asked anyone wishing to provide public testimony on any item i joined eyes for today's meeting is make yourself know you have three minutes three minutes only to give testimony once your time has  center yet we all know that country treating agriculture in one area is not wise disease weather and other conditions can create havoc and weed out diverse locations sustained and consistent hawai'i local production will approved by the legislature a country mile or wise once the center of actual production in the state through a transition over lands you find that many of the farms have changed ownership and the only large contiguous farmland in existence to certainty of the future and you still got a leg access to infrastructure and absence and the absence of urban ag interface issues make the ag park design desirable for the viability molly's level of self sufficiency this measure is consistent with the plan and he's an important factor in to implementing the measure this will provide a means to target agricultural investments for future generations mostly although we did start a new chapter in on our recent weeks of the cooler region falls under the jurisdiction of the chapter i belong to that land is excellent glenn i commend you and thank you so much for considering acquiring it you know i'm in strong support of the a forty eight as well as thirty eight six as our membership i did bring a handout for your viewing pleasure i don't know if everybody got a copy most organic sales of organic products were twenty eight point four billion dollars and then in two thousand and fourteen it was an estimated thirty five billion so every year the sales are growing forty three percent of that market  growing a new generation of producers who do prefer to use organic practices although not everybody in the union does certainly many on maui do and so we have no doubt that those lots will be released and again thank you so much for considering putting that into egg park because as a professional farmer myself access to land is not very easy it's expensive it's not available and long term leases are even less available some of them basically non existent from at least here in maui county i know statewide because i am on the board of agriculture we oversee land leases on every other island from ohio and and they're long they're thirty five years and plus so when a farmer has the access to thirty five year lease they can really make a good investment especially with organics because that's it's a long term process to grow organically so i commend your decision to a couple of questions you talked about organic and whatnot over there is that land suitable for again i haven't had a chance to walk but i know that the coolest soil series it's cold and assault series which is the best soil on the planet so if we were to invest in a parks anywhere on the island it's a cooler would be the place organic or otherwise ok that's good to know the other question is do you know  how much water extra water that's going to take a we have a little bit of concern of typically organic farming uses less water than other practices because there's so much compost and mulch and organic matter in the soil it retains water also leads to office anyone wishing to provide testimony before you this morning is an amendment to add one million two hundred twenty thousand dollars appropriation to the school year two thousand and sixteen budget for the purchase as chair mentioned of twenty one fifty  is here and discuss the ins of the of the actual purchase of that land as the department of finance is responsible for that mr sheriff for here for any questions is well if you need think you can thank you would the end of the day we do have a willing seller and the county has entered into a purchase and sale agreement and we are here along with the management department to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you very much twenty three hundred sixty four square feet i support a big property and pretty big house are you planning to use it in any way for financial mr was do you know of any barmaid that has any plans of utilizing that building until or when we start the actual expansion so thank you for the question member victory now we have done some inspections of the facility and we haven't made any decisions yet on the occupation of it in the meantime before utilize it for another purpose but it is an option i haven't made any decisions yet on that one i would hope you'd come forward soon and in the mirror has an aggressive plan to take care of people in need of housing and i'm not trying to use that as one of them but it's there and it's available and they know me so i know you smiling because we've talked about this before however until we get our campus on the way it is another option that could be put in our arsenal as far as utilization of county propert and that has deteriorated tremendously and that was boarding very remember i was falling for students at m c c but it's county property i know the what is it the hospitality industry is using it but they sure are not doing a good job keeping up my passion all the time and i'm very the i think you can the department or the mr boss fresh my memory in terms of what exactly is that logic what will the be used for in the future it's going to be another building dock the acquisition of that property will be then able to plan for the full use of the areas below on the poor street as well as right now those are isolated from the county property because this building space out of the parking structure than then rather than just to the existing parking lot and going down closer to the newport street as well so those are i mean you know again this area as far as the actual use of it but the county has been wanting to acquire the property so that we have a contiguous lot the whole way so thank you thank you ago but we have an opportunity today to work with again a family that is a willing seller and a county that would like to make appropriate expansion considerations so i think it's a good time you know in our  second we work hard to be able to friend intially deal with this at this moment in time so if they are no further questions for mr walker or mr b two thousand and