LIHU‘E — Two and a half years in the making, a bill that would allow farmers to build additional dwellings for their workers is two steps away from becoming law.
If the Kaua‘i County Council votes in favor of the bill Wednesday, all it will need is Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.’s approval.
“The intent of the bill is to allow accessory use for farms,” Councilman Jay Furfaro said. In other words, farmers would be able to build additional dwellings on their property without adding to the density equation.
Farmers will have to meet three criteria to be allowed to build up to three additional dwellings on agriculture-zoned lands.
The bill was fashioned after a similar one in Maui County, but the Valley Isle only requires two of the three criteria be met. The Kaua‘i version will require that all criteria be met.
Annual inspections will enforce the rules. If a farmer fails to keep up with the criteria, the dwellings will have to be removed from the property.
Farmers will have to prove an annual gross income of at least $35,000, and be able to provide an agricultural plan. In addition, their farm will have to be approved in the Agriculture Dedication Program under the county Department of Finance Real Property Tax office.
If the farm is part of a Condominium Property Regime, the farmer has to have his land enrolled in the Agriculture Dedication Program before the date the ordinance goes into effect. The measure is to discourage agriculture lands from being subdivided to allow more houses.
“We have to be very careful; we did not want any abuse where people call themselves farmers and apply for the farm-worker housing,” Furfaro said.
The bill says each single-person dwelling can not exceed 650 square feet, and single-family homes can not exceed 1,200 square feet. The combined area of all additional dwellings can not exceed 1,800 square feet.
Furfaro and former Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura co-introduced the bill almost three years ago. Yukimura left the council to run for mayor in 2008, but kept an active stance in helping craft the bill. (She has announced her intent to run for a seat on the council this fall.)
Yukimura said that through discussions with active commercial farmers, a logical and workable ratio would be a cap of 2,400 square feet at a rate of 1,200 square feet per $35,000 gross receipts.
Furfaro said that there has been criticism that larger houses could lead to abuse, but the issue could be revisited in the future.
“We’re learning how to swim; we don’t want to go to the deep end of the pool,” Furfaro said.
Another reason Furfaro said this bill is so important is that it sets parameters. The state is currently running a project to identify Important Agricultural Lands on all of the islands. The lands will be ranked based on water accessbility, location and soil quality. The project will likely include guidelines for farm-worker housing too, but will take two to three years to finalize, he said.
Between now and when the IAL is finished, Furfaro said without this bill there are no parameters when farmers apply for farm-worker housing before the county Planning Commission. Furfaro also said that when the IAL is finished he hopes the state will adopt the guidelines set by Kaua‘i lawmakers.
Yukimura had some concerns about the way the bill was crafted. She said that the final version of the bill still allows a CPR division of the land after the farm-worker housing is built. After a CPR is authorized, she said, there’s nothing you can do to reverse it.
Yukimura also pointed out that the Agricultural Dedication deadline criteria unnecessarily discourages new farmers, barring them from applying for farm-worker houses because they didn’t have the dedication by the date the bill was signed into law, even though they have met other criteria.
The fines and lien provisions that were in an earlier draft of the bill were excluded in the final version. Yukimura said it weakens the bill, and although she understood the issue will be addressed separately and more comprehensively, she thinks it should be done as soon as possible.
Furfaro said the county will be looking into defining violations and fines as early as November. The fines, he said, need to be unified for all land designations.
But even if there’s a gap between the time the bill would come into effect and when fines and violations would be set, Furfaro said violators would still suffer severe consequences.
“If they do not meet standards now, the bill allows us to have that facility removed; that’s bigger than a $500 fine,” Furfaro said.
“We would like it to be tighter,” Roy Oyama of the Kaua‘i Farm Bureau said about the bill. He said there are still other mechanisms that can be used to build extra dwellings on agriculture lands, but they are lengthy and complicated.
Oyama, however, was pleased that all three criteria made it into the final version of the bill that will go before council for a vote next week.
Louisa Wooton, who co-owns Kunana Dairy farm in Kilauea, said the Agriculture Dedication deadline criteria does not help future farmers very much. But overall, she’s pleased with the final version of the bill. She has been involved in its crafting since the beginning.
“It’s not a perfect bill,” she said. “You couldn’t please everyone.”
The bill, she said, is going to help some “really good, bona-fide, food-producing farmers.”
The Wootons have been struggling to find workers who can afford living in the vicinity of their farm, where a single room could cost higher than $1,000, Wooton said.
“It’s going to help our operation,” she said. “The cost of housing here is extremely high; we need people living on a farm.”
Wooton said the bill is the result of the most collaborative effort she has experienced between the community, the agricultural interests, county workers, council members and the Planning Department.
“We’ve had these meetings for almost three years now, and it included all these different people,” Wooton said. “To finally get to this stage, I think the meeting went well.”
Visit www.kauai.gov for more information and meeting agendas.
• Léo Azambuja, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or lazambuja@kauaipubco.com.
