for the planning committee meeting of july nineteenth two thousand and sixteen please come to order before we start the meeting to ask everybody to turn their cells or any noise making devices to silent mode or vibrate mode we'd like to keep the under interrupted as much as possible ok my name is diane couch i'm the chair of this committee and i will introduce the attending members read their core members so if you need and from the not good afternoon and from the district office denise fernande thank you and most district office is closed today members we have one agenda item it's p c thirty seven two which is increasing amatory of affordable housing rules seven b it's a rule seven b  item so there isn't an actual item that went to chair why we're just this is something that is important to this committee so we were voting rule seven b first we're going to go into testimony for individuals testifying in the chamber please sign up at the desk outside the chamber door if testifying from the remote testimony site please sign up with district office staff testimony will be limited to the items the item listed on the agenda today and each testifier will be allowed three minutes to testify with one min to conclude and we're going to do a lighting system it's set for three minutes and green one minute on yellow and when it turns red that means your four minutes are up so please wrap up your comments when testifying please state your name and any organization you may be representing so without objection members will open public testimony to their actions ok first up to testify is cassandra good afternoon i'm cassandra abdal at the executive director of no holly o'malley and i'm very pleased to be able to have the opportunity to come before you this afternoon chair and council members to support affordable housing here in maryland county albert einstein defined insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result i think many of us feel like that's what's happening with affordable housing here in maui county naleo maui is a five a one c three nonprofit organization and our mission is to secure and purser a permanent supply of affordable housing alternatives for low and moderate income households and now we county and we do support all affordable housing and strongly encourage affordable housing in perpetuity the county's current affordable housing solutions are not working we currently invest public money to develop temporarily affordable housing in a relatively short time the individual homeowner has the ability to sell at market prices effectively winning the housing lottery where the initial public investment becomes a windfall profit for a single family we believe that public funds invested in the community need to remain in the community there's maryland affordable housing land trust act where i found a quote that says we need to leave it in the community to make the public's investment a permanent part of the pricing of subsidize homes where heartened by his committee's efforts to think outside the conventional box of housing solutions to consider permanent solutions to our affordable housing crisis we are particularly encouraged by the ability of the planning committees t i n g to explore the many ideas and numerated under its scope of investigation invested grants that we have received from hudson neighborhood stabilization program as well as the county of affordable housing fund and funds from the sale of homes  the homeowner got to share in a portion of the appreciation on the house that set by a scale that runs up to fifteen years so a homeowner can share from twenty five percent to fifty percent of the appreciation the first home was resold to an income qualified family increasing the number of families we've had with us to thirty four and the second repurchase we just did this year it's in renovation and once sold will have added thirty fifth homeowner family we look forward to continuing opportunities to partner with the county of to provide affordable houses homes in perpetuity for deserving income qualified maui families those from eighty percent to one hundred percent are sorry hundred twenty percent of the a m line and we want to be a part of the affordable housing solution thank you very much thank you members and the question is the testifier i have potentially a couple you talked about you have thirty five three homes do you have a number of homes that you would you would have to get in your inventory in order to become self sustaining without having to come back to the county for more income initially the organization came to the county for operating funds only the one time and at that time they promised they would not be back for operating funds so the only thing that natalee has ever come back for are project funds and i believe that all of the organizations that are involved in affordable housing here in maui county do need help with projects generally they look at between one hundred to three hundred houses in a seal team where the lease rent will cover the operating expenses and we're quite a ways from there ok all right so right now your operating expenses you you get  a fund raising opportunity part of it is that and also when we come to the county and respond to our people we also ask for development funds ok that this is on the agenda we've been talking about this for a long time as an organization and we think there's going to be a lot of study that's going to be required to dermot determine how we're going to build this affordable housing and what kind of pa it will be on the people let me tell you a story of when i was a kid maybe about twelve years old i was sitting talking to my grandfather and he told me grandson really don't trust the outsider he had an experience that he had bought on a retainer an insurance policy from a traveling salesman that come to his door and he never got insurance policy and i think our rules and regulations  laws that were put in place has some of this feeling that we cannot trust the outsiders so we put all these restrictions on so now we're going to look at those restrictions because it's impacting our need for affordable housing so we got on trying to understand what is the laws that we need to change and what do we need to give a place so that basically we don't get taken face now has reviewed the eleven proposed as we like what you're saying but we think they need to be that over a long period of time we need a long view on the for about housing issue like  need to create a housing czar who would come from in nonprofit housing organization outside of the county that has the experiences that are needed to really coalesce that issue of affordable housing we could do this to a request