before we take the department of finance and the room for pretty certification numbers to take public to simone e we have requests we shall allow each testified three minutes to share your testimony with the committee a lighting system for those in the chamber green means to speak yellow means thirty seconds remaining rigid means to stop continued support of the cooperative education partnership grant and like to ask that you please continue that support and beg if necessary that you please reinstate the previous level of support of fifty thousand dollars to the budget last semester i had a very good fortune of serving an internship at the county department of finance and i can say without exaggeration to change the course of my academic journey thanks to  on classroom learning but i think we all understand that the real world experience offers elements of the learning process one can never acquire in a classroom and thanks to this in turn ship provided by the cooperative education program i have a much better idea of what awaits me when i reenter the workforce and more important than that been inspired to pursue classes after the degree program i really love for my friends  classmates to be able to enjoy a similar experience and i ask that you please reinstate their level of support for the future of my wee county's workforce thank you thank you any questions for mr here every now and thank you very our membership includes over one hundred fifty property and allied businesses that are members of scuse me all of whom have an interest in the visitor industry collectively our membership employees over twenty thousand local residen and represents over nineteen thousand five hundred rooms on behalf of maui hotel and lodging association i'm here today to thank you for your diligence in reviewing the county budget and all of your efforts for a balanced budget i would also like to request that you keep the budget proposal as currently stated with no increase to real property tax rate for the hotel resort and timeshare classifications this year forecasted property valuations alone are up thirteen point four percent generating two hundred sixty six point four million an increase of twenty eight point seven million for fiscal year two thousand and sixteen data mouth one hundred twelve point three million will be generated from hotel resort and timeshare properties forty two point one percent of the overall real property tax income keeping our cost level is critical to our ability to compete against other sun destinations it's specially now when we are seeing an increased amount of competition with new resort locations and other just to other destinations deeply discounted air hotel packages thank you for the opportunity to testify thank you any questions for the  ladies anyone else in the chambers seen one coming forward members with no objections is forty billion seven hundred and eleven million seven hundred twenty thousand two hundred seventy that's the certified rolls mr chair for the rights purposes and  the director financial file with the county clerk a list of all property assessments we made within the county of molly list known as a certification rochelle identify the properties assessed by its tax not keen on the property shall be assessed taxes shall be levied their on proposed fifteen fiscal year sixteen budget to the council a sort of creation of real property assessments has not been completed with and the mayor's proposed budget included projections of the amount of value to me and to be on their appeal with the assistance of the entire staff after all exemptions along with the actual assessments under dispute the certified value for revenue projection is used for conscious deliberation of the budget and establishment of the property tax rates per classification the primary difference between the projection and certification is the amount of value on the dispute from tax appeals in estimating this amount historically we evaluate the appeals from previous year along with the our estimate based on market conditions we have prepared a hand book or technical stuff put together for you and when we believe will provide the consulate figures and statistics to a despotic for tax rate deliberations as well as provide you information for future budget and finance  the certified values are applied to the marriage proposed tax rates per classification to arrive at the projected revenue the sum of all ten plus  after subtracting three hundred sixty thousand eight hundred forty six dollars in circuit breaker tax credits and adding one million eight hundred thirty four thousand two hundred sixty eight dollars in revenue from parcels being the minimum tax the net total for property taxes at the rates total two hundred sixty two million eight hundred seventy two thousand nine hundred thirty seven dollars from the marriage proposal there is a shortfall of approximately four million to thirty six six ninety six the shortfall is due to the actual number of appeals on their appeal and was not available to merit the time he had set his propos pages two through eleven provide summary detail for each of the ten classifications details include the growth all you wish and per class exemptions evaluations on appeal fifty percent of the value of them must be deducted for tax rate purposes and the for tax rate purposes page two is a summary for the timeshare classification as you can see rate appeared these are the when you guys have your handouts this will be to the area you look at residential commercialise residential apartment commercial industrial agricultural conservation hotel resort the next page when you do have a book you'd probably be a good to put a sticky note or a tab over here it's a summary page showing the number of parcels per classification  and pass nine fiscal years as you can see the market began to rise significantly in the two thousand and seven fiscal year it reached its peak in two thousand and ten and started to decline in the fiscal thirteen and with third year in a row the net taxable values have increased on the bottom of the section of the handle you'll see the percentage change from year to year which is not on this power point but to probably be detailed in the on your actual hand th page shows a certified value for tax purposes for the upcoming and past nine years unlike the previous page illustration takes into account real property appeals and a use for budget purposes chair th opening section of the certification and i'm assuming that you would want me to just proceed with such  again we have a summary as the opening pages for a quick reference page number one this shows a five year history of tax rate history by classification along with the proposed  the handout in the lower section you actually have the numbers but due to reason we don't have it on here but on your handout you have the actual numbers on page number two this just shows the other for all the counties in hawaii as proposals for the fiscal year sixteen tax rates now on the floor half on this page you can have a pipe chart which actually shows the two thousand and sixteen certified values by classification and on the bottom right of that slide you have the certified page six is a breakdown of the previous page by indicating an eight year comparison of revenue by classification the graph is slightly different from the values chart because it incorporates tax rates we must be aware that although values move in either direction that unlike the previous page where this shot was beast on projected revenue this is a breakdown by certified value  really related breakdown by proposed revenues this page shows that although salt molly has the highest total valuation at thirteen point four billion or thirty three percent generates the most revenue at one hundred three million or thirty nine point five percent of the total revenues districts had the largest allocation