victory no let us first disarm ourselves with noise making prices silent or off mode please thank you everyone we will take testimony blow a chair committee members speaking on my own behalf as you all know i'm well outspoken on the issue of property taxes and i appreciate the agenda item today and i have great interest in the department's presentation about establishing different rates for land and building i think this is a policy decision that it's good that you take this policy decision outside of budget where you're trying to balance the budget and figure out  and you've got the pressures of we have to get x amount of dollars out this i think there's a lot of different ways that this can go and again i'm interested to in the direction that might be considered what you're considering wouldn't require any legislative action i don't think in order to apply different rates to buildings and land because our we're already set up to do that however something that would require legislative action and i'd like to consider in this in this perspective is applying different classifications to building and land when someone gets buys a piece of land owning they are restricted to what they can build on that piece of land and the value of that land is often considered by what the highest and best use of that land would be the highest and best use says what can you build if you can build a hotel then we're going to value the land the actual instilled value will be based on what it would be worth of there was a hotel on it irrespective of this you know if you build something lesser than that that's what's built into the land and built into zoning but once you do build something on that be it a single family home or be it a hotel then i think that the consideration should be what is the use that's being made if the use is one of it's being used as a hotel that it should be fairly tax that building should be taxed as a hotel but if the use is it's being used as a residential use then i don't think that the tax should be at a hotel so that would require legislative action for you to set it up  where buildings could be classified differently than the land is classified in i'm sure mr to really would have some thoughts as to how easy or difficult that may be to implement but it's something that i'd like you to consider when you're when you're considering this in a broader perspective the other thing is to understand that these policy just asians don't land on just themselves they can to react with other things and this policy decision interacts with the home owner exemption as well as the agricultural assessments that we make so you can apply a higher rate to the land for example but if we make the assessment based on an agricultural segment very low then it's in significant that you've changed the land the land value so again this is an informational meeting i'm i'm as interested in you in what's being presented and i hope that during this period before budget starts that you can have the discussion on a policy basis as to does it make sense to tax the land higher or tax the building higher in based on some policy decision that you may be trying to implement thank you thank you very  you know as a taxpayer we're all taxpayers as a taxpayer who you know is outside of this process a little bit more in tune than a lot of the taxpayers out there but as a taxpayer would you really prefer or would you support separate values for land and building or do you i think that it's a great idea to try to establish greater fairness in the tax code and to give you an example some people feel that it's fair to tax someone who has more means higher than someone who doesn't have means ok and it's probably fair to say that someone who has the means to build a million dollar building on their property therefore can afford to pay more taxes so if you were as a policy decision to say we're going to apply a higher tax rate to that building then the land that that seems to me to be a reasonable way to create fairness but first you have to establish what are your goals you know but irrespective of of what you can do with the rates and so forth what are we trying to do in terms of establishing fairness so the idea of of different rates for land and building is one vehicle that you have to help establish anyone wishing to provide testimony and this is correct this is for the fiscal year two thousand and sixteen which ends in sixteen days that would demand the fiscal year two thousand and sixteen budget for the county of mali as it pertains to appendix a part one grant revenue schedule or grants by departments in programs department of housing and human concerns section eight housing program transmittal is for an amendment to increase the grant from section eight by seven hundred twenty one thousand seven thirty seven dollars to a new total of seventeen million six zero one  your program for the current fiscal year you will see the status members i am not asking for any action by committee if you feel this is worthy then we're going to defer this and on friday council will be asked to consider discharging this committee a responsibility so called so i can take action on friday if it so chooses and so this morning we have director right man from the department as well as our deputy president and we have our people from section eight so as mr baez first order your budget leave any opening comments for the morning members just very briefly i want to really think you are in and appreciate your staff and your efforts to be able to hear this side and so expeditiously before the end of the fiscal year  concerns carol raymond keith thank you comments please thank you chair good morning members of the committee thank you so much for accommodating this budget amendment and we sincerely apologize for the last  nature of this request and all of the inconvenience said it has caused the reason for the amendment is because we failed to report for the additional grant funds that we are receiving for section eight housing voucher program from hyde over the last year our section eight division has been working hard to increase the number of individuals and families that we serve the division has been instrumental in clearing away the list of some three thousand people some of whom were waiting for five to six years for about a year after processing everyone on the