for proposal and then once it is awarded it would be monitored by the department of housing and human concerns and those reports and come to you to be reviewed we believe that this proposal be the best way to make a focal point a one stop center that was talked about by now in new in housing task force so that affordable that we can really create affordable housing for the  agree with dave that we think that the department of housing and human concerns is to visit with all the other duties they have to give full attention to this most pressing need that you have talked about today over time now t a nonprofit housing organization housings are but the benefit of all of most people thank you thank you mr franco members any questions to testify or thank you very much sure and thank you stan for being here and thank you for sticking with this problem as long as you have unfortunately we haven't really made a dent in it but i do like the idea that you proposed today i think when it everybody somebody and nobody is job it never gets done and so if you give it to an organisation is what i'm hearing that you want to you would put this whatever we want to call person it could be as our could be a coordinator i don't care what we call them but they're focused on housing and nothing else probably with content funding in unknown tough it is that what i'm hearing yes and so this person would not be a county employee but would be funded by co funds but a specialist in an expert in this area correct ok well i think that you know that we've tried everything else and nothing works so just as somebody said little earlier  about insanity let's try something else you know what fred we've done doesn't work then let's try something else i have to say i like the idea and thank you very much thank you for coming thank you thank you members any further questions  mr franco you're going to be around we're going to discuss the to again in my intent on the tig is to prioritize the top i think four five items that this committee can really focus in on but those i still remain and i'd like your idea of having a long term really good look at this and have people go over it you know with a fine tooth comb  so are you going to be around so you can have this discussion a little bit and we may be a little bit loose with the formality in this meeting today but to do some back and forth on how we should work this to a big that ok great thank you face affordable housing committee i sat through a number of meetings of another special sort of investigative group that was set up on monday was last year maybe you know maybe it was late and twenty  twenty fourteen and the stand was there tashi comma various folks were there our staff person at the time kim harman was representing face on that group and we were pretty frustrated because we heard  all these things kind of talked around one of the most common responses of the people who are serving on the group is oh well we couldn't do that it's too hard or we couldn't do that even though it's done someplace else or or that wouldn't work and one of the things they said wouldn't work would be to have a person who was focused on just getting the job of of housing and people being connected done so i strongly support what stan has said  if this temporary investigative group comes up with for dynamite suggestions they actually you know start you know being taken seriously by the planning department who's going to check in to see how they're working what they're doing you know i just don't think that we have that role filled also i think it's important who you put on this investigative group because the quality of what you're going to get out is going to be based on mean i don't see that mentioned on any of these eleven points and yet it is true we we are building temporary affordable housing and there's nothing and even if we're considering subsidizing some of it  but i have to say your last committee was totally against having anything in more perpetuity they just didn't think that that was a good idea so we need to work that in the mix and perhaps holly should have a representative on on that investigative committee and then the last thing i want to say is one of the things that was brought up was the just going look at land that has perhaps a land use commission in title months and sort of make sure that the rest of it zoning and community plan designation could match its urban entitlements and therefore be ready to build faster this is not always a really good idea because some things that pass through the land use commission they don't move forward because they have like real constraints you know problems with drainage problems with other things so just to say well you know got that it must be good is not necessarily the correct conclusion in  housing committee when you're mentioning being on that you are saying that people were saying they were saying oh we can't do it like that we can't who are who we referenced seem that this was a special committee on housing solutions that was convened i believe by the head of the of your housing and human services committee here at the console and people were invited to participate and face value was invited to send a representative we asked if others from face mellie could sit in even though they couldn't be a voting or speaking representative and so a number of us went to these meetings which were at like seven thirty a m and in the county building and sat in and listened and that's what i'm reporting back to you that there was just a lot of why we can't in this particular group of people the but that was the county purse the department say we can't do this we can't do that  well it was a variety of folks it was the chair of the committee saying no that would never work it was a representative from the county housing and human services saying no that would be too hard for our department to do you know these  put out many of them were put out by ms harman who really did a lot of research and you know personally i felt that she should have gotten a little bit more of her suggestions incorporated but it didn't happen ok all right well thank you very much thank you consideration the committee was formed to look at the residential workforce housing policy and i think it was formed by a by the council and on the committee ellis leigh was the chair we were one of the representatives of the molly tomorrow was one of the you know represented organisations at this meeting and we got frustrated because we were recommending different positions it was not being thank you very much anybody else in the chamber wanting to testify ok we'll go to the district offices first let's go to the hon a district ok i guess there