chair i'd like to before we begin let everybody know that if you have a cell phone please silence mode i'm going to introduce the members that we have today we have member ellie cochran our legislative attorney as well as our committee secretary paul martin remembers just a quick announcements if you are going to going to testify please sign up at the desk in the lobby  upon testifying you'll be limited only to two to today's agenda items please identify yourselves as as well as any organization we represent you'll be limited to for three minutes and i will allow one minute conclusion before we begin i'm going to check in with our district offices office are you there good afternoon miss lono office are you there county council thank you for hearing my testimony regarding a r twenty to an ordinance to consider farm labor dwellings or culture land trusts i do understand that this is a non binding resolution all we want to do is consider this item so i appreciate your willingness to look at this idea which i consider a cornerstone of affordable farming  am the legislative committee chairman for the statewide farmers union and also the vice president so i'm speaking on behalf of the away from asean legislative committee we do consider this a cornerstone of affordable farming  i personally spend twenty four thousand dollars a year on rent because i can't live on my farm i can't build a developing their own would like the opportunity to be able to do that at some point in time as well as to have long term leases on a farm where i could build equity and i do believe that and i'm really grateful for mr dillwyn are for pioneering this concept and doing some very heavy lifting over the years and we have been talking about this for three years now and so i believe it's coming to the point where we can start to enact ordinances and possibly legislation and i do know that at the state level many legislators are really interested in this concept because as we see our ag lands get rezoned and developed there's a distinct possibility someday the land and water may not be available enough for us to feed ourselves and for so for food security and affordability of folks to be able to grow the food we consume this is really important chris is very important that we do it right and there isn't a bunch of waste fraud or just fraud and abuse of these these land trusts but i think that mr bernard has a really good method to deal with that situation by having a credited  institutions like the hawaiian islands land trust or other entities that are as credible as that to do the management and then from the farmers union side we'd be more than capable of running cooperatives within these land trusts to really ramp up our agriculture to ramp up our agricultural production throughout the state to address that the lack of food security we have so again to wrap it up one in the pharmacy and feel that this is a major cornerstone that we can build upon to increase our food security statewide so thank you so much for hearing my testimony and it is i did submitted on march first in writing explore the ability to put in a package to where farm farm worker housing could be put in the initial stages of a cultural land trust i'd like to draw big picture to this in the spirit of my experience twenty one years i've been a farmer now when i turn forty i let go of the tried peas i was swinging on making a living to farm with a pregnant wife who was supportive of me doing it i had no land or equipment but what i did have was my passion to want to and there's a lot of young people here on maui and the state today who are lacking the land and lacking the equipment to be able to do something like this thankfully i was able to create a niche market on the piece of land we are on which is a postage stamp of seven thousand square feet making a living on two thousand square feet of that but that everybody can't do that everybody doesn't have the wherewithal or the or the vision to do that but they say they may have the passion to find their way and if we can clear that way as would dale born or has done in bringing this forward i mean i take my hair off to him you know it's really he's done an amazing amount of body of work and he's so committed in this process so i think as a as a county would be great if we were to facilitate this coming to fruition and coming to fruition in a way that would clear the way for potential farmers who have the passion and want to grow food the concern i have is the fact that our state budget for agriculture is point four percent living in paradise on earth to have even in our county to not have an agriculture department that to where you have to share a committee that's shared with other aspects is is it just doesn't make sense to me so i think once we prioritize our ability to choose truly create food security then you know we'll be able to to reach this to me the message becomes when you when you say that point four percent of the agricultural point for the point four percent of the budget is to agriculture you're basically saying we don't feel that the farmers here in hawaii can support us and grow our food and i beg to differ i know personally we're producing four to five hundred pounds of greens a week for the community and so i just want to echo the fact of what simon just said and as a wife farmers union united we're strong support of this initiative come forward two from the director of the office of economic development transmitting a proposed resolution entitled authorizing a grant of a license of the county real property for the installation operation and maintenance of the electric vehicle chargers and local battery units the purpose of the proposed resolution is to authorize a grant of a lease of the of the