sure it's on silent mode because if it rains will we'll ask you to who was on the phone and what did they want right in the middle of the meeting and watch mine go off for some reason mines off folks from planning coming up pretty soon good morning mr term good morning and we have corporation counsel mike hopper in the morning and from the finance department department of your property tax we have jerry morning and he'll be up here when we when we need some r b t discussion all right we have legislative analyst jordan molina good morning and doing some interning in learning and training as a legislative analyst greg our no good morning committee secretary probably martin good morning and we're going to talk today  members about p c twenty six which is proposed amendments to a comprehensive zoning ordinance relating to enforcement of bed and breakfast homes and short term mental homes and p c ten amending the comprehensive zoning ordinance relating to short term rental homes we're going to start with testimony and i would just want everybody to remind everybody for individuals testifying in the chamber please sign up at the desk outside in the chamber outside the chamber door this is the form you use  if testifying from a remote site please sign up with your district office staff testimony will be limited to pursuant to the rules of counsel each testify will be allowed to testified for up i will also be allowing an additional minute to conclude testimony when testifying please state your name and any organization you may be representing all right members without objection we will start public testimony ok first to testify is maj shaffer followed by larry shapiro my name is matt shafer that the clues so i've been watching this process and i began to put together clues a steady stream of excuses need more inspectors which turns out not to be true enforcement bogged down despite numerous a legal vacation rentals only a token few have been pursued if we go rancho rentals had my eye meadows that were reported to the r f s system in two thousand and eleven are still operating now a prose rule change that would eliminate the need for planning commission hearings related to the five hundred foot rule when in the last seven months only three have gone to planning commission according to their minutes the council has complained about a lack of meaningful enforcement to no avail so what's the problem why can't the council insist that enforcement be done i was very surprised when i went to the county charter found this statement neither the council nor its members shall give orders to any county employee or county officers other than those appointed pursuant to section three point seven which is that council staff or article five either publicly or privately any provisions of this subsection by a member of the council shall be sufficient grounds for the council members removal from office by impeachment i find this section ridiculous the council of represents the people of maui county this is the room that they come to to have their voice heard the council passes an ordinance and then is unable to pursue the issues and problems with the county staff the administration can ignore the rule of law without penalty this clearly needs to be changed so why repassed act on enforcement easy to blame them but doesn't fit with their professional training they are the fall guys oh i can already hear them denying that that but the scenario is clear is the mayor is it the mayor who's walking in forstmann i raise that very question yesterday with rod anton communications director for the mayor's office it's well known that the mayor wasn't supportive of this ordinance mr anton advised the mayor had not ordered there be no enforcement his answer did not surprise me because the mayor has never been reluctant to speak his mind especially when he disagrees with the council so who is the point man for the administration with the departments and if you'd like i'll stop and i'll just continue on the next three minutes i'm almost finished so who is the point man for the administration with the departments i learned it is managing director keith reagan it is frustrating to learn that the will of the people and the council have been thwarted by a member of the mayor's staff obviously not on the orders of the mayor but by his own initiative chair i urge you to personally asked the mayor to do what is right and advise his staff to remove any order that might have been issued to halt slow down or stall enforcement untold hours counsel and public time have been spent needlessly because of the lack of enforcement the ordinance provides clear tools easy to trigger letters to violators this planning committee can meet for ever on  foresman issues but will be fruitless until the mayor makes his commitment to a bay the law clear to his staff thank you now you are testifying on two items yes item was the five hundred foot i'd like to remind the council that when disorganise was drafted there were different points of view from the vacation rental folks and the neighborhood associations and what happened was don put together a little task for us four people and two from the vacation rental and i was part of that task force and we worked together very congenial and came up with three important issues and three compromises first of all there was no compromise on the enforcement both sides agreed it was essential to the second point was the five hundred foot limit vacation rental people were proposing no limit and we were proposing even closer to limit the the the i mean any there even further limit and the compromise was the five hundred foot limit now i understand that's being challenged that was the second leg of that three legged agreement that was so important the major issues and the third was we agree very self serving but we agree we agreed that the five cap on my mattress was acceptable so for what i see now is an erosion of all three of those legs of that that agreement which was reached by consensus and the council embrace so i hope that i don't know whether that discussion is going to take place today i was told that probably on the six this would be the five hundred foot level but i encourage you council members to remember how this ordinance came about it's a good ordinance if it was given the chance the enforcement was given a chance to work i think it would be very meaningful it was good work on your part and fair to everyone thank you members any questions to the testifier seeing none thank you thank you we have larry shapiro followed by harry van and i've submitted prior testimony and i'm happy to be here today to testify in favor of a modest increase in the value meadows short term rental cap i wanted to mention that the code section one thousand point six five point zero three zero which is the code section that deals with sort terminals says that review of the caps is mandatory when the permits that issued peach ninety percent and now and now we meadows at least i don't know about other neighborhoods it has reached one hundred percent so according to the code review is mandatory and i note that on  the list of changes that have been discussed so far discussion of the cap is not one of the items so i'm hoping that someone on the council will raise the issue for discussion so let me go on to my main points about why i think raising the cap meadows is appropriate i have six reasons that i wanted to review with you the first is that now you meadows is a very large area and it can accommodate additional rentals our neighborhood comprises approximately six hundred thirty half acre lots the large lots provide much more buffer space between neighbors than many south maui neighborhoods yet only five rentals are allowed out of the hundred kroner for south maui which no longer makes sense no other neighborhood on maui has such a special low limit i believe quotas are important but the current setup of five is no longer appropriate and should be changed number too many maui metal residents are in favor of a modest increase in the cap the mountain meadows neighborhood association survey reveals that about half of the respondents favor a modest increase to ten or fifteen closer responded care a lot about the neighborhood and their voices should be heard the survey is a critical data point which shows that what is needed is a compromise solution number three the need for the very low cap no longer exists the sub cap came about because of two problem runnels and now he bellows and concerns that the last new law wouldn't be effective but the law has been very successful with very few complaints against licensed rentals and before raising the sub cap will not increase the number of authorized rentals in south maui increasing the sub cap and not raise modest increase from five to fifteen represents a tiny fraction two point five percent of the living units of maui beddoes number six the needs of everyone concerned can be accommodated with a small increase in conclusion the character  my neighborhood has not changed since the law went into effect i have not seen any problems with parking or other issues that could be attributed to p k sure mentally the neighborhood will not be overburdened and the cap should be adjusted to accommodate the interests of people on all sides of the issue in a fair and balanced way i'd be happy to thank you very much for your listening to my comments and i'd be happy to answer any questions  might have thank you mr shapiro members mispriced thank you dear mr shapiro one quick question yes you mentioned that there was a survey and the general opinion was between ten and fifteen do you share that or do you have another idea oh no i do share that but let me just clarify that survey what i serve is actually very important because it was a confidential survey people didn't have to identify themselves and the people who are members of the metals neighborhood association i have found i used to be on the board are people who are really committed and really interested in protecting the neighborhood and promoting the well firm and and beauty of the neighborhood they pay twenty five dollars a month a year or sorry to be members and so when the survey was taken the the association reported that they got a very good response rate but what was so interesting to me was that the response was just about evenly split between people who were in favor of having an increase of ten to fifteen from five and those who didn't want an increase at all and in my view i think that that is a critical data point to analyze what's actually happening that we have a large group of people who are not opposed in any way to a short term vacation rentals and another group that are but but they seem to be equally balanced i think this survey deserves great weight the the way to compromise on i think i think it's not a matter of you know either or or yes or no or up or down i think it's more a matter of a compromise to accommodate the interests of the people who are interested in or or in favor of a and not being overrun but a small increase and those who don't want to increase it all to to have a small increase modest ten to fifteen maximum thank you i think i got the answer the illegal ones they're still there that have have not been shut down yet well that's a