1985, to secure building permits for structures which, even then, were ten years old? By February 1991, Bohnett still has not made the applications.
Volume 1, Number 9 March 1991
Leave a Reply