sixteen budget for the county of my we as it pertains to estimated revenues but look at wholly community planning area government facilities acquisition of real property at twenty one fifty four cole who treat total capital improvement project appropriations and total appropriations operating and care for the improvement projects and i get that bill is to recognize one point two two zero million the second bill a bill for an ordinance amending ordinance number forty two to eight billion number thirty five of two thousand and fifteen really into the issuance of general obligation bonds of the county of my we position a real property at twenty one fifty four and this is bill would be placing the one point two two zero million by amending the fiscal year general  committee is to check motion before you folks only fear the motion please say i will say no motion passes with eight eyes one excused mr carville thank you very much members with no objection the church is going to bring up be a forty eight and b of thirty eight this six at the same time any objection on rather than amending the fifteen authorization bill we sent on a budget to add this project to the fiscal year two thousand and sixteen budget so that's why you see a number of bills there but basically it's the most of the money that's coming to purchase this is from the state as a state grant so we are amending the budget bill to add the grant revenue in there five million dollars and then also we have the resolution authorizing the purchase so it's the three  front of you this morning that were under review and we have the economic development director misty an arrest and here to discuss the actual purchase itself ok thank you very much m ok thank you very much chair so we just passed out our power point we didn't receive permission to use the screen today so we're going to be showing it to be here copies so i like to just run through the basics of this purchase and then be happy to answer questions so the background of the cool areas that there are nearly about fifteen hundred acres of diversify crop time farm families basically their land was they retire ments and of course that has been taking place the gentrification of cool area has taken place the ag park again is one of those fifteen versus the one nine hundred eighty this is a really good map that has been done by a university of hawaii at hilo they received a grant from the state to do a statewide survey and they released this even though their report hasn't come out yet they allowed us to use this map of the cool area if you look at all of the parcels that have the hash tags basically has a little lines through them those who are being farmed in one nine hundred eighty s the solid parcels are all that remains being farmed today so just these solid green the solid purple the solid pink and so you can see a huge decrease in the amount of actively farm land in the cooler region inbred in the middle where today discussing the parcel a hundred forty eight acres and the parcel which is two hundred twenty four acres and just to give you some perspective  reservoir that feeds the cool ag park and so it's rather nice that we're able to purchase this piece because we're actually purchasing the reservoir which was residing on land that was owned by  in addition on that malcolm parcel well i go into that a little bit later and then down in the parcel that is actually across the road across palais who road just below the park so i wanted to just kind of give you an overview of what the current ag park looks like and then what it will look like as we if we make this purchase the current total acreage of the cool at park is three hundred forty six acres there's thirty one lots thirty one active leases so it's completely at least there are twenty one separate farmers and there are eight farmers with multiple lots the annual farm gate value varies between five and seven million this depends on whether of course any one year and the average size or the lot sizes range from five point five to twenty six point six acres the of course being the largest percentage this slide was where we were going to insert our great video overhead video shot of the land that we're looking at  today but not being able to use that i'll just go into the acreage that were looking at expanding so basically we're more than doubling the size of a cool ag park with of with the purchase of three hundred seventy three acres the malka portion has one hundred forty eight acres it's important to know that seventy one of those acres are already being used by three farmers three active farmers in the area  which we have listed their acreage these these farms years ago i think at least fifteen years ago were given permission to pull their water out of the cool agriculture park reservoir so they are already world into the park water system then the remaining acreage that is on farms at this point is seventy seven acres in them out a portion then if you go down to the my parcel to answer councilman couches question this morning about whether it be suitable for again i farming this parcel was all farm to with again  pineapple it has not been farmed for over ten years so even if it had been farmed with regular pineapple having it sit for ten years would would be enough time for it to be used for organic so any way you cut it it's available for again at farming and it's definitely our intention to create lots in that new area that would be suitable for ghana farming they tend to want smaller lots and then we would want to create some kind of buffer zones for them from the other more traditional farming so the sixty four million dollar question is where will the water come from i have included and of course if you wanted the larger documents or two or pages and pages but the crux of it is that the county of maui has an agreement with e m i and b to pull one point five million gallons of water per twenty four hour period for the needs of the ag park and the ranch property that is part of our purchase that we're talking about so with that  average of those we come out to five hundred forty eight thousand one hundred one and one hundred ninety one gallons per day then go over to the next slide and how much water then is