great question because i think i've been watching this issue and following this issue for many years from the beginning  of trouble for their neighbors and i remember one now it was meeting we had where association me were one of the owners came in and told us i mean it just really a very bad situation so this original cap of five i believe really came about from a great fear that the county was not going to be able to and if the law was passed the county would not be able to enforce the rules so what we would end up with is many metro short term runnels with permits and with no ability of the county to enforce any rules and they would just waive their permit and basically be contemptuous of the county and the lack of what they might think are county you know lack of county in force in effort the law is actually been very effective and self in forcing the hasn't taken the county time it to haven't been complaints the focus has shifted for enforcement additionally what i think people thought would be enforcing the rules against people are permitted now it's shifted to the people who don't have permits and those people number one not having permits maybe not paying their proper property tax and or causing problems with neighbors and i think those issues kind of get mixed up together about enforcement issues and changing her revising the the the rules about permitted units but the the enforcement issue i think has dramatically changed over time at but the enforcement issue against unpermitted units is a really i think is a really a big problem but i i  was kind of heartened by hearing testimony from the last meeting where the county administration talked about how they have filled all of their zoning inspector positions and i've also heard stories about how some of the letters that they've sent out based on advertising to people have resulted in a shutdown of a drastic number of the illegal operators so i'm i'm encouraged that actually something is happening and that those people who are operating without permits are being shut down and put out of business there's no question sort of let's let's go to a different route you heard previous test fire talk about the agreement there is three three prongs to that enforcement yes the limit and so i'm just wondering part of the agreement with this whole body of at the time was five is there any reason to i mean i see your testimony but i'm a little concerned that that has been talked about and that was one of the really important issues during the discussions on getting this bill passed so now we're talking you know there's been a push to increase that how do you kind of way that well i  i think the the issue of when the original cap was set had to do with great concern about the ability of the county excuse me to enforce the rules and so the cap was said very low because people were concerned that we would be overrun with occasional rentals that were not following the rules because people didn't have confidence the county would force the rules now we have a very different situation we have a situation where it turns out that people who have permits are following the rules and in fact the laws really become self and forcing so i think that it's appropriate at this point to really take a look at the situation and to re evaluate it based on the new facts that have occurred and say is it really appropriate to keep this this cap of five when the the the neighborhood is large enough and spacious enough it has enough elbow room and there's been a great expression of interest by i think you can extrapolate from the survey many people to increase the limit just a modest amount so i think that it's appropriate at this time to say nows now is it is fear unreasonable to accommodate a few more rental a few more permits and accommodate the interests of a few more people who are it appears to me that what i'm concluding is that you feel that we should allow more permits because you think that the permitted rentals don't cause problems and that a few more would not be disruptive and you kind of getting the idea that if we don't do this we're going to continue to have those unpermitted rentals that are causing problems  e i do i think whether they kept meadows is increased or not the problems will with unpermitted rentals by the nature of what they are will continue i think that it's a ongoing it will always be an ongoing issue of the county trying to chase after permit rentals i think if you raise the number of permits some of those people who some of those people might try to come in and get permits and and be legal i know there's some state already issues with that but i don't think necessarily raising the limit or not raising the limit is going to dissuade someone from well well let me take that back if the limit was raised modest amount i think someone who was thinking about starting a new unit especially if there's a lot of publicity about the ramifications of violating the law that person might be much more inclined if they could get a permit to apply for a permit and get one if there is no permit available that they could then be involved in applying for either a bed and breakfast permit or s t r a to perm yes as i and my prior written testimony i've lived in maui meadows for about eight years my wife and i would like to get our situation a little bit different what we want to do is kind of joining the the sharing economy so to speak with like air b n b we like to travel and what we're trying to our personal goal is to try to  basically when we're not home to rent our house out we're not our house would not be taken out of a rental pool because it's not a rental we live there and we live here full time we're taxpayers here but if we travel for on the mainland or whatever it would be great for us to get some additional income by trying to run our house out now it's a huge hassle to get a permit it's very expensive but we thought we would give it a try because we thought it really could be a great opportunity to help we're tired and we thought in our retirement we might be able to earn a little bit of extra money i didn't exactly expect the amount of work involved with you know this body but yes definitely we're interested in in having a short term rental permit for our special purpose ok thank you thank you thank you work on the spelling with you if you'd like after the meeting county fire department seven years ago and from american medical response ambulances a paramedic three years ago both retirements were early as i did develop the nonreversible the curing hearing deficit which restricted my abilit perform in order to achieve future income to offset the diminished retirement amount i purchased my wife's family property key hey john even two are the postmaster there that was there for the first postmaster about twelve years ago and to make it a vacation rental property i were you when to acquire proper permits and was told that since the property was owned s m a hotel a permit was not needed i went back three months after the property was was built and fixed up to again ask for a permit and i was told again broccoli that it was not needed as it was on hotel i could rent anything i want i could build a four story ten story condo i was again told this to not to worry so i went into business after ten years of making ends meet and establishing a good legal business i received a letter from the county informing me that i was without the proper permit any illegal and told to shut down this was this past january seven months ago even though i was compliant with all the regulations paid all the taxes i want to head and shut down iris the internet advertising and have refunded over fourteen thousand dollars to people that have already booked with me and probably ruin their vacations which i've really said about i then initiated the permit process in january it's been seven months now and i'm having great difficulty holding on to not only the vacation rental property that i purchased but my personal home is well up  the money put into the ventura property left me with a thirteen thousand dollar a month mortgage which is extremely excessive compared to what most people pay for their mortgages after seven months my saving is depleted i've been borrowing from o meager retirement and now in borrowing from my daughter to make next month's payment i'm basically at the end of my rope i figured i was almost done as i completed all that was asked of me and jumped through all the hoops in my last inspection scheduled for this week i was informed that the original county map showed no vacation rentals within the five hundred foot range of my property so i was pretty late it figured ok it's a done deal however another map was presented showing a different ring i was told there is now a vacation rental just twenty five feet within the circle four hundred seventy five feet away from my property this will now cost me an additional three thousand dollars plus an additional three months before i can resume business there is no way i could survive this i'm at risk of losing both my properties in conclusion i implore the county council to number one remove the five hundred foot requirement regarding other vacation rentals and to see it in their hearts to grant me the permit soon in appreciation for completing all the requirements as noted and also the eighteen and a half years of service with the money fire department as well as a twenty three years of service as a paramedic i gave to the county of maui and that's all i have any questions please thank you members any questions the testifier i have questions to the department not to the testifier thank you ok thank you for your testimony we're going out to the district offices  and as many many of you probably know we live in a different universe over here and so what i'd like to speak to is the extension of time for people who have pain permits you know we have a single take that into consideration that that on the nih we have very different issues where a caring community we do have a problem here and they have but it can be solved with just a little bit of help i believe but other than that someone who's been in this business and to enforce against violations of this code section shall be mandatory and discretionary i would ask you to think very seriously about that because if you think about mandatory sentencing how do you feel  that always there are exceptions to the rule and to tie that planning director's hands by saying he has to do something i think is not in the benefits of the community and or of the benefits of the planning to take that into consideration closed when the hotels closed so think about that think if you had mortgages to pay if you had children to feed and all the rest of these things we need your help on the nih thank you very much thank you members any questions the testif people renting in the back of his house but it found me a five to six maybe eighteen people in the house with six vehicles plus more coming and going and then we had women coming over at night is the name the contract anything in june of this year they had ten auditors come with seven people strapping them off people coming going family of five three cars to ten renters plus three more cars so we had private home who is allowing large groups of people to