county council water resources committee please come to order today is wednesday december second and it's approximately a couple minutes after nine in the morning meeting will take off now we look like we have a very exciting morning before us today but before we get into it i'd like to ask everyone to please check your cell phones and i'll check mine to make sure that we have them on our silent mode so we won't be interrupted by any special announcements or good morning ella members today we have one item on our agenda and it's the water availability policy w r eleven that  agenda relates to the county water availability policy and he's morse commonly known as the show me the water bill when you talk about this and you say water availability it doesn't quite have the going you say show me the water everybody gets the vice chair has transmitted a bill to repeal chapter fourteen point twelve of them county clode relating to water availability my intention today is to hear testimony from the public and how this policy has affected them i also would like to hear any recommendations that you might have as to how this bill could be amended if that's a possibility and i think it's very important that we spend time on this very very important issue we all know that water is life and for me i think it's important that we spend as much time as we need to to make sure that whatever we decide to do with this is a good thing to do i do not intend to try to pass out any legislation today but i would like to schedule this again and we'll be scheduling it for our first regular water meeting in january which will be january six so we will be taking this up but again up on january sixth if the body decides that revisions are needed or if the entire chapter should be repealed we'll decide at that time today is essentially an opportunity for the members to listen to what the public wants to share we'd like to hear your experiences we want to hear your support we want to hear any concerns you have and of course like i said we're open to listening to any amendments that you might want to bring up before this policy was revised in two thousand and twelve to define and add in field development as an exemption and to require reporting requirements every two years please note that a copy members of the chapter is in front of you for reference along with correspondence dated august twenty fifth with the director's first required report i have heard conflicting information from the community and i know that we all have and i am asking for your opinions and your advice today with regard to this matter we are here to listen to testimony we're not here to have that debate the debate will come later when we get into deliberation so i'd like to testify to feel very comfortable in standing up and sharing with us however you feel it is very important that we gather this information we're going to without objection to members with public testimony it will be limited to our item on the agenda today if you wish to testify please sign up in the desk located on the eighth floor lobby or in one of the district offices the testimony will be limited to three minutes to win one half minutes the light will turn yellow and three minutes the light will blink read if you are still talking at the three minute mark i will kindly ask you to stop when testifying please state your name and if you are representing a group we'd like to know that also we have established connections to the district office and to be fair we will rotate through the sites giving them an opportunity to testify we're going to start with the office don lono do you have anyone wishing to testify thank you very much done in the night office denise for nando's do you have anyone wishing to testify do you know thank you denise and in the testimony written testimony because unfortunately a lot of people could not be here today but they have taken the time to send in written testimony and i suspect it will get a whole lot more of it but i did want to tell you that it's not that people aren't interested it's just  many of them are unable to be here this morning but they have taken the time to send in testimony and the members all have this so we do know what's going on there well i'm going and members show we call our first test the fire in the chamber we have studied the issue of water availability on maui for years and have participated in numerous committee meetings which dealt with water policy matters including the revision of show me the water the h caldwell's as well as other important water policies and projects as a strong advocate for workforce housing we initially supported exempting the market units in workforce housing project from show me the water however the item before you is to repeal the entire ordinance and we support the repeal as well this ordinance has been a major barrier to the development of affordable housing which as you know is subsidized by the market rate units in a work for solving project sadly without significant subsidies affordable housing will not be built add to this the cost of developing new water source for market rate units and we will end up with an even more crowded graveyard of want to be affordable water is essential for housing job security a stable economy new schools hospitals medical for cilla these parks and programs public health safety needs and much more our aquifers have more sustainable yield than the island of oahu we are currently using less than ten percent of our capacity maui has four hundred so twenty seven million gallons a day or who has four hundred eight million gallons a day we're using less than ten percent of what our sustainable yield is when legislation does not produce the results intended when legislation creates roadblocks instead of sense of a sensible purpose then it's time to repeal it or drastically change it the irony of all of this is that the water department does not issue reservations and will not guarantee a project water until it's time to hook up to the county system with or without show me the water for all the reasons stated we  chair good morning chair county council and members of the public my name is alex heller and i'm here today in support of discussing sustainable water solutions before we repeal the show me the water policy our government county and state should incentivize homeowners to invest in remove water catchment systems and rain gutters our islands receive abundant rainfall and we should incentivize homeowners to collect store and use rain that falls on our roofs as more and more homes are taken off of the water grid our government will have water resources available to invest in water infrastructure for new affordable homes before county council repeals the show me the water policy please collaborate with their community to discuss sustainable water solutions for a federal and state government incentive by solar then it seems reasonable for the housing shortage which we face here in mali is real and very serious many of us have experienced first hand in our own families the difficulties that are faced by the shortage of homes at all levels in the marketplace people who can afford homes are renting because there are no homes in their price range that they can buy and people who should be renting out conditions or from mali as of the lack of inventory housing this is not a simple problem and there are many elements in our economy and our regulatory processes that speak to why this has occurred one of those elements is the water availability ordinance despite what might have been the good intentions behind the original legislation the ordinance has given birth to a system where the responsibility of establishing water sources for the public is no longer no longer necessarily falls upon the department of water supply with its convoluted process for obtaining written verification of long term reliable water supply for a subdivision the ordinance has for the most part created an insurmountable situation where unless a builder already has a water meter he can pretty much forget about obtaining this verification from the department since as misty said the water department does not issue water meter reservations nor does it approve engineering reports further the cost of the development of new water sources is huge and without the department assuming a lead role in court needing these sorts of efforts it has not been unusual for private initiatives to fall short of standards required by the department for integration into the public water system in short  have issues which in at the very least require that there be careful and deliberate review of the ordinance finally times has changed since the ordinance was first established the departments embarked upon some significant initiatives that have changed the landscape in the water source development arena and for that reason the ordinance may have lived its usefulness thank you very much for your review of this matter and happy holidays again thank you very much should know what a bill was passed under the guidance of michele anderson who is the chair of the committee at that time i think i testify eight times during that twelve year period in favor of show me the water bill which i still am in favor of april one of eleven to county council began to get the water bill the sherman the water bill as you might know last year april seventeenth there was a settlement between the parties about stream water which the county has guaranteed three point two million gallons of why look a river of water which they're now getting about one point six they've had that agreement with well it worked on for some time but now it is a guaranteed thing that one point six million gallon of water will not last a very long this is december to twenty fifteen what's the difference now in the last eight years what's happened in last eight years to benefit the water issue on maui more development more water going here and there the one point six million gallon that the county will garner when the treatment plant is done to won't last very long as we know i still say as i said then why should the small guy the taxpayer pay for a new source development for water for the big guy who gets all the bucks the new source water is only has been said before a lot are a lot of water on maui but it's not where the people want it north going north there's expensive going south going east is expensive so it seems to me that any developer who would develop a property would not want to develop something robinson morning morning chair and concert thank you for the opportunity to testify today good governance requires the infrastructure to support development and my my concern here is for our future generations with no limitations or restrictions i believe the developers would develop all of the can without thought to the future generations that need water and need to live here agriculture has a priority on water and that's because where we need to think about sustainability in growing our own food i don't think that this bill should be repealed i think it's very well if there is major problems it can always be amended but the purpose of it is to prove before the relevant soaker that there is a long term sustainable source of water in the area that they're building what's wrong with that there's nothing wrong with it you know the alternative in not proving it is we're going to be worth left with a worthless buildings and that's not good for our children that's not good for us that's not good for the economy that's not good for the environment