legislative attorney sharon brooks also legislative attorney craig garneau committee secretary pauline martins and four corporation council deputy corporation counsel dept jerry sheppard before we begin i'd like to ask anybody who would like to testify to please sign up in the lobby if you are going to testify please come down to the podium state your name and organization in which you represent you will have approximately three minutes to testify you'll be limited to the items on the agenda i'm going to check in with our district offices starting with hot office are you there and on military office is there anyone wishing to testify like you are you waiting for this like very good thank you very much ladies i will disconnect at this point on the for  public testimony without objections will close public testimony thank you members starting with our first item on the agenda are forty the donation of a batting cage that column apart he h is in receipt of county communication fifteen dash two thirteen from the director of parks and recreation transmitting a proposed resolution entitled authorizing acceptance of a donation of a batting cage to the department of parks and recreation county of maui pursuant to chapter three point five six of maui county code the purpose of the proposed resolution is to accept from shane victory new foundation a baseball bat in cage and related improvements for  maui hawaii valued at ninety thousand dollars the committee may consider whether to recommend the adoption of the proposed resolution with or without further revisions the committee may also consider filing  communication fifteen to thirteen and other related actions members we have a donation offered by our one and only shane victorino foundation to build a new batting cage for youth baseball players that column apart in key hey we have here today we're on the floor we have edward roy ball from goodfellows brothers he's the project manager for the cage construction we also  have from our parks and recreation our chief of recreation mr sol i here today thank you before we begin members i would like to ask the department for any opening no if you would like to ask any questions or make any comments at this time thank you chair and it is a great honor and then i see that this is finally coming to fruition my my son has been very interested in developing betting cages to out the county of mali and this is the first step in many he feels that he wants to give an opportunity to our youth to have the same chances that he had as he developed as a ball player and one of the things that was lacking in our ballparks and still lacking of ballparks is batting cages and if you're into your baseball player just like a golfer you need somewhere to practice your swing and not actually be out on the field playing actually a place to practice your swing you know in golf courses they have a driving range as well as this is baseball's version of a driving range and so he's really taking the first step and he hopes this will be just the beginning for developing batting cages out the county of mali you also saw me in a while because a while he has a golf tournament yeah he's back in that respect however like everything else it's taken a long while to get here and there was a number of different challenges the process is always hottest the first time out and we've learnt a number of methodology is and means of not having the elite in the future so we hope that once this one is done that we can expedite and move into other parks throughout the county and build batting cages so young baseball players and softball players will have opportunities that you know will enhanced their chances of getting to even high school collegiate and maybe even to the professional levels in their various sports so that's his dream this is what he bring forward and i'm very thankful as his father i can't be here to you know to discuss it and to bring it forward and sixteen feet two inches on the high side enclosed with the fence right next to the slab we will have to bowl pin lanes that's just  decided whether we are going to need that if it's going to be required within our estimate permit so that's kind of the forefront of of what we're not expecting to provide however because it's in an essay me area these are some of that government bureaucracy we talk about we're talking about a batting cage and not talking about a structure to live in something that's there to help children and that we have to go to a lot of hoops to get it done ok we understand and we're not opposed to it and will do the best we can and i also wanted to recognize the fact that good fellows has donated a lot of their time as well as some others in the actual construction and i want to thank steve in the family and you for being there because they also a big part of it that's why the cost can be as what you saw on something like this  e in excess of one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand if you were to pay for everything construction start to finish so we are you know very happy to have ah another public service company that we become smaller and helps us when we need it for our children the benefactors are going to be to children of salt molly and others who are in the area you know when you have tournaments and others they'll be able to use it it's just not a betting case like he said there's two bullpens right the reason there is no surfacing on b ns on the hard part is when you're trying a ball you don't want to ball bouncing back at you and hurting you so that's why it will be all dirty but my hope is that we'll be able to complete this by november twentieth as ed has mentioned because on the twent department going to be equipped to maintain the batting cage facility i was told that the little league will be managing and doing the maintenance on this  i know that we have