of revenue and value so this is the values and this is the revenue so you when you guys have it you you have it before you own one one  page nineteen it's a very busy page it's a huge pages just the top portion and all the numbers are in the handout but we don't have it available for the slides this shows all the parcels paying minimum tax by classification one point that we have had with some of the council members in the past is why we have so much parcels in agriculture receiving minimum tax this graph shows that there are about three thousand four hundred forty parcels in agricultural class thirty two point four percent paying the minimum tax primarily because of the reason of receiving agricultural assessments for the ranch gina de discraft also shows that four thousand six hundred forty seven homeowners or approximately eighteen percent of the homeowners to pay minimum tax category h twenty's a breakdown of the ten thousand six hundred twenty parcels that paid a minimum tax this is quite alarming to know that about fifty percent of our total parcels actually paid minimum tax base twenty one is a slight identifies the distribution of appeals by classification for the current and past three years you can see there was a quite a significant spike this year in appeals in a time share category county code requires that fifty percent of the value on the end under dispute or on their appeal is available for the council to appropriate in the annual budget they were told hundred fifty four appeals this year which resulted in a certified value adjustment of five hundred sixty three million dollars on page twenty three this is the litigators claim summary as of april sixth two thousand and fifteen on the top you'll see that we have twenty three cases at the state tax appeal court level dating back to fiscal zero eight with the litigating amount of approximately five point seven strain twelve out of twenty three cases that are in tax court amount to five point five million of those funds page twenty four this slide shows a ten year history of the number of qualified applicants and the subsidy from the circuit breaker program the circuit breaker program has gone through reset amendment's and has been a relatively stable program as far as the number of qualified applicants and has been in place for as a safety net for homeowners credits the book of the residents receive a credit in the five hundred two thousand dollars range and sixteen applicants receiving a credit between three thousand and five thousand the next chart represents adjusted gross income range of the applicants with majority of the applicants with the a g i of less than five thousand dollars on the far left the next chart shows a majority of the buildings fall in the hundred to two hundred thousand dollars range in the last chart shows age is not a factor in applying for the credit but just shows that the majority of those receiving the subsidy are over to age of sixty page twenty six years a summary of the home want to classify ranges on the top of the chart identifies the net taxable value of parcels within the homeowner class after the two hundred thousand exemption is removed from the first bar on the left as zero to ninety thousand means that properties are valued up to two hundred ninety thousand these forty eight hundred parcels received and being a minimum tax the right hand column identifies the fifty percent of our for the hotel resort classes the majority contributor of value i wanted to point out that only two hundred thirty nine parcels of the ten thousand nine hundred parcels within this class make up the true forty four hotels  rest of the parcels are short term rental properties partly made up of short term rental condominium units this year d s c r eight properties were moved out of this classification and moved into commercial classification as a result of this body on the bottom of this page you can see that these markets have very different markets over the years  for this very reason out almost caution the body to know that by having these two segments in a single class can be very difficult results on taxation when they do not move relatively similar that forty four true hotels make up twenty one percent of the value in the homeowner class resort classification this chart also shows a different categories are benefiting from to subsidies  subsidy program and this is the program twenty nine to the end we're going to have some mushy go over the from this to the end of the slide show which probably be about twenty or thirty slides is just for a refresher for this cult so this body to know what type of properties are in each category so chair would you prefer to go through them or  this is marcy martin the property technical officer i'm going to describe to you the type of properties that are in each of your tax rate categories the timeshare classification has properties that are and this is an example of the two on a poly ocean resort properties these properties are individually condominium biased in together they make up about five hundred fifty units the residential classification is vacant and improved non condominium land zoned residential is also project district land designated for residential use these homes are rented long term or are second homes and not rented can be homes under construction finish the apartment classification is diverse category c their project district multifamily use could be vacant or improved vacant and improved non condominium land zoned apartment condominium vacant land without regard to highest invest used or zoning condominiums that are second homes and not rented to transients occupants or their condominium units that are rented long term here we have an apartment building in the upper picture we've got a home on apartment land and we've got condominiums on apartment land and in the lower picture is hotel zone condominium project where the owners have classified themselves as apartment because they do not rent the commercial classification is project district land or properties that are improved with the commercial use industrial and commercial condominiums which are becoming very common a lot of industrial land is being kind of many miles at this point vacant and improve land zoned commercial condominium units used for business or mercantile activities and now the permitted short term rental homes are in the commercial classification we've got a napa auto parts store short term rental home the industrial classification is land with a project district designation of industrial can be vacant or improved and vacant and improved non condominium land zoned industrial again we have shopping centers and costco's also on land zoned industrial the agricultural classification has vacant and improved non condominium land zoned agriculture or rural land zone agriculture or rural but dedicated to agriculture production  the agriculture classification land zone agriculture improved with residential do exile and with no agriculture use the homes in this category are rented longterm are second homes and not rented sugarcane fields are dedicated agriculture there and agriculture class in this picture we've got properties up and  center shows a home with agriculture use in the upper corner is a home without agriculture activity they're both in the agriculture class the conservation classification has golf courses regardless of their zoning properties are state zone conservation they may be improved with the wind farm or residential dwelling or they could be vacant we have a picture of the wind farm force reserve they're on the conservation class golf courses along the shoreline there's a lot of conservation land we've got fish ponds and conservation land and we have luxury oceanfront homes in the conservation class the hotel and resort classification has a vacant and improved non condominium land zoned hotel if the zoning allows transients