county real property to hitachi advance clean energy cooperation in civic center the committee may consider whether to recommend adoption of the proposed resolutions with or without revisions the committee may also consider the filing of county communication fourteen two nine two then we approached the taj to see if they would put to be a part of that system so now we're doing these official licenses to to you know further couch i there are gates there and they do they i haven't been there late enough because i think i better by eleven o'clock at night and they were locked you know and again if we're going to put so it's not nobody can charge cars there of this jump smart grid of electric chargers because we knew people would not adopt e v cars until this grid was created and because of this project it got accelerated far faster than if we had left it up to the private sector and so this is just adding more to the grid and this is all intra gault project of showcasing that a small community like ours can benefit from you know the whole electric charger i mean electric cars and electric charger grid so it just is furthering their their grid and that just makes it easier for the citizens in order to charge their vehicles in more places and these battery storage units are in conjunction with solar arrays that we have and that's also they're trying to showcase that you can store excess solar energy into a battery system and then use it at a time when you know the sun's not shine so it's all part of their demonstration project and we're very grateful to have toci because without what they have brought to i mean i just and we're just trying to get the license i guess official now but it's already been operational it's already been so this is sort of a formality in us after the fact and we're trying to figure out because i know there's been some installations in west maui but i guess that's not part of this program i was just assuming that all of our charging stations were part of this whole networking program but i guess now some is some are chargers some are some are but i think you know there's a lot of moving parts and i'm not really quite getting the full clear picture here those are very good  know those are very valid points i just i think it will hold on i would like to get some clarity for the members on the timeline number one you mentioned that there were there already exists out there various locations and then you mention in the resolution that you you want to establish a license for it toci for the  units that are already there no so not so why don't you distinguish between these go through a timeline what is existing what are you taking over what is actually going to be there are now what are you know is this is this a resolution after the fact i guess the number one question would be have you gone forward before ok we're we did not the only installation that happened before we came to you today was the three that are out front of the county building none of the rest have been built and we're asking unworkable and that was something that the county did on its own outside of jump spar mally so in order to have a kind of a when when the county didn't have to pay for those t be reinstalled out there and have three working chargers hitachi came in and paid for that so that is the only one that is done you know again before we you know came into you but we already had those charging pads were already there a sense all of the rest are were have not been built and we're waiting to build them yes that is that answer ok either a county or some other person had the lease and now they went out of business and somebody else came a fix it so we're just i think transferring a lease essentially or transferring so we give them a bill saying this is how much based on the usage you know what was because we have those records with what the chargers gotcha thank you  i just want to say publicly that we are very grateful for hitachi and everything they brought to this community in showcasing this technology and it's really been a win win for our community and i think the fact that we are light years ahead of the rest of the nation and our density of cars i think speaks volumes to the success of this project thank you  members like to entertain a motion to adopt the proposed resolution entitled authorizing a grant of the license of the county real property in operation maintenance of the electric vehicle quick chargers and local visit japan and seen their operations and video through their choice of the company that is going to do all this installation and we signed up with the program of the project that we are affiliated with i am very honored and very thankful and it's quite it's nice to see that we are leaders once again in the movement of electric vehicles so thank you very much for bringing the opportunity here to our little island and cochran's comments the one thing that we have to be careful of and i don't know if it's not really their fault but we have to be cognizant of is that these vehicles are using gas but are using the road working on the national level because they realized at onset of alternative usage of vehicles not only electric but there's hydrogen there's many others bio diesel and you know a lot of them do not pay any kind of tax or very limited amounts so this is being worked on right now in congress so we can do something here locally but only affect locally is the big picture that needs to be done because until we get us sustainable fund for air our infrastructure needs in this country which is lagging way behind if you will know and anyone who has followed this understands that the difficulty is all these alternative receipt of the following a county communication fourteen dash two one five