so i guess really i support sustainable water solution they says support rainwater barreling and i just really hope that you listen to them authors and work with them to create solutions to this problem  the way that the bill is written it actually supports affordable housing projects that are one hundred percent affordable are exempt from it proving that there is a long term sustainable source of water and if it's repealed then all of the thousands of units that are entitled would jump to the head of the line in front of the affordable housing the other thing that i wanted to point out is the term affordable housing is not truly affordable it's based on somebodies unrealistic guidelines of hud not based on like you know the salary that most people me when you use the term affordable holocene just realize that it's not really affordable for a month already of the people in our community and i think that you know people that are looking to profit off of our water resources would be first in line and so happy that it would actually affect the community directly lives here thank morning good morning chair good morning community committee this testimonial shall serve as support to the proposed bill to repeal section fourteen point twelve of the maui county code my name is color robinson i'm a project manager and speaking on behalf of staff for car development for eight years the water availability policy has served only as a moratorium on development of affordable primary residential housing units on maui it did not prevent the development of the timeshares or the star the ocean resort to their ability to find their own private sources of water instead it shifted the onus of ensuring long term reliable sources of water to the private developer with unintended consequences the lack of investment and development in primary housing has impeded socio economic diversity growth and it's obstructed post recession recovery the result decreased affordable housing supply stalled capacity and economic growth while the language of the ordinance exempt one hundred percent affordable housing projects the burden restricts flexibility in affordable housing development or resting it in place our proposed home a village project juxtaposes market units with the fordable units to provide one hundred two affordable units in the hina it is stalled in permitting due to water socio economic diversity provides greater value than the sum of its parts lifting this ordinance would allow developers to integrate various levels of society and build communities of opportunity affecting more affordable housing not less the unintended private water sources have turned the supply of water into an  unregulated and affordable commodity water credits have dramatically increased in value in some cases upwards of fifty thousand dollars per credit creating a water based currency subject to the manipulation of private water companies with minimal oversight altogether the result is a cycle of non prosperity and a violation of public trust spurred by fear ignorance and misinformation concerning actual physical water availability there is more water beneath our feet than we could possibly use today or for many years to come millions of gallons of clean water spilled out into our ocean on a daily basis two of the wettest places on the planet are in the east my watersheds why there is not in short supply but purposely limited to curb development show me the water serves the sole purpose of controlling development in that right it has succeeded it deterred development in the county but in that same breath the ordinance has forced the community of sacrifice hundreds of potential affordable housing units and facilitated the defacto commodity currency that is the water credit it is not water we lack but the political will to make calculated risks to build sufficient infrastructure and support economic growth we will not achieve one without the other all the for mention considered we submit our support to council member victory no and the repeal of this ordinance mahalo thank you very much  and you said it's stalled due to water correct that's that's not what i've been hearing and i heard it's and litigation that's what stalling and i believe because it's a tool one age you folks are ex and the county has always said there is sufficient water for your project we are in litigation however the litigation is not what is currently stopping the project from moving forward and there are other issues that we're working to on right now in the permitting process but by and large water availability has not we have not been exempted from this policy on our project and it is a major concern of the water department in approving our plans show me the water for since it started in it and when i looked at the agenda is that they were going to talk about maybe the repeal of this i said yeah it's go repeal it because i really hated this thing but you know over the years i've looked at it and looked at it and well maybe it is a tool maybe as a tool that you folks can use the water department can use and like in all tools it's not it's how you use it right you know and if you use it properly and you use it the way it's should be used and you could have an effective tool and accomplish what you're trying to do so but you know the thing about it that bothered me the most was that it targeted subdivisions and this is where people live and as you know we're we're really behind so behind in homes for our workforce having affordable housing and you know subdivisions a war that what gay people homes right had you built the subdivision small subdivisions and people live it work are work the working force i like the fact that you can exempt people from the to an agent so and from small like infill projects so that's how the tool is being used so so then i thought well let's just keep it let's keep this let's apply it properly it's not just across the board say show me the water my feeling is that water sauce is your responsibility government's responsibility to provide source you have a lot of tools in your tool box also you know you could direct  revenues you can direct you know general obligation bonds you could form partnerships especially with large landowners and large developers you can use all those things you can just water rates so you have all those things that your disposal to do what you're trying to do as far as getting stores so of a small developer i'm talking about somebody a family didn't want to do a family subdivision or somebody is doing it in fill project it shouldn't be on them to do that and the other downfall i find with that show me the water we could end up with a lot of private water systems and you know as you know and yellow sea comes in and does a project and then it dissolves and ten or fifteen years from now what are you going to have you going to have a problem where the people that live in that subdivision are going to have a big problem so having people do private water systems i think we should avoid that as a cause but anyway i wanted to come here today just to thank you for taking up this subject because it really needs to be looked at and i hope some of the there's a lot of fervor i'm out of but i hope people come with a good mind say ok let's make it work let's not just throw throw it out and and try what they want you got nothing so i thank you for taking this up but i i hope we can get this thing going you know one of things i'll leave you with you know our lack of affordable housing or lack of homes for our workforce you know it's almost like the the debt clock you know the national debt clock it just keeps ticking along so every week every month every year we we don't get homes built we just get further behind so anything we can do to get housing built but she for our residents and our workforce people and in affordable housing the better so thank morning chaired by some members of the council on michael howden former chair of the now a county board of water supply i'm strongly opposed to the repeal of the show me the water bill  which i actually feel fosters of portable housing as you may define it and i think it's kind of bogus the way it's presently defined and largely as  poulton pointed out largely on a portable for most of our community and we need workforce housing desperately was what i think most people are missing is the underlying issue in all this which is which are our water resources which are i think generously overestimated by the state and certainly by the county if you're wondering where the water resources are most of those are captured by h c n s illegally as opposed to what the public trust doctrine states and that i think all of us need to review when i was a member of the board of water supply we voted with under the aldrich as chair we voted nine to nothing to restrict and i actually waited for a week or two to see if the maui news would actually publish that our meetings at that point were not covered and nothing happened so i reports the tremendous impairment of an awkward for awkward birds that supply sixty to seventy percent of the public used water on maui you know the had risen in the past twenty or so years more than twenty feet and these are real concerns and i don't i don't think you can just say all you know these are green people or environmentalist you have to wake up to the fact that everything's changing climate is changing i sat on a select committee of the east west center on the effect of climate change on rainfall and water but i would just asked you to consider i mean certainly mark back to reno and other people are very familiar with this so please consider what you're doing  we really do need a truly affordable housing and workforce housing and we also need access to water resources which we at present don't have thank you thank you very much we we're very joe gardener good morning madam dyson good morning county council members mahalo for allowing us to testify here i didn't hear about this meeting until yesterday when some nice young gentleman in our neighborhood told us bill repealed maybe we can amend it if we need to but i wholly believe that water needs to stay in our streams and we need to really keep track of the water that we do have in our aquifer because it's not going to be here forever at the rate we're using our water and misusing it is a shameful cry and we really need to expand and develop that quickly that fast that many i feel that we really are losing our country type at atmosphere or just being molly in a sense we had a problem in our valley that no one could help us with it's an age old problem and it broke probably still be around we had a dead cow in our street it was in a popular swimming hole no one could help us we called my lights off is they were going to call the governor's office no way to remove it those are small little things here in our county that we just can't take care of anymore we're moving on to higher developments everybody wants more people to come here we want to give out more stuff we want to take in more things but are we really considering what we have here water is a great big resource not just to be used by all but also to be saved and to conserve i mean what about our ecology here what's going to happen to our or and our stream life here what's going to happen to our children in the future will they have places to go to swim will they have water to enjoy when they go down to the ocean will there be water going into the ocean a lot of people think that's wasteful that is not we really need to go back and