occupancy less than one hundred eighty days it is in the hotel resort classification properties that are grandfathered to allow transit occupancy less than one hundred eighty days are classified as hotel and resort and condominiums use for transients occupancy less than one hundred eighty days are in the hotel and resort classification so the grand when there is a hotel property and condominiums individual units within condominium projects that have declared their use as transit occupancy or in the hotel and resort class we've got vacant and improved parcels bettors own hotel some of these parcels have homes on them in the homeowner classification we have properties including condominiums used as the owner's principal residence and has been granted a homeowner exemption we've got single family homes owned residential it can be a commercial belly it can be a home on hotel land or a hotel on industrial land if they have been granted the homeowner exemption they will be in the homeowner classification and last we have the commercialised residential classification it could be a parcel or condominium unit that has been granted a bed and breakfast permit a parcel or condominium unit that has been granted considerations that go into the discipline that presents your ability to give us a certified number so the chair wants and thank the director and his staff administrative shared half of that is goes into a fund for us not to be utilized into appeals are determined through the p but to look at various categories and consider proposing adjustments one is in the hotel resort category i'm thinking of splitting out what else to be an independent standalone category i think their impact of the other components in the current tax getter gives them an unfair situation so i'm going to be reviewing that i'm also going to be reviewing the commercial residential component and i have my issues with that as well as the commercial component so i'll be looking at those texts categories  and make sure that they make sense with the zoning categories for those that need to i want to know my position i'm going after those illegal shock term rentals everyone's information on how you district where your value is in your district and how your revenues are generated by your district how we've had people at the door hearings asking how much to district generates well this will help us provide those answers and where it comes in the from those districts whether it's resort homes commercial time chair one of the questions i had was the commercial the significant amount of appeals in the commercial sector and in reviewing the assessments here is that the total valu gone up by about fifty percent and i was wondering and the director could help us understand if there was a a significant jump in the number of parcels or whether data have shown a tremendous increase in that area and the appraisers likewise made the adjustments according to what they believe that they could support so assessments are not magic they're based on sales data on the use of data the established data to mean they rearranged my desk sorry about that one of the pictures in your portion on the homeowner exemption showed what looks like a commercial operation and you know there's  my recollection is in the code it says that it's for the homeowners exclusive use and how does that square with the commercial building that may be partially occupied by the resident but the remainder is in personal use or is that a is that an accurate description of what's going on on that parcel and chairman is th code is has the word exclusive and i believe the word exclusively has been in there when we used to all be with the state of the boy under one one jurisdiction over the years we have never at least my we county has never i think is the only county that has never used the word exclusively the way it's written in the code we have if you do own and occupy even a portion of your home our code also says that once you have been granted and received the home exemption the parcel shall be classified homeowner it doesn't say the portion of use for the homeowner so there is something that i think this body should go over the code and see whether what is the true intent or what is the interpretation that they want to take and either remove the word exclusive or if you want to treat it as exclusive then i think it would be better to come out and publicly know about what would change because that's not where thank you so in that case right there it's a lie you know it's a mixed use where the owner was could be living up stairs and used the first floor as commercial use but in that situation once you own an occupier and apply for somebody would own and occupy that hotel but it's likely and it could be so there's two hotels marci saying that they're probably smaller hotels that onan occupy and therefore the entire hotel is being in the home one of classification and i don't think that is the intent of what it was intended for i certainly agree with that thank you thank you chair and that is word exclusive in the long term and the word exclusive is in there but it's not being applied as exclusive so that's why i said we i think we should either clean up the language or or i'm fine i'd like to ask the question i guess first on these appeals do you believe you can are you able to conduct and complete these appeals in the time frame that they're going to hear and how you know so even if it passes the border review these twelve hundred fifty four a lot of these cases are either timeshare or commercial a lot of times even if they were not a favorable judgment in their in their eyes they still have the ability to go to toxic court thirty days after the judgment so i feel of the times i would think that time shares continue to go to the higher court so that's president and how he he understands what is what is being lined up thank you and you know again is that your begin to accept your court you know there's another opportunity for us people who are or whatever entity is assessed who doesn't agree with that final decision the review board right but the key there was the chairs you know we're looking probably around sixty percent  beals so kind of a decrease from our original projection versus what according to about four million dollars came right off of appeals that's a lot of  money that's a lot of money but i know this is serious and i think you chairman i just want to let the body know that because just because we get a pos that doesn't that doesn't mean whether or not we're doing a good or bad job i think i don't know if i think what we need to understand if you are not getting appeals you're might be giving it away you know there's a reason why people people have this because you know values are going up and it's getting really close to market value and i think i think two percent is really showing that we're doing what's normal of all i want to say thank you for a great reason to there's a lot of really good information in here and when we have time i'll take a closer look at it but i think we were given a pretty good understanding of what's happening i'd like to say that i totally agree with you that we need to do something about the eagle the operating principles it makes a mockery of the work that this council worked very very hard on we were very hard on setting process so that people could you know get a permit and operate legally and it is so unfair to those that go through that and so i agree with you that you know this should be a priority we really need to go after them i don't care what it costs but we need to stop it because of the effects that it has it's demoralizing to the legals and our counties deprived of revenue it's not fair it's just not fair so i totally support you on that thank you the other thing fair and so that's another story we have to plug the other thing that i want to say and nobody wants to hear