from me on the matter relating to the agriculture sustainability tools and number two correspondents dated february twenty fourth two thousand and fifteen from me transmitting a proposed resolution and titled referring to the amount of planning commissions a proposed bill to permit the use of farm labor dwellings by agricultural land trusts the purpose of the proposed resolution is to refer to the planning commission's a proposed bill entitled the bill for an ordinance to permit the use of farm labor dwellings by agricultural land trusts the purpose of the proposed bill is to permit the use of farm labor welling's by agricultural land trust with the intent to keep agricultural lands affordable to farmers through the community land trust model of development members the chair does not intend to take action on this resolution but to begin the conversation nonetheless as part of our sustainable agricultural tool box i don't this committee has been examining innovative ways of encouraging and preserving agriculture and ag lands in maui today we will begin looking at a new concept for maui county a method of applying the community land trust model to agricultural properties to reduce the costs of agricultural operations and farm labor dwellings it's the two it's a tool for increasing the viability of agriculture by addressing high land costs and applying the community land trust modeling of housing in agricultural just to what we have to it is i know that we the resolution is to send it to the planning commission but i wanted to give an opportunity for the members of this committee to get the have with us mr dale bowen are and he is a marine biologist by training a former professor of the university of maryland and the former executive director of the whole why an island land trust and trust following a retirement from the land trust in two thousand and twelve mr bonior began an affordable farming project with the goal of providing an effective affordable method of the stablish small sustainable for family farms which includes permanent leases and the ability for the farmers to build equity in their working farm also joining the committee as a resource person is john anderson the executive director of the holiday zero maui who pineapple cane sugar cane is simple and can you get closer to the my early sorry if you sure cane of course is a big challenge and and as we saw on yesterday's paper i think it was you know even so a and b is looking at what alternatives are out there a lot of the substitution that's come in to fill sort of our our loss of farms over the our the the folks who are getting into and so these are examples of things that are going on here i had to show chuck foreigners on a farm picture since chuck and i sat next to each other going all the way through school one hundred fifty years ago here the local demand demand for local agriculture systems lee increasing we constantly hear how the fresh food local food better for us fresh grown farmers markets are blooming local supermarkets all of them now have their local sections and are promoting that locally produced what's really inspiring to me is the educational increase that we're seeing not only in the university where you maui college it's got the ag programs which are designed just to teach people out of put the seed in the ground how to make it grow but how to do the business of farming all the things that one has to do the financial the marketing the acquisition the management of it and there are many young farmers out there who are do not have farms of their own or are on temporarily leased land who want t farms the farm union meetings that are here there are are now nine chapters around the state we have five or two big chapters on maui that are meeting each month there's one hundred thirty to  hundred fifty people that come forth there most of them are the thirty somethings the forty somethings the twenty somethings and these kids are either helping work on farms or they may have a small lease that their own but they're really anxious to be able to be a family farm and of course like all farms your costs go into a whole variety of things and for young farms for small farms it's an even bigger choice and so all of these are the kind of things that if there's a way of facilitating those we're going to get more production out of our local farms and those are going to be part of our self reliance here but the big challenge the huge challenge we're all painfully aware of the cost to land for a young family or young farmer to get on land in which they have control of the land is typically very expensive these are numbers from the last two years that i just had one of the realtors pull out looking at small acreage what they've sold for and das to look primarily for they could it ones where there is water available and it's arable land for them to use and although they couldn't guarantee about the water availability these are the kind of figures that come out when you're trying to look for smaller chunks of so as i said before virtually all young farmers are on least lands simon who testified has a couple of acres but you know he can't he can't have a house on it because he's leasing it and  so it's the cost additionally plus any infrastructure he was to put in or if you tried to get organic certification for it what's his lease is up all of that is gone and so for them to put their own equity in something without building an equity to come back is a disincentive be the kind of farm that they would like to be the other means and these are some of the challenges of that short term leasing but one of the biggest problem here is coming is that if you're leasing a piece of farmland whether it's two acres or a thousand acres if you're leasing it