as i just did as mr chair proceeding with presentation of testimony on the agenda items we've established limited telephone interactive communication that enables individuals from i to provide testimony from my district offices individuals there who wish to offer testimony should now sign up with the district office staff individuals who wish to offer testimony and a chamber please sign up at the desk located  on the floor or to lobby just outside the chamber door testimony at all locations is limited to the items listed on today's agenda and pursuant to the rules of the counsel each testify or is allowed to testify for up to three minutes with one minute to conclude if requested when testifying please state your name and the name of any organization that you represent hon office please identify yourself and introduce your first testifier great morning mr chair the district office is closed today and we have three individuals who have signed up to provide testimony in the council chamber the first individual to provide testimony me this good morning everyone and morning my main concern with the gas tax is a whole list of electric vehicles that aren't included in any way you know every day i drive around maui and i see all these teslas that are eighty to one hundred thousand dollars and realize that they're not paying anything other than a way tax you know there should be some way that these vehicles are tax leafs electric leaf driving all over the place and even for myself i'm contemplating buying a hybrid which is going to you know increase my mileage by fifty percent so i will be paying less i don't mind paying the gasoline tax and i can understand why it needs to be raised but for this whole other category of air vehicles you know there should be some way that they have to pay because right now other than the way tax and the leafs don't wait very much at all and another concern is with all of the construction going on especially in key hay where i live i see these big vehicles the big trucks that seem to be  burning i guess it's called stationary fuel kerosene and it's pretty obvious i was a mechanic for thirty seven years worked for delta airlines there is quite a bit of difference in the exhaust from a vehicle that's burning the for fuel you know it's pretty obvious on the way here i saw vehicle pulling out of and there was just a huge black cloud coming out of both exhausts so i realize that that fuel is not taxed at all and i really feel that there's you know whether the police have any enforcement or you know how is this how's this regulated so that those vehicles you know are allowed to burnette material either the vehicles not running properly or they're burning a salt for high sulfur fuel one other thing is on the way tax you know and i have a fairly modern cards but there are a lot of people that are driving old cruisers for instance that are half the pay the exact same way tax where i live before on the mainland and not to say that this has to change here but as the know whether it's good fellow brothers or anybody else and i don't know you know who is or who may be doing this but there is a fuel that they guide that is ok for  and you know other heavy equipment that is used on the road but you know those vehicles people that own those vehicles you know it's very easy for them to take the nozzle from their their oil tanks and pump into you know one of these big rigs and i know what happens you know it's obvious to me although you know i haven't tested you know i haven't been there and i understand that there's a different coloration of the  l that you would buy for your diesel car and the color of the diesel that is used for you know the stationary equipment and this is some strange grader it's not on the what we would normally be seeing it's kind of a renegade fuel right well what it is is people that are bypassing the system you know that that and i don't know whether there's anything in the laws or regulations that  prohibited but it seems to me there should be because these heavy vehicles are obviously using the roads and they're bypassing paying whatever is a twenty three cents a southward paying now or what we're going to depending on what it is but i get it and i see the black smoke just like you know what you're talking about just trying to figure out what it is that we should be taxing well you know petroleum or whoever but you know that i know that there's vehicles that drive around through construction sites to fuel the caterpillars the excavators you know whatever the equipment is called and it's just so easy for them to  what i believe we do have laws that the perfect prohibit that so that's interesting that you know that maybe we can figure out how we can take a look at that but the question i have for you is on the electric vehicle yes we've been discussing that on ways to do that and since you're anticipating buying either an electric vehicle or a hybrid would you consider paying when you do registration per mile charge every year during the registration knowing that it probably will be around two hundred dollars extra on top of your registration i you know i just think it's appropriate you know you should be able to use the streets the roads for for zero in the way it stands now that's exactly what's happening so whether you know it should probably be sliding again you know i'm probably going to go with a hybrid right now because the only s u v and i'm getting up