some coming down the pipe will have some issues coming with union stuff that well we'll hear about it later but anyways is there any other questions mis by mr victory in a second second by mr couch any further discussion seeing and all those in favor say aye although suppose say no we have five five eyes  three excused motion carries thank you members and moving on to the next agenda item or twenty today will have on the floor for a year or twenty mr kenneth y the specialist from economic development office and i believe we have a representative from the old here we are mr david good from public works twenty industrial hemp the committees in receipt of the following county communication fourteen to thirteen from council member donald g couching jr up on the matter relating to industrial hemp as defined in act fifty six two thousand and fourteen correspondence dated august fourteenth two thousand two thousand and fifteen from community chair don as transmitting a proposed resolution entitled urging congress to pass the industrial hemp farming act of two thousand and fifteen for the purpose of the proposed resolution to urge the united states congress to pass a proposed bill entitled industrial hemp farming act two thousand and fifteen which would amend the controlled substance act to exclude industrial hemp from the list of controlled substances we've passed out the actual bill to the members here on the floor which is h r five two five and senate bill one three four members the industrial hemp farming act of two thousand and fifteen is currently be before both houses of congress it would be amending this controlled substance act to remove industrial him from the lists of controlled substances and duster all hip is produced from the same plant as marijuana cannabis l but is commonly used in clothing foods and various other products currently industrial hemp is regulated as a form of the active ingredient in marijuana it would exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana thereby allowing it to grow as an agricultural product the bill has nine co sponsors in the senate and sixty co sponsors in the house of representatives including representative told c gabbert the passage of this bill would boost agriculture in maui county and allow cultivating this ancient crop with many diesel fuel we have with us today as mentioned ken if you are more of the agricultural specialist with the office of economic development as well as david good from the publics works department before we began i would like to of products that they could grow i mean we don't know really how successful we will be growing this we're at the stage of just researching whereas if you look at canada with other products as insulation material in a building so it was something that was presented to us by the architect mr george reccy owner stands very knowledgeable about these products and we did some research and we wrote them back wrote back and said that's it would work for us in our building codes and required certain spec inspections make sure it was done in accordance with the manufacturer's specifications or mr couch do you have any questions or comments both i wanted to thank you mr chair for bringing that up my letter was in reference to you know the state has an act act fifty six two thousand and fourteen  that that allows for the testing of industrial hemp and it defines industrial hemp as you mentioned in your opening remarks having gone to the same conference we're importing all from all over the world we're the united states is importing a whole lot from all over the world so i wanted to bring it up to and this these two bills are just jive perfectly as to what we're trying to do i think it should be more than experimental here right now all the state allows for an experimental use and i know that there has been some research done a little bit about there's the growing seasons forty eight minutes a little too short for the op optimum amount of growth that they want but still it's not enough to kill it so i really appreciate it just as a side note canvas the word canvas comes from the latin word cannabis so even camus is a sturdy cloth made from hamp or flax so if it's been around it's got a number of great uses and i think we're missing the boat and if we're looking for you know it's sage cns we're to have some issues and have to close down this could be something to keep the valley green  and uses a lot less water than sugar cane so that i mean that there's a viable crop if there's a market that's the other big gift and i think there's a ton of market because we're importing the products already from all over the world so really appreciate it kentucky's doing it right now they're doing a great job on it and we might as well step in line you know get in line at the beginning as opposed to trying to catch up so and right now according to those that are trying to study this and make it work here the big issue is getting the seeds the issue is the seed so i think this legislation that the u s congress is doing if we can the more we can get to call them if everybody who testified today just on short notice sent their list out and sent all this to the u s congress once we passed this i think we're going to be in good shape the question i have so i want to thank you by doing so thanks for bringing that up the question i have about that the house or the good you said it was insulation material or is it is it the him because we saw a demo demonstration of what is called hamp create and that's actually a building block material that that i thought that's what that house is made  certain standards because i don't know that him create as is listed in the international building code it might be but as long as it meets certain structural standards and in pressure and all that it should be ok to be used to scott's the if these for insulation