you cannot build a residence on it there some sorry you cannot build a residence on it there if there was a residence already there you could live in it as a renter but you you cannot build new new buildings there and this is been the challenge for many because for most of these challenge especially to the agriculture in certain areas here and so the the question that i wrestled with for years is you know how do we encourage this how do we provide them some kind of security and the types of land that they can turn into good farms and so we came up with this vision to establish this a nonprofit farming organization and right now we're we're working under the auspices of  hawaiian islands land trust is closely involved and we're looking at atlanta would be under permanent conservation for agriculture but that would allow the farms to build the farmers to build some and so in a way this is kind of looking back at a plantation type model where the land trust would control of the land but the farmers themselves are building some the whole operation there  the structure as we envision it the nonprofit would own the land and fee or it could own just very long term leases you know ninety nine year renewable leases would acceptable because that does provide e farmers would be given a very low cost very long term renewable leases that could be passed on to the kids if they were well i'll get what happens if they want to their house but the farm infrastructure that they may put in which could be or it could be a house they build some equity and this is where the non profit of the community land trust model really kicks in because you can get these people in affordable housing it would restrict it to people who are at that low moderate income level there but it opens the door for them to get in these and establish their family farms most of your young aspiring farmers or the young farmers on the slant are in that position now of being that low moderate income it's farming is required no farming no lease and if you lose back and then get it resold again to someone else who fits the appropriate criteria there and that housing would have to be only for people that the family living in it would have to be working on the farm they still have other jobs but they have to be engaged in the farming operation the advantages here of this type of a model that does provide access to the  land and a number of different programs that can help pay for it there it keeps the ground leases low lousy low income family to build and most importantly when that gets sold it gets sold what would be an affordable price for a next owner rather than having elevated to market values there what we envision is a two tiered structure the land trust would be the holder of the land it would work to acquire the land hold the fee interest those are the kind of things that are my tickler specialty of course help oversee the ground leases these are things in the hollow maui john anderson who's here that can answer questions if you wish and speak more to that but it monitors these leases make sure they're doing the farming and does the and they're both monitoring enforcement the best directors to work with a farmers as well as keeping an eye in the land and those are also the great benefit for coordinating things like marketing a quick mentor or supply purchases having a mutual communal these concepts it defines what an agricultural land trust would be has to be a nonprofit it has to be some kind of certified accredited organization and not just well in the land trust world we call them rogue land  it allows that the bill is that set would allow the construction of units without having to go through all of the criteria that currently one does if they're going to put work or housing on their land as it is now if you have a piece of ag land i mean you get the house and you're accessory farm dwelling on it and then you can add one farm worker dwelling for each five acres that you have there it requires that you show in income thirty five thousand or more for a period of time prior to that thirty five thousand a year  and that you either have water or you have a deal with the county to get water there and a farm plan what this would do is say that a certified agricultural land trust could go ahead and get the housing in before you have that history of showing the farm income and so it allows these people instead of spending the money on their their rent somewhere else to be putting their money last bullet point is the way that it's constructed requires that the land trust would have to report every year to the council you know how many people are are many people are in the living in houses what kind of houses have been up what they're producing to work out but it's a concept that those of us looking at our local sustainability our local self reliance see this as a very productive way trust there are a few details that we need to work out i believe that by the next time that we present this on the floor we will be ready to actually address some of those issues members the planning department is very supportive of this concept i think it it has a potential of assuring local agricultural production as the president of agricultural land and food or you know flowers or other crops for for the whine islands that's this is a good concept i look forward to working with this about the number of homes on a lot sure does not specify how many homes you can put on a lot and traditionally you think about it traditionally with our history of plantations you had a lot of  welling's i mean if you're talking about a farm land trust like this and everybody who is farming on it it could be a really good concept and be perfectly allowed under five i mean of person owned or at