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WAILUKU - In presentations to the Maui, Molokai and Lanai planning commissions in August, county Director of Public Works Milton Arakawa presented some hypothetical examples of the difference between requiring "conformance" with all land use designations for subdivisions, or requiring "consistency."

Neither term is defined in the County Code.

But conformance has been taken by the Department of Public Works to mean that an applicant must have designations that conform to the same category in all the levels of government review. These include state land use classification, county general plan designation, county community plan designation and county zoning.

For example, consider an owner who wants to build a school. He has state urban, public/quasi-public community plan designation and county R-1 residential zoning.

All three allow for schools, but since R-1 is not P/Q-P (the zoning set up for schools), the application is not in conformance all the way through, and subdivision will not be allowed. (If the owner doesn't need to subdivide, he can go ahead and build.)

Or, consider a person who wants to build a single-family house. He has state urban, community plan single-family and A-2 apartment zoning. A-2 allows for single-family houses, but because it does not conform to single-family zoning, subdivision will be denied.

However, if the standard were changed to require "consistency" among land uses, in each case subdivision would be allowed, and that is what a bill currently pending before the Maui County Council would do.

But those are comparatively simple examples.

Some lots have different community plan designations for different parts - they might be divided between designations of hotel and open space. Such a lot could never conform, under existing rules.

And some community plan designations do not have any matching zoning, like service-business-residential.

In those cases, subdivision would never be possible under the law as it exists today, according to Arakawa's presentation.

Arakawa told the commissions, "We believe that consistency is a fair and reasonable basis on which to approve subdivision of land in the county of Maui."

He proposed that since use of land is the domain of the Planning Department, the planning director should be the one to decide whether an application is consistent across all levels of regulation.

* Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.