old list section eight was able to make available a new list which allowed even additional more additional people a chance to  vouchers they've also increased in number of lease ups and least ups are when a family or person with a voucher finds in occupies a unit because section eight has been making strides to help more people than ever i budget funding has increased helping more found me she quits increased rent expenditures while heard has provided us with adequate funding we at section eight have failed to update council on the increase and now we stand before you requesting a budget amendment so that we can pay for our families friends we take full responsibility for this oversight and for a failing to keep our budget updated for council we have initiated meaningful discussions with their leadership team to ensure that this does not happen again internally we're reviewing our practices in procedures to ensure that there is there are all monitoring and we conciliation every county budget to expenditures on a regular basis we will also be correct besides brand new applicants we've also increased our payment standards that we help per family so the current participating family that is participating families on our program also had a nonresidents that i would have to get back to you on that percentage but i believe it's a very small percentage for you know for people who are not in our jurisdiction that way and in the county given additional assistant have funding so not we still are we still have the same amount that we have we have to utilize one thousand four hundred sixty four that has not increased but our funding our amounts in the bottom and we don't know the breakdown specifically of the seven hundred thousand dollars that we're adding but if you look at the total sixteen point the new increased amount we're looking at sixteen point three million dollars being for housing assistance payments and one point three million dollars being for the ministry of commerce so you get the idea that the big so the committee under stands the importance of this and again it impacts payroll detail of again state for the record is for work already performed mr white questions concerns on this requests thank you chair and yes we will schedule a special meeting take care of this so director of the course that comes to my mind is do we have enough money to cover the current payroll mr chair so because of the finance department in the way that we account for payrolls they even though the payroll for june fifteenth gets paid on june july fifteenth gets paid on july fifteenth it gets accrued back to the year before and so for fiscal year sixteen there's a fiscal year fifteen payroll still included in the expenditures for sixteen so we're going to have to back that out so that's one payroll that yes we can cover for the june fifteenth payroll and but by june thirtieth will need this in place ok i wish we had a little more detail on what the breakdown was to see how much is payroll and how much is is red relief but i understand the challenge with the request that to the director if she can maybe provide some comment by are seventeen budget amendment and at that time we can do a more thorough review of the program and the details of expenditures and things like that but if you're looking for a breakdown in the budget details there is a decent  breakdown as far as ratio goes you can look at and then apply it to the amount and i would just i'm just concerned that if we are ever to use this money to cover payroll th e existing payroll was not covered on our original budget receive in the budget ordinance so there's no more even though because in the budget it doesn't break down what's payroll and what's housing assistance payments it's just one lump sum for the section eight voucher program so because the limitation in the ordinance is that dollar amount he doesn't you know the breakdown of what they spend it on isn't controlled by the details of how much is of any questions for the department or i guess you sort of explained it but not so much in detail and so out of this seven hundred something weights question a little bit more extra money that we're receiving is for the housing assistance payment because we have more people least up so if you look at the total aggregate of what we were saving of sixteen the original sixteen million dollars the amount that was based on the fixed operational costs and the flexible housing assistance payments so say you're seeing us over that fixed operational cost no we went over the flexible housing assistance payments rate because we're getting more people into housing and so we have to pay for that housing so that we that's why we're receiving more money from it's not because our operational costs went up but you're not even to meet payroll because of the limitation on the budget ordinance because it's all one lump sum are you going to need or utilize mr buzz county general funds to make up for the short term operational requirements until this grant is finally process by counsel and no mr chair kid and i appreciate it because it's a concern of the chair of company general funds for fridges grit pollutions ok is there anything else members you would like to ask us for prior to council meeting make their own internal adjustments to avoid  opposed i believe we gave them budget position for section eight you have a budget position in section eight can't receive it in yes that will be an issue if we can receive it then there will be no thank you for that comment mr buzz we appreciate it any other any comment you wish to add before we dispose of this us thank you very much for explaining this process we truly appreciate you hearing this so quickly and again we are putting steps in place to make sure that we monitor this and that this will not happen again so those those measures are already being tak as part of also as part of the testimony this is a discussion i will not be asking for any decisions regarding this this is just to have a discussion that was brought up in the budget we have again ari to keep people from our finance department to give us their comments as voice response to the committee's questions again this is a communication dated may twenty three two thousand and sixteen decisions that the concern as far as yes one appeals maybe because then the allocation from one building