read at their house so that you get ten fifteen twenty people on a single out to traffic overflowing the traffic on my street is already congested two cars cannot go down the street the same time the noise and everything else so i would ask it's not just white life we're not going to force on the night that there have to be some kind of guidelines and some kind of way questions the test fire seeing none thank you spying on my own behalf i have submitted written testimony at previous meetings that we really haven't had a chance to review and i don't know if you have the chance to review it today but it is want to bring it back up to your attention one of the written testimonies that i submitted before we concern the five year ban about thirty to fifty notices of violation to my knowledge have been issued in the past few months a notice of violation is now carrying with it a five year ban on being able to apply for a permit i have seen some suggestions in my written testimony for restoring the ability for someone to be able to apply for a permit even if they have fall in under that provision  if they prove they've shut down if they pay some type of penalty and in back taxes or something like that i think that's something that we need to we need to consider a a piece of testimony that i submitted today regards it's kind of a technical thing regards the parking requirements we have a when we when we created the ordinance we said that there should be the same number of parking spaces as the house would normally require unless that house has more than four bedrooms then one more spot but we didn't anticipate all the various derivations and one of them you just testify who came up here he has a two bedroom cottage and a three bedroom house so in total that's five so he's told ok well you have to have two for each of those plus another one because you have five and i don't think that was the council's intent for that i think it was if there was a five bedroom house you need three parking spaces not if you split up five bedrooms among two that you need five parking spaces so that's just kind of a technical thing the the other written testimony that i previously submitted was on the notification letter that i think can go a long way towards helping people get through the process when we send out the notification letter right now to people we don't really tell them what's going to happen with the permit that they're going to get or or that's been applied for in their area we don't tell them that there's going to be a limit on the number of people allowed in that make a sure and all that there's going to be time limits of quiet times and so forth and i think that people get all the information up front there's probably going be less folks complaining and as a result sending folks to the planning commission as a result of their complaints and then finally and you heard a testimony about this the trigger the planning commission trigger of if there's another short term rental within five hundred feet is the number one obstacle in the way of making this ordinance work there are dozens maybe hundreds of people who have not come from who are in it to apply for a permit simply because they recognize upfront there's already one within five hundred feet who that means i got to go before that mean planning commission board and they recognize that that means my process is going to be a minimum of six months to get through and that's if everything works that's if that's if the planners are on time and there's no problems along the way then they might get through in six months and you just heard from someone who's trying to do that and he's practically bankrupt in that period so it's such a discouragement that this ordinance without question will fail if people continue to be sent to planning commission every time there's a short term rental within five hundred feet that already has a permit that's it's a nonstarter for many many of the folks who are sitting sidelines of having gotten permits yet and for those who are already in the process and are being told well you're to have to go to the planning commission before you'll be able to get your permit for a minute i just can't stress how important that is thank you thank you members any questions to the testifier seeing non bison missed by so has one so i didn't get my hand up fast enough thank you mr crowley for being here just a question in regards to what you mentioned in the beginning of your testimony about a five year  n do you have any suggestions about that does five years sounds like it would you be considering maybe a shorter term i don't know if the shorter term solves the problem the problem is this the person got themself into that situation because they continued to operate without a permit now they were drawn into the system ok the system said you have to shut down or you're subject to these fines and so forth so they comply but left without an alternative at that point being told at that point you can not get a permit i just don't think that's effective i don't think that that's going to that person will necessarily take the desired result sell the property stop operating do whatever i think that you're just creating a problem there but if we give that person the ability to apply again through some level of penalty making making it clear that that's not the way we want you to enter the system the way we prefer you to enter the system would be voluntarily coming forward and making your application and not being operating but if if we give them and the ability to do that i think then we have a better chance of compliance and that really has to be the goal of enforcement and of this whole process compliance with the law you know we're looking for something to hammer away our leaders with because we've had you know we haven't been effective and we keep hearing about it go up variations and i think that's the way this five year ban came about was we're looking for some kind of you know thing to say hey there's a message here you  doing something this community wants so a penalty you know i don't know i'm sorry i don't and i don't know for sure what we're talking about when we talk about opinion to maybe you can and leyton me but you know something's got to there's got to be something that send a very strong message we're trying to stop other people from doing this right this objection that i made in the previous testimony was that the penalty would be three years back taxes equivalent to the difference in taxes that you would have paid paid if you had your permit versus if you didn't have your permit for some of these valuable properties that could be twenty thirty thousand dollars i've spoken to some of those folks and they've said i'll pay that i'm willing to pay that penalty if i recognize that it's going to lead towards me getting a permit so i get making the hammer bigger than that or  stronger than that i'm not sure if it's necessarily going to result in people voluntarily complying you know shutting down or not i just don't think making the hammer bigger and bigger is is going to pres what we want when someone comes into the system i want them to get a permit and operate as a good operator and not create problems and so forth and we know that that happens so excluding them once we get them in the system by saying now there is a there was another potential fix to that and was that if they got a notice of warning they had the opportunity to comply but if they got a notice of violation then you're in the five year ban is that potential compromise well that that honestly is how the system supposed to work ok the way that the way the system is supposed to work is before you can issue a notice a violation which is operating without a permit you have to give notice that i mean the state law says you must do that now for for you to apply a penalty prior to that or at the same time as you're giving notice i don't think you've accomplished anything at all there so you have to give the person a notice of warning you are out of compliance you know please come into compliance stop operating or go get a permit whatever but if they don't at that point and they take it to the next step which is a notice of violation which automatically carries with it fines and you have a discussion today about that then that is by code carrying with it this five year ban and because we now have thirty to fifty people that are in that situation i don't know i i just i can't say that those thirty to fifty people are necessarily all going to shut down or sell or whatever in the meantime so i'm just trying to come up with a practical way of getting those people into compliance ok numbers any further questions yes mr white they could share my understanding  microphone yes something if the if someone is found to have a homeowners exemption in violation of the homeowner ordinance my recollection is th liable to pay five years of back taxes so i think it would be a similar similar result if we were to set it up that way for someone who's operating illegally and if we were able to go back for the number of years that they were operating illegally i think that would be reasonable if they were operating for three years is three years it was operating for four years and they pay four years back taxes but two that would you see as mean evaluating whether they've got a license as well and if they don't have a t eighty license  have not been painted eighty then they should be paying the back taxes there as well would you feel that was appropriate i agree with you i mean what what i want is an industry of people who are doing the right thing paying tax whether you have a short term rental permit or a bed and breakfast permit or not is is the law and everyone should be doing that so if someone's found that they're not doing that yes they should make good on on on those previous things and just why i chose three years it was three years ago that we created this ordinance so to say to someone well you should have been paying a higher tax rate for beyond three years ago we didn't have this ordinance at that time so that's why i chose that but they were still operate they may have been operating yeah yeah so yeah i'm just trying to add a little yeah it's going to miss miss bice's hammerhead and you know the length of the handles but but again i just caution you don't make the hammer bigger make make it more followed by marty taxes i'm trying to follow some china get a permit it's been a very arduous process and i have long term rentals on both sides of the property that i've on for ten years and they're partiers they're russian workers and things like that they work all times and night sleep some of them are construction workers they have multiple vehicles and they do not maintain their properties as well as i maintain mine so i just want you guys to keep that in mind when you're thinking about this because we all live in these communities and we all have people that have too many cars and crappy houses that's all i got any questions members any questions so the testifier i have one you mentioned  questions for the questions next to testify is marty hurling followed by david on tests we got a term permit somewhere around two thousand and two and it was an arduous process it actually took seven years for us to