HILO, Hawai'i — The Big Island County Council has declared a pause in all major rezonings for Puna, signaling that it wants to hold off on any new development proposals in the fastest-growing region of the state until a citizen working group completes a new community plan for the area.

The council voted earlier this month in favor of the "temporary delay" on Puna rezonings until Sept. 1, 2008. The move affects new projects on nearly half of the island — more than 1,800 square miles.

The council earlier this year approved similar non-binding resolutions deferring rezonings in North Kohala and South Kohala, and in North Kona and South Kona. In each case, the delays in rezonings were passed to give citizen groups a chance to complete new community development plans.

The Puna resolution will not affect rezoning applications that have already been filed with the council, and also will not affect state public works projects including public housing projects, housing projects for the elderly and homeless, or Habitat for Humanity projects.

Puna has been the scene of explosive growth in housing in recent years, with new residents moving into the area to build homes on some of the more than 50,000 Puna lots that were subdivided from the 1950s to the 1970s.

According to the resolution, that pause "will allow the community through a legitimate and deliberate Community Development Planning process, to define how best to solve existing problems, to redress past land-use mistakes and to allocate space for new growth ..."

Puna County Councilwoman Emily Naeole said the homebuilding under way in the rural Puna subdivisions won't be affected by the zoning pause because people will still be able to build on the existing lots.

Since the resolutions are simply statements of intent, the council can reverse itself at any time and approve a project. However, council Chairman Pete Hoffmann said the resolutions are having an impact.

Hoffmann said he does not know of any new zoning applications that were filed in North Kona or South Kona or North Kohala or South Kohala since the zoning delay resolutions were passed for those areas in January and February.

"The developers themselves recognize the importance, I think, of having well-crafted community development plans," Hoffmann said.

"It's been a great assistance to the community development process and gives, I think, a measure of credibility that the county, the developer community and the council actually intend to pursue the development plan as a reasonable approach for global planning efforts in the future."

Critics have said the resolutions don't resolve the real problems plaguing some Kona and Puna communities, where many residents are stuck daily in traffic jams because their populations have grown too large for their limited networks of roads.

The Land Use Research Foundation of Hawai'i has suggested that instead of development pauses, the county should charge impact fees to developers to pay for the extra cost of providing public services needed to serve new development, or create improvement districts to tax area landowners to build new roads or other facilities.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.