this but i'm going to say again number nine still looking for us to spend some time as a budget and finance committee looking at all of the classifications and seeing what the strengths of them are and possibly any weaknesses and you've identified a couple but i really would like us to spend the time to look at all  system is so important because that's our largest source of revenue and i just think that the time we spend in but it's just not enough so i just like to hope that you know we pick up a look at it during the year  misplaced into the committee for serious review thank you chair and i appreciate that i think it's important thank you thank you mr cochran thank you chair and i want to compliment the department on a very thorough  presentation and a wonderful find booklet hand maybe it's just the years of going through this again and again that i'm it's kind of sinking in now but i'm seeming to understand  maui's and so is that what is the reason for that is that it's called timeshares and where most of our appeals come from also and everything the valuations are really really close but it's the number of same the same but there by revenue coming in is higher by sixteen plus percent was it ever looked at to bring it down to not as high of a jump or percentage for revenue so dropping the tax percentage to be you know i mean to not have the revenue grow so high because people are still looking at it as we're still paying  more because revenues are hot you know valuations are up ok great tax number is the same but that doesn't mean they're saying paying the same taxes due to valuation so is it ever looked at the ratio and  is that average increase of all the categories increase some categories went higher somewhat lower six to number sixteen this being tossed on his the more less categories average one you look at your streams i'm going to tell you that you might want to go deeper into the weeds to make certain adjustments i mean i leave it up to you how you want to approach it you could do and blanket reduction adjustment cross the board thank you i guess i was looking at were kind of matching when our economy was kind of mean a little bit back in zero six looks like seven o eight valuations are very similar to what they are today so i was looking at trying to see but it's not in here to cross for a reference of what this county tax people then because the valuations w oh most equal is today but i probably could figure that the overall tax revenue is probably down from what we're going to they're proposing today where the budget  lastly about vacant agricultural taxation was that ever thought to look into we do not have that category but i believe i brought it up in previous years and i'm looking on your page two section two page please i don't really have a say as to whether or not i mean i think if we want to i think we can what's interesting is that the vacant agriculture is hired an actual agriculture so i'm not sure what department in condominium units we have a declaration it's called a condominium declaration for the owner to attest what is the use defeat checks off is using it as a second home and not rented for a period less than six months then it's considered long term and it's called apartment so that is something that's different that subdivided parcels came up to and i think i talked to the chair about this and i believe he was aware of the standard that we have here because you condominium why is now you can have a determination of what is your use and potentially be claiming something lower than if you were subdivided as a zone as a hotel you don't have that same right to claim long term rental and get apartments so i renting it we get complaints and that's something that also the chair has been considering whether or not we should start doing more in compliance to actually go out there and do site visits and do questionnaires etc and maybe look at their returns whether or not they are six hundred forty nine individual units or how is that accounted for here in the city yes those are individual units it could be one project but there may be four hundred in a project but projects i think they made up over five hundred of the appeals so their buildings are condominium bias into multiple units ok so when you when you're valuing timeshare units are you value in them as though they were kind of or do you know you them based on the sales price of the individual week or two week period we value them as condominiums as individual units we do not use the building block approach where you add the timeshare sales and determine the value of the unit like that because there's a lot of  going concern there's a lot of elements in that building block of values that isn't real property effect the way we're assessing it could be half of what the actual payment they made currently the payment they made that was made by fifty two or thirty something owners of that particular unit that's correct ok interesting they enough the valuations in the homeowner category went up like seventeen percent and timeshare went up eleven and yet in the homeowner category we had less than one hundred just over one tenth of one percent appealing and in timeshare we had nine percent appealing so  across the board you know it's kind of running through the different tables by districts and i see i see some disproportion in debt area and i see some bigger increases percentage wise in commercial but down or homeowners and  it yes it does amount to the sales and the increases from that area revaluation zx also sometimes create situations where one area goes up more than another with the homeowner class the reason why the increase is larger is because they have the exemption so all of the increase goes in after the two hundred thousand  their gross value may be increases the same but once you apply exemptions that changes the increase in the asked this round is overall when you look at what we have here and over the last seven years i've gone back you have thank you and i've got to say this is probably the best report i've seen ever because i mean they have gone in copulated from two thousand and seven on through and really given us not only percentages but the actual dollar difference is i want to thank the department because this is i think this is very and i'm going to be more time to go through it to really understand the full focus of what they brought for two months but i think it really does give us not only by districts and classifications i mean they've covered the gamut and i want to thank them very much an question to you is on the various classifications that we have here versus neighbor and sister counties i know is we don't want to have ten most of the counties and maybe six or seven but that's that's not the question i have is you had percentage after different classifications from the different counties those that a percentage of revenue generated for the total budget or what was that classification ok very good thank you thank you it's a carol any questions not at this time i'm still trying to digest these numbers thank you thank you thank you chair and so the circuit breaker is someone not eligible because of their land valuations have gone  market going to refer to the circuit breaker chart sorry just to refresh my memory chair i've had repeated questions from the public also while she's looking for that i just want to follow up on your comment your question the last time i think on page three of the second part of the handout when you talk about why did they go up this much versus this much etc on page three of the second handout it shows you the revenues per class and it shows you the increases t you which category went up potentially higher than others so if you're looking at what kind of rate you know you got thing you see further over towards the right you see revenue dollar change or wherever your percent change for classification that