least one hundred acre lot they would only be allowed to the two or the three actually only if they owned it the two or the three dwellings right they couldn't get much more than that are they allowed like mr boehner said one for every five acres are allowed the first farm dwelling as of right with a you know once you get a farm plan approved have to implement that farm plan in which more than fifty more than half of the property is in some kind of agricultural production but that c gricultural water rates and a number of it's not impossible but it's it's difficult it's more difficult to do this would simplify that and under the farm and that's the big thing is very concerned about people taking advantage of it and not doing the farming which is kind of what happened with our two acre farm so that is one concern because with this model instead of you know one person getting maybe two or three dwellings you now get in that same hundred acres if it was owned or at least by nonprofit and then you had people that were sub leasing each five acres if you will to do their own farm you get out twenty homes something that normally would have one or two which i understand works as long as it's continued on in farming but i just see the you know again as mr victor you know keeps pointing out to me about what i say is you know eighty percent or ninety percent of the people  do what you want to do it's the ten percent that we have to figure out who's going to find those loopholes if we can cover those loopholes i would be more comfortable with it but you know that there are people out there that say oh good i now i get twenty farms i'm going to have my own nonprofit organization land trust and i'm going to rent out twenty farms that are each have a go on it and it's that i mean it's just because this is what we are doing in countering now similar things like that i just want to make sure we don't have that same problem this is a great idea that loved to have sees are actually farming yeah this i mean it let me step back one step when when we developed this idea went around to talk to just a very wide range to landowners to  developers to farmers to have them because what we're trying to do is avoid the loopholes where somebody could come up with i can see how it can turn a slippery slope you know with someone who lives in a in  agricultural development there in which out of i think it's one hundred forty lots in our development and i would guess there's no more than six people who are doing what you would in sitter farming which seems to be true of most of our ag subdivisions now the real question is just what you said how do you assure the way a ground lease works through a community land trust model it lays out very specific things because land trusts are very specific things that are identified in federal code the i r s recognizes them the feds have unique definitions of them we have to we as land trust have to meet those definitions for example for naleo maui to be able to access some of these affordable housing funds they have to meet very rigorous types of standards and demonstrate that they do it they monitor their keep up to it the reason we have accredited land trusts now is because of some of these slippery slope land trusts in the past this really came to a head about ten twelve years ago  i was part of a crew that helped develop the plan for accreditation and it's a very rigorous one that a conservation land trust goes through with a re accredited every five years if you're very heavily scrutinized you know you have to do your annual monitoring reporting the enforcement if there's issues coming up and this is the discussion that we're now having with planning is what is the best way to certify that it's a legitimate organization for the moment my feeling is if you if you identify the land trust have to be either nationally accredited or have gone through the certification process that hud requires that that is an effective measure of is this a capable organization the way federal laws is written should something happen should a land trust have to go out of business go bankrupt whatever the last has very specific guidelines for how a court of jurisdiction has to reallocate those assets to an equivalent type of an organization or one that could carry out the mission of that organization so there are controls there the part of the part of the question that we're wrestling with now is ok how can the county best keep an oversight on this acquire these because again the concept is to put a multiplicity of smaller farmers doing five acres twenty acres forty i saw a different dimension which is great you know allows a lot people to get on and farm and but she young farmers all or farmers you know i again you're such left out there in the cold if you want to use a pond and so i would i just want to see is there a plan of were either to donate to my nonprofit or to sell at a bargain sale right you get a big tax break there from from the feds and there's if you look at the way these agricultural developments are being done now where you know you have so many two acres and so many twenty five records these bigger acreage generally sit around and often the big left over  you know that that's all they are as valid to have those kind of things for a developer for a landowner sometimes it's a benefit to them to say well look i'm going to get all this income from selling all of these will that was part of the discussion we had with some of the landowners some of the developers and there were developers people who you all know and said wow no if something like that was in place right now we could figure out how to make this how to  and again that's going to dampen a lot of this because it's going to be costly to put in any