and he's to produce what we call an r value right so he has it which is based on insulation values so we have requirements standard requirements for housing in our model or it was called  energy code which by the way would be coming forward surely with the new energy code so it's good to start talking about it but so there's like i think it's our thirteen in the walls and our nineteen are our thirty in the ceilings so they can demonstrate that it meets those numbers so in this case the product information was shared with our staff and enough information to provide that we're confident is going to mean as long as it was installed correctly ok all right so that  they're still in that was one of the properties that if you look up some of the sites and some of the facts on that it can get up to in our eighty five value so for insulation it's a great product for instance it's lation but it also as we saw a very very sturdy product for actual building material as well so and they say it's mold free i guess with correct right correct and so yeah so in the state of i know there are already using it as say a concrete right type building material so my question to the department or to the chair is it if it isn't allowed and i would like to know if if it is if you can research that and get back to us if it isn't allowed i'd love to be able to put it in the building code or whatever where it would would be suitable for for you to ok that if it were being used will follow up with a lot of thank you i think mr okama since you know very familiar with what's going on in congress as well as other jurisdictions that are supporting this the bill that's pretty presently in both houses the industrial hemp farming act of two thousand and fifteen do you have any information or knowledge or opinion as to what's going on with this bill chairman thank you i would just say the senate  seems to be a little bit more work oriented to get things through the docket and off the senate floor and like many other issues in the house   requirement of closure which takes sixty votes so set up or a slightly different but i would say mr chairman that i think this is a very timely consideration resolution urging congress to pass the industrial hemp farming act twenty fifteen whereas the cultivation of sugar cane and pineapple has been traditionally a critical part of my county's economic base for over  hundred years and where ask the cultivation of sugar cane and pineapple has dwindled dramatically in maui county who approximately thirty six thousand acres of sugarcane and one thousand three hundred five hundred one thousand three hundred fifty acres of pineapple and where as only two hundred thirty thousand acres are engaged in active farming activity out of a total four hundred two thousand three hundred fifty four acres is zoned agriculture in the county and where as agriculture remains an important element in mallee county's economic and land use patterns with the trend moving towards more agriculture diversification and where as maui county's agriculture lin's itself to the preservation of our sense of place and serves as a background of scenic beauty for residents and our primary economic driver the tourism industry and where as the industrial ham industry is enjoying a significant and growing revitalization worldwide and in the united states as faltering agricultural economic economies in a number of states create pressure to investigate alternative crops including industrial him and where asked to date twenty two states have passed some form of hamp legislation with thirteen of these establishing commercial industrial hemp programs by statute and where ass on april thirtieth two thousand and fourteen hawaii governor neil abercrombie signed act fifty six two thousand and fourteen into law legalizing the limited growing of industrial hemp for research purposes making hawaii the eleventh state to legalize industrial hemp and where ass on february seventh two thousand and fourteen president barack obama signed the farm bill of twenty thirteen into law whereby section seven thousand seven six zero six of the act legitimacy of industrial hemp research finds industrial him as distinct and authorizes and institutions of higher  education or state departments of agriculture in states where hamp is legal to grow hemp for research or agricultural pilot project programs and where as hamp is a fiber and seed crop with the ability to grow in almost any soil with minimal maintenance and is a five hundred million five hundred million import industry in the united states and where as industrial hamps three raw materials fiber herds and seeds can be used in more than twenty five thousand products including textiles ropes plastics resins particleboard him create paper products soap shampoo skincare products bio diesel food vitamins and oil among others and where as industrial ham is commercially produced in more than thirty countries including canada great britain france germany romania australia and china without undue restriction or complications and whereas industrial him is distinct in its relative marijuana in that him contains less than one percent of the psychoactive chemical t h c and where as industrial is currently regulated by the federal government as a form of marijuana which is classified as a schedule one drug and where as the controlled substances substances act of one nine hundred seventy specifies the findings to which the government must attest in order to classify a substance as a schedule one drug and those findings include that the substance has a high potential for abuse no accepted medical use and a lack of accepted safety for use none of which applied to industrial hemp and where as senate  three four the industrial hemp farming act of twenty fifteen which was introduced on january eighth two thousand and fifteen by senator ron wyden