get our permit and but that's water under the bridge and that's  just multiple multiple multiple other places houses cottages so on and so forth that have no permits and there because i can't actually say for sure but because they're not paying any taxes  their prices are so much less than mine and also i'm also speaking for cherie addicks yes me to mention that she could make it today that you know it's very difficult for us to stay in business because of this and we you know we spent a lot of time and effort to be legal and we just feel like these places that aren't legal you know are creating an unfair unfair playing field for us and at one point i think about five years ago b o sent us a letter saying just to let you know that the county of maui is cracking down on illegal rentals and you must present us with your permit number on your suggestion i don't know if it's legal for the county of maui to do this or not but they could get in contact with air b n b which we don't list on and several other places like b r b o home away and trip advisor and let them know that people who are not listing their permit are in violation of maui county ordinances and so forth and you know we've had a few people who've come to us you know just walk walk buys and they've come in they said oh you air b n b no i'm trying to find this place but i can't find it and then other people have gotten in touch with me and said we had it we had a reservation at somebody but they were forced to close down and we have no reservation can we make a reservation from you so that's happening more and more often just to let you know that you know it and i really appreciate that you're meeting like this and you're addressing the problem and thank you very much thank you members any questions the testifier i have one you say you're on are b oh we advertise on p r and they sent you a letter saying about five years ago not for the recent crackdown but for a previous crackdown they actually sent me a letter saying you know thank you very much last sign up to testify in the chambers is david if anybody else wants to sign up please go to the back and sign up and listen morning mr chair and members my name is david dante is testifying on p c ten and then p c twenty six un p c ten there are two topics i want to touch on briefly one is an issue raised by a previous testifier this morning about the maui county charter prohibiting council members from directing the performance of duties by members of the administration which is considered an ethical violation but i think that there is a misunderstanding that i would like to clarify i believe a council member can't call up someone in the parks department and say i want you to just clean the restrooms on the south of maui and don't worry about the rest of mali that would be like interfering with the with the performance of duties of an administrator but the council can adopt laws that can make laws and those laws tell the administration what to do and when to do it that's the nature of laws so there's nothing in the county charter that prohibits you from essentially dictating to the administration what the community needs and  what is to be performed the second point on this topic has to do with the hammer that we've been discussing now i'm sorry that the zoning administrator john repast isn't here this morning but i'd like to relate to you a comment he made to members of our informal group when we met with him on june fifteenth we were concerned about the severity of the five year ban and i'm not advocating a five year ban but i'm relaying to you what the administrator said to me he said that there is zero incentive for a person to apply for a permit they're just start their business and hope that they get away with it in if they don't then they can close down or they can apply for a permit there's no downside he said there are so overwhelmed with the proliferation of the legal rentals that they feel they need to stop them rather than have to go after them and shut them down to stop them they have to have something that penalizes them to the point that they don't want to start up without a permit so again our group and myself personally are not saying make it five years or make it inhumane i'm just relaying that going after them afterwards and saying well now you have to pay something that doesn't accomplish the the need that mr reponse was describing which is to stop them in the first place and if you're looking at back taxing for trance in accommodation tax it may be difficult because operators who don't pay that tax don't necessarily keep records of their income that's my comment about p c ten six go ahead during your july second meeting you heard permitted be in be owners advocate strengthening the enforcement provisions of chapter nine hundred sixty five we propose those amendments because the department's efforts have not succeeded in stopping the proliferation of unpermitted runnels controlling their impacts on the community or protecting our businesses from unfair competition however there was subsequent public testimony which questioned the facts that our group had presented to you i'd like to respond to the three main points raised in that subsequent testimony which are one that our group exaggerated the magnitude of the problem too that we should just lower our rates and in order to compete with violators and three that the department is getting things under control so there's no need to legislate mandatory enforcement asked of the assertion that the number of illegal render rentals is quote nowhere near what our group stated and that our group exaggerated the magnitude of the problem please take note of my written testimony dated july twenty first and your binders there you'll find documents verifying that the numbers in question were not based on speculation but were quoted directly from statements by the zoning administrator hawaii tourism authority deputy planning director and the planning commission so please avail yourselves of the data regarding the suggestion that we should just reduce our rates in order to compete with violators if our operations were challenged by other legal rentals which offered a superior guest experience or better pricing we do except that as a risk of doing business and we do reduce our pricing trying to cope in an over saturated market but we can't compete with the rates of illegal tax evading operators who scoff at the rules which were established by this body we're just seeking a level playing field now that said the survival of our businesses is a side issue please focus on the concerns of the larger community i previously paraphrased a statement by the planning director to the effect that the infant torrie of affordable housing has been depleted by illegal rental rentals depleted according to the dictionary on line means reduced diminished or decreased but it can also mean completely eliminated so the planning director has asked me  to mention not only that the housing crisis is aggravated by a number of factors not just illegal rentals but to correct my paraphrasing of his statement and in fact use his own wording instead of  said we have so many illegal rentals now i do think it's taking away from local housing stock not depleting local housing stock provided written testimony which includes the director's entire statement verbatim and in context lastly as to the claim that the department is already gaining control of illegal rentals according to the zoning administrator is that four minutes now one more minute there have been thirteen hundred requests for service hundreds of notices of warning but only thirty to fifty notices a violation at that rate of issuance it could take fifty five years to cite the existing violators the planning commission letter in your binders calls the inadequate enforcement quote an urgent problem and the june twenty ninth m v are a bulletin also in your binders applauds the proposal stating the frustration this is a quote is that a property might have three or four requests for service but still no enforcement later this morning you may hear from the department that they have finally hired a full complement of inspectors that their training is progressing and that they are gearing up to enforce effectively that would be welcome news but please don't be dissuaded from adopting the proposed legislation if the department is able to follow through you can always remove the mandatory language at your next three or four minutes ordinance in two years thank you thank you members any questions the testif seeing that there's nobody in the district offices and nobody coming down here without objection will close public testimony no objections ok at that point at this point it's about time for a mid morning break anyway so we're going to do a ten minute recess and then we're going to get right into business so this meeting is in recess the planning committee meeting july twenty third please come back to order ok members here we go right now on the agenda we have two items one is p c twenty six proposed amendments to the compromises owning ordinance relating to enforcement of bed and breakfast homes and short term mental homes and p c ten amending the comp as owning ordinance relating to short term mental homes we're going to start with p c twenty six and the committees in receipt of general communication number fifteen dash five dated may twenty sixth twenty fifteen of its counsel received in a god sent to  this committee it's a letter addressed to chair white from david dante is talking about zoning enforcement and some suggested amendments so before we chairman members and i thought i would talk a little bit about enforcement first and it is you know it's one of those still things people are really upset if you do and people are really upset if you don't do it and you know so we go on from there and we try to be as fair and as complete as possible perhaps as a as a starting point  there was a five hundred seventy nine initiated violations those are all references that we receive that we have to follow up on now those aren't just  too many people living in a house not short term but long term there's an auto shop being operated next to me there's people building without permit the it went down to three hundred forty eight twenty thirteen for eighteen and twenty fourteen four hundred forty four and though i would say in two thousand and thirteen twenty fourteen short terminals were a good portion of the complaints there were certainly not all and last year f y fifteen the number of of our  filed regarding short term runnels has it i don't know the numbers right now it's going to be pretty pretty large certainly the great majority of complaints that we received the  we came up probably i would say i don't know how many probably four hundred three hundred individual short ourselves but but we are starting that and i'll get more details in a second the we have about two hundred over two hundred that members of the public of called in complaining there's a short terminal next to me or down the street or whatever so in all we have about four hundred over four hundred open are ephesus some of them are going to overlap members of the public will call in for rahm tolls that that we've also identified and we've issued about four hundred notices