was nobody willing to testify we would close public testing without objection closed public testimony with the exception that if honna does have somebody testifying and they just lost connection the will jackson's ok public testimony is closed and we will hang up the phone if there is something we'll get will recessing come back ok members me these suggestions include such things as allowing additional cooking facilities involving units identifying stalled projects that are quote unquote shovel ready and determining what needs to be done to get them built and considering comprehensive county initiated land  designations the planning director asked for the committee's help and guidance with prioritizing the items we discussed forming a temporary investigative group or tig pursuant to hawai'i by statute section ninety two dash two point five thousand and sixteen it is in title temporary investigative group of the planning committee and it can be found on granik us as attachment number three the purpose of the tick is to make findings of recommendations on the ideas being discussed  that a little bit further the whole idea for this to get is to take a look at those suggestions and see what top five that we want to really dive into we think will be most effective  will leave that to go up and until november thirtieth i think was what we've got to say but i would like to see the top five issues that we think that this committee w discuss since to go aren't i mean they're all the certainly open to the public but they're public noticed and you know they're probably not going to be on a kaku or anything like that that's what i'm looking for from this committee is just to find the top five things when we have those top five i would love to have this committee discuss it in full and especially with member cavallo when she can make it discuss each one of those items in full if we were to go for the eleven then we would be discussing forever i want to get the top five most important ones that we think we can do at a quick we can do quickly and get people in here will have panel discussions we'll have the discussions and come up with something before too long you know we're getting close to the end of this term so i want to i want to have some guidance from this committee to see where we can go and get those affordable housing issues taken care of will leave the going so that they can have separate meetings after that to come up with you know to delve into the other issues as well to see what kind of things when what committee we might be able to send information to does that makes sense to you guys yes no miss bison i thank you very much chair to have a question i can't remember i was in this group i don't it's really important oh yes the intent is to have three members three or maybe four council members involved because i would like to miss camilla wants to be on the ticket and then bring in as many people as possible to sit down and discuss it just go through as long as it takes to to discuss each of those items and get input from everybody and then come back with the recommendations  definitely open it up for everybody that makes sense i make says but again that's not what i'm thinking about i'm thinking not having the whole world but having at least somebody who has actually done this and i just pick a name because unfortunately they're not here anymore but somebody like and just expensive group that actually has done this right there will be there employed did they we get people that have been down the road in the trench they understand stuff the that's part of their mantra also so i appreciate i know there's other models and programs across the nation that do incorporate a little differently from what fay do embody appreciate how they're doing it here now  so i think the big b going to have someone like them there because they really truly believe in the whole affordable perpetuity concept is there are we to get staff like someone from my office who's really honing in on this particular topic and subject matter i mean from morning noon and night digging in to this subject matter personally i would like to see that person involved somehow time ago we had something called the more we knew we had a task force and that existed before the the land trust was created here and lends holter was very active says there are organizations throughout the country that do this and they do do it really well right so you know we do have only known the holy molly and i think there are a very important player because this idea of you know we've been playing with there from when the more new housing task force was created and we know that it has to be a piece of it and i think that they bring a very important history to the deciding that will be doing  what we're going to do it because they have the experience of having done it now but you know throughout the nation there are folks and you know we are members of the neko and i'm very sure that through those contacts we can get more help and we're all going to be in long beach next week or later this week talking with you know these kind of folks maybe something we should really look at and see who can help us you know that's part of my what i'm going to let of you to morrow when i go i believe tomorrow  to what we bring back yes mr cochran chair i think and i and i love the perspective of myspace in regards to speaking to the people who have actually been there done that have physically fact was one of my starter homes originally and so we have done it others have done it but i think what we don't really talk about too much is you know i think a person in the real estate brokerage  huge type minded person needs to be here because what we're finding out is that people if they camp qualified they're not rich you know and now they're just checked off the list and next thing you know the developers are saying she tried we couldn't get anybody to qualify and now we have flip it to market well you know what that is not this yeah i think that is part of the problem that is occurring so the physical cold buildings that's one thing but to get the people in it that's awful another part of this rant of a person from that field needs to be here to discuss it because it goes hand in hand has to be addressed in talking about  to get in and again this is to find the top i say five but i think we're only going to be able to do three here as a committee and then we will get all of those people in here talking about those things kaku the whole nine yards is just to get the ball rolling so all of these items and dissipate we're going to have here on this floor and what we can do to help expedite effect i would like to have the first report on by