and three original co sponsors senators  and rand paul currently has nine bipartisan co sponsors and where as house of representatives bill five to five the industrial farming act of twenty fifteen which was introduced on january twenty six twenty fifteen by representative thomas massey currently has sixty bipartisan co sponsors including representative told seek apert who represents the people of maui county and where as the purpose of the act is to amend the controlled substances act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana and where as the bill would create new jobs and open a diverse market for farmers in hawaii and other states now therefore be it resolved by the council of the county of maui that it hereby supports the proposed legislation to amend the controlled substances act of one thousand nine hundred seventy to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana are any other questions or comments from that committee miss by so thank you very much i'm not a voting member of this committee but i wanted to be here today to show my support i think that this is very very important and having had the opportunity to attend that conference and speak with people who know it made it very clear to me that a lot of the things that i've been told are not true and there's a lot of misinformation out there and so i just want to say that i thank you for bringing this forward and i hope that we'll get it out of concert real soon because we need to deal with this you know having seen that building product that they showed us that is important you know how we're struggling  build housing here and if there was any weird way we could find material that we could grow and produce here that might help with our costs along with a whole bunch of other benefits so i again want to express my support thank you remember the saying that you could grow your own house yes at that conference very interesting concept any other questions that we have mr okama chairman thank you  first thank you for bringing this forward today and i want to paint mr coach for being in initiative in industrious you know to propose it like you said earlier chairman i think one of the things that the senate bill you would take right at this point in time you cannot beat fossil fuel once it goes on below fifty dollars a barrel it's going to be a hell of a lot cheaper to buy fossil fuel than any other type of fuel and it's just plain  and with that i say that because right now if we don't know what to do it one million gallons a day we get from saudi and what we're going to store it we are at capacity in storage and yet we still bring in an additional meal in a barrels of saudi oil  documentation or something we can support that would allow us to get the ability to get a sense of what kind of jobs we're talking about the numbers of new jobs what type of market open to getting the due diligence done so we can make educated decisions but i would hate to create a false sense of what is potentially came be just saying we're going to create a jobs and open a diverse market so what is our goal to make sure that all current eggs on lands are continue to stay in production i find it interesting we have the ranch and others that have i recall jill lance we don't this them as let owners they should be considering this is an alternative use of their agricultural lands so i'm just making suggestions on because i think we need to get our big land owners excited if possible to go back to active agriculture and they're allow us to reduce the subsidy we provide agriculture on an annual basis to a general fund so for me it's a big picture then just industrial have this is about the overall revenue generation for this county to agricultural sector and keeping it viable as a state constitution had tended agriculture to be  o that's what it was situation i you know if part of this in your committee report i am very supportive of making sure this resource is to get the documentation of verification of the jobs portion and what we are meaning by diverse open market type of construction in development to make this thing work you have a sense of the school potential for the county can take a look at what we have no sense of what's all there yet probably no sense of where we need to go and what to put up in the way of the infrastructure i mean for me i never grew up so i have no a prisoner experience but you know you know we've got to have some hi  i think in support of our congressional representatives i think we should do our due diligence and look at the other twenty two i think it's twenty or thirty countries that actually produce have as a fiber or as a product itself canada which is our neighbor right next door to great britain france germany australia those are the other countries we can look at we don't need to go you know very far to see what other countries are doing to  i guess change their infrastructure or their way of doing business and and producing this type of agricultural product and make it productive i think there are other other states that are also producing have and we can also look at those those states and what they're doing to you know change their agricultural business of doing things in the way i think that i would be interested is the just need to be on of us are doing commercial scale whereby for some of our maybe more independent and want to do small scale agriculture you know if this doesn't fit that group then we should be up front with a message this is not for you guys we're looking at you don't have skill or critical mass to make it viable financially so you know those are the kind i think we need to get information so that we can make the right choice because if this is let's see if my always says we want to be the manufacturing capital  but it's someplace where you know we can it's a starting point and i believe that if