kind of in any of these areas because if you go to west there's a lot of federal land there you could do a lot of farming there but it's awfully expensive to get agricultural water into that area so again i don't want dampen the plan i guess there's more work that needs to be done mr chairman and the concerns will be raised when you come back with a final final plan of action i think then i'd ask more questions fair shot to survive and if we're not if we setting them up to fail then i'm not really exactly keen on that idea and i know you're not to make you exact you know but you know i'm going with this absolutely ok thank you thank that's jack i should say that that one of the things that we bill before you but i also believe that we do work slowly with it so that we as the members and understand the concept first and then work you know work with the planning department to get more of the concept and and i said well you know here's here's the type of checklist that could you know the question is how to do that quickly effectively to meet the counties come for we're definitely in support of this concept and we'll figure a way to make it work very good and then i know it's a work in progress but in relation to enforcement any type  that may be imposed or you know in relation to the whole registration bit and it's only valid for a period of no more than five years and if people continue on without renewing anyhow these things are actually addressed and sort of spoken about in this version but i'm sure if there's any comments towards that aspect of this right now those are those are all things that we're going to be discuss ok ok very good and i understand sure that we're looking to forward this to the planning commission says yes we're going to work on some more of the language within the bill before you today just so i just wanted to have these ten of it i was involved greatly with trusts twenty percent of my general practice was involved in trust so to me this is a really interesting concept when you're taking on the trust trust and how reliable they are in terms of securing the lads and you're combining it with an affordable housing trust like  so you're combining it together that concept where you can get affordable farming for multiple families on one property and the trust itself could is the owner of the land so when it comes to selling the land for keeping the price of the land down it will keep it will be also the trustees under the trust documents that's all well and good my concern is we're going to with all the houses that are on the land if this trust goes away etc or if the next generation doesn't want to farm of the families that are there that they don't want to farm  the land trust has the full right to say farming is part of it you have to be doing the farming you're going to lose your lease you know and you're going to have to sell it get off the land and so it's got a farm family unit there's some other interesting little twists that we're wrestling with what happens when you get an elderly farmer who gets to the point where they can't farm anymore and you know we've talked about ways in which you could sort of bring in the young farmers to work with them there and basically  the farmer buy them out over time there but that all i can say is that monitoring and enforcement or to land trusts both community and conservation that's our mission if we do this why it's important to have a good strong land trust where required by the i r s to build up really like it just trying to figure out how to get get around the scofflaws to help and that's why we're here yeah yeah you've got you get this set up and you've given  know the the right to have this farm and live in this build this house and live in this house and then he decides bam not going to farm anymore it's really really really hard to kick somebody out of the house a family out of the house and take away in title minutes so do you have that factored into your your model because that's one the root of why we use a sustainable leasehold model instead of a fee simple with deed restriction model fee fordable housing has been done on this island using short term deed restrictions where you're delivering fee simple ownership which is a legally a full bundle of rights deed restrictions start pulling some of those rights away and courts can intercede and say no you can't do that but community land trusts model never delivers the full bundle of rights in the first place that owner does not get the simple to the land we give them a sustainable leasehold that is designed to be affordable and homeowner friendly as opposed landowner friendly but we have the right to have a resale formula in there that governs completely the price that that property will be soledad also we have clauses that they have to live in the house as their principal residen we have an annual certification process to document that requires us to do that so the model works it's not legally challengable by taking some of those rights away we never gave them in the first place and when a homeowner enters into a lease with us they go through an extensive counseling process and legal review with summaries of it with signed statements that they understand what they're getting themselves into and what they have to do and what they own and what they don't own and they own the improvements and kelly can sell the approved ment's based on an appraisal based resale model and it has turned out to be successful we've had a resale where we went through the whole formula it worked exactly as it was theoretically designed to work for the homeowner got a share of the equity they moved off island they were happy we got the house back but another family and it was affordable first time affordable