august eighteenth i see ok so it's a short time but it's a small it's a smaller task at this point is to determine the top five so we can sit here discuss and then come up with the three and get the people here on the floor and have a really good not quite round table discussion but something that we would be able to really get out there a little less of a formal meeting and just have a lot of back and forth and see what can be done about the three items or four items that we this committee chooses so make sense for mr jess mr  spence i think i think what we're talking about it's extremely important they are certainly part of the picture the land trust as you know model in that's a that's an ownership issue the being able to qualify i mean you know that's a financing issue but one of the things i think that someone that would be important on this tape would also be  a developer because if we don't have inventory it doesn't matter how many buyers you have it doesn't matter whether it's in perpetuity or not you have to be able to develop inventory in order for it to give people something to buy or to rent and you know the whole side coming naturally because i'm directing the planning department i think in terms of  entitlements but i personally have not gone through the entire woman process what it cost to go to the land use commission what it cost to to go through the county process sees what it's like what it adds to the cost of housing what it adds to hang on to a piece of property for the seven years that it takes to go through everything i think that's going to be an important component as well that is on the list and if we don't if we can't control things too much on the state level certainly there's things we can do in the county give them and one of the things on the list is to go ok what are these and title projects and how come they're not going forward let's find that out that that's a big deal there's there are reasons for this it's not just it's not only entitlements right and those are the some of the things we need to discuss and bring you know that might be a good thing for the tig after we get the  priorities they can go and pick on those kind of things especially about all those two and h s we gave yeah we just extended the one and he's got sick in six months or eight months into it six months and nothing two of us that's great if i get a third that's fine too and then we will set that tig will set the meeting times and place and and get our list of people that we're going to invite to sit down at the table and just hash it out i'd prefer to started eight in the morning and see what we can do by five in the afternoon i mean if we can get a day's worth of stuff from everybody as they can come in and and just go through this list that from the june sixteenth letter from the planning department say ok we really need to concentrate on one for seven and nine and then we'll bring that discussion out in the open to everybody here to invite as many people as we can to sit down and discuss it on the floor and come up with some solutions there it's a change of procedures a change in in code you know now county code order or whatever it takes to get those three things running and running as soon as possible so it makes sense yes chair white i think that makes a lot of sense i think what you're going to find is that some of these items might be able to be done by the administration guess a little bit from us yes others are going to require code changes and so forth right but i think the other thing it strikes me is that once you get the other folks involved you have a developer or somebody who's been doing for the housing from a non problem standpoint for a while you're likely to have a number of member committee correct because she's a non voting member correct and she would still be still qualify for at the council level because there were still a before members that is correct ok thank you  right any other questions i have a couple more comments that i wanted to to go over we kind of talked about what i was looking to do unfortunately the law requires two committee meetings for the ti report at the first meeting the ticket makes its report findings and recommendations but but there cannot be any discussions deliberations or vote so hopefully by august eighteenth which is our we have a meeting this committee has a meeting by august eighteenth we get to report the tick can come up with ideas or four or five priority items and then the following meeting which is september first i think meeting i believe it's september first yeah it's september first is when we actually have you know other people up here and will be acting on some of the the top priority items august eighteenth is when the tick is going to give  report and they can give the report and say all the nice things in what was talked about but we can't deliberate or act upon ok ok the state sunshine law prevents the committee from discussing any matter that the tig is working on during the time they are concerned constituted but members may discuss the matters before the tig with each other during that time so we have to be very careful we can't discuss anything until they come have come with their report that's why my recommendation is to establish to to go with a report due back on us to us on august eighteenth the my final thought before we begin discussions is that this committee may wish to instruct the tick to consider prioritizing issues by the time the department will need to complete them so if if some items on the lists can be a accomplished pretty quickly and have more bang for the buck then maybe we want to make that higher up on the priority list others may take a quite a long time you know change in code for sure sometimes can take forever the other thoughts from the department corporation council i'm i'm on the right track with digs essentially it i wasn't sure what you were talking about  would only be appointing the council members to quote unquote serve on the take correct in may have other people come in and we will have as many people as we can get coming in yeah i just want to clarify that the actual vote would be to appoint which members which have to be fewer than a quorum so three of the most to actually serve on this on this take except for a member crew belo can be on it because she's not a voting member of this committee i haven't looked at that particular  tig will say we want the hollywood now here we want your staff here we want my staff there because they've been working on some of the stuff we want to develop are there we want mr franco you know would come up with a list authority to to and i can think of really force those groups to show up and i don't know