of warning between thirty and fifty notices of violation ok that's not i'm not horribly pleased with that number and we're discussing with corp council how to increase that and because it is it's not such a simple process as one might believe you can't just go on the internet and go ok here's a short terminal people are really good about hiding their locations their addresses etc it takes some time you gone of the r b o you see really what gives away a lot you know pictures of the outside of the property and so then you go in to pick tom a tree or google earth or something and you try to match it up you know a general area and you try to match it up there's other indicators the ways that we do it but it's it takes quite a while to find out exactly where a property is located when people do call in and complain if i individual they call our office we ask we always ask for an address because that's the key is finding out of the exact location and then we can pursue it from  there there's been some mention of the five year ban if people are operating already when they're file an application i have personally signed about eight letters  i'm really sorry you've been operating or your application is being returned or you are you know you're banned for for doing this so it it's working it's not working as well as i would like and you know we're certainly open to suggestions dantes has some suggestions i know that  some of those may work some of them i i doubt they're going to make much of a difference but we can discuss those things so i do have to make one comment and i i have nothing against the testifier we have received absolutely no order from the administration saying stall or put this on hold quite the opposite is true quite the opposite is true i have personally gone talk to the mayor of personally gone talk to keith regan and go on you know what this is going to raise quite a storm if we proceed this way and they're like go ahead and do it so we are personally going there is no no order to stop or anything like that the and one more comment on the island of lanai he the one testif r talked about the multiple rooms being rented next door to her the cars on the street cetera and we issued that occasion rental notice of warning at one time and they did shut down for quite a while and apparently they have started back up we're going to issue them in other notice warning the island of line i e is really unique as you know has been pointed out you have one  landowner both of the hotels right now are shut down for renovations manelli is mostly shut down for construction purposes the  right now is handling construction workers and but that's also going to go into renovations the hotel and i e has what twelve rooms i believe ten or twelve rooms that's set that's all that's available there is no other business i can see no other business there are no other visitor accommodations on that island except for the short term rentals and in the past when we've we've taken this up for take we took up the ordinance with the council people on the ninth testified this is one of our primary business opportunities and you know people come over and go hunting people come over they you know for to see family etc i can hardly stand you know the lodge is better but you know but those are all close up we close down all opportunities on that island it's going to be a problem for the economy of that island people are all illegally that's true i just there are other priorities if if we have you know five hundred open if we have all these other rentals that we need to follow up on you know it's  i personally would rather deal with the issues that meadows are out in haiku first before pursuing other other rentals i'm not saying but you know people should operate without a license or without a permit that's hardly the case i'm just saying if we're going to prioritize i think there's other areas that need attention first thank you thank you members any have an enviable job you know it's really hard to be sitting in a hot seat trying to deal with an issue that is hot in this community and of course my prejudice is that you know i sat here for a long time as an advocate of vacation meant to be obese a little more concerned about s t r but you know i also thought that that was ok if we had good laws and we could manage it but i to see the progress and thank you for the numbers but we have a long way to go and what i'm worried about is how much worse this is going to get before we catch up and we can sit here and talk about prioritization and about not having enough people to do all of this and how hard it is and you know i hear only one name we've got mr a pause i mean ho much can one person do you know let's be realistic and so i am worried i personally do not think that tweaking this law or punish him for threatening people with a five year ban is go make much of a difference short term i think long term yes short term i don't think so so what i'm hoping in day we could do is to find a way to give you more assistance short term can you tell us what that might be if you think that's flyable zoning enforcement it is a difficult thing to fill those positions are not extremely highly paid and not a whole lot of people around with experience so we've been we were fully staffed and then we just recently had one of the inspectors leave for the fire department for a much higher paying position  those extra two positions have helped a lot and i would say if if we really want to talk about you know positions dedicated to doing this i would say the majority of all of the inspectors time is spent on short term rentals i think a lot of the hell i mean bodies always help i don't know temporary hires or i'm not sure what how we would want to do that i help quite a bit get more notices of violation out i think some of it will have to do we're going to have to look elsewhere i know there's always been some discussion about why don't we go after the big advertisers why don't we go after air b  know some cities are doing that going after v r b o i like that idea but i also realize that there are you know that the their gross income every year is larger than some countries so you know they're they're well staffed and there's first amendment issues involved with it i like the i idea you know just being able to advertise on the net the i like the idea of talking to to the big advertisers about you know this is our requirement that they put their permit numbers you know in their advertising you know they at least at least be etc they say you must follow all local laws i don't know if they follow what doesn't seem like they follow up very well with their advertisers but you know we can certainly look at contacting them but you know i'm certainly open to other thoughts and ideas ok haven't one more question here and that is when we issue a notice of warning is there a specific time period that the person is giving given to clean things up i believe we can from thirty days to i don't chime in those warning those are pretty you know i can't possibly sign everything that goes through the office i believe we can thirty days to remove all their advertising and shut down you know if you were the operator and obviously you taking reservations and you doing all kinds of things and in the case and this was brought to my attention and that's why i'm asking father or mother has become very ill i'm trying to get them settled a day studying their alzheimer's for it progresses to the point where i have to go and find a place to put them and close down their house and all of this stuff ok i'm on the mainland and so their mail is piling up in my mailbox or on my desk or wherever and all of a sudden i come back and i find this in my thirty days is very short and so i'm trying to do everything i can to close down so that i can comply and i can't i don't have enough time because i can do a quality job of looking in every place where i might be easy to find on air b is defined on some of the bigger sites but my also happens to be in some of these numerous and i can't believe how many there are now waiting publications they're all over the place and because i'm just you know distressed or under stress and i'm dealing with all this stuff and trying to comply with the notice of warning i run out of time and so no i'm given a notice of violation is there any way that you have discretion as the rector to deal with this type of situation if it can be reasonably explained that you know i wasn't trying to tell you i don't care but i'm trying to comply but it just didn't work circumstances out of my control is there any discretion is what i'm trying to say there's always room with dispute the notices warning no i'm sorry i couldn't do this within thirty days or whatever and you know we we generally we talk to you know as much as i wish of as many valid reasons as we hear there are also you know whopper stories as well and i get that i understand that we have get put it really just don't care and they fly in the face of rules and don't care right then you always have these people that are for real i mean you we have to kind of people in this world and while i want to hammer the people who really don't pay attention and don't care i also want to be a little bit of more compassionate people that are caught up in messes and we heard about someone today you know and we all know that  told stuff and we have to take it on face value but then you folks have the opportunity to dig a little deeper and see if the story is really true or not so i'm sure that you know you can but i want to make sure you have that ability you never going to impose a five year ban that's a tough then you know i want to make sure that we're doing it to the right people you know that the beginning of the question was to you know how do you know people shut down or at least that was a part of the question just really honestly it's easy for somebody to take down their v r b oh right advertising i mean they could log in i'm sure get it removed and then you know all the other later open another one back up with a different number and so that's you know those kinds of things happen all the  time one gentleman that we signed a five year ban who founded the mayor's office you know some of his aides and myself and came down and said you know give me all kinds of reasons why he shouldn't be banned i looked at his operation he had taken down some of his advertising off of his website where he blocked a portion that you couldn't see from county computers but could see from other computers he was also advertising under two other names on a couple other websites where he would call his vacation rental some other name i understand people are creative and we you know very seen that but where i'm going with it this discussion is you know when we started we decided that we were going to take these matters and give them to the planning commission because totally clogged up and people had to wait and wait and wait because we not only have a cation mentals we have a bunch of stuff to deal with things that are high priority that we have to deal with so we said planning commission you know let's let you go there if you need to so that we can use our time better wait more policy matters right well it's my understanding now that the planning