we don't start supporting it then we may be you know on the talent of it where we're we're left without anything they may they may not pass anything at the congressional level so then we would deny the even the opportunity to even think about him as a product or another diverse product crop that we could possibly grow here on maui we actually i'm going to keep this the resolution itself has a different way our number this subject matter stays in this committee so we are going to keep on researching all the viable opportunities with him as i said the subject matter stays in very good and interesting points i agree with you chair that we are at the point now that we need to start moving and this is just one step we're asking for federal support to recognize him as a legal product that we can produce for building purposes and other usage right and hemp was at one time in this country one of the most large and largest growing crops for production and h us that this is a viable product i understand we still come was concerned about large small but i don't think we've gotten to that point i too attended a conference although nobody saw me do right however one of the things that i got out of it was that it is the time and place for which we in hawaii because of our season which is almost universal one season can't be really a real leader as far as g and whereas in other parts of the united states that's not quite so true so i can support the resolution asking congress although i agreed mr okama the house is the main stumbling block when it comes to issues like him and let's not let's not you know let's not lose sight of that they have been very negative as far as hamp and other other situations and i think they will be it be difficult to get it passed the house but that's another story if we were in line to support then i can support you know i would like to see it legalized so that we don't have this challenge it is not marijuana it's not what we call marijuana it is very different and so i think as a building product as a holding product as a material that can be used in many aspects of our lives i think this is the time to look at it can it be so i'm where i'm going to look at it in that respect i don't want to see our sugar industry go until those jobs in those people are protected you know and that there are real true opportunity for another crop to come in and be viable as far as employment situation is concerned so of all that being said i will support you know this resolution i think it's long overdue and what congress listens or not the point is we stepped up to the so or what have you so i think if we can get this first step going i can appreciate you bringing this forward and i'm sure that we can get this happen sooner than later so i too don't know how this would be in place of sugar cane that would be up to eight cns as to what sort of crop they wish to grow but there's also renewable energy that talks about utilizing i think our own bob king from bio diesel king bio diesel so members at this time the chair will entertain a motion to recommend the adoption of the proposed resolution entitled urging congress to pass industrial hemp farming act of two thousand and fifteen so mr chair i move a quick question for me mr couch because i am very supportive of the motion on the floor mr chairman so supporting this and if we get it accomplished then this takes away even the need for us  agricultural pilot project right we wouldn't need to go through that process at all we can go to that's my understanding that mr chair that's my understanding though i'm not a lawyer i would think if this bill passes here the whole research bill stuff goes away so that the current leader and the companies can put forth a proposed agriculture research project project and do an industrial  only limited to honolulu and you want to correct i believe it is just limited to honolulu and i know i know at one time eighteen house was looking into it because they had a they had a deal that they could do that but they said the biggest issue and i'm reading also that kentucky still having this issue is the seeds is getting the seeds because those are heavily controlled by da they can't tell the difference between the two so that's where the issues are with the research if you if we make this opening it open it up it seems that it would open up the whole  each sack that amendment to allow the research on maui but it didn't go anywhere so mr couch one last thing and for anybody who's going to be reading this on line or in the paper  have spelled marijuana the way it is spelled in i guess the congress the controlled substance act spells marijuana with an age so we have not made type typos in here of what we're trying to get accomplished germans on thank you and i think just addressing your concern mr o'connor under the h r s as it defines marijuana it encompasses all of the cousins and all the relative of marijuana so it doesn't define just marijuana as t h c under our h r s it's if it's a marijuana plant hoary relative of the marijuana plant it's illegal under even our own statutes need to be somewhat amended or at least looked reexamined in terms of the definition of marijuana or have as a separate and distinct members moving on to our last and final i don't know this is near our thirty three and today we will have sandy baugh's our budget director as well as i believe mark walker from our finance department is in receipt of miscellaneous communication dated may twenty eighth two thousand and fifteen from the county clerk on the matter relating to the molokai a diversified agricultural revolving loan program members this was a n item that was referred to us by our budget committee and directed this committee to evaluate the feasibility and the benefits of implementing a diversified agricultural loan program under act three eighty seven session