if there's any type of a of a quorum but i mean it would which is one which is to say the authority under the sunshine laws generally to designate which council members w be assigned by the committee to investigate the matter and then of course the those those that can decide to have the participation of whomever they would like to come in and investigate it would be a matter though of this body saying that a particular group would have to serve on the take necessarily because that's really not something under the sunshine law that they would they would be be doing they would be assigning which members of the committee because that's the whole purpose of th exception is to assign members of a border commission or in this case the committee to do a certain thing so that's what it would be and departures a patient of other outside groups that's generally going to be through if you want to include them or send notice to them or whatever method but they generally would be actually one of the one of the groups assigned because i don't think the council committee would be able to really require that  ok let's get this crystal clear this was the question i asked in the beginning these groups will come but they come as resources yes they have no full well there's no real votes in the to give me well you know the right of who is go members of the take i believe we can say that's a good question i don't don't don't know that there's a lot of voting i can remember how we did census they were there you know the for the report to come from that to report out from the take there is a  members i think it's maybe i see mr hopper jumping forward maybe got a different take on it but when we had the earlier came on our p t we had a number of people come in as resource people right i don't we didn't assign them as members of or as voting members but i'm not sure that we're precluded from doing that i'm not familiar with doing that and generally wouldn't fives doing that because if you're going to it's a situation where you really you don't necessarily have the commitment of anybody there if you're actually if the body is actually voting for itself to do something it can actually as a body will the body do that but it's i just think it's a very awkward situation if you're assigning other people that aren't on the council or have no idea if they're going to going to be able to show up or have to have any commitment whatsoever two two assigned to the tick of the sunshine laws does not say who would be assigned it if it talks about for going under a cherished ninety two it only talks about assigning members of the actual border commission to do the item does not talk about any assignments of other people to also investigate that and to me the sunshine law does not contemplate which is what this action today is is tourist ninety two to assign members to to do a certain thing or investigate a certain item it only deals with border commission members which in this case would be the members of the committee so that that's what that's what the h r i think the hoorah says that because the main focus is the sunshine law and there are these types of groups are authorized on a very limited basis and it's less than a quorum and so forth  take a deeper look at that let me ask this of whomever if we have whoever we have what members are the members of the tig can they then say ok we want to add  know mr franco we want to face we want to add song so to be part of the voting member that did can that be done or does it have to be done in and meeting like this i have to look into that assigned the members can decide once in a t shirt whether we have as it's an informal authority to move ahead with them as members or just write a source people write i think that's a valid comment sometimes i come  structure here right and a structure to me is we have to reboarding over the members and one who is it none of the leading members right and that's that's it all these other people can come and be part of it but they're not voting  this longer than me and you're the chair of the committee and i think it's probably best that it be the three of you rather than the three of us and i'm willing to step back if you want to  i i would like to be on it but i i you to your staff my staff have been digging deep into this and you have got some history so unfortunately  incorporates the letter that mr spence sent to us but it also has a few other things involved in there as well so the idea is to get five of these no more than five i says at least five but i think no more than five that we need to bring to this committee and say these things we can discuss and we can do i'm now let's get the people that are in here and get it on public record and get as to take you folks are on mr oh yeah i would recommend not focusing on televising it because the the for me the rationale for doing it take is so that you can get through a lot of material quickly right you don't have to you know these meetings cost us six hundred some day six hundred some dollars each time for a meeting so i would i would recommend against it because all of this all the real meat of the discussion is going to come back and your prerogative that's my body anyway my thought is when we get the items we're going to get be here and everybody and their brother is going to be ok and televised right we'll see if we can add to mr carr knows burden well since we're all going to be working like crazy to be eighteen dead lying yeah i think that's what it's going to take yeah i remembers i realize we are going to be on the mainland most of us are you not sure ok you can start gathering your folks and get everybody get a meeting set and you know if we can get a day in the for another first week of august i believe we have committee meetings i'm not sure but if we can get a day even you know afternoon into the evening i'm available for that i don't know if miss bice's but if there's pins of the evening right the closer i mean the more we can do and one the in as few sessions the longer sessions the better that way everything's fresh in everybody's mind ok all right cool any further discussion ok all those in favor of the motion please say i opposed the measure that the wreckage of the motion carries with four eyes the zero nose and three excused member victory no member guzmn and member carol right members thank you very much i look forward to a working on this and coming up with a good list of things that we can just here in the gallery please get in touch with ms cochran and and let's get a date that we can all get there so with that i believe in any other further comment see none thank you very much staff and members for being here this meeting is adjourn