commission is just plugged up with all of this stuff it's obvious that your office is being plugged up and that normal things that planners might want to do they can't do because they're dealing with these you know are fesses in their d n a which permits and inspections and all this stuff now i'm beginning to wonder is there another home for this kind of of permitting and i know we don't like to create extra offices and things but you know this in my opinion is a budget matter because this is money that is being lost just your thoughts i don't know about another office or something yeah i know as much as some people believe that you know mandatory notices mandatory violations would be an answer i i don't think so but i mean just because of the volume that we're dealing with anyway  i know there are certain things you can do with property taxes and there are certain things you can't legally you know may be exploring some of those avenues i don't know  may first ration of course is that i'm a solution oriented person right and i don't think we need to sit here month after month after month talking about the same thing here in the same thing we need to figure out something and i like that tw be talking to the state department of taxation and maybe we can maybe match up you know people who are paying their taxes to permit solos who are maybe be maybe paying their taxes but no permits but then of course then there's the people who are flying you know no taxes no permits no nothing you know that's where basically what we're looking for is sources of information thank you mister i just wanted to chime in on a few things just to make sure we clarify on something that is that is you know for notice of the warnings  we currently do give about sixty days sixty sixty days out have the wrong information this is only for short term rentals most others only violations are you cease immediately the sixty days is given only if they can show that they have read existing reservations and we try to work with them based on that but the maximum we give them is sixty days to wind down any reservations that they have they don't have any reservations they if they can't prove any reservations then we force them to shut down  of course when you see a letter from the county certified maybe you don't want to pick it up from the mailbox which i know that's our first step but we have people who say i never got it because it's sitting in their mailbox we also san is that the current law that was written by the county council basically and i'm paraphrasing is that if you were found to be advertising that was deemed to be prima facie evidence that you operating a short term rattle and you immediately banned for five years the initial tweaks to the code were more for legal issues to be able to come into compliance with their existing   issued the five year ban we have gone we have issue violations that have occurred  i guess to keep one of the some of the key points we would like to see or any tweaks that we need to have some type of basically probation if they if they are in violation that they cannot apply for five years i understand that it's a long term but that does create we need to have something in there because that is our probably our most effective tool at this point going forward so that that some somewhere somehow if someone is  currently operating and they're found to be currently operating they won't be able to apply for five years i think that's that's are probably are most effective in keeping new people out there as well as hopefully maybe if somebody does want to become legal there they'll shut down before they get caught i think that again that is that there has to be something in the code that we can use to keep people and we can return the application i think again through the last couple budget cycles we've asked for assistance and we've been turned down for a clerk twice to help us you know in the budget cycle this committee has has denied us i mean there's a lot of paperwork as there's a lot of detail back office work goes into filing sending out the stuff and so i can have a lot of in foresman at people out there going out there but the back office work of getting the letters doing the certification and sending those those letters out takes not not inspectors but clerical and we just don't have that in our office and so there's only a division has never been fully staffed i think that we were fully staffed for three weeks three weeks until our last one left so in all the time i've been there we've only been fully staffed for about three weeks and that that's a send a chair the game thank you any other questions i have a couple mr white thank you chair director you mentioned that there were there was a comment made that the there's a lot of permits going to the planning commission can you put together give us an outline of how many have how many total permits have been submitted how many applications have been submitted how many have been improved been disapproved how many went to planning commission and those how many were due to one factor or another i'm having a hard time getting my arms what the what the what the real challenges are here yes can you share any information with us or can you provide it to us at a later time if you don't i'll be happy to provide it at a later time you have any idea how many have gone to the planning commission and for most of the most of the permits of applications that have gone to the planning commission or in the agricultural district because they need a special use permit  have denied a quarter a quarter of all of the a quarter of an all the applications that have gone to the planning commission are probably the ones within five hundred feet of another mind asking for that for those details but i'd like to have an understanding of how many permits have been submitted and how many have gone to planning commission how many have been approved by the administration without going to the least three that have been denied by the commission that's those are things that were orders have to be drafted and there's at least one case that was appealed to the circuit court and actually was reminded to the commission for further proceedings so there may be more in that number but those are just some that i'm i'm personally familiar with if you could please ask everyone to get a little closer to their mikes if i can barely hear them or anybody can either please ok thank you members need to turn the system up a little bit ok we have a hard time hearing advertising is filed to go up again because you get an individual get another notice of warning or does it go straight to a notice a violation at what point is there going to in our follow up which is something that it's easy to obviously easy to issued notices of warning in following up to see if six months later they're advertising again  if we can show that it's the same thing we would probably issued a notice or violation and would be subject to at that point and what would the fine be there are a thousand dollars a day thousand a national thousand dollars a day for for continuing to operate after they receive it rules they actually have administrative rules for fines for different types of violations and for a use which this would be it's a thousand dollar so that's the maximum possible fine but those are in the administrators rule so the department so that's where where that that would  to provide a bit of a supplement to the director's answer and interject there for the people out there and the people watching that dollar fine is a charter that limit is a charter  restriction and it was a charter amendment on the last election and it got shot down again so if you feel that we counsel need more of a hammer next time that comes up on the on the charter please tell everybody that that's what that's why we put it there so you know sorry for interjecting a little bit of a but we're hamstrung as well we got a thousand as an administrative fine so we maybe have to look with the department of finance and what they would typically do with essentially whether it's a vacation or any other type of you know tax evasion or failure to pay property taxes what would happen in those cases but it could not be characterized as a as as an administrative fine under that section of the charter or under section one thousand point five three zero point zero three zero of the  code which deals with civil fines for violations that we need to be from the authority to do that would have to arise from a different mechanism which would be collecting back taxes basically are you aware of whether or not the back taxes for someone who loses their homeowner's exemption is considered a fine or or a tax i have not personally worked on cases like that i mean in general you wouldn't be charging those as as and again they could be charged as administrative fines and under title nineteen of the code like i said one thousand five three zero three zero which is the civil unfortunate section that's generally not that does not provide for the  you know back taxes that would have to be under a different provision of the of the code and again we're talking about a vacation rental ordinance right now i did prize that that really be left out in the context of  of back taxes in general for for illegal operations to or not illegal operations put back taxes for those who don't pay their taxes rather than as a specific vacation rental issue perhaps you could look at providing tax data as part of the application but actually charging the back taxes would generally be something that the finance department would have to be involved in from what types of agenda items have gone through my planning commission so i'm sifting through this and the numbers really don't seem astronomical but although the paperwork we have i see a table in s t r zero denied one deferred back then it was thirteen to twenty fourteen numbers so to say there's fifty or whatever around about gas from then till now seems like a big jump but i guess maybe perhaps things are being you know crack down on more or what have you so i was just kind of glancing through our voluminous binder here and came across some of these figures which were very alarming testifier had mentioned going to come about in what's been put through what's you know so we can get a better grasp as chairman white is looking to get and i think everyone knows how i feel about the subject matter i don't particularly like it i was able to somewhat like the b and b s but everything else for me has gotten way out of control and obviously a house for this community and especially for your department and it's very actually just heartening to hear mr all the way to say something quite sad to hear but again i wouldn't want to be in his own position either so it's a tough one is a tough call so pay more so people want to do it i you know i don't know incentive program for them  some something to entice people to want to do it and to get brownie points or somethin to say hey you got another you legal and you know i don't know some kind of incentive i guess but i just think if you can get one off the sheet yea that's one less and just work your way i mean take off little chunks at a time to grab everyone and one net you're not going to do that comment on personnel i've