laws of hawaii in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight this act has been in existence for about i believe twenty seven years and i understand that that maui has implemented it in some degree but i'm not sure i could go i requested that mr boz provide some details about the program eight members would you like me to read it through just so you get a better understanding of what we're dealing with and then was asked mr boss some questions so i'll go ahead and read it on the read it on the record is at a critical juncture the residents have long relied on the pineapple industry as a major provider of jobs however since the closure of dull companies operations in one thousand nine hundred seventy six and the reduction of del monte's operations hundred eighty three hundreds of residents have been jobless and the island's unemployment rate at over fourteen percent is the highest in the state the legislature further finds that that to revival revive the economy is contingent on the development and growth of small businesses especially in diversified agriculture and that is and it is in the public interest to provide financial support to facilitate such development and growth the purpose of this act is to establish a revolving loan program to stimulate business development and growth in diversified agriculture on the island of molokai section two there is appropriate out of the general revenues of the state of hawaii the sum of two hundred fifty thousand or so much there of as may be necessary for fiscal year nine hundred eighty eight thousand nine hundred eighty nine for the establishment of the revolving loan program to provide financing opportunities for small business ventures and diversified agriculture on the somme appropriated shall be expanded by the county for the purpose of this act section three such as a and county of maui shall establish a temporary revolving loan program to provide financing opportunities for small business ventures in diversified agriculture on molokai to carry out the loan program the county shall establish a revolving fund from which monies shall be loan in accordance with this act and into which all payments interest in fees collected by the county on such a loan shall be deposited subject can be the program shall provide loans to qualified applicants with the following terms and conditions number one no loan shall be granted unless financial assistance is not otherwise available to the applicant number to the amount of the loan or loans to any one applicant and any one time sh not exceed one hundred fifty thousand number three the maximum term of a loan shall not exceed twenty years number for each a loan shall bear interest conforming to the department of agriculture agricultural loans rates policies and practices and number five the commencement date for the repayment of the first installment on the principal and interest of each loan may be deferred by the mayor of the county of maui for a period not to exceed two years subsection c the program shall be administered by the county of maui the county in consult in consultation with the department of agriculture shall adopt a rules to carry out the programs purpose the loan applications shall be aggrieved reviewed initially by the credit review committee of m task force the committee shall make recommendations regarding the substance suitability of the proposed business concepts they count him as shall make the final decisions to approve or disapprove the application section for the county of may expand up to forty thousand from the river find in each year the revolving loan program is in operation for the purpose of hiring a professional staff person for and to cover the operating costs of the program section five the county shall annually submit a written report as of december thirty first to the governor and the legislature on the progress of the revolving loan programs for each year the revolving loan program is in operation so members i did send a letter to mr boss and it is dated august thirteenth two thousand and fifteen and i'm going to put that on the record as well my questions are number one please provide history and description of the loan program from its inception in or about one thousand nine hundred eighty nine to their current date including all amounts received from the state a list of all loans and if any grants made from the program together with the purpose and repayment history for each and number three copies of all reports made by the county to the governor and the legislature on progress of the loan program for each year of its operation so i'm going have the molokai diversified agriculture revolving loan program as the chair described act three eighty seven of one nine hundred eighty eight in acted this ag loan program it's been on our books for a very long time without any activity you know every year during budget we come up and we say ok we have two hundred eighty one thousand dollars in there and not sure even how to use it or spend it so i really enact we did try to do some research we could not find any administrative rules that were enacted on the county's behalf for this program nobody in the longest term person and he's been there for twelve years and she didn't have a clue dig through these files and figure out because there's actually two programs we found we don't know if in finance they look like they're different programs but we don't know if they're the same program or are related programs that the  state had us manage for them as we were remitting payments back to the state for that we were keeping the payments for some of the loans and we were meeting some of the payments for the loans back to the states so it's going to take a significant amount of research and that's why i apologize chair i couldn't respond with information your quest did by yesterday deadline and