might aid you in the last question that you for circuit breaker applicants are eligible for credits up to five thousand dollars and you qualify if you have an income of one hundred thousand dollars or less and if you're building value is less than four hundred fifty thousand dollars you qualify now there's a sliding scale where the cutoff is four hundred thousand and then we have a so that we don't have a cliff you get a certain percentage between four hundred and four hundred fifty thousand dollars for building value but as far as land value it's unlimited in your qualification for circuit breaker  ok so there's an example then where looks like the land value did go up by a couple hundred thousand but the building value stayed the same under sixty thousand dollars so this person change for this person well the circuit breaker credit is based on their taxes so it doesn't have anything to do with the value of the credit is two percent of their taxes don't exceed two percent of their a not because at the time that the marriage submitted his proposal he had no idea what is on their appeal and the difference between the merits and ours is actually the actual number and their appeal so he would never have any way of knowing that so what's presented to you mornings putting my spreadsheets together you've got all that all the information there for the department and the division members why i paid attention to the last three years of your question and then the division as to chair of what he i thought was review yeah we're going to hand it out today members for your information i'm going to ask if you could present it by the afternoon of friday april twenty fourth there's about two hundred thirty seven point seven million i'm looking at a number of two fifty one and then instead of one hundred twenty three million dollars sort of borrowing i'm looking at between sixty and sixty five million for those projects that are where the for things we know what the court has ruled we know what our revised law is so for me there is nothing regarding settlements there's no issue before council so for me members i'm going to say i'm going to go aggressive and get the revenues from conservation that is colonies o you by four p m i'm going to try and work it with staff and mister i would prefer to just leave the record open and let you submit  well that's legislature allows the record to be open for additional comments on the members in journals statements or whatever i will see if we can do that so they finish early and you submit early and you feel good leave that's fight ok but if you need t four twenty six this is all in reference to circuit breaker kariya and i'm just trying to kind of wrap my head around i guess the numbers especially on twenty four that i just came across in regards to it looks like this does show us the number of qualified total tax credit given and so the number difference between number qualified from zero nine zero nine to present is drastic and then you know you just go down the line and then the average credit given is kind of close nine forty nine versus back in zero eight zero nine two eight seventy six present day so i'm just trying to figure out is that saying valuation the climate is very similar then as it is today but income or overall income is less for our g i of zero but had two four million dollar homes so the amendments that we did really kicked out the upper half of the bill carolled city so to speak whereby homes are over four hundred fifty thousand do and the limit is one hundred thousand dollars so we've had different criteria over the last two fiscal years and i think you see the difference here and i think as it maintains or moves forward i think this is these are the numbers that are probably more prevailing moving forward i'm assuming for their amendments i said you know every kone code is never going to be perfect i think you try to make amendments just to make steps forward a better ball but it's really hard to get a perfect bill that will meet every single resident in the entire county so i think what we did is we made amendments and that's the best we can do for now ok thank you mr perot for that explanation and then your other  that word of caution your friend a heads up was the amount of subsidies that we got was that in reference to page twenty eight in all the different categories and then the ending dollar amount of ninety million we start raising rates or you know ask more taxpayers to pay more money you need to look at your subsidies and whether or not it's still holds true some of the subsidies may be things that you've been given long time  and there's a question of whether or not it's still worthy of being subsidized chairman i think i have an article that kind of talks about what what the state of maine is doing and whether or not they still believe certain people should be taxed  testino use for condominiums and if we had the similar language we would have seven point six more million dollars is it is it fair that condos can declare or use and subdivided parcels cannot and also question whether or not you feel that we should have two different systems i don't think anybody's going to argue the point of churches and you know what they do but ultimately the subsidies go back to yourself and ask yourself is this what we need to subsidize sort of the good of  everybody else and if the county had to provide that service then maybe it should be worth it but if the county didn't have to provide that service to the student need or should they be entitled to the subsidy have think that is the general question that we should ask county our sister counties on the man and he's also moving strongly taxation for second homes over a certain dollar amount so for the northeast some or not they should be different in taxation since there was purchases in fact a typical resident like we've been in this county so that's one thing i would see  financial impacts on the resident homeowner but we don't do a good job is to readjust that exemption when times are good but i'm much better again and then we can lower the exemption to be say in a more fair thanks to the existing situation like how we respond quickly during the bad situations to look at home and things in the reports that i would ask you to look at because i you can buy two piece of equipment worth five hundred thousand where was that money hiding i don't have a problem supporting the department's needs the want to hide and buy and action so those are things that are asked to do taking that count when you look at your numbers and see how the certain departments have performed whether they were up front with you or not and make sure adjustments that you feel like justif any any improvements to land that's what it is in conservation and i think when we think conservation we think of force reserve we think of when form etc but we have a lot of conservation oceanfront and they basically have a density of one unit so we have big expensive like sixty million twenty million dollar sales of conservation land with a home on it and the structure is always said least one fourth of the value and we're seeing multimillion dollar states on ocean front so all improvements like i'd mention is anything that exposes other than land anything that you wrecked on the building or on the land is considered improvements whether it's a structures it's permitted by the board if it's taxable it's tax accordingly to our our code in our requirements anything you can add to that in regards to the conservation no i think everything is done and we're trying to move forward i think we have the billion that we're trying to required him to do the building permits i think i think the state department is also supporting the that measure moving forward because they  twenty eight could you explain to us how you calculated the subsidy for the last three programs you list the kind of classification