i've been around and joe's been around the office long enough to remember during the former administration when there was a big crackdown on  and you know that the council had a number of meetings where there were complaints about the inspectors and about how some of the people who are now testifying in favor of enforcement were also the subjects of the very negative methodologies of that time and how they were rude and threatening and all those things so it's you know when when we hire inspectors we're looking at we're not just hiring anybody because when you  people who take it so personally that somebody is violation is a personal offense to them and you know there's all kinds of other problems or go along with that and part of it is part of i mean besides just reflecting poorly on the county there's going to be legal issues with that if you want violations to be upheld the show that there was no discrimination to show that  know enforcement was within the confines of the law you know those sorts of things it's finding finding someone for enforce somewhat of a challenge and i have said it's not paid much i wish we could pay them more because they have one of the one of the most negative jobs in the county to go out and tell people no you can't do what you're doing that's that's a hard thing for most people to do those wages are set by i forget the exact term but it is basically civil service and that's pretty much statewide all the zoning inspectors around the state make at least my understanding make roughly the same amount of money it's hard to negotiate a higher wage through the system and i wish we could because i think they're paid for too little for what they do so it's a challenge to get the right people into those positions because there and that's coming through years of you know screening and training and everything extremely fond of our zoning inspectors but it's hard to find those good people do work so that by the time it gets to the zoning inspector it's already ready for a notice of warning and possibly notice a violation is some of that work cannot be farmed out  assistance in part of the issues that some people even those in the industry don't want to turn in others who are in the industry and they're now willing to put their name on it they will testify all all day long in front of council or the planning commission railing against the county to enforce law when push comes to shove and say hey give me your name as a violator as a no then i can put down a letter that says this person witness did you this someone else had witnessed a violation they turn a little mic on there so if the industry itself wants to help self regulate the industry they need to put their name on and certify the day witnessed or they collected this evidence that someone was violating the short term rental or the beam be ordinates but if they don't want to do that then it county's job to do the enforcement and it's not in somehow the citizens don't feel it's their job also the help support or enforce the law then it makes it difficult so if you want witnessed it this is a violation and then we can follow up ok but it makes it difficult when they don't want to just send us some stuff and we don't know where this evidence came from and they're not willing to put their name to it then it's not going to it doesn't help us means we just this specter has a start a new or it is but then they have to go in witness the same violation or track down the same type of evidence that maybe that person already had collected so but the bottom line is the inspector still needs to do is job still needs to do in a professional manner still needs to do the proper legal notifications that are required by the code to do we're discussing and so that's where my idea came from that they're very busy with this and i do know that in two thousand and thirteen to fourteen i believe we had the five hundred foot restriction was not in force yet and a lot of the stuff from two thousand and fourteen on is a five hundred foot rule i believe ok memories any other questions well i do we did have real property tax here and i want to bring mr mugg up talking about what what the process would be if there is a notice of violet i'm sorry notice of warning sent to let's say an illegal short term rental at that same time if that enormous of warning got sent to the r p t real property tax permits actual permits on our books there's actually one doesn't even have an address so we have a legal permit it place but we only on our records don't even have an address for this person so how does that work do have notification of these things happening primarily what we're looking at if there is a homeowner's exemption for example if you're looking and that's what i'm thinking you're thinking about because if it's a residential property we already classify classifying the property as either a residential home or the exemption if we get notified that a property and we have these notification the r f s system that there is some short term advertising occurring on a property then we start from our point of view we have to see if there's a homeowner's exemption on the property and then we start a investigation into and communicating with the owner that there is a potential that they might lose their homeowners exemption and give us evidence contrary to that let's say they just say they've got a homeowner's exemption do you remove that exemption and turn it to residential or i know we had a discussion in a i think it was in the budget fight that saying you know charging at the hotel rate but we were advised that we can't tax illegal use because of certain reasons that that's correct if we find  exemption then we're going to be removing their exemption at that we also have to investigate what part of the home an exemption they are violating if they are saying exemption we would have to get that evidence evidence that that is happening so we would have to follow up if we because if we just get a notification we have to go get the evidence in order to adjust it and then we when we do adjusted that again is subject to an appeal that goes to the board of review if they wanted to appeal because most of the time we get if it's just a notification or dispersant is doing to short term rental and that's it there's no other information or evidence that is provided to us  you know just dates or any other type of information that is happening on that parcel so we have to start that investigation in order to move on our end members any questions to the department mr white i said this is more for core council but ok as as mr couch mentioned we've been told that here unable to tax an illegal use is there anything that keeps us from taxing and actual use or does it just requires to change some ordinance to allow us to tax and actual use that might be illegal i know this is come up in other cases perhaps i think before the border review i don't wonder if i think there's already been advice given on along the lines in i don't want to talk out of turn without consulting with who have given that advice i think that those issues have come up before so i'm not prepared right now to provide a response to to all of those taxation issues again while that's certainly relevant to legal use is going on the agenda item today is for the short term mental home ordinance and the zoning provision is there so i'm not currently prepared to discuss that that issue at this time there are enough but a think of it is in my view part of our of the penalty discussion with respect to the enforcement so would you like a formal letter from the department maybe the committee said you know a request for a formal opinion and what was the question again what we've been told we can tax an illegal use so my interest is by that whether we have the ability to change the ordinance to allow us to do so or or at least be able to tax an actual homeowners exception if they currently have one right but they should be subject to back taxes as any other homeowner or loss of home or exemption would be subject to mr clarification for something that mr other whether said so joe come on up those are no longer supposed to be anonymous right not to just that's a policy change that's written in the law i understand it's a two edged sword people are hesitant to file a complaint because are concerned about retribution but at the same time we've seen a great decrease in the number of our f s s filed specifically to attack a neighbor or a competitor or a former landlord or something like that you know people people are filing so many false claims because they can no longer do it anonymously at the same time we've had help from the industry and so i want to give give them credit where credit is due because they're in there they're operating legally you know legally and they know where their competitors are they're illegal competitors are located so they have helped identify a number of i'm not sure how many but they have helped identify the location of quite a few operations ok you said two things those were the two people who like to file anonymously but they won't file anonymously and well it's true that the public doesn't like  the industry itself doesn't like to put their name on an r f s they have helped locate certain operations far as getting systems or not and we do take anonymous it helps to have a contact person so we can follow up but my question about do you know that help what can be done to help the enforcement is to been my recollection was in our last meeting someone said the professor can be anonymous but there's got to be a work around where we can protect people or who are concerned evidence you need because i thought we put in there i mean it says that it's private facia evidence if you have the link and the address to the location is that enough to issue i mean to issue  a notice of violate a notice of warning first or do you need more than that that's pretty much when we issue a notice of warning when we know that somebody is operating and we can find an exact location ok so would be good i mean we obviously need to link to the advertisement and the official address and ok and that's why we've sent out four hundred notices because we know the location and part of my i've never been i mean my first inclination is to say yeah sure but then every time i go yeah sure on something and i get back to the office and consider this to you consider that did you consider the other thing i'm like understandable what else can be done to get those numbers a little bit closer closely matched as i had mentioned mr chairman that some of it's just internal how we deal with the notices of violation so we're working on that with corporation counsel and you know i ask the same thing you know with when i work with mr a pause you know how come we're not issuing more violations and while we admittedly got far you know we got farther ahead with our notices of warning than following up with our violations so they are in the process of following up with a notice is a violation there's a warning you know we think you're ramifications with that so you need to be more careful i think i want to say more careful you need to be more precise across all your t s dot all your i's to make sure it's white so if you want that violation to be upheld versus