the mikes off though i was going to have to learn how to deal with these microphones let me start over will that meeting please come to order my name is glottis place and i am the chair of the water resources committee today is wednesday august third two thousand and sixteen and it's approximately five minutes after nine in the morning i'd like to welcome everyone and ask everyone before we start if you please check your cell phones to make sure that they're on the silent mode and i'll check mine to i'd like to introduce the members of the committee that are here this morning unfortunately my vice chair mike vick to reno is excuse today one who is the deputy corp counsel and we i also have and in the car no trying to escape it cushy our deputy corporation council well we got two attorneys today we're in trouble we also have our staff we  thank you for being there we'll get back denise fernandez  mon morning ellen thanks for being there members we have one important item on the agenda today w r six parentheses one department of water supply presentation relating to water meter applications i would like to receive the presentation before we take public testimony if there are no objections no thank you very much members we will do that and the reason i'm doing that is because we have had a lot of requests from folks who have said would you please show us the presentation and then maybe we can include our remarks in our testimony so we might as well give folks that opportunity because we're here here we have a specific reason for what we're doing today and i'd like to explain it to you it's a little unusual kind of meeting but there is there why we're doing this today is because i am continuously stopped and asked about water meters it's the number one subject that i get asked as the upcountry council member when am i going to get my meter why is it taking so long why does i why do i have to do all these people work would think that you should be doing this faster how many have you given out how long did it take you no questions and a lot of questions that i think need to be answered for the public and today we're very very fortunate that we have you with us today and he is the engineer who actually does all this work hands on and i fit we may get the guy who does it so we'll get straight answers and i welcome you to ask questions going to be talking about as he speaks if something rings a bell and you want to ask a question about it please let's raise their hands or let me know that you want to do that and let's take care of it and then when we're done we'll have the testimony and after the testimony we'll have another opportunity to ask some more questions we want to make this as productive as we can and i ask everyone to please try to be productive we know that this is an issue that's been around since i was a child and since i've been on the council and it's something that gets people very emotional and you know they're just tired and frustrated when they speak so i asked everybody to please be patient and try to be kind but we do welcome any of your suggestions and if you have questions please ask them so mr taylor you are the man to be our next g s would you have any opening remarks no madam chair i'll just turn it over to boots he's an engineer six in the engineering division of the department of water supply and he is the head of the section that handles up country and west maui so you will be walking you through the history of list and some of the challenges that we do face in this whole process j s i'm going you know we're we have new microphones and we had this problem yesterday it was this constant reverberation you know before we had to get into our mikes and notice that people could hear have insufficient water supply develop for fire protection domestic and irrigation purposes to new or additional water services without detriment to those already served so therefore the department created and maintained a list  of upcountry properties listed by data validation for these people who had requested new and additional water service in two thousand and two the department created the mo he county administrative rule title sixteen chapter one zero six called the water meter issuance rule for the country water system the purpose of the rule was to outline a procedure for processing these applications for water service on the priority list in the meantime  in this codification it provision was added that effective january first two thousand and thirteen the department would not accept new applications to be placed onto the priority list therefore the list was effectively closed from that date on october eighth two thousand and fifteen ordinance four to five five was passed and became effective it was primarily an avenue to provide an exemption from department of water supply subdivision fire protection acquirements for applicants on the priority list but it also stipulated that applicants on the list as of january first two thousand and thirteen who declined such water service offers would be allowed to be placed back on to the list at their prior placement therefore these forty five applicants shall be offered water service prior to the applicant listed at number one on the original product list it should be noted that while ordinance four to five five gave an exemption for department of water supply fire protection requirements does not give exempt it does not exempt applicants from department of fire and public safety requirements their requirements still apply to those a little bit of the background so for general procedures and  of the country system this backup source allow the department to begin water service offers off the list in april in two thousand and fourteen so water service offers you know they come in the form of certified mail letters from the department to the current owner of the list of the property on the list the current owner and their mailing addresses are determined and verified through real property tax so the majority of the time spent on the generating these water me to offer letters begins at this point there are three different ways properties are placed onto the list through a building permit application a subdivision application or proposal or a water service request building permit application you know it's when it was applied way back when whether or not they needed a meter upgrade didn't matter they were placed on the list and based on that for subdivisions they were placed on the lists under the assumption that they needed additional meters for each of their new subdivided lots and the water service of course is just the request just for a meter or meter upgrade so after determining which situation applies all files regarding their property are gathered multiple files may apply subdivision files water service files or development files sometimes in the case of subdivisions files for other properties are examined due to their relationship to the list on the property maybe new lots were created or there are other subdivisions you know t original subdivision on the list who is dealing with all this paper at this point of these files it's the engineer that's crafting the letter their responsibility to gather all applicable it's very important for the public to know anything else you want and we have undergone a partial reorder to kind of shift around some of the engineers so we do have a couple of people under me and the department currently has i think five engineer positions open in the county as a whole is struggling with engineer positions as an example the person who would be helping jase their position is an engineer level five engineers go from levels one through six chases six somebody right out of school as a one so the engineer five job for example tops out at eighty five thousand dollars a year and somebody with one year of professional engineering experience a school they got their license which is usually four or five years later plus an extra year so you're talking about somebody who's been out of school roughly six years would qualify for this job so the way people apply there's a county advertisement for engineer five and people apply for that job whether that's for they don't the applicants don't know if it's for us or d s a or public works they just apply for it and five we are currently filling off ellis as are some of the other departments without going into the details i can tell you that every single person on that list is an existing county engineer at a lower level so even and eighty five thousand dollars a year job for an engineer there is not a single person from outside who applied so all that's going to happen through the county is we will probably hire somebody for this job which will create an opening either in our department or a different department you know and so on and so forth people are centrally applying for promotions but no one's really applying to being new county engineers  people are applying to get promotions within the county so we have openings other departments have openings because the construction private construction is booming right now it seems that the county overall is not competitive with engineers we may end up doing better than other departments may because we have a few higher positions we may not so i forsee for the next couple of years there is going to be some holes in engineers through the county i don't know how the juggling is going to work who is going to end up where b outside people don't seem to want to work for the county and engineers that injure positions right now thank you mr taylor members any questions in this area ok james move on please i'm sorry but we're going t to you know get information out as we go thank you thank you yes ms cochran here's my mike thank you and thank you department so just to get it straight from at this point letters  generated and you get these letters generated by looking through applications basically or you know like you said building permit applications subdivision applications so on and then you're looking into different files to figure out how you're going to draft and craft these letters that are going to be sent out so you need engineers six to do this i mean you need all that background in order to compile this kind of information out of files and these other processes the background processes as a six you know as you know i'm going to as i'm going to go on and explain there's also detailed calculations analysis of the water system that needs to be done which is typically done at a higher level  detailed examination of the detailed examination of the files are important as past allowances could dictate how the offer letters are drafted it is important to not require the public to do more than they need to but it is also important to follow through on past and conferences on the property for example past agreements tied to the property may command a certain water system improvements be constructed now for example family subdivision you know it's basically a deferral agreement defers improvements to a future time how letters are written to the possible inadequate water meter sizing and finally passed the citizens from board of water supply hearings need to be understood and followed accordingly once the files are examined the existing water system serving the property is analyzed calculations based on fire protection and or domestic use requirements are run and the results are compared to department standards part of the calculation process may involve communications with plant operations employees as they have knowledge of specific system  configurations which in turn could affect the numbers if the calculation results do not match department standards requirements for water system improvements are added to the letters letters or drafted with all applicable requirements then sent out by certified mail usually in batches of properties at a time maybe ten to twenty properties per batch the applicants per code have thirty days from the day they receive the certified mail to respond to the department negative responses or failures to respond are treated