available for the expansion so you need to know that if the five hundred forty eight thousand and then there is there are entitle moments that have been agreed to for land across the street that we do not  own it's privately owned and it was called the cool eight hundred subdivision as some of you know we did pursue first actually trying to purchase that land and that deal did not materialize and so then we we started negotiating with ranch so the entitlement at the maximum amount of water that they could pull out i have listed there and that figure so that brings us up to eight hundred ninety nine thousand gallons a day that are committed that leaves us six hundred thousand seven hundred six gallons a day to be used for the remaining three hundred two acres and remember i'm just counting three hundred two acres because you already have seventy that are already being then the next page is from our previous agriculture specialist car crushed moto he's soliciting the college of tropical agriculture to do a study because basically the agreement said that they could not use any more water than pineapple used when it was farming pineapple so they had to calculate what pineapple use was and so that is what this letter from c tar is that they calculated the use of what that pineapple land would use and that essentially is the entitlement for cool eight hundred which comes to three hundred fifty one thousand gallons a day lastly once this land is purchased there will be a face to that's needed we will need to engineer and we will need to provide the water infrastructure for that  lot we'd like to add their engineering costs to our o e twenty fiscal year seventeen budget so that we can get that done and then we will see infrastructure delivery infrastructure from the state of hawaii and federal sources and we did receive confirmation from representative kyle who is the one who secured the five million state appropriation in the first place that he would go back and help us with this phase two funding that we will need to fully develop this plant and that's my presentation so thank you very much won't know that until we actually do the engineering study because we're not exactly sure what they're going to say is going to be required to get the to get the water over there we already know that the  water meters for the cool eight hundred are just have been just brought down from the upper reservoir or across the road and i regret you know gravity fed into their lots were hoping that that could be the would be thirty seven i guess they were purchasing three hundred seventy three acres but we have to determine its true conservation if all of the acreage is usable which looking at the land from above and actually having driven in around the entire perimeter of this property it is very it's very usable it's really it's actually really good land it's really good and it's anybody from water here because i definitely would like to hear from them i don't want to put this on hold because i want to go forward but i'd like to have a little more discussion about the water and the commitments and what they see have had discussions with the department of water supply they do not provide water to the cool part it's all through this agreement through the e m i and in the ditch basically so it's all non water so it's freezing it's run by the department of water supply because the meter the they do charge for the water in the cool act park and then they do pay for the pumping costs for the cool ag park but the actual water allotment not come from you know our county sources so to speak it comes from the dead that's not where i'm coming from year lease and let's see is guy still here could you tell us what the remaining on those licenses are so i think they're at different confident that we will be able to make this happen i will put all of my efforts behind making it happen before we leave office i think this is incredibly important i think these opportunities don't present themselves very often but appreciate your putting the pressure on the state because as as one of the testifiers of us mr russell pointed out  water system upgrades i think that will be we do have the backing of the chair and right of the department of agriculture he has sent a letter and they are backing this purchase and they were actually delighted that we have the cool ag parking structure to be able to manage it because then they don't have to manage it as a state ag park but so we have everything in place that's the beauty of this by having the proximity so close because we have everything in place to manage the property ordinances and and the least structure and how you give out lots and everything as i already there are you aware of what the  what the comparison is between the three leases that will be on the the new portion how the rates compared to what we're charging in the cool i park currently one hundred dollars for a for yeah i think they definitely pay more and there are some that have options on it's of the reasons why i believe it was ten years left on one of them and their leases are higher than what they pay at the current part but we can get you that information if you requested holding up on this but one of the one of the challenges that we have is that the state you know the farmers all compete against each so there are from island to island and the state ag parks provide water to the farmers at fifty cents per thousand and i believe we're currently at about a dollar five so we've modified in my recollection we've modified the reds in order to make up for some of that  data charge for the water so that's so i'm interested in finding out what the guys are currently paying and would we consider i don't know what they're paying for their water but would we consider adjusting their leases to use that is that there's been some parcels that have been leased out but not actually there has there has been some waxing and waning on the use and that's our ag specialists one one of his main jobs is to contact farmers and find out you know what they're doing some of them are you know there's a various stages of land being rested at at any one time in the cool at park there's also rotation be going on so if you see mt follow landers