the second time it will be affordable the third time those concepts can be married less current land people that are banging down your door to offer this land to you apparently and you did well for it for for some reason a lot of the land look at them not at the moment because they were they will be more convinced when they see a law in place that's that's it that's yeah but you know people who  are in a development process are doing the preliminary subdivisions are doing this have told me while i know if this was in place now that we jump on board i can't afford to sit and wait to see what happens here you know i but money invested we got it moved so yes there are and we looked it chunks of land in various places certain places will be a lot more amenable to this you know haiku where you don't have quite the same water problems you much what's going to be taking place at our mary energy conference which starts on march twenty fifth of this month and as you know this is a conference that's co presenting by the mayor's office of economic development and economic development board and we have now economic development board who are represented here by a frank durango and doug macleod our former energy commissioner is here as a program committee member for the conference so we're going to just show you we have the website up and this is basically the home page of the website we're just going to show you we currently as of today we have two hundred twenty one signed up and paid registrants for the conference and there was an early bird price and we're now into the late registration phase which is now fo ninety five and we did give some scholarships out to folks on at ninety five dollars scholarship rate and they had to basically their website is it now energy conference dot com but yes oh there we go ok great and so we have keynote speakers scattered throughout the program and of course the merrow be speaking but one of the one of the speeches that i think people are particularly waiting for is the president of next era energy transmission company and then also the president of he will be doing this each in the morning and then we continue on and then we have a panel discussion talking about understanding the evolving role of the customer and this conference is the whole entire focus of this conference is on a consumer of electricity so it's on the customer the role of the customer what the customer needs are and how that has changed you know from the you know the way electricity was delivered to customers in the past so there will be a panel about that and we have some very good speech on that panel and then moving on talking about the concern the customer of the twenty first century and what kinds of things are they going to want what kinds of flexibility are going to want and we know that one of the major things that they want is they want to be able to put more alternatives from their homes on to the grid homes or businesses and then of course this conference all of the fees do include lunches and it does include is going to be moderating a panel that talks about a process called power and some of you have heard of this they've done i think four hundred different people now in the community have been through this process another eight hundred gave feedback via some forms at the county fair so in a way this is a process they're going to be reporting on and then moving on advancing toward grid modernization meeting customer  i think that these are legitimate experts at the national level the growth of distribution generation good or bad for the customer and we'll have the reception at the end of the first day and then going to the second day now we have this very early panel going on that is at seven thirty in the morning and it is in fact moderated by frank to re go and this is going to be a focus it's just a matter we focused panel and so if you wanted to come early to the conference on that day could see this is going to be senator baker will be a part of this as well as you can see several  and then kind of recap from day one as we move into the second day's program and our keynote speaker mark tony tell us a little bit of this organization is a very active organization in california in terms of consumer rights and with this conference we always try to have some balance this would be considered the side of regulating the attilla tea and doing more for the consumer so  landscape and that is just talking about the role again as you can tell as a consumer of electricity people are a lot more vocal they have a lot more needs they want a lot more from their energy company money that investment would be repaid that if they did it under an order from the utility commission that that the compact the tradeoff was you know in exchange for good service they would be assured to get their money back it basically things are changing so fast in this business that a lot of the traditional notions don't make sense anymore and this will be an interesting discussion you can see that's one of the commissioners dad is a very vocal guy who did energy work nationally before he went  here then we go onto session eight and looking after the the customer you can see that's the chief attorney for the p c acting as the moderator and again this is make sure we have balance so we have the consumer advocate for the state we have the director for turn and we have someone from the national consumer law center again disbalance balance balance so important for what we're  a lot of people are always interested to hear what conny allow us to say or she's still the chairman of the electric and so we have her speaking again as well as austin energy which is a very innovative utility from the midwest there  so i can't tell you how i think