as a refusal of water service and the subject property is removed from the list during the thirty day window and hang on a second mystic cults yeah i know thirty days seems to be kind of a short amount of time if somebody happens to be off island for an extended period of time or something like that is there or is that was that done by ordinance or is or is there some sort of leeway you can do on that if somebody comes in  said oh i got this you know a couple months ago and i just got back because thank you mom number so the way the code reads is these this thirty days not start until they actually sign that certified mail card so if they do not get it  to department then we try again but the third is the start of the point ok great that's it's important to know because on all other things we always get concerned about adding get it right thank you and that helps too ok go ahead thank you during the thirty day window the department receives multiple inquiries and requests from the applicants sometimes relatives of the applicants or even prospective buyers of the property  inquiries usually it's a multiple face to face meetings with the public in order for them to under either understand the requirements or to at times even contest the requirements this point it's like to speak about a little bit more  in the fact that it's a bit different these up against on the list versus see a bigger developer already has a license engineer is already on board maybe license architects on board that they have at their at their disposal but  typically you know people on the list or everyday people that are not big developers so they may not fully understand the whole process of the ins and outs why it leads to these these meetings and again sometimes to contest why they have to do all these requirements these improvements are won out so you know it does take time there for these back and forth meetings like this is sometimes founding members get involved and sometimes their disputes on the property on the land does get kind of contentious and sometimes so as like to make that make that a point i may add to to add to what mystery beauty said it's these types of things that end up eating a lot of time most of the meetings that the deputy and i get involved in that bump up to our level are applicants who don't have engineers on board that don't understand the rules that don't necessarily want to accept the  information from lower levels you know want to meeting with the deputy director want to meeting with the director so we meet with staff they come in again and more time is spent explaining again how the system works what the ordinance says it's meetings that tend not to have been with applicants that have professional engineers i almost never have to meet with applicants who have an engineer because their engineer explains this to them so a lot of our time is spent essentially being the engineer for you know regular people like he said to who didn't hire one and that is one of i think the big reasons why these things go so slow is we spend a lot of time teaching engineering in ordinances to you know common people and then when the people are not happy with what they've heard from it from geez or mr taylor or paul you know the deputy director and writer and guess whose phone rings and it rings at work and it brings it home because they want to know what's the story on their meter and boy did this and why that so this is very complicated i think the point that you're already getting is this is a very time consuming process and if you don't have enough people involved sub out that work if you will because we can't get engineers but there are companies that can do that to say look just for this purpose and just for this amount of time instead of having them come to you to have them go to somebody else and we cover their costs they go to somebody else in the can explain to him what's going on that way appreciate you guys up to actually get your work done is that the thought of you know under professional services mr taylor mr couch of all the workable solutions that is the one that floats at the top if they count he could somehow come up with some methodology to pay for the engineering fees for a private applicant and come with some methodology of you know why it's this guy but not this other guy you know there are some details to work out it's not usually our role to well first of all we wouldn't hire them right we can't hire an engineer and assign it to a private person since they would have to somehow give a grant to an applicant so they could hire an engineer if essentially there was some pot of money where we said look you sign here will reimburse up to five thousand dollars of engineering expenses but you promise that we only hear from your engineer not from laymen that would absolutely speed things up i i would fully support something like that it might be problematic figuring out how to use county funds to pot to pay for what other people use their own funds for but if that could be worked out that is i think our big timesink and to go along that that that's the more  logical approach is the way you're talking about it but if there's an issue with the county fun things couldn't we hire a firm under professional services the say if so and so comes in there you've got this part of doing r p or whatever you have this pot of money and as it gets closer to the bottom you know come talk to us kind of thing by sarah these are kind of ideas you want to flush out while we're going through the process or do you want this after public testimony that i'm going to dress that i'm just not sure ok to you want to do it now we're here you know i find out that it works better if we deal with it while we're talking about it there's two sides that the practical side and let's say the legal surrender ok the practical side is what me mr me but she was talking about earlier saying this isn't the kind of review that's like what the the planning department does say do you meet our rules it's a system integration review so it has to be somebody who understands how our system functions  difficult thing to farm out unless you're farming it out for a very long time where those people know our system as well as we do so it's very difficult to farm out system integration it's really the same problem now electric had when people want to p b s and they had to hire companies that have their own engineers and they know what's going on don't those same engineers know our system or do you still have to talk to the engineers and set them straight as to that snark you know that's physics etc but our system does this exactly the private sector engineers know generally how things work but they don't understand our pressure zones and where the best tie in point is so essentially if you are an applicant and you are an engineer that engineer would know all the rules they'd come in and talk to  chase would say you're not going to tie in here you're going to tie in here and put a pressure juicing valve and then it's going to go yeah i understand but only jason's going to know how the system works that engineer would never know that but all of the other stuff that engineer but that little thing right there  if if that takes only you know an hour of jaycee's time versus ten hours agreed again that's still worth the agreed and that's the practical side ok then the legal side i don't know if not allowed to outsource work that has been historically done by union employees so it has to meet the practical side and that legal side and now it's the legal side is this is and we've talked we talked about this a budget all the time this is something that a you can't hire anybody because there's nobody applying for the jobs and b it's a it's a temporary situation it's not going to happen for the rest of expert at it but i believe the time frame is ninety days i believe that the little box we check saying is this temporary and i believe that it's ninety days that is is this bright line so a couple years is over that line so in any case you know some of this may border on things which talk about in executive session about where the line is of what we can outsource and we're i just want to say there's some practical issues and some legal issues and if there is something in between it becomes an option but there are these  civil service laws and decisions that we have to be in compliance with them so it is a good idea but it might be more complicated than we know so we'll put it down in our list of solutions how i don't think ok thank you that's what we're here to  thank you and we didn't you know like i said we have a script but don't worry about it if you have to you know wonder from it or embellish or do whatever it's ok thank you we're here to talk thank you so at some point to me the meters are either accepted or refused and the letter drafting process begins again for the next applicants on the list meter acceptance means either a meter reservation or a meter installation throughout the meter offer process time is not exclusively dedicated to the p letters daily calls emails subdivision and building permit reviews meetings and public walk ins occur concurrently and can be pushed aside just to focused on the list further if water system improvements some areas than others so therefore more calculations are required so that takes more time ok and approximately how many do we get done in a month right so  usually again these usually are sent out in batches usually about ten to twenty does not take a month usually a few months again because of all the other things that are going on besides the letter crafting but i guess if you're if you were t average it out maybe like five a month maybe if if we were to go monthly and but i'm sure if i may add a yes in the past budget session the council put a provi o in the department of management's budget saying that some amount of time of the engineers in that department shall be spent on a contributor this so we've been working with the department of management and we are going to by the end of this month or early next month going to be start start receiving the time what's nice about that is that the person who's going to be doing that used to have jason's job he is the single best person on the planet to help with this he already knows everything he does need to be trained he actually train chase he is going to be dedicating roughly forty to fifty percent of his total time on this so within a month or so that's going to start so that is going to help substantially so regardless of any action that's taken or not we are going to more than double our man hours on this money them in about a month and then the total number of people on the list muskoka think you are just trying to get this straight from the beginning so april twenty fourth teen is when i guess the original list started right it was created so that's over two years or whatever you didn't you go back to these original from that twenty fourteen list to say hey still on board or what you know trying to get the gist of where people are at so i'm just trying to whittle down that original  list to where it is today because i mean yes you see people here in this gallery who have been stuck on it beyond that and hopefully you know not a whole lot longer but and then you're saying you have  it's the list just keeps going and things and i'm still and i'm getting the phone calls too just as i'm sure we all are that where am i what happened was and yet you're saying year reaching out your redrafting letters your and some people are i'm hearing they're like they're lost they don't get it they don't understand where are they hope we get through today so maybe this is the reason why we have mean this meeting today is because we all get those inquiries and i'm  sure you get the money you know everybody gets them and a frustration of no you said we have water we can get a meter why haven't i gotten a letter how many are you doing why did it take so long and so there was the idea today was to explain the situation in the water department and what's going on we do issuing these