you're seeing more than likely rotation going on because they have to have another field ready to go into but we're we're pretty diligent about tracking that and if we see lots not being used we urge them to turn them over you know assign their leases to the remainder of their leases to new farmers which we do have a list of people that are waiting and and some farms have changed hands over in the last two years so that's a good thing people are wanting to retire there's a mechanism for them to do that good it's good to hear that you've got a waiting list because i mean some people are interested in and doing the farming mr kerry to have the questions of the water department so whenever they're available i'd like to  determined by still conservation and then we would adjust the lease based on that you know if they could not use that then we would take that out of the calculations ok thank you and i guess and then there's one kind of in the middle of the park so it's pumped up and then the gravity flows down and is used from that point that it's how the whole ag park was designed to be able to take the  the county to go and get multiple bid for use of county estimates we have the correspondence dated october twenty first members two thousand and fifteen and i would like him to tell you in his own words incorrectly what he means by this  i thank you chair but when the issue is reasonable purchasing this property with the existing licenses we briefly looked into it and we just wanted to raise the concern that typically colony land when you least it all you go through the concession process chapter one or two h r s or chapter three point four zero makati code you know we looked at it however our view was this purchase is appropriate  we feel it's a can move forward with this if i had to bring it to the council attention that you are buying land with licenses on it our understanding is the licenses will be honor and followed through in accordance with the terms of the existing license we're taking over as license oars however when these licenses expire you don't have to go is we are acquiring land with a license on it we're not doing it to try and avoid any laws or anything which is the land we want to buy happens to be on the license right now so we just wanted to bring that up to the cost of the tension thank you is we're buying it subject to these we kind of have to on our own if you as want to purchase on that way if they were to be amended and changed i would strongly recommend that then you go through the proper concession process or follow the park rules but if you just leave them as is and let them go on their term in expire naturally after the they run their course i don't see a problem is leaving everything  license so naturally to protect the place and see also didn't have a for any reason whatsoever the lease and stormy term any kind of clause in it so we can't just terminate for whatever reason we want to thank you us i believe in the licenses there were extension provisions but i believe most of those have been exercised already so that's why it's two thousand and twenty four as far as the co amending these existing agreements to continue on for there i also would not recommend that i would say at the expiration of these go through the proper processes thank you thank you the questions members on this component of the discussion we are currently discussing items forty and thirty six which sports relates to the cooler agricultural work and the requests for expansion so if you have any questions for the director yes dear think you very much in thinking mr taylor for coming to join us obviously when we ever were talking about a country subject was water becomes very important and it has a whole lot of relativity to this matter we're talking about today because it is in a park and we all know water needs for eg big and i thought it was really important to be sure that we not overlook any question that we should ask and i'm not sure what those questions are and as our resident expert maybe you can help us as we discuss this and i understand from several of my colleagues also have i w have clarification about water it was brought up how much water is used how much water might be needed i think that it's really important you know because i represent entire country  mean you know there are so subject water issues i want to make sure dead people understand people who watch this rebroadcast and read about us granting expansion that they are clear that this is poses no danger to their ability to get water that's really really important and i was hoping you could help explain bad mistress missing try to just you know they go they are not using potable water they are on another system and all of this but we have also heard in this chamber many times that the most expensive place to put farming is a country because of the need to pump water up country and i just want to make sure that we discuss these issues and then we make this decision that everybody is well informed as to what the possible impact of it might be so if you can help with that we got the guy  we be concerned at all about water use in approving this acquisition i think we're always concerned about about everything and maybe just talk about how the system works maybe this will answer the why  twenty seven streams that have diversions in east valley that fill this fill this ditch that is water runs that hold that whole way the come only treatment plant which is our facility is first in line to take water out of that ditch and we take out about six million gallons a day this digit varies from zero to one hundred and something million gallons a day but we basically take the first six the cool and parks at the end and a m b e m i is operation is in the middle and talked earlier about their agreement with e m i e m i is the water supplier for the ag work so from the department of water supply standpoint as long as we get our first six you know we're good what e m i does in the middle with that to make sure that there's still supply meter at each of the lease ease space we measure that water we send them bills we collect the money we take that money we pay the electric bill for the pumps we pay e m i you know for the water by