Musings: Fresh Start

I returned from India, where the weather and plants were similar to Hawaii, to my sister's house in New Mexico, where it is full-fledged spring.

As in flowering bulbs.

Leafing trees.

Riotous blooms.

Roadside wildflowers.

Brilliant color. 

And it was all the more dramatic for having emerged from bare limbs, cold soil, stark landscapes, the desert.

It's been decades since I experienced a real spring, with its vivid reminder of renewal; bees, birds and blossoms heralding the circle of life and its unceasing cycle of life and death, constant change.

It's easy to forget that in Hawaii, where the seasons are subtle, the temperature range is minimal, the landscape never really sleeps.  

Still, there is hope of a fresh — and legal — start for the Kauai homestay industry. The county planning commission, acting with uncharacteristic swiftness, yesterday approved an ordinance regulating homestays/B&Bs. 

As important as the speed was the simplicity of the bill, which clearly defines the use as requiring a live-in homeowner and caps the applications at no more than 10 per year.

Attorney Jonathan Chun has helped numerous illegal TVRs become legal and is now assisting other properties — some of them actually unpermitted TVRs — in getting licensed as homestays/B&Bs. He claimed the county's recent crackdown — replete with cease and desist orders — was unprecedented and unfair.

They responded, they ceased and desist, they come and file an application, and then the county tells them, ‘Sorry, it’s too much for me to handle. You’ve got to wait 10, 15 or 30 years and we’ll get to you.’

Well, so be it. It's a special use, which means they aren't entitled to it, it's a privilege. And if they have to wait, that's just the way it goes. No reason why the county should overload its permitting — oops, I mean planning — department with applications, or inundate neighborhoods with more resort uses when some communities already are reeling from the onslaught of legal and illegal TVRs.

And just because the county has never previously been so aggressive in its enforcement actions, doesn't mean it should continue to slack for the benefit of the homestay operators who got caught in the sweep.

As planning director Michael Dahilig noted, the county has sent out fewer than 100 cease and desist notices, with most going to illegal TVRs, which is entirely proper. 

Unpermitted TVRs have been a big problem for a long time. They aren't fair to the people who got permits, and they aren't fair to the communities that suffer the impacts of uncontrolled resort uses. Nor is it fair for unpermitted TVRS to now masquerade as homestays. So good on the planning department for cracking down the charlatans.

Only 16 notices went to homestays, which is pretty minor in the overall scheme of things, despite the sky-is-falling stories that homestay operators and their guests have taken to the local newspaper.

Under the ordinance approved by the planning commission, they could all be legit in two years — not the 10, 15 or 30 that Jonathan claimed.

The County Council still has to approve the ordinance, so it's unclear how they may alter what appears to be a winning formula. But at least it's off to a strong start, and it appears the planning department is committed to making it work.

Hope springs eternal.