meters and what i'm hearing from the staff and you know is that there is an awful lot of work to do and there seems to be up until now one person who is really responsible for this you know does not only deals with the water muralist he has all of these other things that he has to do in there in his presentation a list of other things that he's doing he's got to do with calls e mails subdivision and building permit reviews that are not on the up country this meetings and walk ins and these people that want to meet with them because they want to explanations so it seems to me that either we're going to figure out how to get more it's many many many years right so i think it's incumbent upon us is the people that provide the resources to try and figure out how can we help them with this and that's what i'm trying to do and thank you chair and i think that's during the budget process if that was brought up in particular and i think mr couch brings up a good point outsourcing what have you because we need to do all that work to what we do you're on this floor yeah we addressed every single thing of they're saying they got to address j suggest we do it in our own offices now holding us out from continuing our so you know and i just think this is a huge hire as you know and there used to be a dedicated staff to it if that is what is needed right where you know we kind of talked about it during the budget process and that's why we have this help that's coming from upstairs but i don't see that as a solution because i don't think there's going to be enough if you're going to have one and a half persons dealing with this double what we're doing so i'm really worried that we kind of find a way to move this issue and i think that that's why we need to talk about it we need to talk with th administration mr taylor who knows what needs to be done and we need to talk to our budget people and figure out what can we do to get rid of this mess i feel first treated i've been here almost ten years i lived in this water meter saying i'm on that list i'm into seven hundred something which i think it's seven sixty nine or something like that and i'm going to be dead before we get a meter because i'm going to live that long so this is why i think we need to sit here and hash this out what do they need how can we help them the agenda today is the speed we're moving through the list the speed we're moving through the list will be solved by engineering powers on it whether it's us hiring more people or paying for  applicants to hire their own engineers more engineering man hours will speed up our processing as far as this other issue of eight hundred names on the list we came in five years ago there were i think around twelve hundred names on the list some of these names are asking for many many meters i think one of them is asking for you know one hundred lot subdivision or something like that so the top if everybody on the list all eight hundred get their meters essentially  i looked at it before something like a sixty percent increase of growth upcountry which is way beyond what the existing piping system can handle so even if we magically had a huge well that generated you know twenty million gallons a day eight point eight a lot of these people are going to get a letter saying you know dear applicant you're come up on the list you need to put in you know seven miles of pipeline and you can have your meter and of course they're going to say no what we're going to see as we get more and more into this is as the early people who are saying yes are taking up the capacity somebody on their same street who gets offered a meter a year later the line now may be too small for them so they're going to say no so as we go through you're to see a smaller percentage of people being able to say yes because the piping systems are going to be you know at their capacity and you'll see the people saying yes where there's large pipes and the people with their small pipes still saying no so processing through the list is not necessarily going to get people meters it will process through the list so there's the available source or reliable capacity that's around with the ip that's problem one that we're i think we have a good handle on problem too is processing through the list which is what we're talking about today but problem three is still that the pipes are so small a country and because county ordinance still puts that pipe upsizing on the back of the applicant that a lot of people are going to say no so when you ask what how would i solve it what we're trying to do is we're trying to solve the actual reliable capacity through r c m p program we can speed up the processing by getting more manpower somehow to  help somehow but none of these are going to solve the problem of the people who are geographically dyspraxia in from a point of adequacy which there is no one's really talking about a solution and like as we've said before that's a several hundred million dollars aleutian which is nowhere in our radar of being able to solve so we can solve some of these problems but the reality is i don't see how realistically eighteen hundred people eight hundred applicants a list are going to get everything they want in some reasonable time frame and we're going to sort of double the population of country we're we're going to upsize you know one hundred miles of pipeline so i think there's three distinct problems and they all interrelate but they are three distinct problems numbers come in account when we did the population growth estimates in the mouth plan my understanding is the maoi and plan did not take any of this into account it was done on you know i'm sure you know better than i am so sure nomic socio economic growth projections but it didn't take into account and i don't think there's anything in the maoism plan that actually mentions the meter mist we mapped the urban getting people off the upcountry meter list but it is not a literal implementation of now adam policy and i know i've mentioned that before this cochran thank you chair and as for infrastructure's i heard that one part of stating infrastructure in adequacy i guess of sorts where people you know if you want it you gotta pay x dollars and it's just too cost prohibitive so when during if you've looked at certain areas that wouldn't be so would it be two hundred million dollars it would be feasible reasonable as we go through each budget cycle you're going to add this extra you know pipe bean to address these numbers in meters and then just add as we go kind of thing i don't know something like that so at least you'll be tackling people on the way you know and getting them up on the on line so has that there's a cut claim to be for the director taylor i want to come in here because we've talked about this at length with mr taylor and i have messed him you know how do we deal with this he has said and he's talked with us he has come here with capital improvement projections of what he needed to do i think it was a leg up to three hundred million dollars and he needed at least thirty million a year commitment in order to implement that and we have a difficult time as a consul in committing money for him he said i need three hundred million so i mean you know thirty million for ten years we cannot do that because we cannot commit the consul's that are coming after us and so he finds himself in a really tough situation and maybe that has changed since he and i talked so mr taylor thank you and i appreciate this meeting because i can go back and things over the past several years that the council's been supportive of the show how the they were starting to link together one of the things we did a few years ago when we had our up country solution plan was we had recognized that the ordinance itself the meter this ordinance was part of the problem it says you have to take number one the number two the number three even though number three is on same street as number seventy six is on the same street as number two hundred thirty four and that itself is a problem for infrastructure because the people can't get together which is why we ask council to change the law ending the ability to sign up for the list which counsel agreed with to say look let's put an end date to sign up on the list and that's when the list bumped from twelve hundred eighteen hundred as everybody you know rushed in what we want to do is get to the end of the list so that the new rules that will were right at some time later when we get to the end of the list would allow us to take to have a whole group together so we can recognize you know here's a street where there are seven people that can be helped by this two hundred feet of lying now we can emphasize that right now there is no way to do that because the law says we have to take one then two then three so there is no way to put the critical masses together and that was sort of baked into the cake when the law was passed and you know the board passed the rule in one thousand nine hundred three saying i'll take one then two then three there's no way to efficiently do the infrastructure which is why we want to get to the end of this thing even if a lot of people are saying no once it's gone we can start putting groups together who can have that critical mass that is i think just ending the ability to sign up saying that let's get to the end of this sometime the sooner the better so we can start doing it in a way that allows us to do exactly what you're saying but that's also not going to be soon we're i mean but there's certain areas that are kept out i mean there's only so many lots already built on it that's a many places like that and i guarantee everybody in the audience who's on the list has a reason why very street should be the first and if there were so syria i'd be more than happy to start and even if it was one million dollars a year it would be very difficult for us to say this should be first because like i said there was going to be probably hundreds of millions of dollars of this and if we if there was some direction about how much to spend a year and who's first you know i wouldn't be against doing that and yeah i understand but it's like looking at the r one recycling upgrade in westmount we're not going to start up creating over in appealingly before we start upgrading and  know i say you're going to start from common sense areas where the source is to shoot it out to where it's needed first and then build from that and then build from that so the only difference i would point out is in the r one expansion the county is allowed to say this area over here has the most need no one's on the list right now number one on the lists might be in the public who are we supposed to put the line in that helps number seventy three that's the difficulty the list saying one two three is not necessarily geographically linked to where the greatest need is and that creates the dilemma of what should we do first if there was some direction that i would be more than happy to implement a upcountry pipe upsize program if there were some criteria about what should be first ok and we can talk further about that chair but my final question for now in regards to wake up because it's been completed and so thereby what what has that affected this lists have you been able to to just burst some what have what's happened as i was trying to when i when i noted when i talked about there's three distinct problems the first is reliable capacity the second is getting through the list the this administration we have projects we're working on that we will not finish that the next mayor will be in place but we're already working on projects that will enable there to be at least enough water to keep meter list issuance going beyond this administration's time we're not looking at this saying oh you know we're only you know we're going to solve it we can in the next guys have to start from scratch so why can we as part of that part a which is to keep an effort going to increase reliable capacity so as we keep moving through the list you know we don't run out of capacity and we there's