think where we come from where do we really want to go do we really want to proceed this fast with development there's a lot of things that we really need to look out for the future is one like i say so i really think we should keep this bill and put a lot more thought into that i would also like to get more notice of this because i would like my community to come in here about this this will be new today and i will  schedule this village in it will schedule the schedule as many times as we need to sit and we can hear from everybody is not my intent to try to rush through doing anything we need to hear from the community and then i want to be very clear you said are in support of the bill you are in support of keeping the show me the water bill because the bill today is to repeal yes ma'am ok i just want to make sure we got it right on the record thank you for i know where you're coming from thank you any further yourself excuse me i'm sorry ladies and gentlemen my name is joe gardner i'm a maori resident born and raised here on maui thank you thank you mr gardner go ahead i am very concerned about what's going on here on maui that's why i take the time to be here this morning with the few people that are here that have found out about these meetings you guys want to build homes for what you call a workforce community people the workforce those are people that are getting paid to go and cut grass a for people who live here one month out of the year so i don't think that you really need to build a home for what you call workforce people but you need to regulate the people that live on an island there needs to be a regulation of how long they live on an island you can't own a home and live for one week out of the year and use one hundred thousand gallons of water every day to water your yard in your big beautiful zone so that when you come for your week out of the year you have a beautiful beautiful home to live in and then now we need to build more homes affordable homes for work force people to come in mo this grass and trim these trees for these people who don't even live here and then the affordable homes next thing you know are for sale for one million dollars the last affordable home project that i paid attention to that i thought i might have a chance to by being a resident here on maui was the project built right in piii a town the first place on the right when you leave heading east you cannot find one of those homes for sale for less than a million dollars and that was an affordable home project done here on maui and other young gentleman with a project says that his project is on hold because there's not enough water but yet there's all this water spilling into the ocean the water does not spill into the ocean the water flows into the ocean naturally for centuries and centuries and centuries creates evaporation which creates rain therefore creates the circle of life the the woman who spoke first said that we are only using ten percent of our water here on maui and that there's a ninety percent that's not being used i would like to argue that fact i've gone to han on my entire life and when i was a kid every single stream flowed streams flew flowed across the road even you couldn't drive donna without your car getting wet now you drive out there and there is hardly any water flowing at all i farm taro out there and to get our water from our taro we have to go dig it out of a spring and divert it all the way down to our charles patches and divert it into the ocean that's the only way we have flowing water because e m i is taking all of the water so to say that we only use ten percent of our water is a joke because i think it's the opposite and we use about ok how about you denise ok and ok thank you very much and then we'll just proceed because we have a pretty good number of folks here in the chamber ok let's proceed miss well and and i currently live in poor colony i am here to urge you not to repeal this bill this bill was designed to protect water resources for the future this is just another attempt by developers to trump the voice in the world of the people so they can make more profit i want to rebut some statements made earlier regarding housing there is not a housing shortage there is a shortage of affordable housing which also really isn't affordable by any means either look at on your well over three thousand affordable homes that should have been built by now because these companies are holding back in b and molly land in pie need to be held accountable you the council should draft a bill that in forces these developers to build out their workforce housing before any additional permits are given for future projects i think that sounds like a great idea and i think it would address the shortage of affordable housing their current law actually supports affordable housing being built since it exempts all the following type of developments from moving a water source giving them priority access to county water supplies where available also i urge you all to read this it will be so will be article posted yesterday please realize that over forty seven percent of homes on the neighbor islands were sold to out of state buyers not to come out of maui if the law is repealed thousands of new units already approved in central west and south mali will be entitled to water sources whether there is sufficient water resources available or not this really is just another attempt by the developers to make more on affordable projects that only benefit the wealthy and not the i am in strong support of keeping the show me the water bill and i urge you all to to please consider making a bill that holds these developers accountable there's thousands of homes  on the table that have the permits to move forward they're sitting on it and honestly you guys are being played by them so let's let's hold them accountable thank you very much members in you need to clear the chair miss cochran thank you and thank you ms laurence for being here thank you for your testimony i wholeheartedly agree these projects that you're speaking of that entitle manson all the green likes to go but on hold  do you know if water is an issue with it that is why they're on hold i think they're using water as a reason to not build it but honestly if you look at the profit margins of building million dollar homes in couple who obviously they want to build those projects than they would the fordable homes because they make way more money they're sitting on these permits because they only think about and that's what the problem is these guys need to be held accountable i'm sure members of the committee name is charles jackson here on my own behalf not advocating for any company or partnership just a few facts in two thousand and six the workforce housing bill was passed and eight years later in two thousand and fourteen it was revised consistent with what was proposed in the beginning as as reasonable standards for percentages of affordable housing it took eight years to get back to a reasonable bill  two thousand and seven december of two thousand and seven the water availability was passed by the council and we're eight years later working on a bill that obviously doesn't work too well either so and we're having this discussion in both of these examples i participated landowners participated the construction industry participated the collective bargaining participated and said to you and other council members these bills won't work economists said these bills are not good for  economy they won't provide you the result that you're trying to trying to achieve yet you want to head and pass these bills eight years later we're having a discussion on how we revise the bills in the second and third quarter of this year i sat on a task force appointed by the mayor to evaluate this same bill i spent nearly two months six meetings spent a significant amount of time with mr david taylor the director water supply wondering how we could solve the problem because i think originally this spill was intended as a stopgap to help solve a problem but nothing has happened in the interim i spent a lot of time came up with a bill and i have still don't know where th where that bill is and we all voted on the revision is to the bill that would make it a better bill i have no idea where it is i didn't however meet with a member of this committee to talk about that bill and i had a great discussion i have an opinion on everything i couldn't come up with a clear answer but i did say i said look this bill is another layer of legislation that further delays the delivery of housing it just takes that much longer to get something done  certainly not a good good idea i also said that if it was impossible to get a water assurance letter for a bank for a lender to provide financing to build a project before this bill was pas this bill after its passes certainly made even more remote to get that letter of assurance which is still a major issue in our county i left the meeting ended dawned on me the question isn't who has been hurt the question should be who's been helped by this bill you passed the bill did it help anybody empirically imperatively you have to say no because you don't have any more affordable housing now then you do when the bill is passed he had two bills are harmed the don't the delivery of affordable housing the workforce housing bill that was corrected and still waiting for results in a maybe another couple years and this bill i then realized i did have a project that was harmed it went back to the bank because i couldn't perform after spending four million dollars on drilling wells ran out of time the bank the project went back to the bank my advice to you is either repeal this bill or develop a bill that really is effective and does the job but you've got in front of real concern is the water itself can go out or actually be used to be able to afford it everybody's satisfaction that we know in real life not in what is going to be satisfied but the thing is what is a best use of their resources it's not whether or not people have housing that is a personal problem it shouldn't be on county and a thing is the use of the resource should be the concern of everyone because everyone gets hurt when a resource is damage and our resources are damaged and we have a lot of complications because of the way the resource is dealt with this is just another implication of how we're going damage to is that resource we have to look at it will it help us survive the next fifty years with a we have a development wants to come out and people want to develop are we going to be able to support these are we able to support what is going on today generations that actually lived here and have history here and actually supported this county and built a park it's built the buildings on their back and switch not the ones coming in to madam chair committee members i'm here on behalf of my grandchildren three grandchildren that were born in maui and i hope will always live here and i'm on here here in behalf of your grandchildren as well i'm water issues it's done by the university of texas and everybody that they cite in here is either state of hawaii maui county agency and they took only local statistics they didn't make their own statistics and the analyzed them in a metal analysis and what i want to go right to the conclusion right back to page out of fifty four pages of page fifty they say the current water use situation is unsustainable and is likely to suffer a catastrophic failure in the next prolonged drought the status quo