the contract we fix the pumps and we also provide technical support for example when these liners had to be when the president had to be realigned a few years although economic development got the money we provided an engineer to sort of run the project and manage so that's our role we are not the water provider and so i can answer a question it's really for e m i about whether or not there will be and is there enough water all i know is we take the first six million gallons and they're at the end and it's between you know if they're still water there so water doesn't affect their head all we did in that part of the work we've done in water resources committee mirror there's this graph i showed you before that looks like a seismograph ups and downs and it was the ten year ditch flow of this ditch so we analyzed the last ten years to say how often is there enough water for us to get our six million  and that it's a huge reliability ninety nine point something percent reliable and i think we look back ten years and said there's only been a few cases where there was more than like nine days or five days or something where the ditch was only we're how much but remember that ditch is usually flowing one hundred million gallons a day to make us happy department water supply we only need ten and as long as there is ten it's still i've seen it when it's about ten or g d it's only about this deep and that's enough for us to skim off our six whether or not that's enough to make it all the way to the ag park i have no idea so i don't know how often drought effects water getting all the way to the high park because we've never analyzed that i do know that it's very very reliable that or the last ten years there's only been a handful of days where we're we've had to shut down come all the treatment plant because there hasn't been water but as far as you know each cns is needs and how much gets the park that i don't know ok so it sounds to me like another person we might have wanted to talk to was e m i thank you thank you thank you mr carroll questions for mr taylor we five point four million gallons total yes yes ok so that's roughly three days supplied according to our one point five million dollars  according to our numbers the usage at the park is roughly half a million gallons a day right but with the commitment to cool eight hundred an additional space the projection is that it would be up to one point five billion so anyway that's good thank you thank you water to us i think as everyone knows we don't pay for water we don't charge for water people get paid for treatment transmission and distribution of water so a couple of years ago we worked off second development had a had some money for looking into some ag park things and we work with them and we hired a consultant to do a financial analysis of what's it cost him to ron how is that broken down by the projections for the future and so based off of that what we looked at fo sixty six thousand dollars and the revenue from that park in that year was around two hundred fifty thousand dollars so you know we're making that up you know we pay that bills so we make up the difference with just you know general water rates with our our water fund so that's basically the economics of the current and there's a minor cost for our labor and things like that but their electricity is by far the the major cost and the purchase of water and you you also mentioned this is going through the east it comes from my lou right to say it come that it goes all the way to and he does so it's filled from diversions at many many streams as the streams cross the ditch and we know there's a contested case about stream flow etc mr bella talked about but there's some on the other side too there's concerns there that we maybe we need to ads in a contested case in front of the water commission and the case is about how much water can be diverted so essentially the parties are environmentalists who feel that water should be in the streams or left in the streams saying our case was that we need enough for our current operations plus the ag park some of the environmentalist have said one hundred percent of the water should be returned to the streams and none should be diverted so that's what the contested case is about and that's all very public so you asked if it could affect this some of the plaintiffs are saying there should be one hundred percent restoration of water to the stream if there was one hundred percent restoration to the streams the department water supply surface water treatment plants would way that isn't all or nothing that could certainly affect each of the parties because there certainly isn't enough for every reveal what they want so somehow everyone's going to be affected and who gets what i have no idea or i've no idea how long it's going to take cochran thank you chair and think and think you mr coach for asking the question because that was mine too and thank you for somewhat of an update in regards to the contested cases east maui which i believe felt kind of like where ms bice's question was coming from in a sense where although the particle below is being pumped up i mean it stems from one source taylor at this point but that agreement back from my guess from the was in the seventies nine hundred seventy eight or nine or so in regards to e m i agreements i guess for that heard right now because of this agreement having been there more you be in brought out in one nine hundred seventy eight it looks like and here we are two thousand and fifteen looking at contested cases from where the source of definitions what that really means is in navajo the state water commission looked at the end users and said you get this much you get this much they get that much because they got right to the end users including county of maui you're an end user and there that process is still ongoing east now is not a designated area so what's being contested is not the end use is the diversions from the stream so they're just looking at the in stream flow standards so basically the end of the day they're really just going to tell each see an ass or e m i how much they have to leave in the streams now the case isn't going to get to the details of what e m i does with