always another project that will work the wife and i was part of that but i tell you this what are thing is not an easy thing to settle but i chair i'd like to have a discussion and i guess an executive session to see if there is a way or see what we expose ourselves to if we were to  change the ordinance to allow the department to consolidate members of people on the list that are in the same area because that it seems to me that we're there's just no way we're going to get through this the at the rate that we're going now another question i had for you was with the change or with the age vocal wells coming online and the and like more are being fixed to what degree has that changed our reliable capacity and how does that translate into additional meters that will that we will be able to offer at some point compared to where we were in the beginning flume has been because we haven't had a dry time and have reservoirs are just full of it's august so we know it's something we because the h poco wells are firm capacity that was easy to calculate and that's going to translate to  probably you know substantially more than that so i'd say you know upwards of five hundred maybe as low as six maybe as high as seven or eight or something like that so a substantial number of meters or equivalent you know especially as we process what maybe not even a hundred meters since that time right hundred twenty so we have a hundred right so we have hundreds more meter hundreds and hundreds more meters to offer before even if the projects we're working on never come to fruition we have hundreds and hundreds of more meters will be offering with our current reliable capacity and hopefully by the time we get there those projects will be on line and they'll be hundreds and hundreds more that is what we're working on although you know this is ministration won't see the end of that we're hoping that you know i would like to hope in ten years when they look back at least a thousand meters were working i think that would be looked at is pretty successful i don't know if we're going to start running into piping limitations before that but i think we can meters many applicants have you received or application the serve you been able to process for those to lot subdivision of applicants right so i spoke about the ordinance four to five five which allowed us to make offers to our applicants who refused or this didn't answer us as far as the first time go first go around so the in total is about forty five properties or so so currently those sit at the top of the of the original list and a few months ago we mean for applicants because it exempts fire protection apartments like i was speaking about but it does not exempt domestic requirements in other words if there's a smaller pipe running across fronting someone's property and they need a meter or a meter or meters again that that pipe may not be adequately size for domestic purposes domestic flow the mystic residual pictures that we need to allow them to have that meter at that location so that's that's why you know these they were still saddled with you know infrastructure improvements just based on domestic requirements alone the last question i have is we we've set aside i think six point four million dollars in the country water meter fund and to my knowledge there was no request to use any of that but in this last budget go round do you have any plans to use a portion or or all of the fund the point yes the two projects the two big projects that are heading for heading into design to eventually construction are a second well to powa callus site that will through a redundancy upgrade increase reliable capacity by around another half million reliable capacity by equivalent to you know couple hundred meters probably the combined construction cost of those two projects would certainly spend all of that money so we whether or not we'll use that source or will use our influence for those we absolutely in the next couple years will be spending more than six million dollars on construction that would fit that category so that money could either be used directly for those or that money could be used to pay the debt service for the lifetime of loans or for geo bonder etc etc but we we definitely have more than six million dollars of upcoming construction for that purpose in the next couple of years thank you you thank you tear and i will make note of the possible executive session have also brought that issue up and i'm glad that you're asking too so i'll try to schedule that when i can get the pretty put together ok members anymore otherwise we'll be without objection i'd like to do the testimony not the objection let me just do a couple of announcements here about testimony i think most everybody that's in the audience has been here before but just  ace testimony will be limited to three minutes and upon requests up to one minute to come clued at three minutes late will turn yellow and a poor minutes the light will blink read if you are still talking at the four minute mark i will kindly ask you to stop when testifying please state your name and who you are representing if you represent a group we have established a connection to the district office is to be fair we will go take through each of the sites i will ask  do you have anyone wishing to testify you don office is there anyone wishing to testify thank you denise and molokai office is there anyone wishing to testify you we will check in with you one more time madam chair in the chamber the first person signed up to testify is dick mair and he will be followed by rosemary robins if you members very good that you had the discussion before they make such testimony a lot easier and more relevant i think and i was very pleased to hear the discussion because there were three separate areas three separate issues that i could see that  problems one is what is the water supply is there enough capacity in the system number two can the water department and its engineering section process things and that seems to be slowing things down even if  available and thirdly is the question of infrastructure the pipes big enough is the system able to deliver water those are three separate things each one of them probably needs attention and hopefully solutions some of them a ready so we may have enough water capacity but the department can handle it all the pipes cut and second thing is the question is raised does the maui island plan state anything about this and and in a very indirect way put it a very relevant issue it and that was the use of urban rural and small town growth boundaries those boundaries were exact acknowledgement that we cannot supply remote remote areas with infrastructure is easily and does cost effectively and that's why i would hope that the department will take a look at the water meter list and see which it which of those water meters for example or some large subdivisions on that list are outside any of the boundary lines and it be very expensive to bring water to those areas and that was a statement by a policy by this council when it put those boundaries it said what we want to do is to minimise the costs for the county they employ i'm going to ask that when you take look at the water meter piece that right now there is a certain feed and that didn't even come up today what is that if he could we help pay for some of that infrastructure through the use of what i mean if he's differential be made that water meters that if you feel compelled to get water meters outside the urban and rural growth boundaries that perhaps fifty percent or one hundred percent increase in that what i mean to be be assessed for areas that are outside of the boundaries that you as a council set in the  know we can talk about how if you are still on the water meter list number that didn't come up was how many people have already been offered water meters since the beginning of the establishment of this list that's i think something that the public should know about but you have all the pressure on you council members to  the people say i'm still on the what have you to list it might be helpful to be able to say we have four hundred people or six hundred people three hundred because many of the people on the first part of that list were subdivisions and they may be a lot of meat is already out there at least people were offered meters like the extra minute please and another thing is we have a lot of subdivisions on the list and i think it would be very helpful if the department at least for the next two three four five hundred applicants find out how many meters those subdivisions are asking for so we have an accurate number as hartmut may know but that that will tell people further down the list that you know until the next six hundred meters given how many of those in clusters subdivisions you know you may not get the water make it a more realistic number rather than talk with a number of applications i think we better to have the number of actual meters being requested thank you very much thank you very much good morning good morning everybody rosemary robbins concerned citizen living up country here my phone rings a lot to what's the deal with the meters and so wit great compassion do i listen to those folks and say that i don't have an answer for your particular meter i refer them to the people who are dealing with this i was sorry to see that represented a victory no was in here today because he's worked on water for so long i hope he's ok but i'm looking at an even bigger picture on this and thank you by the way for this being made available to those of us in the peanut gallery so that's very helpful thank you all of what we've talked about today has been within a closed system as though there is no room for growth with the system and i find that very scary we talked about engineers i'm not an engineer most of us are not but when we talk about having people always from within the ranks part of that is so valuable because they've lived through it that shouldn't be the limit we need to go beyond that too so please don't think of just  dealing with the folks who are on the water meter list right now because there is a bigger picture and that as an educator i am well aware that stem education and science technology engineering and math has been around for some time where we are dealing with people who were be able to come in and shadow folks who are dealing in the engineering end of those things are right now i'm not hearing anything about that happening  wonderful technique does exist the other thing is that folks who are dealing as and in here as and that's been brought up at this microphone before repeatedly in the county charter where it talks about  the engineers involved in the water department it says that they will be a director and a deputy director and one of them has to have an engineering degree there are so many varieties of engineering degrees a quick hit on a computer will be able to tell us the kinds of higher education institutions that have majors in the more extensive and nearing for example water in the area that exists also why are we not looking there if we only confine ourselves to what we have now and how did we get here we have to acknowledge that we're paying a fortune for engineers who either by way of a mission or commission didn't get the job done and now we're paying attorneys who aren't aquatic engineering field people either something's terribly wrong with that that we keep just closing and so giving credit for the fact that those opportunities do exist cheerfully  have both lost friends country who have run out of life spans and you and i are the same age and it's going to happen to us too so we have to admit that there is room for improvement and we need to give that as much attention because it's going to be an escalating evolving reality that we haven't had here yet with people who have expertise in water so thank you for me thank you very much for that and we need to make sure that we take a look at including the board minutes just to close on that sense that we have to be aware of the well being