requested that we have until end of september to to write a research and get that information to you that you requested i did find the ministry of rules for the state department of agriculture agricultural loan program which does make reference to have to follow the state's misread of rules and reviewed some of the language is changed  in the state the ministry of rules as compared to what we see in three eighty seven as well so it be hard to implement as i mentioned doing but he session the motorcade task force is something that that i am not sure is in existence any more member shared the history of it and i thought those very appreciative and some very important people from ok were a part of this task force that helped at the time to get the for us implementing this program the matter how many ministries of rules we have opted or anything so at this point my recommendation is going to be that we continue to work to reconcile what we have available in the records that we have and then maybe approach the state to have these this act appealed possibly allowing us to keep the money providing it as grants or some other revolving loan program for the that we could enact with a little bit more clarity in the procedures or if that's the case and they don't want us to then you know we we i know that mr bosnia has more time for research so we need if you can pose some questions i have staff that will take notes and i will put in a formal letter to follow up to be part of his research as well  ravello i thank you chair and i appreciate the but committee referring this and your commitment to follow through i guess i would like to know just from basic twenty six years about two hundred fifty thousand or so monies have been supposedly sitting somewhere and it you have it so much interest has it gained or how much interest have we got out of the two hundred fifty thousand or so yeah when mr maybe a question put in writing will look that up ok i mean obviously we started off with two fifty we did make some loans and we got some repayments there were some loans still outstanding it looks like on the books of organizations that are i think no longer in existence but the corpus is now two hundred eighty one thousand so there i mean just sitting in our banks we made thirty one thousand dollars theoretically over six years but i'm sure that that that balances from a number of different factors ok so you also made mention that there's an obstacle because there's no mo much on our island they have passed on but we do have different type of so called task forces there that continually to work and try and find some solution to you know it hasn't changed much on our unemployment rate and we still are the highest in the state so it behooves me for county to to try and give back this money when there's an opportunity for us to try and respond to the forefathers who worked hard to try and get this going because of the unemployment and jobless situation on the island i think this is an opportune time and if the him in dust your him passes congress what an ideal situation perhaps we can use this money to can be real i wish to add to community advocates from my in will agree that we have many community plans and plans and strategic plans and it all comes out to about the same heavy talk about agriculture so it would be appreciated if somehow or other we all can put our heads together to first of all to find out where these monies really are there are two hundred books or one on the books and if it is it two hundred eighty one what kind of opportunities do we have there and if it needs to be repealed so that it can be utilized them assure our island representatives and senate legislature will be more than happy to support us and that thank you yeah i'm secure thank you and you know this being your island you're a prisoner of of the sound of this very important to understand you know you do understand very well and and i think the new representative at the in the house is a very good understanding of our culture and mulcahy from her background as well so you know the county has over the years made significant efforts definitely more is needed you know we have the business center  emil business development center and you know when i was at emil we actually provided it was when you know the ranch was closing down and there was some individuals who wanted to take over some of the ag land in the some of the cattle and they needed classes so we you know  the business for business training classes with them as well as providing some small loans to them as well this would be a incredible resource if we could garner this money for that type of use i think would be pretty significant and we do  have i think the people over there now you know with our business center and we'll to be able to assist with not just providing the financing of it but with the business acumen as well i think forward if we decide to do that so i appreciate your efforts and administration administration's efforts to see how weekend you know make use of the opportunities that are before  get you to where you know i i like the fact that this this is diverse and oates general enough that legislation is general general enough that it opens the door for small business ventures with nexus to diverse agriculture so we're that's you know putting it in a more business sense this could help a lot of small businesses if they wanted to get started that had somehow connected a bridge or a nexus with agriculture business is necessarily mean that they're growing set there there's some type of bridge or nexus to agriculture the other one that i'm most concerned about is the forty thousand under here that in the the act itself forty thousand is allowed to be spent each year for professional staff person to operate the program a i just share what little i know of humus covello gave us a pretty