important i think this conference is the amount of information that people will gain from being there i know that several of us attended last year and i think that it was an immersion in to the entire energy world and all of the issues and now we're going to dive deeper and we're going to get into you know the customer side of it so and i wanted to follow up with who our sponsors are that have signed on to our conference so far they are and the trade show is really very very interesting and that will be taking place again up in mark gado hall at the met all of this takes place at the mac and we are exceptionally proud to to produce this we have worked together great as a team between the two organizations and so i would welcome any questions that  you mr chair it's been a pleasure actually this is my first time on the program committee for the conference and it's been quite a learning experience for me as well my economic development board has always been happy to collaborate with the county and especially in terms of educational and cutting edge kinds of conferences like this one and this and tina have both said we've bought a very unique group of people together to be able to talk about energy issues and especially for the molly panel what we're going to try to do after the first day is to be able to take those lessons that were talked on a national level and see how those apply to molly especially so we're going to try to tease out from the participants in the molly panel ok this is things we've been talking about so what do you think about that how do you think this applies to molly what are the dynamics that occur on molly county that make us such a focus on the national level in terms of looking at renewable energy and integration of new technologies so i think this is going to be a very exciting conference i think the fact that we've actually gone out and asked four hundred mile island residents about what they think about the energy future and we'll be talking about that at the conference i think there's you know it's not only just the national in the state full state focus but i think there's also going to be a concentration of what's happening here on maui and see how those lessons apply so my economic development board is very happy to be involved in this process and we're also happy to participate thank you i guess what our committee would request from the maui economic development board is if you could your conclusions at some point you of those reports things like that that you could provide to us as a a relation to the company here well just this this program took on the focus of the consumer so i think they start building all the programs around them and so i don't know if and project came into the mix and we're trying to keep this on a wider focus like we are having now you know people come from all over the country to this conference is not just so we want to really wide to that policy that you know problems that are happening all over the country right well thank you and you know somebody like me who lives off the grid who really has no chose which is totally self sufficient in you know intentional farming practices intentional living and i guess they call are equal villages type concepts so just i don't see any kind of focus on that because i guess this is just primarily consumer generated that feed off or utilize existing utility companies per se so as for it being broad range and open that side of the picture is totally cut out of this me yeah it's interesting it's all good and i know it does affect majority of our community because most people are tied to the grid system so just share a thought and how i personally can relate you know to being off the grid and i think others here also probably would like to see i don't know some type of technology that may be heading towards that way i think that's what renewal being renewable that prices get to a point at which the consumer and because of technologies that have been developed the consumer is kind of at the point where they can start looking at those choices and that did actually come out  because my sister got to live on that no grid stuff and so i understand all that fortune the question i have for you is is there going to be there when these panels are speaking when they're talking about their particular expertise in areas because we're bringing them all over the nation will that have some relationship to our systems only keep the questions questions along the lines will be can help us here give us better ideas to avoid some of the pitfalls they might have gone into you know maybe you can answer that yeah i mean i think that everyone has in the audience going to be making those those lines to you know what applies to their area and they say hey you know hey yeah we're facing that and we're facing that and so there's something you know clearly for everyone to glean i mean clearly there's going to be some focus on the hawaii on the hawaii you know issues and of course with the lady from colorado and all those different issues that you know even though they might not be directly or indirectly you came right back to absolutely you know and it's travis i'm looking forward to this i hope that the communities that have meetings on those days are going to make some lots of you know revenue from the registrants and we have basically gotten this to be a self sustaining advance and that they made enough revenue last year that the county sponsorship was already included for this year so we're hoping that we can achieve the same again this year for next year so anyway so members and the other questions   this will conclude today's agenda and i thank everyone for being here on this late afternoon and everybody have a great weekend and be safe