we're talking all about engineering and math we're not talking about the well being of our citizens and our visitors something was wrong with the lack of that mission statement focus k my p point with this is that a lot of people now i would like to get the count of how many local people got their water meters versus how many people they flew in and got there what meters and you know what i don't want to hear it all we didn't give these people water meters because i have to prove and i like to sit down with this concert and i like to shop from nine hundred eighty nine i have dead lists we have people at thirty years trying to get their families w but you can tell us what you want to see no but i'm frickin pissed off about it i am really pissed off about it because these families need their were you guys talk about helping the china of these homeless trying to give people housing how are you engineering department police because then maybe things would really really run straight that's all i got to say thank you and i certainly understand your passion members an you need to clarify the testimony i think it's very clear we know where you coming from i understand thank you thank you this will then bring our next testifier is tom crawley to be followed by bobby pa what you just said you have a thirty three year waiting list ok so obviously that's not something that's tenable and we need a different answer i like i like problems to solve and this is one of those problems to solve i'm not a one and then junior so i don't have the solutions for you but clearly one engineer working on this at his most diligent is is not going to get you there  one idea that i put forward and of course you have you have legal issues but when we go down the list and we find number five and we say number five is going to need to put in a two inch water line to make it work and we recognize that he probably doesn't have the resources to do that is it possible to look down the list and say number five go holy up with number one hundred sixty two and number twenty five hundred and number twenty five thousand and maybe the between all of you you can meet this requirement ok doesn't mean that number the guy at the end of the list gets his meter ahead of anybody else but if he understands that if he who ease up with with  other guy and we get these improvements done then when it comes his turn he'll get a so just you know want to idea as as mr taylor was talking and he talked about maui electric and and the capacity issues on the solar it occurred to me yeah you have these regional issues and that's how they they dealt with it they said this particular circuit is oversaturated so you have to get a study if you're on this circuit this particular circuits ok so can we identify those those types of circuits and and figure out what the needs the needs are there we can we can address this a bite at a time but we can't address it the way that it was just laid out that domestic use or just domestic use and if we put in a bag line a recycle water line as as is that going to free up capacity in the lines for people for example  somebody gets a water meter five essential water meter and they just build a house and it's just their family living there and they're not doing any ag use whatsoever they're going to use a fairly small amount of water that same two acre lot may start irrigating a whole lot and may use ten times or one hundred times the capacity of someone so so obviously that's difficult for for the department to predict can we put some limitations on the amount of water someone is allowed to use is that is that a solution that could that could help the department here i would make one suggestion the vis was this is a great meeting and there's a few people here and a few people watching on a co but it might be very worthwhile for the department to put together a little presentation that shone continuously on aku to make people aware of this you know of what the process is and address the questions that are often asked of the director and of the engineers and so forth just kind of those f a q so that the public those guys without an engineer can watch that program maybe even be directed to that program by by by folks when they first  so they can be brought up to speed i learned a lot today i'm sure there's more that could be learned well you know about the details of this but clearly you've identified a very fundamental problem that needs to putra saw and there you go so thank you good morning good morning and my name is bobby pat knowledge i'm speaking for myself today and i first want to say thank you to the chair by for having this meeting today and i also want to thank the council members for your comments so far i believe you are really trying to represent those of us who are waiting for me here you know i did the same math that tom did and it's going to be thirty two thirty three years before we get to the end of the list so it's obviously a problem for all of us i don't even know what number i am it used to be eight sixty four i think at one point my husband calculated it would be eighteen years before we got our meter and my meter originally was intended so that i could break my mother who just turned nine d over to that island and she will not be alive in eighteen years s that in the work i do have a couple sons who are already working in the land and hopefully in thirty two years will have meters for them i have a couple questions too and i also want to say thanks very much to the department for being here and being so willing to talk about it and answer our questions you said there was going to be an additional person coming to help who would be able to give forty to fifty percent of his time and what i'm wondering is could we use that time to train other people so that you have a bigger staff who understands what's going on rather than just dedicating that individual  and then i also have another question recently the department issued notice that you could purchase addiction additional fixture count for your meter so if you have a fi meter you can buy up to eight additional fixture counts and i think it was a cause of like three hundred eighty nine dollars per count and i'm wondering if that has had any impact on what's happening with the list or how the list is processed and i just mention also at the school the community association board meeting last night we decided we would ask the department to c up country and do an information session for people so they have more information about how that option could help them and also what's happening with the list just as chase did today and then my last question is you know it's me as a person sitting there up on crater road waiting for my meter to me it feels like the whole problem we have is the list the list is the problem and i know it's a law but that's what this council is here for is to fix the laws if they're not working so could we please entertain the idea that we change the law so that the infrastructure gets built in a planned fall way instead of going according to the list because i think that's what's really causing this whole problem that's all i have thank you very much thank you very much and that's the issue that we're talking about having an executive make some statements and then prepare anything just represented myself here today because they didn't talk about this with the association but anyhow original team k s a lot of them don't have water meters i think that's an issue and people have been waiting since they've owned their properties and they can't they don't have water you have to haul water to it if you want to raise cattle or have the animals go from  rancher as as that happens and as lots get sold in between it kind of breaks the cycle of being able to rotate animals so you end up trucking animals and trucking water which brings up a question where do you draw from legally if you're not allowed to take water from one team to another team rather be by truck or be by water holes or be you know whatever so that's an issue has been cases where owners names have come up and the quality has required infrastructure they may not be able to do it in a position other people buy properties in the same area they don't they i don't know where they are on the lease but apparently they don't need to put in the infrastructure and economy hooks them up so what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander so i had there's some stuff there that i don't want to go into  what i would recommand or suggest is first priority would be for original t m caves without water get water meters like a sea ice i utilize some of them there's been taxed the owners six thousand dollars taxes for properties that they felt maybe weren't occupied by animals grazing and sometimes water is an issue sometimes bond then rain is an issue and you're not able to make it around but you know how can you tax a property that high that doesn't even have a meter i think family subdivisions should have high priority over i'm not sure you know however it is but it seems like somebody's order doesn't come up in line i don't have an answer for that at a question on the executive session this being a public utility water issue why does the executive session after come into play but anyway that's all i have to say right now thank you thank you if it can be done in open session we have no problem but you know we have these legal concerns we have to pay attention to because we don't want to be sued and cost our taxpayers money that makes sense yeah we will be sure that if it's something we can do in opposition we will and thank you very much for coming today members i mean need to clarify his testimony thank you well in big madam chair the final person in the chamber signed up to testify is ryan churchill good morning long time no see morning chair members of the water resources committee my name is ryan churchill here speaking on behalf of myself i'm number six for two on the water meter list up one hundred spots in the last three years which is a significant increase from the three years prior to that so i do think apartment or water services for increasing the pace they're issuing meters however based on this pace i've got one thousand years to go to get there so i just want to add a few comments based on the discussion today as mr taylor pointed out there's three issues one being reliable capacity to being adequate or inadequate infrastructure and three being the process scene of the country water meter list now the first two reliable capacity in inadequate infrastructure are issues not specific to just up country these are issues  every district on the island whether you're in south now my central valley which is the central my water system west maui you've got the same issues if you come in for a meter or a subdivision you're going to have the same thing say is there enough water for this applica you have the right size pipe and those sorts of things so that's not really an upcountry issue i think as pointed out earlier the list is the problem and as mr taylor pointed out he wants to get through that list and get through it as quick as possible to get back to looking at those other two issues reliable capacity infrastructure and working on those to deliver water to the consumers out there on maui and so the question i think is why we're here today is how to how to address that list i just want to comment i want to add on that is for you executive session discussion i don't know how depart public works does it but the public works being short staffed with engineers on the technical side of certain levels does outsource  construction plan review so if a developer comes in summits their construction plans for a subdivision has a drainage other improvements in there that's all going to a consultant in honolulu believe a professional services agreement that they manage a process they get at the comments back from that consultant and then pass that on to the applicant so just something to take a look at how they do that and how they process that thank you thank you very much morning