agriculture in central mali county currently operates at a water deficit with today's average rainfall patterns but why rainfall has been increasing at a rapid rate the last few decades the declines and rainfall are consistent with the expectations for rising temperatures from climate change thus there is the distinct possibility that hawaii rainfall will continue to decrease in the future more drought tolerant and less water hundred crops will be needed to only not only to deal quote so after four years of analyzing the most county water issues this report which i will email to the county says that is unsustainable to continue as we are continuing i would also like to mention that we all like to eat and we know that from county from the university analysis we are only producing eleven percent of our food on maui at this time eleven percent of the food that we produce that we consume everything else is being shipped in in the face of what's happening in the world this is not we just cannot continue to allow this to happen we must work towards food security from our period and when i come back in january sixth i'll have more statistics for you but i have heard that there was a state water analysis that said that the pollution in the central arc of her in the central valley is so severe that is impossible to filter it enough for human consumption now if that's true to all  happening so when when miss lynn says that we're only using ten percent of our water this this report says that we are using nearly one hundred percent of the current water that we have and that water is decreasing so which is true charles says that the reason that we are not having development is because of the water restrictions and yet what about the tremendous economy problem that we've been going through since two thousand and eight you know that that is the biggest reason we have not had construction in this county so thank you for listening and i will be back january sixth and i think you missed the brain if you could do me a favor before you leave sure can you quote that report what is in the source again the end of course it hasn't receded if you email it to us i certainly will a systems approach for investigating water energy and food scenarios in east central mali by dr professor by dr kerry king of the energy institute i just wanted to if you could e mail that to the water resources committee real quick and hold on mrs o'brien so brian just wanted the date of that report yes it's november of two members are going to take morning break it ten thirty and then we will resume testimony i want you to know that we are going to try to take all of the testimony today and if that means going a little corps good morning i'm hamiliton power president of the maui chamber of commerce and i thank you for the opportunity to be here today you know water is a resource and there's a question about why are we talking about water and combining it with housing but like all resources we have to look at that resource in terms of how it's use and i guess the question for me is how it's most needed at this time as we look from a chamber perspective one of the things that we hear over and over and over again is the need for housing affordable housing marketplace housing you know a lot of our housing is owned by off island people but the law allows for that so you know we have to look at how we meet the the mayor has said over and over again and we all have heard that we have a lot more water resources than we're currently accessing so a huge part of the equation is looking at water access transmission and storage and we support additional means so that we can better use the water resource that we have we also support water conservation we don't feel that you know enough is being done in the conservation area and we support sustainable solutions and looking at incentives for those but we also know that we can't just keep waiting when we know there's a huge need in our community and of you know that at the end of the day housing is a huge need in our community it's one of the top me it's i think it's one of the needs that are going to be a focus of the upcoming election is it's going to be a huge problem because it's just continuing to grow and as the economy is recovering as jobs are coming back as people are starting to have more income and looking to get back to improving their situation again housing is a key part of that equation so when this bill first came up the chamber actually opposed this bill because the bills to repeal but when when the water availability bill came up we opposed the bill because we were deeply concerned that it would actually help or not help affordable housing development and market housing development there were two bills that too many leading economists but it started with and it was actually at the maui chamber of commerce request to get their opinion we didn't ask them to say something the way we want it said we asked them to evaluate two bills the residential workforce housing bill and show me the water bill as it was known the and asked for their opinions and they said they felt both would be detrimental to our community and hamper economic and affordable housing development they still continue to say that today in many presentations you can go to am bank economic update those two bills are still pointed to as hampering residential housing development so we've got a huge demand we haven't been meeting the need for many years we need to do something and water is a key resource to that kind of development so we have to look at it collectively but in looking at it collectively i think we also need to look at again other things that have been mentioned access to some of the resource we're not currently using additional conservation and sustainable measures so we're really glad that this bill is being taken up we ask that if it is to remain as it is now that it be repealed but we do feel that there is room for modifications and we'd like to look  at more winning solution and again it's about coming together and hearing all the voices and looking at and getting the right data so we can make educated and informed decisions so we come up with winning solutions so we thank you for the opportunity to share that message and i wish everybody a happy holidays thank you very much members and you need to clarify that testimony saying no thank you thank you it's well and drink yes junior in the car followed by david  i'll try not to knock out the electricity ok provision really is more of a tool or process the policy we need is to be built and we need it's to be built around the goal of providing our community with the water resources we need to support our growing population the current will water availability rule does doesn't do that in fact they kind of do that does the opposite the informal informal title of this measure and it's gone by show me to water demonstrates t spirit that drove its passage the fact that this measure was aimed purely it's up divisions demonstrated it was intended to slow or stop housing development couple with over the over reaching workforce housing ordinance of two thousand and six the plan succeeded very little housing with built we need to change the narrative shelter is a fundamental human need most laws have consequences some one of the consequences of this ordinance of was to effectively block small medium scale developers from participating in the housing market smaller developers cannot compete under the law because they if they do not have water source and some of those who did stretch to ridiculous lengths to set up private water systems that will ultimately cause our community much grief as they begin to fail in the decades to come if for no other reason this measure needs to be shelved because it promotes the development of small subdivision scale water systems instead of a single professionally operated innocently o water system the one positive aspect of this ordinance is it does promote the development of affordable on a percent affordable housing subdivisions that are local residents can afford but the number of these projects represent a trickle in the face of the river size demand for housing we need to be building fourteen hundred units a year that's what the economists say this law is one of the reasons why we are only building a small fraction of that is not enough to simply erase the provision doing that only makes sense that this committee is willing to step up and invest in the water source and transmission we need them to take us forward the american water works association says america needs to invest one trillion yes and with a t and twelve zeros in the next twenty five years to have enough water running in systems that are not falling apart we are not alone this is a national problem the same could be said for much of our infrastructure we can invest or it will crumble thank you very much to do the members any need to bill availability policy and we asked at the water resources committee file this communication water availability policy is a good law that recognizes reality if you don't have water you shouldn't be building so if you do make commitments to build it just puts pressure on the county to provide to provide water that it doesn't have this is unfair to existing water users who are more likely to then be placed under travel restrictions the existing policy has risen reduced the likelihood of that occurring in recognition of our need for housing policy exempt one hundred percent affordable projects residential workforce housing and family subdivisions and i just wanted to make a comment about the idea of affordable housing the way it's to find my understanding is it's eighty to one hundred twenty percent of the median income so to me affordable is median or less so right there since you have eighty to one hundred twenty percent and we have a twenty five percent requirement it pretty much cuts it in half so truly affordable housing that's provided by our policy is more like twelve and a half percent and if you look at the civil beat article there was about department of business report that said that less than fifty percent of maui homes are sold to maui buyers so we need to do more to make sure that those those are sold to maui buyers and that's why i support this this requirement that the exemption be only for one hundred percent affordable because if you exempt projects that have any affordable component you're basically going to be exempting all projects all subdivision projects in recognition of the need to keep our property taxes low this policy also exempts infill development does not require the county to develop expensive new infrastructure it also requires the water director to consider the needs of current water users and people already on the wait list the impact of surrounding  hawaiian homelands water uses impacts on native hawaiian rights and practices sustainable yield and in stream flow standards so if we repeal this policy what we're really saying is that we don't think any of those things are important enough to require review a particular water director might choose to consider some or all of those factors without the policy but not all administrations will give it high priority if it's not part of the maui county code and that would leave us at risk so in summary the water availability policy is a good law that's preventing developers from making empty promises those who make their money by getting land in title months without actually delivering truly affordable housing might not like it but the policy