good general sense but look at the times we're looking at the mid seventies moving forward to eighty during movement there's a lot of things happening culturally in the state big get the watermelon program started on so those big things and if you look at seventy eight when the state passed a state plant and under the agricultural functional plant what looked like it was being looked at and doesn't lloyd clooney and then to muddy on a walk so they had greet the changing and diversity of their own government representation on the county level so if you look at this thing its  chairman county was working in concert with the state and that's why you see state money being asked to be a menace to temporarily if you leave it's a temporary fund that we supposed to be doing center the smaller cray people working with more work a business is economy people i mean i think there's opportunities as my colleague stated for us to move this program to the next level and utilize the money for w intended the thing i think we should be very upfront with our people is what is the department of base interest rates and do we need to have it adjusted so that he becomes a true source of financial know this was again for all intents and purposes one of the components that the county did to try and move forward because also in the seventies they got to understand well look i was talking about separating from ma to provide its citizenry so those are just some of the factors that was going on during this time of the legislation and what was being impacted from all ok again you got rid of three major employees in a very short timeframe was not the way it is today even so access to water was a different story also back and sure and i just share that because she misquote lives to it she knows exactly what i'm saying but those off some of the fact that i think we need to be sensitive to understand why more look i was giving this type of law support thank you thank you mr okama for the the history mr white do you have any comments that you'd like to add that we could probably know i love corporate with our love for the discussions going because i see no reason to give the money back to the state yeah if they haven't asked us for about it in twenty years let's go ahead and get creative and i think most task force is kind of up to us to define at this point i like the idea of providing it to how for them to administer and and  and come up with a program that makes sense for the island and so i'm i thank you for bringing it up i think it's discussion is heading in the right direction so maybe maybe we can ask m hence and i know we haven't been submitting any annual report so in the end result we haven't been following the act itself but can we find a way to somewhat revive it looking into that's critical information before we go forward and we also want to be careful so that we don't ring a bell that we can't unring the state finds that there's funds over here that belong to them and we haven't used them we don't want to you know start saying that we have to have this money so we have to be kind of circumspect on how we're going to do it so i'm not sure we want to go in and change the state law right off the bat but maybe we could figure out a way to interpret that interpret that rupert and target ok members i'm going  to questions mr couch you know i was just going to echo the comments is that we should be able to figure out a way to keep the money and be creative and defining multiply task force  but yeah i i think that we should be able to put it to the use it was supposed to be put it and put two and if we don't have if the only issue right now is the task force i guess we don't have we may not have administrative rules either and it says we shall do administrative rules but we've done some loans before so i have a feeling there's something out there yeah and if if we can figure out a way to get around that  task force or define what that is and then i think we can move right along with what this program is designed to do and i think it's i think we forgive mr bazemore time to research he can come up with more information it sounds as though there were there could have been give it out yes on that like you mr walker yes i thank you chair members touching on what member white mentioned from my perspective in the short time i've been here i don't think the county is a very good lender we don't want to set up we were not good at it for whatever the various reasons and depending on how this all comes about i agree we don't want to give the money back to the state if we don't have to if we could get it to some we're going to zation that's more set up on the ground to lend the money and administer to the applications and do the reporting i think that would be certainly a goal worth investigating further thank you to the state the money that's not becoming chickens before they hatch you never know what the state will say so i just wanted time i things to bosnich to get all those ducks lined up to make sure we doing a drug right if we need to have administr rules then we need to do whatever to just make sure that when look i who is in dire need today as it was back then you know has the opportunity to continue to work on diversified that is an opportunity that we know funny when they find out that there's some money laying around somewhere and that they can get their hands on it they start grafting real fast so that would be my only concern you know i think with the rest we can do there's no question and as far as loans i agreed to mr walker if we're going to give out loans let's find somebody who can do a good job at it who knows how to administrate loans and do all the necessary services that are related to that but i want to see that will conclude our items on today's agenda thank you very much for your patience and all the input and discussion