stay cool i'm a magic pill for our water problems for infrastructure problems all you need is a little bit of water offices and then we can close this out this is so anyone wishing to testify thank you denise and molokai offices so anyone wishing to testify public testimony for today so ordered on members members would you like to take your morning break ok and to take to be back here no later go again well the meeting please come back to order now that testimony is closed there's i'm sure many questions that we want to talk about but the tear has one before i let everybody else have open season one of our testifiers mentioned something about multiple lists mr taylor would you like to respond there is only one list the list is publicly available anyone can go to our website if you go to the county website click on department of water supply and engineering division as a contributor list you can search it by number and by t m k that is a list by ordinance updated once a year that is the list it's always been a list there are however people who get meters that aren't on the list for example dolling company developed a well and i cood many years ago dedicated to the county from a well development deal and got certain number of water credits for meters for that area so people have over the years who aren't on the list gotten those meters from credits that were outside of the nearest him come in also there are empty lots that have had meters for many many decades that all of a sudden somebody builds on or maybe somebody buys and builds on they already have meters so i can understand why people waiting see all the sudden inside a lot that's been empty for decades and all the sudden somebody is building and say hey that person's not on the list well that may be true that person may already have a meter or may have gotten a meter from somebody with those older credits so there is only one list there is no other list but there are a couple other ways that people have moved forward based on previous water credits or meters thank you very much ok members i am open for courses that we want to start expedite order move it faster there may be some of the work we could possibly outsource in the realm of providing engineering services to the applicant rather than doing our work so that is one area where i think we could possibly either outsource work or demanded of applicants c i don't believe that our work can be outsourced because of the laws around civil service that work that is historically been done by collective bargaining units like ha thirteen which is where all our work is done is not allowed to be outsourced to the private sector so that work had to be outsourced but work we're doing that is historically been the work of private engineers that the applicants don't have a private engineer there might be room to somehow pay for that work to be done so that we're not adding to our work that was historically done by the private sector engineers that i think the one room chair yeah i understand as far as you know  overriding collective bargaining and what you know but you just don't have the capacity it is it sounds that way you do not have the capacity to fulfill the requirements that we need to get this list moving and as far as infrastructure this is what what i'm hearing mr coo she can give you a better explanation of what are can what are legal constraints and outsourcing marker he's prepared for it thank you very much davis correct in terms of that cone of decision about oh outsourcing is certainly work that was done by by the department of collective bargaining employees however there may be other ways if there's a a problem with the other other way might be to hire temporary employees temporary engineering expertise employees who would not be civil service but they would be house in the department under the control of persons like jase or whoever again that's a temporary relief measure aside from that you know the market  if you need to think thank you thank you i it you know i'm not pushing for us to do away with our employees it is just the impression i get that you do not have capacity so i'm trying to find how can we resolve that issue and if it means working with personnel or temporary and concern and that that seems to be if we can get around the legal issues that seems to be a really good win win situation so let's hope we can really look into that and i understand we may have we would have to discuss some things in executive session potentially so looking forward to that this is another issue that i would like to bring up whether or not it needs to be answered  executive session not that's for you guys to determine but again the maoi haven't planned it you talked about there are subdivisions outside of the maui plan that outside of the or rural growth boundaries what precedents do they have since we've we've drawn our lines in the sand if you will and you've got this big subdivision potentially outside of those urban growth mounties and they're high on the  mean you know there are low number on the list and they could potentially come up when they come up do you look at them our own plan say oh you don't really you can subdivide because you're not in  own plan urban growth boundaries were rolled around member couch my understanding has always been that the general plan is not about ministerial permits and meaning things where there is a clear process that we're processing thumping as per rules laws and regulations so something like a subdivision application my understanding has always been that the general is not consulted on that level it's only consulted on subjective approvals like the zoning s m a and these other kind of things that has always been my understanding working here for twenty five years we do not consult the general plan when we're looking at the list from both the administration and from the council the policy has been made clear to us that we are supposed to execute the list with all possible haste as per the order of the list and we are not  reasons not to do that if for some reason there was some directive to us that that was inappropriate because it now i am plan for a policy stamp and we would certainly follow that but i have never heard anyone indicate that we're supposed to check with the  zoning changes their subdivisions that are already allowed by their existing zoning their pure subdivision applications or media requests but they're not there's no subjective they don't have to come to the council for zoning they don't have to the planning commission they are just subdivision processing where i understand that but right now you can subdivide with an ag subdivision with a sliding scale it so you're saying that these folks are to have urban designation and they can then subdivide there's owning is is residential or you're getting really be on my knowledge of that process we are there subdivisions that were applied to for the department of public works they come to us for at a certain stage and they're continually processed by the department of public works whether or not public works and those to planning for other portions i don't know but they these things are basically have been s with us because we won't sign off for final subdivision because of water whether or not there's other things some of these have to do i don't know but there it stuck at the preliminary subdivision stage because we're not signed on past that lines originally mr cox brought it up and then ms kerrville opened up her comments in regards to the whole outsourcing thing and i look at the real property tax the appeals the tax appeals when we saw they just job everybody have their hands for ready just hope assists them in you know getting to their end goal so i see that i don't know if there's a whole different relation between what we're talking about versus what we did with that but i guess that c discussed in executive session some time and because i agree something needs to give here something these that happened as what the process right now is not working and i'm just trying to get it and then chair in regards to your comments in your opening comes a buffet to lists of some sort i don't think it's literally in black and white a list i see it as a sort of an unspoken kind of things that are current according to testifiers according to people who live up country according to the observation is the scene with their neighbors down the road what have you in their community and what has happened is properties have been sold and these new properties have been subdued violated and given new new meters they were never on the list to begin with so somehow things of this nature is occurring and shared that could be a further a whole other subject of discussion but according to sources they have their proof and they've seen it firsthand to build and we have two thousand and nine it was codified in our codes two thousand and thirteen it was closed and we passed you know the exemption on fire protection so now the list was i guess the people who declined due to the fact that they couldn't afford but now that we lifted the fire protection part are able to come back on to the list because i'm getting questions about how come the list got reopened that was never supposed to be from the original but is that what occurred  in a sense got reopened i mean the people who declined or denied and then the fire exemption passed so now these people are really offered to get back on to the list that we decided that we would give them another chance because they had originally said no because they didn't have the exemptions so we thought it was fear that they should be given the opportunity to enjoy the exemption and that's it there's no real printing of the list and i don't know four responded in the affirmative hopefully soon will be able to go through that second batch so we can clear that out once we get through that then we'll start back at number one of the top of the original there are two missed that's where it's at right now ok and then mr taylor mentioned perhaps people see empty lots all of the sudden they got meters and are built but those meters are existing there are existing meters that can get water but because their number is five hundred eighty and it's you know you're only at number ten then why can't these people and i understand that's why we need the exec the executive session to talk about this listen as we stated in comments the list is the problem and i'm seeing here with this example there's families who the meters literally their infrastructure is literally there in fact they built it themselves just they can't get approval to get the source into the pipes to get to that meter to make it functioning so those things i think are just so frustrating to hear and why can't it somehow just be taken care of you bring up a point i want to be absolutely clear on once a meter is put in the ground by the department it's paid for and it's put in the ground that's there meter and they can use it there are no longer restrictions so what i was saying is that somebody may have subdivided decades ago put  meter in but has never come in and built anything they can come in and build right now they don't go on the list they have their meter there are many many many empty lots in our county and i own one that has an empty lot that has a water  actions council takes the department has given them the meter they have a five essential meter they're up to there a lot up to that many fixture units there's no lists they can just come right in for a building permit they will not be turned away they anyone who has a meter can build to the extent that that meter is allowed to be built with ok so no one should be denied the winner was given because the you the department agreed they you had enough stars to give them and all this list was chucked up and said yes you can have and we're here it isn't as you say they never took turned it on correct and so now they can come in and go hey i want to turn this on and they cannot be denied because originally when it was given it was stipulated there's enough stars that's why