provides incentive to developers who are serious about providing affordable housing for mali residents and prevents existing water systems from being overcommitted thank you thank you members any need for th written testimony in support of this bill to repeal of the water availability policy you know we've been here before you many times talking about the great need for affordable workforce housing and that's housing that our members who work very very hard each and every day to build can also one day hope to afford it and we've been very very concerned that this show me the water law as it currently stands has been an obstacle to creating more affordable housing you know when this bill was our contractors and home building companies expressed strong concerns that this would make it if we have that the supply of housing and create a bottleneck and those concerns really have been borne out those are concerns that many of our agents brought up several years ago when this first was going through the council you know and a number of the testifiers have talked about studies and other economic analyses that shown that yes this has been a problem and will continue to be unless it is repealed first wind banking report in two thousand and ten said flat out that quote it has been a drag on residential construction and they also suggested that it made the recession worse here i'm out of county you know our members are finally coming out of the recession there are a lot of projects on the horizon which is very very good we're very excited about those but we need more and you know to add to my written testimony i think we need an all of the above approach to creating more housing and also in all of the above approach to how we deal with our water here you know we need the county needs to be doing you know a lot of work to make sure the infrastructure and distribution networks are ready to go we need to obviously we're going to conservation i'm really glad that a lot of people have been bringing that up because that is something that we can't forget but at the end of the day this is a policy making body needs to really embrace the all of the above approach you've already done that with the work force residential housing policy taking a look at that earlier this year and it's time that this committee you know look very hard at this show me the water policy and take favorable action on the bill before you today you don't want to add one more thing about affordable housing in general you look at all the inputs that go into building affordable housing you look at the wood in concrete and land and of course the labor as well and those are expensive enough but then you out on it you know requiring a developer to find a source and develop a source and build the infrastructure underneath the housing development and that gets passed on to a homebuyers and so that's a big problem in and i think that we need to change that and you guys are taking a good step today in looking at this bill so thank you morning everybody rosemary robins this december second twenty fifth being water resources committee focus on water i just wanted to mention i came down the day before yesterday and went to the binder on the seventh floor there was only one piece in there and it was the likeness twenty six letter from  the presiding officer to my quite as the chair of the council so this was the sole piece that was in there i got a big picket this morning ok it's a disservice when we don't get those timely to be able i mean somebody can down and wants to do it so if we can just encourage people if they have an opinion on that to get in early a so that any of the concerned citizens yes well have access to it sure thanks thanks much ok so taking a look at the agenda today it's eight four other ordinances following the show me the water bill two thousand and seven two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve two thousand and fourteen and the staff on the seventh floor was as usual very helpful in getting the documents show me so i got them i read two thousand and seven and i remember well i was one of the people in the  country oversight and advisory committee working with the p a back in the early two thousand same mayor then but a different water director and then the election in there were two people in the county council who were excused for that hearing but indeed the bill the showing the water bill was approved on the fourteenth day of december two thousand and seven so the new mayor wasted no time having been through all the upcountry stuff had paid attention to that and understood why the aged local wells were shut down and etc so familiar to me and then when i took a look at the twenty eleven twelve and fourteen they all just have to do with housing and i know way or everybody needs to be housed somehow but when we drop out the idea of having highly trained people working in the water department to be able to recognize the history here and to be able to recognize other evolutions that have happened in water that's crucial we need to bear witness to that none of these and in the twenty twelve election the people working on the charter asked the electorate would you like to have our operation done with bono and the answer was yes so we need to be sure that we do that we concentrate water on water and the rest will fall in place thank you thank you aloha happy holidays to all my name is lee c n d nay testifying on behalf of the sierra club group as its conservation chair like to address some of the information has been presented today the information that we're using ten percent of our water for instance i mean that would be true if we didn't count all the groundwater that's being pumped by you know the egg concerns that would be true if we really knew how much water we had a nice mallee and didn't have guesstimates but we don't really know how much of our water we're using is there more water yes but i don't think that ten percent is our accurate figure and then i'd like to talk about the mayor's task force that mr jenks referred to i sat in on a couple of the meetings as a non voting member you  really need a real task force i would suggest put one together they put together an excellent water task force in the past it had a broad representation of business and technical and environmental knowledge on it and really was quite productive also we talk about the further delays in housing that are caused by the bill i just want to say one thing we have we have nine hundred affordable i'm with the people that say track down who was supposed to be building this housing and let's get it built i think that's the most cost effective way to get some affordable housing but i hear everybody wants talking about the delays that this caused you know the island but the intention is there everybody wants to know that you can have a real supply of water and then there was the mention about you know how usenet is needed that's an important question here well sad to say it's needed for lawns in south maui you know i mean if you just look at the stats about fourteen million gallons a day of the river water goes to south valley and only half of it or less ends up in the sewer system so the rest is being used outdoors somewhere so we're you know we should check into that is that our best and highest use and talk about incentives for conservation some of you may remember why layer resort wanted to expand by four hundred rooms because of this bill they found water conservation within their own plant to not have to use a single extra drop of water for those four hundred rooms this bill had been in place do they need to look that way probably not they just expand their existing water meter use and then this idea that we have of no incentive to develop water well people are developing well systems all the time and wanting to dedicate them to the county the county doesn't have any land that i know of except their land in  o and why his area to develop wells so i think they need something that gives an incentive to this partnership so anyway the idea that we're creating all these sub standard small water systems i'm sorry to report i've read the well bulletins for the last fifteen years payment thank you and these small well systems were here before the show me the water bill they'll be here if you repeal it it's a fact of life there just many places that the county doesn't have service areas or doesn't hasn't had meters for years like up country haiku area so you're going to get small subdivisions with private water systems it's not a result of this bill it's just a result of how things are here so please set up a in maui lonny that were dedicated to the county's why so they could have water you know mr atherton has three wells i believe he is willing to work with the county on them wells are being delivered that are being developed has been trying several wells and they are willing to dedicate them to the county one didn't work out up and holo people law get the message that you know yeah we need to find more water we have the land we can look for water on our land is maybe there is a way to offer these guys some incentives but just saying oh you don't need to show us any water is not that incentive well thank you very much for your time and expertise thank you thank you any further the show me the water bill that was enacted is an incentive essential and instrumental piece of the of legislation that holds not only developers a carnival but also the county and state which ensures that we're utilizing and highways most precious resource wisely and sustainably to protect and keep this spill that was inactive as is is not to inhibit or even slow development but rather creates a pathway of certainty that water resources are from over exploitation as was commonly done prior to the development of the spill for me personally i support affordable housing i mean there was just an interesting article that was published other day that fifty about fifty percent of the homes that are being purchased here in hawaii are from out of state residence so that to me is a clear indication that we need to support for the housing for local families for a workforce and also small family you know parcels of land subdivisions but the silver lining is that we also equally need to protect these are water resources and they're crucial to ensure that we have availability for these affordable homes that are for local people shelter saw may be a human fundamental need but i also see that water is equally important you cannot have a home without water i am representing myself as a bunch of twenty six year resident of mali i tell many people whenever they ask why did you come to ma i said i was looking for a place of peace and i've also said that when i arrived on maui i thought i'd died and went to heaven here i am twenty six years later and i still think i don't want to have it this is that this is our home this is what we need to protect what i'm here to speak about is this water available but policy this bill was ill conceived from the very beginning by this coun maybe not the exact members of the council of responsibility it was clearly a bill to slow down the economy i can remember all the meetings i don't think i've missed any of the meetings that discuss this so what do we do i belong to the mayor's task force along with charlie jenks and now it's lee and a few other great community people and we had meetings with the public with the director in in attendance most of the time we discuss many things on how to change the bill how to change