the ag program and the home owner just wonder if it's a combination of assessed value and rate or how you come up with those numbers but the subsidy is based upon the emir's proposed tax the rates change the subsidy would change so we take the values and then multiply it times the rates of the various classes that the mayor proposed ok but for example in the homeowner classification i'm assuming that they are the majority of the benefit is based on on the exemption two hundred thousand dollars is that included in this calculation yes the exemption of two hundred thousand is included in that calculation but actually the rate is real subsidy for example you might be in the hotel and resort class because of your zoning so your rate goes from yeah to seventy eight to nine dollars and eleven cents so if you have a high value property the benefit is in the tax rate right so if you're in a in a residential area and you have the homeowner rate is the subsidy the difference between residential and homeowner yes it's  the rate and the difference in the value in our subsidy calculation we add back to two hundred thousand dollars and then we apply the different rates like ok and then  allows transients occupancy take those values and we multiply it times the rate ok so the seven million or some point six million is for those who might be living in the whale or condo at a homeowner rate time if not if you do have questions i'm happy to give you mr to use division number mentioned in my opening remarks all values as of january one so if your home burned down in january to it's two as of january one of the whatever there's only one as was as of january one that is what the valuation is based on ok made year you change it to a different zoning the entire assessment year it's still the old one and the next year beginning january one will reflect the change and  everything that's been approved since january one will be affected in the two thousand and sixteen certification ok because i know you had issues working on these things and planning and making sure th luxury item and that's you know it's a vacation home place residence of some sort and so there by taxation is a little higher than others  if we have questions that we would like to forward to you to forward to the department for release and yeah we will you still accept that yes ok and i just want to make sure that we're still acceptable and from your site yeah that is ok thank you that's that would i change we should bring this committee meeting back to order we are going to review the council services requests members out we have provided two documents to this committee for the budget session on march nineteenth i provided a spreadsheet showing o c s budget equipment purchases in response to an inquiry from this committee and april fourteenth provided some updated information that might be useful to the committee for both fiscal year fifteen budget updates and fiscal year sixteen for the sake of time i think i'll just focus on the fiscal year sixteen information included in my april fourteenth memo because it's fairly noteworthy with respect to what the committee is considering with the o c s budget proposal for fiscal year sixteen transfers the three existing o c s attorney positions to the department of the corporation council along with just over three hundred thousand dollars budgeted for the position salaries and i know you went over this to some degree with the department of the corporation council was here and just to clarify this is not you know c s request this is obviously  policy decision for the council and we will work with whatever decision this body makes but i do appreciate corporation counsel being creative and trying to develop proposals that will ensure that the council receives the legal staffing requirements that helps the body perform its legislative functions but this particular proposal is not something that o c s is requesting at this time secondly is in the area of audits them mayors budget proposal deletes two hundred thousand dollars for council initiated audit audits in the fiscal year sixteen budget it appears o c s that the council does wish to retain its ability to exercise its charter stablished power to conduct audits from time to time though the county now has an office of the county auditor of course the council can't dictate which auditor the county audit auditor should perform so if the council wants to be certain that a particular audit will be performed the only way to do that is to have the county council commission the audit itself so again this obviously is a policy decision but we understand that the council would like to retain its independent ability under the charter to conduct audits which is why our original proposal that went up to the mayor's office did include two hundred thousand it did not include any step increases only that something that the body has deemed appropriate and we wanted to allow for that possibility in our budget so four to six members under salary adjustments we do have a little bit of a backlog in our research work right now what we call project assignment forms are p a s and we're hoping that with the new attorney who will be joining office on may first will be able to make some progress in reducing that backload i do thank the body for approving that hire as recommended by our hiring committee and the council chair we're evaluating whether it would be prudent to recruit additional staffers or possibly even look at a new category of part time assistant somebody who can do research work perhaps somebody even who's alumnus of o c s or elsewhere in county government as potentially cost effective way of reducing the backlog that's your approach with the section three section  it's fairly similar to the research section we're not currently requesting additional staff in the secretarial section is working very hard right now we have nine standing committees and several secretaries are doubling up on their committee assignments and i've had the supervisor of a secretarial section right  meow an argument for possibly requesting additional secretary during this current this upcoming fiscal year but we haven't yet decided that   the representation issue i think is something that i find difficult to go along with and we are in the process of trying to evaluate about i know that our a lot of our analysts are double loaded that their main priorities committee work and so if we get as a type of assistance for the the piaffe to research section which is very  you know grueling and long in some of these projects and some of these research is we we have pending i think it would be very very valuable for our body so thank you thank  official position on this we don't think it's really our role to offer a position but i do want to clarify this is not something that we're requesting and it's not our idea ok thank you during but i would prefer that when we get into that discussion that we should get more in depth in that discussion other than that imo key that we have before us at this mr chair well we have been actually consistent in recent years relatively speaking on what our overtime is  it is i would say just to be very general committee work that is the leading factor in generating overtime primarily because  this body well knows that ours can be quite beyond the seven forty five to four thirty normal workday and there's there's deadlines that have to be accommodated and one of our primary reasons for existing you know c s is to help the council meet legal deadlines so we don't hesitate to invest the time and left labor and effort necessary to to meet the deadline  fluctuation in recent years it's been fairly steady  how much can you adjust this year for improvements but i just seen your review process approval process mr chair we've actually had supervisor level discretion discussions gives me with the last couple weeks about our review