even ask around united and it it's on they're getting a bill every month as they have been for however long the meter has been there on the minimum charge you know you don't want it i have one of these i've got a water meter and when i look over fifteen years or something there is zero reading on it i get a bill every month for the minimum charge but never a drop of water has come out so even if there was a moratorium in central maui i can come in and build a house i have a meter so those exist all over the county and it may be that somebody is next door neighbor that was just an empty laws that had a meter for decades and they all of a sudden came in maybe they sold it to somebody and that person built a house so that can happen all over the county all the time once the once you pay for me to pay that water system development fee and we install meter that meter is yours we're not going to take it away and you're now not on any list ok i just saw that had been made close to where i live in a street somebody just built a new h accomplish the payment of it and then regardless of the number than your number in the line on that improvement line you are able to tie in and you know start functioning so that and i think that's the whole executive session thing if we do call something like that sometime so thank you chair for that note you know i think the informational meetings that we have had we've talked about a lot of these issues have really helped us you know like when we were doing budget and we looked at the water rates and fees we knew what to do because we know that they really need to hope with the money in order to move this along and we approved them and so i think you know spending the time understanding the needs really really helps us a lot  one of the test fires brought up the fact that the public works department is currently having plans reviewed by a firm in honolulu and so i would like mr coo she is thoughts on whether there hear as soon as chair called the recess i called the director of public works to ask him because i had never heard about that and public works director indicated that they were not outsourcing plan review when i talked to the testifier and he mention the name of the consultant it is the consultant that i know public works has under contract to do the m s for permit help so i think i don't way i haven't closed the gap between the testifier and the public works director yet but i'm wondering if what is being talked about is the m s four consulting contract and possibly some things having to do with that maybe go and get out consulting because that is the consultant you need i'm not exactly sure what's going on sure the public works director can clear it up but i i think it's probably most likely a professional services for the a must for consulting contract not applicable plan review but i'm not positive that that's what i was able to find out during the break w you know this is a problem that we've been dealing with for years and years and years it's a huge capital challenge which is we have with a mess for and so i think there may be some if there's some way that we can engage consultants to help us through this then i'd sure like to see that happen another question that i would like to have addressed and i don't know this can be done in open session but it seems to me that it would be very helpful if we could if if your number comes up you're number one hundred you've just been offered a water meter and there are three people on your street or that would be affected by the same infrastructure or be assisted by the same infrastructure is there a way that we can now consolidate if you know when when someone on your street comes up and we consolidate the other three or four now let them pay in the infrastructure and either get the meter then or still only get the meter when their name comes you know when their position comes up i'd like to know if there's some way we can make some sense out of this damn list because i don't see is getting through this lot and quickly enough and as long as they're doing the same calculations for the same four people it seems like that would require much less engineering time and if we need to hire a consultant to aid in that i'm i'm happy to do that thank you mr wade i share that question with you again the director may you know have certain limits to answer in open session and we can take this up in a scheduled executive session but director taylor mr me but she has some experience where people are actually doing this that he can chair something we have a couple couple situations where you know these are these out because on the list they know where they're at the know where their neighbors are at not right next to each other but you know down the line and separated but they know eventually at some point they will come up on the list on their own they would together and paid a consultant into drudge after one set of plans that we can review you know as as as one set of improvements so when the meters do pop up then they just can go and you know whenever they're during their applicant number comes up but they're doing it on their own on their own yeah because they know where they're at ok so and so they would only get their meter when their number come they wouldn't get it they wouldn't get moved up on the list no yes they would get offered a meter when their number comes up even though the infrastructure has been in the ground for over many years i kinda question and be really want to look into is can we jump the numbers on the list and that something we better discuss yet i'm not i'm not interested in jumpy the numbers but i think there's a number there's definitely a lot to be said for consolidating the work  absolutely it makes the department's life a whole lot easier and and weathers whether they're who end up on their own or whether we facilitate the who enough of them because the department knows what the  infrastructure improvements are that are going to be needed long term and i also i'd like to see some of that money that we set aside for a country be used to offset some of those infrastructure improvements that are going to help the overall system more than they're going to help the individuals that are being asked to pay for the entire thing because some of these numbers are just really incredibly high and three million i just i don't think it's fair for us to look to wonder two or three or four individuals to carry that entire burden totally agree with you but you know what we're hearing today i think is really really important because it makes everybody understand hope how complicated this problem is and how much work we have before us to china to so you know do little to changes  in places that make a huge difference and when i talk about jumping the list i'm not trying to be facetious or you know do anything illegal but what i'm saying is you know we fed testifiers mentioned things like why can't film family subdivisions go ahead you know and these are the kind of things that we might want to discuss with legal and see you know and doing it to the public and ask them you guys must to do this but can we is the question we don't even know legal ramifications so what i would like to do is talk about this with our legal folks and giving them some time to do some research and then we can have a meeting i guess another question would be whether we can hire a  consultant to look at where we're all the meters are you know if they can be provided access to the system can they do the footwork to see where consolidations would be possible and most helpful absolutely we're going to need help in getting some things done and the other question i had was a whether or not you know that the idea of the purchase of additional fixture counts for with your existing meter are there has there been an assess of those requests that could be it could benefit from either the purchase of additional fixture co would then need an additional meter or are there meters where there is absolutely no infrastructure needed additional answer that question as part of the presentation or i guess the question in my mind is how many people on the list that we're talking about the list there how many of people on the list would benefit by the newfound let me i don't have this but they all can don't have it ready for this maybe to get we're going to schedule that's fine thank you for asking the question also they will be ready for you know i don't need to be clairvoyant you and i have been but on the same page for a long time on this damn list i'm i'm going to plow through this thing the question is kind of an easy one to answer a almost longer than a discussion are shorter than discussion we don't know we don't know how many people the fixture you think will help there are certainly roughly half the people on the list just want like a meter size upgrade many of those people may just need a couple fixture units and they may look at this saying look i can just buy maxtor fixture units when we get to them on the list they may say never mind on the other hand they may want to meter upgrade because they want so many fixtures that it doesn't help them we don't have that kind of detail we only know that about maybe half the people on the list want a you know meter upgrade and so how many of them are going to help buy the fixture thing we don't know and this is  what i'd like to do is have a physician or a presentation on the fixture units and what it means and how it's done and what it can help so they folks who might only need a few fixture units who were told that you can't build because you need a new meter might come in and take advantage of the offer you know we did it in budget and i don't think it was a whole lot of fanfare about it but i think folks need to know so that they can avail themselves of it so that's my idea  chair along that picture unocal because i was one of the questions i was going to ask just a thought is that if you know who's having a meter upgrade you might want to send them a letter saying hey you have this capability and you know if you only need to add a few more fixtures remove use that you know do it and remove yourself from the list that might get rid of maybe a quarter who knows if that you know if we're thinking optimistically so that's a potential that you proactive thing that you might be able to do in order to cut down some of that list and it's just a thought anymore but yeah i didn't know if they had a comment on that or it would certainly help those people though it wouldn't them coming in for those fixture units wouldn't a race from from the list when their name came up we'd still have to send them a letter and process them could anybody help them earlier couldn't they remove themselves from the list that they could remove themselves but that's not something that we could ask of them when they could have their own volition come in and say oh that's all they need and let us know right right and that's why i'm saying as if kind of the work together with them saying if this is all you want go ahead and do your upgrades add your for your room or whatever it is and if you would be so kind to remove yourself from the list that kind of thing that's a that's a potential proactive thing that might help a bunch of the list the question i had the other question i had is something was brought up by one of the testifiers that it's it's a sneaky thing that  i don't know if we're looking at it or not but when somebody wants a new meter are they is it for domestic use or ag use or are you are you looking at that for the capacity or or does it matter because you're going to give them a two edge meter whatever they use it for you calculate the capacity that that meter can draw do you take into account whether it's going to be ag use or domestic use is so th t the numbers on the list as far as usage are projected usage gallons per day is based on what the zoning of the property is so that's how we assigned that certain capacity to that to that request so whether or not whatever they're going to use the meter for our numbers are assigned