overturned on some technicality like you cited the wrong section of the code or you know some other silly thing you know you've got to make sure all those things are right so that there's they should start or should keep looking for that particular if brutalising if it's anonymous then we can't let that person know we we get a lot of complaints but you've said that you don't anyway we processed a complaints as they come in we were as as a director indicated we did get a little ahead of ourselves we were trying to take a proactive approach by sending out as many of the notice of warnings as we as we possibly could to try to get ahead of it and now we're we're going back through those notices warning issue notices of violations we do follow up with with the complaint and if there is a contact person to let them  know again as director indicates they you get people just complaining about their neighbor about something and it may not be real and so we try to get back to those but sometimes i guess if we get anonymous complaint and they don't we follow happened we find out that person never gave us contact information to get back to them that's so there we try we try to be diligent in trying to find out whether or not someone is actually violated one of the rules before we actually go to a violation and that's why i stress it helps to have evidence everybody wants to have evidence you know to be able to do their job correctly not just hearsay  this morning i heard a mention of eight letters had been sent in regards to ben i'm kind of curious to know how many people have been banned and all of the people that have been sent a letter in to your include that in the letter that you know mr white is talking about i know i have signed amendments have you had a chance to look at them this was sent to the committee because it was received the general communication in assigned to this committee so i figured i'd hear it at the same time  we're hearing p c ten so on the letter addressed may twenty sixth two thousand and fifteen to chair white page is the set of proposed amendments i think these have come forward because of the frustration of the community i would just like to see some opening comments we're not going to be able to go through them today obviously it's we've only got ten minutes left but i'd like to hear the department's response they improve over what we have and i believe i previously commented that some of the some of the absolutes li things we've talked about i mean on the one hand it's in speaking with mr a pause it's it's nice to be able to just point to the law and so to say hey folks sorry i got to do this is that what the law says on the other hand you've heard some stories about you know people that there really are exceptions to the case or as missed by so used an example when on the mainland on to the mainland i have to deal with those from that the other thing and having those absolutes in there the mandatory time limits that provide absolutely no flexibility for the exceptions and there's always exceptions so you know that we're going to have to discuss go in and dissect a little bit  things is for us to streamline the process for them so that it's not any more burdensome that it needs to be because it for me it seems relatively simple that if you're not  you're if you're not advertising showing a permit number and you're in violation of what we've passed already and we just need to make sure that we give them the tools to make it is easy as possible and so you know we're not going to be the ones to be able to figure that out without their help you know and i'd be happy to sit with them before that before we come bring this back up again and certainly won't be at the next meeting i think unless we get some time to do that but  absolutely be able to sit with them and see how we can incorporate a lot of this in i would also like the department to consider because i'd like to discuss it with the members as well you know they talked about the five year ban and some people are saying get rid of it with some fines that aren't that high there people are saying no we still need to five year ban and my thought is consider if we need to put it in the language just say at the time of notice of violation the five year ban so that gives them from the notice of warning to notice a violation a chance to comply if not their band consider that if that's something that the committee would be willing one see what they can come up with some kind of language that if  likes that idea will go with that if not if you as a committee member have another potential idea it seems like the the back taxes isn't a lot i would like to see a lot more if if somebody as miss by says says the hammer needs to be reasonable and you know sharp  somebody says twenty thousand bucks i'll just pay that will go right on that that isn't sharp enough to miss by so then mr white i'm just going to make a quick comment you know i was made aware and i believe this to be true that there was a case where somebody was up to eating illegal vacation rental and they were making over three thousand dollars a night if you're making three thousand dollars a night thirty thousand dollars is peanuts thank you more interested in making sure we've got a large hammer and if that means that if you're if you have a notice of violation and you continue to operate you're going to get the thousand dollar oh yeah absolutely a day fine but also it seems to me that even if even when you get a notice of warning you're getting that because you're you're  advertising and operating illegally so maybe there's some way that i don't know exactly it's just frustrating but it be nice to be able to find them starting with the nose a violation if they're not responding right exactly you know yes mr spence mr hopper one of the say something just to comment that i didn't want to leave the impression that in foresman would end with the find if they're paid i may have thought activity is ongoing there's ability in the get a judge to enforce an order to stop the operation that's one permitted if all appeal rights are exhausted meaning if they either don't appeal within the timeframe after the notice of violation or you go through the board of variances in appeals and there's a favorable order to the county so it is possible to go to court i don't know if that's been done in any cases but has been done in other cases involving other types of zoning violations so that is a remedy available to county and you know that can help in cases where if somebody is making more than the find a mountain has no incentive to stop they can be taken to court and a court order obtained that would require that they cease operation so that is an option that's of to the county the proposed changes in the draft bill so that's already there for the committee's consideration the first and i want to say i will follow up with the testif who on the ninth floor that there was some kind of order to stroll enforcement i believe the chip probably was told that i need to follow up with her on the ninth floor up so i can correct i do not mean to insinuate at all that choose testifying in a correct so i will follow up with her and i also want to thank mr dantes for correcting his testimony on what  there's some state law implications as far as when you have to fine with the prerequisites are not just for zoning violations but any county violations but generally you have to give that opportunity to for a hearing and doesn't have for example like you know clean water act or other if they start up again can they be fined for the period from the first notice of violation to the next if they get if it could be proven that they were operating during the what we try to do in that case i think is this when you settle the first violation meaning if they were issued a notice of violation and they actually came into compliance ceased operation and paid the fines that were agreed upon normally in the settlement agreement which you would say is that if they're if they're shown to be you know violating all of the fines that were either held in abeyance or were not due for that for that for that notice of violation they can retroactively be imposed and you can put other terms in there that would perhaps deal with the gap in between but in general the department would need to have evidence that there was operation done in order for those days in order to say for per day that the that the thousand dollars is a valid fine this is one of the reasons i think that a thousand dollars per day fine maximum can sometimes hamstring enforcement efforts if the actual use is being profitable despite that that fine it would perhaps be nice to have a special management area rules under the under state law for example allow for up to one hundred thousand dollar initial fine and ten thousand dollars per day fine so someone gets  fifty thousand dollar initial fine whether or not you continue to you know either operator do your use that probably enough of the of an incentive to deter the activity outright without having the daily finance a thousand dollar  but well i can add up it's a bit difficult because you have to you do have to show operation and evidence of operation for each of those days because you can't go more than a thousand dollars a day now there can be multiple violations which is something that we could mention most of the advertisement so generally there's two thousand dollars initial in two thousand dollars per day separate violations and then you know the person can appeal and argue i didn't advertise or i didn't advertise or i didn't operate but there's two separate things one of them is just the mere fact of having your ad up without a permit number that would be a citation but then the fact of operation which you can show through prima facia evidence using the ad is another violation and so those have been issued as  i mean only adds another thousand dollars to the to the pot but they are two separate violations ok thank you thank you thank you members any other questions what is going to do is going to work with discussion will schedule it again i don't think it's going to be on the next meeting because i don't think we can get that resolved quick enough but we work on it i want to thank everybody who came in testified we hear you as you can hear we're it's not a simple as ok just do it so we're working on how we can do it legally and giving everybody due process we do understand that it is an issue in neighborhoods and also for people who are have done the proper saying it and gotten permits you know it you shouldn't be punished for everybody else not doing the right thing and we're working on getting that apartment they hear you they've heard us i think we're going to work on  ways we can get them a faster way but until then i want to sit down with them in really work hard on getting something that everybody will be happy with  or partially happy with in the way so members thank you very much thank you for your questions and staff you've got all the stuff you need to order which i just take action on the items that we're going to defer we're going to do for both of these items until we can get this certain things resolved so members thank you these items without objections will be deferred ok and thank you this meeting is a