process and improving it one of the things we take pride in  to allow for more timely reviews and we actually have been in discussions on looking at our overtime policies as well we have a little bit more freedom because our employees are not in civil service or select they're subject to collective bargaining agreement so we may both be able to do a little bit more with flex time or other adjustments that will be thank you mr charge don't have those figures at my fingertips who he'd get back to the committee if you like and that we do have a general policy that when an employee works overtime thank you mr chair we don't currently have a policy on match and that can be a concern we don't want to have too many hours that can be a problem for the employee and for the there any questions you you you've enjoyed this roof thank you very much mr chair first of all i'd like to say that you know i had the pleasure of working very closely with the council services staff and i'm very impressed they are good quality full and very dedicated and work really hard and as has been mentioned phil many roles you know they're trying to do with me in committee chairs and of course every committee chair feels that their work is a priority and they want it done right away at the same time you know we're asking them to do p a s and kinds of things and so they are in my opinion they're really hard work and that they try very hard to please does so but i do share your concern about we've talked about this before you know i don't like to see a whole lot of it banked up like you because who knows that we someday have to pay it off and it could be  so i come from an agency as you know that had a very strict policy on c t o and we were required to either use it within a paper we had for pay and that may be too strict for us but i think some tighter tighter deadlines wouldn't hurt better to pitt and to have that hanging and not know what it could do to us budget wise if somebody leaves and you have to pay all that off so i'm really happy that we have a new attorney coming aboard i think it's going to make a big difference because consular services has not had a full step of what tourney's for quite a while now i think you all remember when we started losing consul attorneys it was like everybody just you know it started a trickle down thing and person after person left and change jobs and so you know it's kind of been in a flux and i'm really excited that we might finally have a force that it will affect i think our ability to do the p f c but i do like the idea that you know if we are getting behind we may have to have some outside help just to at least to catch up in kind of with a full staff maybe we can better determine exactly what we need you know when you're operating short of staff it's hard to evaluate what you really need because when you have everybody there it makes a big difference even with us you know when we're all here it's so much easier to get work done and we're just a few so i don't have any serious concerns about the budget i know th council service is very frugal and they watch their budget very carefully and so i really have no concerns chair thank you thank you carol christians i want to thank them for everything you can help them continue to do a good job by providing the necessary equipment and as well the staffing so that they can provide us with the service to our communities on the large thank you  are using in fiscal year fifteen funds to move forward with the contractor we hope called grana case which we've had several discussions with the council on over recent years the body did provide that funding in fiscal year fifteen and i want to acknowledge that we are intending to to use that before june thirtieth and as we look forward to working with all the council members and the committee chairs on testing out the new features that we will be available and making sure that it's seamless transition to their credit they've taken the time to understand our operations and how we do things at the mouth of county council and we've taken the time to look at what they've done with their legislative bodies throughout the state and on the mainland and  tried to correlate that to what they can do for us and it's largely an inefficiency i would say helping to actually expedite review process is tracking the status of legislative proposals check in the work of of all this the nine standing committees and then also  using technology including web streaming to both make live accessibility to our meeting a little bit easier for folks throughout the county and then also having an archiving system where the video is linked to to the minutes in the legislation so our archives will hopefully be more useful and meaningful to people frankly within the legislative branch doing their work and ultimately for the public who works with the council and tries to check with the council is doing you know we currently put up a lot of information online we're constantly up dating uploading material but it's not and this is sara lee always a very user friendly type of organization where it's really intuitive and and we know it's not it's easy to track legislation and to do legislative history yes we'd like based on the content that's actually available to us so this will help to make our system a little bit more  meaningful for people who go online and also again with our internal operations and producing meeting agendas and the other documents that we create  preparing an r f p it's i think the council members know we contract out most of our committee minutes we do verbatim minutes and we have a contractor who does the bulk of the work we do have our secretarial section who checks the work and oversees the preparation of the minutes but that's based on our chair they do step in and do transcription work when it is necessary to meet the legal deadline in the instances where the outside contractor  hasn't been able to meet the deadline so yes thank you for allowing me to clarify that the office has a hole is in legal compliance but sometimes it does require our secretary stepping in when the contractor is not able to to meet the deadline but that is the exception rather than the rule  were thank you for the clarification mr chair yes but i do see that is a large portion of it that is fifty nine thousand dollars for h p s i and the remainder is for that the d s l and other web  again we don't know for sure h p s i will be the winning bidder so we have to go through that process alone have we had this vendor the things i'd like to have you check out is that at the end of last year and comer it says or at the beginning of this year encumberances of one hundred ninety two thousand dollars and we budgeted one hundred f you don't mind i would chair i'd like to have them provide us the detail and incumbrances in this line because the remaining balance at this point is actually in excess of  believe that's another one that where we have a large incumbrance balance last year and we reduced the the funding is that details of what's in the remaining one hundred sixty or what the remainder of whatever encumberances are there i would appreciate that i'm i'm assuming director that the the administration shifted two hundred thousand dollar amount for the commonly have been for audit services and i'm assuming that you're wanting us to reinstate the two hundred thousand dollars elimination there so that we we maintain a certain is largely the allocation in anticipation of the council hiring its own special counsel ok and that's been a relatively steady number in recent years mr cherry yes that's been generally the standard figure that's been put in the budget thank you thank you  thank you chair and referring to the first back to four dash seven and the contract services six one one two in your correspondence page two of april fourteenth you folks will soon be publishing r r if p's for