there in age so i can't sit down low in a sports car anymore or what not so the s u v is you know a good design for me and the only one really that's making an all electric s u v is a again it's tesla and there are one hundred ten thousand dollars and you know i just can't see me ever owning one ok roads in our department transportation by giving them funding to keep everything going which which helps everybody as fuel as cars get more efficient of course you know miles per gallon his will will continue to go up and hopefully people that are being official are going to see their net will be the same or actually last because they're saving on the fuel portion as well as far as the biodiesel portion of this bill i i like you know i couple of fleets that just couldn't make the number go any more so he has a couple two and a half cents more this year i would strongly recommend that we stay at nine or preferably go back to zero quien big island and we're seeing good support on the big island where they've done this it can't be forever we know that it's got to be while we're building up this the industry getting people used to biodiesel and then when the significant amount of biodiesel being used then it's it is appropriate to raise that rate to cover or the roads right now it's so minuscule you know it's a few thousand dollars difference per penny for biodiesel where it's several hundred thousand dollars per penny for gas and diesel so i would it's more of messaging right now than it is the actual economics for the county but for the fleets it's it's a it's definitely comics they're looking at and they are small users the individual owners they they're still with us on biodiesel they do it because they want to do it the fleet center are very much more cost come cost  not on not on the retail market but on the hotel market so it's it's really you know it's quite a bit less than what you're seeing on the street and biodiesel is more expensive so that difference that that ten cent difference is enough it's we're trying to make that enough to cover the spread between bio diesel and diesel fuel right now a couple years ago it wasn't a problem we were we were competitive already with diesel fuel but as you know that the prices are just are just really low right now so this year last year was a tough year because of the spread of the difference in price so that is that explain so again if if that and you get to do this every year so if for some reason petroleum goes up to eighty ninety dollars a barrel again we won't be as it won't be as necessary to to do this for the regular diesel it's or what is the price for the there's different rates for do you know on different levels but i but i'm it's about a it's about a dollar a gallon tax i'm surprised that nobody else seems to care it's a twenty eight percent increase that's a pretty significant increase you would think that people might be all up in arms but why aren't they because gas is cheap today you know nobody is upset about it if gas was five dollars a gallon you would have a line of people out the door saying don't raise this by five cents but it makes sense to raise this right now i like the idea that it goes directly to orders repaving our roads and taking care of our roads i i like the way it works you drive more you pay more tax you drive less should pay less tax i've done the calculations for myself and the increase that we're talking about for me is twenty dollars a year so i'm not going to fight about a twenty dollar increase the total tax that i would pay myself based on the number of miles i drive is ninety two dollars a year i i'm i'm fine with paying ninety two dollars a year to be on the roads but i do want to make sure that the money is used properly  and i know that you guys in budget you do a good job of making sure that the we're getting our money's worth but mr good i hope that he comes back and he shows you the miles that we're paved in and that we have happy people about the  roads in front of their houses being smooth so again i i think that it's the right thing to do to raise the taxes as has been proposed today the idea about the electric cars and paying some some alternate tax we do have to recognize that people drive variable amounts i know one guy with an electric car who drives twenty thousand miles a year i know another guy who's had electric car for three years and he's put two thousand miles on it so just hitting him with you know one fee is hard to say  i have a hybrid vehicle that gets thirty eight miles to the gallon i had the non hybrid version of the same vehicle that got thirty five miles to the gallon so this is the one hundred fit and a honda c r v the difference between the two  fuel mileage wasn't that much because it was what they call a light type of it so not all hybrids are created equal not all electric cars are created equal mr couch has a hybrid die you still electric car so it is hard to figure out what the right thing is but i am in total agreement that we should come up with some type of tax that is assessed when they register the electric vehicles that that brings them into this they might not pay the same amount but they need to be be brought into the table at  council chamber if there's any individuals in the council chamber in the district offices would like to offer testimony please identify yourself to the appropriate staff and proceed to the testimony electron or district office phone at this time