the language how to eliminate language subrogate and bring things together could never ever come out with what i thought was a clean bill because the bill is felt it from the very beginning so what you've got to do is you're going to tear out the termites and the rot in this particular bill and then start over so i am in favor of either one repealing the bill but probably more concerned about what this co  is willing to do to make this bill it does nothing for the community ok because a lot of talk about affordable housing there's a lot of talk about a water source a water source development in my mind belongs to the county of our public private partnerships are the thing to do however two thirds of two thirds does not make sense is a language that we submitted to the beer short of the repeal and you know it's i hate to say it but it's kind of went into a black hole it hasn't he said and seen the light of day since so i don't know where that's at and that's exactly what charlie said we worked very hard to to make some substantive changes we thought would be strengthen the bill if it is ending and kind  or on any you folks had come up with adjustments or whatever to address me just kind of nothing moved from there so there is some type of document somewhere yes that has your folks recommendation that's been on it now ok and then by the way the members were good morning and good morning my name is liz key and i'm here in support of not repealing the show me the water bill and i i strongly  my opinion is that a developer should have to show the water it's very logical there it seems like they come into my county and they just make a profit and they don't give back to the community and off and they're not there mindset isn't for the future generations it's for the dollar and that is not sustainable in the long run as far as water goes i've seen plenty of developments go up that are supposed to be affordable homes and they're affordable is six hundred thousand dollars which is not affordable for most people on maui and i'm also in support of if you know there are any exception exemptions for this bill it should be for one hundred percent affordable not for you know five houses affordable and the rest are million dollar homes with pools using a bunch of water and landscaping their whole property using millions of gallons gallons of water where the average household with use much less water  for their for their needs so i don't have very much to say but i'm just saying i'm in support of maybe making modifications of the bell but not repealing it because that really leaves us vulnerable to outside developers who are just waiting to have the green light to use now for their purposes and not think about the future generations of the community of maui just thinking about you know kind of looking at this thing from fifty thousand feet when you look at legislation you know there's unintended consequences to legislation always and we've had seven years to look at this bill and there's good parts to it and there's not so good parts to it but just  completely rip it out and say i like to rip the termites out i believe is is what he said is there's going to be unintended consequences to that as well so as i look at this is a say why not go ahead and say what's right about this thing and what's not right about it just to repeal it to give a thumbs up or thumbs down it's created a lot of fear like a lot of people are coming up here and they're talking from a place of fear they're going all my gosh what's going to happen if we just say you know we went yes and we go no so i think that there's some kind of a happy medium when we're legislators that we can just say hey listen you know what let's debate the intercourse because c s if that's even the right pronunciation you know use the engineers i'm not an engineer i don't know what's right about this and what you're not right about this or infrastructure and how we're going to get the water to him and who's going to do it and who's not but i think we need to have that that conversation needs to be had not just on pro affordable housing or i'm pro water i think that's what this kind of debate is sort of turned into as i just  for the last couple hours listening to people so maybe what we can do is somehow modify this to where we can have a debate about what's right and what's not right for the community for water seven generations from now right seven generations from now so that's all i have to here that testified in approach in support of repealing this bill is financially invested in the removeable of water restrictions and everybody who is against it is invested in the future of this island so that's a big red flag for me water is not an economic issue period people like to make it one but water is not an economic issue water is everything and it's really our job to protect it above all else developers are trying to sell us this line that show me the water is the reason for the lack of affordable housing meanwhile illegal short term rentals and increased short term rental permits are booming developers are sitting on thousands of approved affordable housing projects that haven't been built yet water isn't the hold up the priorities of the developers are and the priorities of our planning department and the commissions are  if we're serious and really serious about ensuring the ability the availability of affordable housing let's do something let's draw a line right here let's put a moratorium on any new building permits on all of them until all of the  affordable housing projects are finished that's what i call serious about affordable housing for the sake of argument even if this were the reason that the affordable housing is being held up and we repeal this bill and we end up with all of these new affordable homes and we run out of water where does that leave us i guess when we run out of water van we're talking about water as a big economic problem let's ask california right now as we speak farmers in california are selling their water rights to municipalities because that's the best solution they can think of there is not enough water in california to grow food and to sustain municipal populations water needs so in favor of green lawns and golf courses and big municipal water needs farmers are opting out of food production and selling their water rights can you see a problem here california is a major agricultural zone so we can all agree that food security is an issue and being more liberal with our decisions about water is not the way to achieve food security on an island in the middle of the pacific i also take huge issue with people that said we aren't using all of our water and there is much of it spilling into the oceans there must be plenty water is not something that we're supposed to use every last drop out of the streams should be spilling into the ocean even more than they are now there should be water left after we use what we need that is the law of sustainability you use what you need you leave enough for every other system in nature and you leave enough to ensure a continuation of that system so using one hundred percent of our available why resources is not sustainability those are the couple address points i needed to claire to compliment your decorator for your beautiful christmas speculation thank you we appreciate enforcement keeping homes affordable the county needs to hire a posse of bookkeepers to enforce the deed restrictions and the infrastructure it's been too long on where developers are ignoring the infrastructure duties and now those same developers are going to come back and hit the county again and how could the title company six those deed restrictions and not notify the county of the sales those sales costume the county millions of dollars of lost revenue if you want to keep the homes of ford of all you've got to keep the deed restrictions in forests i'm sure that out right now there's foreclosures and there is sales of homes that have deed restrictions i wouldn't i wouldn't doubt there'd been at least thirty and that might be a very low number of private water systems often fail and cost the taxpayers to rescue subdivisions then those same developers have the nerve to come back to the county and do it again so my my suggestion is the county get some book keepers and find out what homes are being sold or foreclosed upon and that's revenue for the county thank you very much and members need to clarify the testimony saying no thank you very much madam chair claire upon and then the final person who signed up to testify is michelle anderson what it takes to come up as a member of the public and continue to try to bring the truth to this body and decisions may have already been made here is a bill which serves the rights of the people development this island a lot and yet that comes again to be squashed to take away the people's right know what it's like to have to go up against mercer visons you know what it's like to go up against charlie jenks just as an ordinary person who cares about you also you care about mali but do you care about the people who are really putting in the time to keep this place to keep the balance and yet the balance is always tips so far away from us i have to say about this bill there are many good things that protect our water resources and water resources of with one of the greatest things that you will ever get to protect and in particular it spells out native hawaiian water rights in terms of what you need to do when you are applying for a new we'll show you we cancel those out should we cancel these o shall we cancel these out for all native hawaiian people who have the right to water should we cancel out the right for the people who are going to do wells to look at their neighbors and how they will be impacted should we do that is that a good idea who gives developers the right to feel like they are entitled to build all these things no it is you who makes the rules so that you see that the development is done well the rules are followed so that we aren't all the only heavy to the development side where you they can take advantage of the i know please this is not the way to to do it by squashing good war laws that have been made by all of you and many of you voted for in the first time i have to say this that in the report that was given the two year report of water availability the report on native hawaiian use and writes how we are affected  sorely sorely short all it said was there are many worlds applied for in why in homes what happened to how it effects the current coolie on a water users that is clearly stated in this law and i hope that you will fight for the why and right to know this and i want to end by saying something from queen corny who fought very hard to keep water as a public trust she says be strong be steadfast and take comfort in knowing that justice has no time limit thank you other the outer islands we did get one more test to fire on this and sen has asked to let this test fire go first and that is  at that board meeting we voted unanimously to ask that the water availability what should be the water bill be allowed to remain the bill that you have now before you be rejected i think the thinking behind was several things all three very briefly one is that there is really still a need to protect existing homeowners it's not just to get more housing built it's also we have been silent all the existing all of the people who vote for you at the elections number two there are people on the water meter list and we do would not want to see them