out how much we get around much the ag park as this do state water commission is not going to rule on that like they did in najaf it is not how it was designated so if for example i think what you're reading too is what if e m i gets their allocation for diversion reduced how does that translate to how much of that that they have to absorb how much do we absorb how much does the aardvark absorb the contested cases not going to answer those questions so i don't know what would happen if there are a lot min is reduced how that would trickle because the commission's not going to take that up like they did not ok th ank you director of follow up care and so with what you just said director then who is going to make that decision say everything gets cut back to where we can't even get that six mill off the top per day and so there there isn't a clear step one step two step three what if what if that all of this was thought out so there is uncertainty about what may happen between all the sub bart assume or what if what ifs but clearly it's a possibility let's hope we don't have to go there one day and finally you know we're more worried about you know this as it affects the three surface water treatment plants and like i said in the  to our case so as director of water supply i'm backing the ag park in that case too but all of these are at the same risk although we're talking about the ag park today this is the same risk for the three surface water treatment plants right well thank you very much for your time here today and i have one more but we hit the road briefly chair if you don't mind that agree with my line and pioneer regards to the three hundred fifty thousand gallons per day  at the time of the agreement in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine was two for pineapple crop now as we know is no longer and it says any crop other than pineapple but it still uses the word crop but now type of agriculture but now we're still guarantee in this personal this amount of water per day for i guess housing now so just going to go for us i have seen that contract my department's not really  i believe that's a private party contract agreement between two parties that are neither of us so we may not want to venture too far into that agreement thank you ok any comments well i did i'll just add one thing to that the non possible water that they have the right to cannot be used for housing it has to be used for crops so it is an agricultur forty delivery point up to a point five million gallons of water per twenty four hour period we understand that to serve the needs of the park last season we are understanding that and the agricultural needs of the ranch property what is your understanding of the agricultural needs of the ranch property my under standing of that is the mouth portion that we're looking at purchasing yeah according to our pets historical knowledge approximately fifteen years ago there was a formal request that came to the ag our committee and i don't know if it had to come to council at that point i think i couldn't say but there was a formal request to allow those farms to actually get meters from the park and that was allowed so that's when they actually formally got meters possibly under the semi autonomous these  years we've gone through you know for the relations so i can understand your comment any other questions for mr taylor mr taylor has made his time available so members any further those lease agreements expire it must comply with the food terms and current situation of all other my we county agricultural  twenty for the remaining nations will expire on july first two thousand and seventeen and they do have one more option to extend for ten year period which we are not i will follow the terms of the agreement which is it i believe it gives the current license c option to extend we won't amend the agreement to allow for further until two thousand and twenty seven ok so that is the ultimate drop of the twenty seven they require as this body to act before we can start that process we do have the finest department has actually initiated all the paperwork required  we have support of the department a bag chairs and scott and right and of course our legislative members but we can't this body has to act before we can take it to the state because we had to prove that we had the match of a million dollars and that's what's required for them to be able to really said mr i'm think you also the state does require that we have i ordinance that we accept the money and grant revenue before they'll release it so the money has been appropriated by the state in the state budget the monies available to us until june thirtieth of twenty six team and so we need to  act on this before the end of the june but they require us to amend our budget to show in ordinance that we accept this money ok thank you very good thank you for the to take it in two separate actions so members i'm going to address to be f thirty eight desk six first total appropriations up for reading and care for improvement projects this is them in the budget by increasing bond lapse on revenues by one million dollars and adding an appropriation of one million dollars from the bunn fund book alone equal a community plan area other projects for the cool agricultural for expansion and finally the third bill for an ordinance which will amend the number forty two to eight do a number thirty five two thousand and fifteen regarding to the issuance of general obligation bonds of the county of a cultural park expansion and this action is to add to the authorization ordinance one million dollars for the cool able cultural move these three bills for an ordinance to council recommend the passage on first reading and also follow steps to make than substantive changes to the legislation any discussion groups i mean not only for thank you very much mr coach i don't forty eight this two things one we have a resolution to council recommending approving the acquisition of one hundred forty eight point three three eight acres bigger cultural park for two point nine million dollars and in the second resolution approving the acquisition of two to four point eight acres for the expansion of cool agricultural park for three