such services but yet you're anticipating this increase anyways so it's like we have a current i guess a vendor of sorts but you're going to be putting out an r f p for a new one but you're anticipating that the bid will come in higher than currently ok and then following along the same lines over to the professional services page for dash eight six one three two and mr white house that's the current services you're also looking to go out for an r f p soon for video services which i guess would be in connection to this line and figures that's correct so annually i guess that's so koku has three submit an r f p annually it's not a given they get it every year whenever we go out for an r certainly any proposed better has to submit a proposal and it could be any number of potential vendors have to see how the process captioning so we we've been doing closed caption we have in prior years anticipated the possibility of doing closed captioning and for this year's proposal we are not making that assumption allocating in the budget each year sixty thousand dollars for closed captioning but have not actually done it and we haven't and because we had sixty thousand dollars kept adding up and so that's why we were able to reduce the amount of this line item last year because we were able to work off of that in congress so we're likely to be able to do that to some degree again this time each office is well equipped and there's there's new equipment coming in and nothing has really changed in our equipment policies of if too much significance i will note in passing because i think it's probably ventris city council members we are request teen funding relating to the new v o i p phone system short tell equipment that will need to be installed at the three district offices replacing the current public comm equipment to facilitate testimony via the interactive communication system we had actually anticipated having the legislative branch make a change to the new system by this point in the calendar already and we've been in regular contact with the administration we're still waiting for that to happen and  i think best i can tell right now it'll probably happen right around the beginning of the fiscal  year is dependent upon something from the mission for us to implement yes it is it's a project led by t s d and they're outside consultants and well the district office equipment will be necessary to be compatible with the new system the new v o i p or voice over internet protocol system as it's been explained to me by the technical is the brand of equipment that works with the new system just like the old system used to be nortel or whatever the current product is so yeah that that equipment then is one of the standards that is being introduced throughout the company these phone systems are very enhanced as compared to the current phone systems they can tell you are the now for the administration or previous phone systems and the features of this new system i think that the members and staff will incredibly appreciate i appreciate mine very much easier to do an assessment of actually use those accessories on the phone yet i know when they came in my staff they asked each of my staff members what they did on the phone and there was changes a couple of them where for some reason they had you know multiple lines and different things like you got reduced to just a single usage kind of systems and the base phone system does have a lot of features on it which i use quite a bit of but maybe in general most people voice mails in it so you know like i can be sitting here on the floor and know that i got a voicemail from somebody and you know i could actually check it from you know on my smartphone download that wave file and listen to the voicemail phones to replace the triangle system that you have instead of i think there were normal replacement phones are included in the contract but if there's any special things you know sort of like our conference rooms have those same type have a conference call it doesn't matter who the other person and it was said a line would have to come in they have it just matters what type of equipment we have because it's we're connected to our system so it's not like it's proprietary that good they have to have that same type like it used to be where each council member has a two hundred dollar allotment to apply towards the purchase of any mobile device to assist in the council members official duties that two hundred dollars credit can be applied towards the purchase of a more expensive device with the excess funds coming from the council members individual office account and we've budgeted six hundred dollars the upcoming fiscal year proposed that anticipation of three council members wanted to take advantage of that opportunity i think it could be both current and existing and new devices under that category or whoever becomes they're going to a provider would be provided to grant a kiss who would then put it on the web and nearly real time if it's some may have seen on a cock who's web site currently there is a version of what web streaming but it's got a very significant lag time it's got its commercials and we can't control the content of the commercials and we've had people complain to us about that frankly so this would be a commercial free virtually real time web streaming service and it would just be taking the existing video content so you know to the extent that this body decides which meeting videotape which currently is basically every comedian counts meeting in the chamber then those would be the meetings that would also be on the life stream  so they wouldn't be doing the the video itself the video taping so they're the whatever thank you that's correct their main line based company and  so they wouldn't have people here onsite operating cameras running running video if there were no kaku or other existing video provider that we had they would probably go out and contract with video professionals here locally to get it done and able to live streaming but that's the but if there is existing video content they'll just pick it up and run with it on their life stream ok thank you and i guess you're going into the narrative book and looking at equipment there one for eight twenty six hundred dollars for a monitor for this chamber that's similar to what we see on the wall there and where this is for one monitor and we're planning to put that chair thank you that's a good question that's one of the benefits of granted this is that they will provide all of the web space the cloud space that's necessary for archiving the content but we have an ongoing is it's going to come in lower than we initially anticipated thank you mr yes we do believe that looks like that will be the case there will be some savings there and i think the other question that we had and i don't recall documents and we would not be as open and free with the ability to do things with the documents as we right otherwise you know if that's been resolved or whether that was a concern of the place thank you yes we've raised that concern with the grandkids folks and we'll make sure that that contract makes it clear that any content that is produced relating to grant case or they somehow itself so it was a those are separate functions if your mind and then can i just take half a second to say that the cock you feed on the web is is not that great i use that a lot when i was out but it has significant flaws and if you can upgrade that i would personally appreciate that they get money from the state when we are not the cure all for everybody including committee of the whole requirement to thirty we have a policy committee requirement six thirty there is a district meeting in central that leak or a school this evening and will finish audit auditors and county clerk either thursday or friday of this week members any questions for you cheer if not this meeting is a