jeopardized by developments going to end in some way would threaten their ability to get water and finally and this is a very good subject for us a country white homelands we have a large white homelands community that wants to continue growing thriving and we want to make sure that they have water available this water availability shall be the water bill allows the planning director to determine when developments come up and wells have to be drilled been many projects that you folks sat through hours and hours of committee meetings it finally meetings and commission and looking at these projects and authorizing what will housing to be built but they have not been built and i want to cite just a few of these projects and ask you is it really should the water that stop these projects respond abs town center that is not a thing they have plenty of water for the whole industrial park their water is available to build that they have not built that project and that was made largely for seniors and others in the community low income families to get housing a lot of pineapple company came in with a bully who would days and days of testimony on that project many houses committed they have water all the pineapple fields that they that used to be irrigated by water would be available to supply those homes but he kind of probably twenty twenty was major they have their own private wells system they have got bills it's not lack of water it's other things perhaps a squeeze and you hold a gun to your head saying we need to get rid of this show me the water bill when i think the gun should be going to the other way and you should be put requirements on them time limits and other required ordering the administration to enforce the laws that you already passed to get th housing built that we so desperately need i would give you another option and that is the water use and development in the water but i'm supposed to have done this years ago that's the mechanism to look at this issue when it's and to develop within context of a the water used to develop a plan i was down there working on that now i would hope that you would do for this action and let it be incorporated into an overall look at how the county should be developing its water supplies thank you very much and it's really good to see my former colleagues and also union members who were not here when we passed the county's water availability policy i have heard a lot of false claims today and lots of it misinformation coming from testif s development community as the author of this policy i'd like to give some background for those of you who are not here when we pass this so that you'll know why we adopted this protective policy prior to two thousand and seven when the water department review development permits there comment would always be the department cannot assure the availability of water i'm sure bob carroll remembers that when he sat on the planning commission but nonetheless savvy developers would go ahead and proceed with their construction plans get them approved which included county water laterals then sign an agreement with the county bonding the required improvements without actually constructing them this allowed them to record the final back and proceed to sell the lots without having a verified source of water they would then force the county to give them the water whether there was the new source available for all or not because the county had approved their construction plans which included the county water laterals you remember this is you may remember this is what happened with the spencer development just south of here because the county was already overpaid being the aco for causing the salinity levels to rise and water levels to decline the state commission on water resource management had warned the county to stop issuing water meters service by the  at the time and now and said he would no longer approve water meters from the central valley water system then mr spencer threatened to sue the county if it did not service the county water laterals in his completed housing development well he got his water and the county lost control of the auckland for now under state management the purpose of the water availability policy is to protect existing county water systems from over and be in system capacity and to protect existing users from over sharing the water already committed to them at the time we adopted this policy the water department described the county's water situation as dire with water department figures showing all county water systems are operating at or over cystic system capacity with an additional deficit of over one million gallons of water a day to be issued within one year and a total of four point five million gallons a day to be issued with within two to five years for water meter reservations already purchased the water department the public works department corporation council th loopholes that allow the county water systems to be overcommitted if you now have additional system capacity capacity to issue water meters then there should be no problem getting a water meter reservation before you subdivide if you don't have available water and the developer needs to drill a zone well then he has to follow the state department of health regulations for water source development the water policy criteria for assessing the impact a new mail i knew why well might have an existing users is the same criteria of assessment than the department of health regulations and also the state water code i understand the current water department director has said his department doesn't have the time or expertise to make this sassaman if that is the case you better hire a new director and new staff who are capable of following the state water code besides that how many new well applications are there any year three or four repealing this protective policy or amending it to render it useless and serves no one but the private interests who have brought this bill forward why would you counsel members relinquish your stewardship over the public's most important resource that backtrack as i was not here the original makings of this bill like you were you had i guess brought this together with as you mentioned water director at the time public works and other entities and what was the elaborate you know i want to give credit to dane conny who happens to be here today he was the one that first brought this bill forward i think and his time he called it the show me the water bill which really happened first in california back it languished and for years in that committee then when i became water committee chair i brought it forward and at the time as i said director jeff in was like horrified that we had over committed all system capacity and that we had to do something to protect what is what users are now using those systems and also their resources for future you know if you if you ever over the system are over use a system especially if it's well water you you could damage the system for all users so that was the main concern and  public works is also very concern too because you know these developers who bond their projects and don't have to  bond they don't have to say what their water source will be and what what it's going to cost to develop the source then the water source doesn't become part of the bond so if they fail to follow through then who's left holding the ball of the bag and that's the county who then the taxpayer then has to pay to get this source online for those people who may be locked owners or homeowners who aren't serviced by a failed water source so that was the main reason i mean anybody who wants to go back and get a little education and i might suggest that the current water director avail himself of the water resources committee minutes from september seventeenth two thousand and seven and there's lots of good information in there thank you very much  and you know i said through that initial two thousand and seven passing of the ordinance if michelle sit next to me and we had some excitement it was a very long and very difficult deliberation for us to very happy to have you with us today thank you very much for coming my pleasure if you do want me as a resource person i would like for any objections to come out now so i can ok you know if i need to stay or leave well we know what we're going to do today is take testimony we are not going to get into deliberations so if we are going to use it a resource it will be at a later date does anybody have yes there's one final test fire stephen west mr west if there's anyone else i would appreciate it if you'd let us know because i like to know what our time commitment is here  morning sure council members thank you for the opportunity to speak this is a very very contentious debate but the reality is is that you know working people are living in homes multigenerational search sharing one road the reality is we need more affordable housing and truly affordable and i i think hopefully this council can take another look at the affordable housing bill as well and make it truly affordable because it's not we need you know people shouldn't have to spend more than thirty percent of their income on a mortgage but the reality is we do and i don't know if that's a that's a whole nother subject but this this i'm standing here in support of repeal this bill and i think there needs to be future work on it but for the time being for the time being needs to be repealed and that's you know most certainly my opinion and i have you know had a lot of contact with a lot of working people and  it's not helping this bill is not helping at this point we do need to protect our resources i think we need to develop new resources we need to have more stories there is a solution but i think just turning off the t is not bad so i'll wind up and thank you for the opportunity and you know have a happy anyone that showed up nobody oh you hung up ok so we're all today have we told them to let us know if anybody showed up so i'm sure we'll get in the district offices is there anyone in the gallery who has not testified who would like to t testimony is closed for today members that was our agenda for today we'd like to thank you very very much come today and i am very very very pleased to see and hear from down here this task force that was formed and has our report to whatever i would like somehow some way for that report to come to us i think it's important i know you were part of it or amanda was we know and our prayers are with her today for her challenge but more importantly i think we all need to issues so that by the time january sixth rolls around i will be at least small prepared with some information that we can share with the public if that can be achieved thank you ma'am ok let me address that because this is the second or third time that this is been mentioned the merit put together it test floors and informal task force that he appointed of people that apparently he felt were very important to give input on this thing i was unable to attend any of those meetings they were all scheduled at very early hours in the morning when this for some reason i just couldn't make any of them and i had asked the men to inform me not to repeat but to listen and so i was not a participant in any of this they came up with some suggestions in a draft proposal the draft proposal was given to the mayor and there were subsequent other meetings not with the task force but with myself and mr taylor and i don't know one mother person can remember this was a while back anyway