through our standards and that's all we go that's all the allocations are listed on the list so potentially that's very eyeopening because potentially you've got a lot of these lots out there but they're only going to be they're not going to do ag they're going to just build a house right so potentially you have calculated that these folks are going to use twenty thousand gallons a month and they're only going to end up using eight so there's some reserve capacity in there it sounds like that there's there's the potential for that could be just that we would know until they actually sell using of course right i mean we can only go based off of our estimated numbers  ok that good good information that you know i see what you're thinking of let me just pretend for a second the list didn't exist because there have been some questions and let me just quickly explain what i would do if there was no list essentially the system works in three parts the upper let me say the lower which is sort of below model of a new between moscow of uno up to say twenty eight hundred feet and then above twenty eight hundred feet to four thousand feet that's really the three zones if there was no list and you want  to help as many people as we could we would take people who aren't doing ag people who just want houses at the lower level everybody in haiku everybody have to mark all everybody below market often which is probably just give the meters because that's the easy place to serve where there tends to be a lot water the last group would be the people doing large ag at the highest elevation up at three thousand four thousand feet who have this big drop so kind of you know what you were alluding to is you know some people use more some people use less that isn't how the list is set up it's set up how chase went through but for me could we help more people quicker of course we could you know the people just the way the system functions the lower elevation people mako of a new and below who just want a house or ohana those are not a huge drain on the capacity and they might have like local piping issues but again that isn't what the list says you know i think if we're going back in time if i was there when the list was made already and we would have been with just been left with the large exterior use especially at the higher elevations but the fact that those people may be you know number one and number two a number three that's what sort of making this so complex is it's not following the natural usage and you know who can we best help just to follow up monday on that question to set fire also as the very interesting question can we limit the amount that it can have that amount of water i mean this is the person who was asking about the egg used domestic truth and also said can we limit the amount that they can have with the meter so understanding that currently we we allocate meters a five essential meter at full capacity can put out twenty eight thousand eight hundred gallons over a twenty four hour period now average household uses about six hundred gallons so you need to understand that somebody can come in with a single family on the list saying i want a five essential meter and if they start doing huge ag they're going to use a lot of water so it takes some time to grow we look at how the usage is actually happening so we're not allocating people of volume of water or allocating them a meter which they're allowed to run a twenty four seven and used twenty eight thousand eight hundred gallons the it was modified again such that if somehow we were able to offer meters for people that promise you know to use no more than five hundred gallons a day all of a sudden all of those people would be easy to serve those people at lower elevations would be really easy to serve so that's sort of somehow some of the operational mechanics clash with the ordinance of the list in the order of the list or do you anticipate that twenty thousand gallons a day for every five eighth's inch meter or do you have a number that you we have to look at a case by case right if it was a if it was a five acre lot and they just want  house but maybe they're going to do a lot of ag versus if it's just a five thousand square foot lot will clearly that are going to you know use twenty thousand gallons but this is not an exact science because we're not limiting volume we're allocating meters that have a wide range and thank you well you know i left a list six hundred gallons a day per house goes i think we use about two hundred and we're not dirty people miss cochran chair yeah i think it's what people can afford to use to and then of course we do limit them during drought times and conservation you know aspects of it so i guess maybe this is just kind of simple but what number are you actually on if there's this consecutive order we need to pay attention to and that's why we can't talk about condensing infrastructure and getting people from all levels of the list to you know on percent acceptance on that so again once we get through the second half of the of those re offers then we'll get back to the top of the original list and we'll start from there so that two of the testifiers cities number when down by one hundred because you know point yeah especially if it works out that mr carroll's number one in mr white's number two and your number three and we've processed three this year well mr couch was number four but we put up a new list and now we know he's number one yeah that's how we do it every year  this is why we have this problem of how to remove right now and then for mr taylor's take if there were is no such a list this is how he would do it the lower middle upper levels have you taken existing lists and broken it down that way we have mapped them and we know where they are right and they're equally spread over all the areas i'm just saying from a practical standpoint if we ordered it that way we could process lots and lots of people much much faster because more people would say yes there's water that we know where the infrastructure is you know if we could follow where the water is and where the big pipes are all of those people would say yes and we don't need to do a lot of engineering because we know the  enough and but again that isn't what the current ordinance us right and so that's why a chair hearing that i thought how can we look at it from that perspective and change it and adjust a adjusted in order to accomplish the potential uses are and i don't you know these are just discussion topics and to follow that to give you another sort of idea because the council passed a water shortage bill and passed the the chang fees in the budget if you think about it if your goal is to help people with housing you know that's really the goal is to have you know honasan get their kids in if the goal of this becomes housing rather than ag a again putting the list aside the legal issues a list aside for a second knowing also that the nice thing about residences is we can cut them back during the drought we're ag we can't we had that discussion so if the emphasis was how's is not exterior use especially at the easy to serve areas that we can cut back you know for a month a year you know we can give them a thirty percent cut back on their lawn and things like that all of a sudden you could probably take almost everybody that's in that category who just wants a house without exterior use you probably give me water right now as long as they're piping was big enough for their you know domestic is fire it wouldn't cause a big problem with the ups and downs of volume so there are practical operational engineering solutions to this but again the list overrides all of those and everything you heard us today say we are legally bound to follow the list even though our gut feel is engineers try to help as many people as quickly as we can once to go in this completely different direction and if some way the laws were changed to allow that a lot more people could be helped a lot of faster and without going into the details i think frankly we were the first administration to come in and to try and try to really roll up our sleeves and fix this i just don't get the sense that anyone really had a a a really clear vision of how to move it forward and i think that's probably why it just stop and i think it's called kicking the can down the road and you know what it can is in this room you know fortunately we're here trying to deal with it but i think i'm excited that we can begin to deal with it in one think we have the will to do it and that's all it takes in this state way so i think it's fair you know i think mr taylor's come up with a number of of good ideas and i think the thing that we've always been operating under is that we can't touch them to the list because the legal ramifications what i would co counsel to work on between now and the next meeting is to evaluate whether the overall public good or finance you know the county are there some brash now that can be brought to bear so that we can provide changes to the code that give priority to housing give priority to family subdivisions give priority to those areas within the designated rural areas or urban areas in the various country areas and then also an easier time getting if you're at the lower elevations where there are the pipes or the you know the infrastructure that's already there i mean i mean stupid is as stupid and at some point we have to say in which we may have to take some chances that somebody might sue us but the flipside of that is if you're in an area that may not ever get water please don't come and sue us if we're trying to take care of other people before we get around to you but i mean we need to come up with something that's workable and there's some really sensible ideas in this room right now and we're not addressing them because we're concerned about somebody's game ticked off and taking us to court but at some point we need to come up with solutions not just keep doing the same thing over and over yes i think i hear the spirit of we may have to take a risk and that's what people pay us to do for the good of our community right you know we're dealing with this horrible ho water's a big piece a bit right and so where do you know trying to figure out in our temporary investigative group how to do with the housing problem what this is a piece it's a big piece anyway i think that you know we have had a very productive morning and unless somebody has another very burning question i think we've pretty much talk this out and we will take the suggestions ideas and plan to follow up on this meeting and come back with maybe possibly the executive session if it has to be so jason like to thank you very very much and i apologize for taking you away from your meter list for a while we probably lost another meter today while he was here with us but i thought it was really really important and he also had to take the time to put together this and out for us so again thank you very much to read meters when we were talking now we're hearing it from the director how well look i'll have to live with that anyway i want to thank you folks for their cooperation you know we can do this but we all have to work together so i thank my members for your attention and i want to think the testifiers and for those in the gallery and i thank the viewing audience i know that many people were not able to be here today because they told me they'd be in front of their t v s either today or when it's rebroadcast so again thank you to my staff and to everybody and folks without credit business the atmosphere just so you can tell your friends and anybody who wants to look at it again we now have a  county dot legist star dot com and look at the committee it will say water resource committee and there's a column on the far right that says video you cook on that you can watch it right there and they're wonderful with one ye yes madam chair i might just add that our new county website maui county dot us has a link to that if they just want to it says web cast or something just push that button and do exactly what