there was no consensus and nothing has been transmitted from the mirror's office at this point is my understanding that mare's and his staff are working on some proposals and that we should be giving those i thought it was important that we have this meeting today so we could hear from the public i wanted to hear from the man on the street and from everybody else their views about this issue do they feel that we should repeal show me the water do they feel we should take a look at it do they feel it's a problem do they feel it's not a problem because it comes up over and over and over every time there's some kind of meeting this is mentioned you've heard the economist talk about it that was mentioned in testimony today i've heard administration talk about it every time we have a housing or a homeless meeting we talk about it and so i felt it was really important that we have a meeting where everybody could come and share their and that was what today's meeting is about when we reconvene we will do testimony again and we will look at this issue and then the committee will decide what we want to do with it and we will bring in whatever resources we need to bring in we'll try to get facts and figures and make sure that the information we're getting is accurate and correct and we proceed to make a decision i am not a person we drives anything one way or another i see myself as a facilitator to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to do input and do this so there is no official communication that i can give you at this point ok members anything else mystic cult thank you madam chair and i see we have a little bit of time left i would be would like to hear some of the comments that were made against or for mr taylor or just the department itself i would like to see hear if he has any comments about some of the testimony  was given i'm willing to let you do that but we're going to have to take a three minute recess ok ok ok so those members you guys want to do that ok well we're going to take not disappear i'm talking about three minutes ok  who came and testified today we heard a lot of testimony that touched on some of the biggest issues we face water for health affordable housing etc and i think we all recognize that this one ordinance is not going to be either the cause or the solution of all of these problems i mean it was only that easy i just want to comment on a couple of things people said i want to focus on two of the testif and the seventeenth testifiers mr de leon from the realtor association and the eighteenth testifier was mr pres from maui tomorrow one said let's repeal it the other said let's keep it there were a couple sentences both made and if we put them together i think it gets to the bottom of what this is mr dionne said this was aimed at subdivisions if you read the ordinance that's exactly what it is it talks about subdivisions the act of subdivision doesn't talk about large hotels shopping centers businesses doesn't talk about individual tax map keys that have large water use developments it is about subdivisions mr president it reduces the chance of needing drought restrictions that's exactly correct and he's the only testifier that nailed that that's really what this does it reduces the chance of having drought impacts by putting some limits on subdivisions if you didn't know the history of this you hadn't heard any of the testimony if you simply looked at the counties water system the county zoning ordinances the counties permit issuance ordinances and you just looked at how the county functions then you looked at this bill you would say that the purpose of this bill was that the counties concerned that there's not going to be enough water service for everybody so in the process from  ing to subdivision to building permit the county is intentionally saying we're going to put some special restrictions on subdivisions to make sure there's enough for everyone else now i'm not saying that was the purpose of this bill but i'm saying if you just look at the the words of this bill versus the rest of the systems in the county the physical water systems and then the bureaucratic systems issuing permits you would say that's what it does again i don't know if that's what it's supposed to do that's what it does now it's something member former member anderson said about the department formerly couldn't assure water service ok because zoning far exceeds our infrastructure capacity right for water sewer roadways schools everything else but for water specifically essentially everyone who owns a piece of land that isn't built out to their zoning is racing everyone else for infrastructure capacity there clearly isn't enough for everyone to build out to their zoning so the utilities water sewer power always take this position saying look you're in a race against everyone else and we don't guarantee service until you're hooked up and that's how it's always been so even without this bill there was always a department of water supply what i call a guarantee of service but it happened at your meter installation always did what this bill did does is it says in addition to that for subdivisions we're going to make a separate determination when you get to the subdivisions stage and if we think there's a chance that there won't be water for you at the meter installation stage we're going to stop you right there that's what this bill really does it doesn't stop hotels doesn't stop commercial buildings doesn't start large agriculture all of those keep going until they come in for their meter issuance and if there is no long term capacity at that time the department says hey sorry we can't help you what this bill does is it adds ace special condition for subdivisions specifically to say if we think we won't have the water for you we're not going to let you get into trouble by going further that's what it does again whether or not that's everyone's intention i don't know i don't think it really does anything to protect the aco for or not i think it very subtly affects the process of development for people who are subdividing and i think if we look at what it does and then ask is that what we it to do and what do we want it to do we'll have our answers about should we change it should we keep it should we get rid of it so that is just my sort of analytical assessment of what this bill does based on some what we've heard  just come in very quickly on something also at the heart of this that also former member andersen said she said back in two thousand and seven the department said that we the department of water supply said we were at or over system capacity now i remember when that was happening and i was in wastewater at the time watching this and a number of senior people at the department of water supply said we're out of water and i had heard that repeated in this room at the planning commission and i always wondered about it and so one of my first goals when i took this job five years ago is to get to the bottom of that statement because every day i would hear that i would take a shower and i also knew that the shower didn't seem like we were out of water so i knew just from an engineering background what they really meant was based on some system standards we can't reliably give more people service that's what they really meant by the words were out or over system capacity so when i took this job one of the first things i did is i got together a staff yank those numbers about how those numbers were done how are they calculating how much water we're using and how much water are we going to use essentially what they were doing is looking at meters that had been issued and said if everybody comes in to morrow and uses that meter to its max how much water would that be so based on that we were over allocated but that allocation was more than what the general plan growth projections were so it was my been my opinion that those allocation estimates were overly conservative now this is a subtle important point that a different person in my position may take an opposite position i mean that is my opinion i've told you a number of times that i go to the long range planning department long range planning division of the planning department and i ask them what their population projections from the social economic studies they do are i've been basing department of water supply needs based on that i have not been basing it on the meat meters that are out there that are unused or existing zoning of those properties and build out so there are two different ways to judge there's a number of different ways to judge future need and depending on which you do you can say look we're over allocated or you can say we're under allocate so that's one of the subtle points that is sort of my heartache with this bill is the council's pat has a law that says the director of water supply shall make this determination of long term reliable capacity but it's a very nebulous statement that a director may say look i'm going to base it on these assumptions a different director may say i'll be set on these other assumptions so everyone's in a race for capacity we don't know how many people are going to come in we know the infrastructure can't support full build out of them and we haven't come up with any quantitative legislative direction about how we're measuring this and i think this confusion is what's causing what we heard today i think there are solutions to this problem if we drill down to some of these sort of nerdy details about what we mean by long term reliable capacity how we're measuring it and what goals we want to reach what i heard today from all the  testifiers are very passionate views on very important subjects and i think there is absolutely room to cross something that everyone can live with and even be happy with so i appreciate that opportunity to comment on what we heard and i hope that of focus on discussion for the next time thank you very much mr taylor and i i think that helps a lot to members i think we've reached the end of our work for today i want to think  carroll for giving us the opportunity if we had to go into the afternoon to accommodate the testifiers they really appreciate it you know we had no way of knowing how many people would come today because as we heard unfortunately no matter how hard we try to address and publicize you know we had this on face book we had it on the radio we had it in the paper we had it just about everywhere you could go with this so that people would know and i personally tried to  people as they knew and i ask you also the network when we are planning these meetings please let your folks know because it's really important and we want him put so again thank you to everybody who can thank you to the staff thank you to the administrative representatives and the meeting is sorry to hear oh can i just ask mr taylor a question real quick he is it would be a simple yes or no yes we don't want to get into too much here  addressed what i think we should do ok ok mr coke and we're going to have to wait a while for that answer i think actually i think it's a very good place for anybody to be at this point we're just beginning the january sixth nine o'clock in the chambers so please let people know and without any further business the chair would like to wish all of you a very merry christmas and a happy new year i will be leaving on my annual trip to mexico on friday evening and i'll see you all in the new year the meeting is adjour community media you're watching channel fifty three aku green government and public affairs