land for the other will be now appealable i know that rates are not but it's normal that people that know the system they will look into it and they say i want to allocate more to the cheaper rate than the higher rate and although  that affects the total value of the property that that would be an appeal for my people the board of preview to look into it so i'm just going to looking at administrator this is we don't have a position on what it should be it reduces this body's to should determine whether you guys want to split different rates we do have the ability because we have them separate  one versus the other just like the director said there's a tradition to appeal one that's the higher rate than the other even though they weren't really arguing the fact of the overall value being thousand and six for some reason and i don't know the reason why i don't thousand six a two thousand and thirteen yet the building hired inland so i think you can see that even though you have a system in place where you do one versus the other  i don't even think they know why they transferred it over to the improvements vs the lad and two and today i think for the this is the third fiscal year they did they only have one rate so they too have  there is thought that they will go eventually to one rate system as well and the reason being is the way we value properties are you know in the in the state of oil we have the costs and market approaches to value and in different set of situations you do one versus the other in in the condominium a lot of time to try to move towards market market modeling  a true land it's taking over the entire parcel and you're allocated eight percent common interest of that total value and there remain there is thrown on to building so you can see and some cases of traditionally the building value in a condominium is allocated more towards the building in the single family residential properties a lot of times the value is higher so in this in in the in the sin family residence of process you have a sales price minus what we have to reconcile as a building new less depreciation and the remainder is land so there's a little bit different approaches so even though the value of one similar in total value the location need different and so if you create the rate higher in one or the other it will affect two different properties different me so i guess what i'm here is not to tell you what  system to use or which should be higher but know that there are some things that we need to consider when we decide to or if you should decide to call one versus the other we don't have  a particular silver bullet to tell you that this would be the way to go because ultimately there's an unintended consequence which is whichever way you go i'm sure maybe p out some properties where it shows you that lead to building ratio are different among classifications agricultural use parcels predominantly are lowland to building ratios condominiums with high value maybe hide land to building ratios are like rural properties or predominantly it's all land value and what is very interesting is most homeowners have a high land to building ratio and more so being that you have an exemption of two hundred thousand so your net relatively little which leaves you with very most majority taxable is on land so for the homeowner class i think a hide land taxes are pretty requested for most homeowners so that's something you should consider  throughout the united states it's predominantly a single rate system there's very few states or municipalities that have a split rate system i think i believe it's either pittsburgh pennsylvania things pennsylvania that probably is thirteen of them municipalities have different land and building rates but that's one of the few with hawaii having split rates but predominantly throughout the us it's a single rate system chairman i think i'll be good at that some background i mean it's not that we don't want to spend the time to research everything but it's a lot of work to compile if we want to consider scenarios  if this body chooses that we should be looking at a scenario system it be probably best that the council may be picking up the scenario so i can do it because it would be endless for my technical stuff to be doing a presentation on what ifs well you'd probably be better to find out what you guys want us to consider and then maybe we can come to germany if you choose to give more historical information about where we were pows world war two the reasoning because behind the split breaches the hired land tax appreciate your comments i would say that is part of the discussion also i would hope that eventually give us a comment regarding non profits too be considered taxable for not profits and us more about the type of structures some of them put up already getting the break on the land but if you can put up a ten twenty million dollars structure  is similar to us where we have lead and building although the are historically using the same building in residential it's predominantly inland in commercialized residential it's right about fifty percent in apartment it's one to four it's probably building is higher for the one  commercial it's two to one on land an industrial it's a little bigger on land agriculture it's to do and land conservation it's to do one land hotel it's while predominantly building in homeowner it's more towards the land value and the aggregate total it's just slightly higher in building so like i said you know it's really mixed but she's stark e and traditionally if there is a higher rate it's probably on land and that is just the research that we've done through to most municipality is land has been the predominantly the higher freshers if you do have a split system chairman and i think it started a long time ago pre war world war two where there were very few individuals owning majority of the land and the commoners probably wanted a higher land tax so that they could distribute the wealth of lad and that's probably how it started and here we are today and i things have changed so but i just history it is good to understand why they did one versus the other and whether it's to release today is really for the spot thank you we appreciate it carmen i was says that is a factor but the other big factor was in the some of the certain benefits whether it was stopping escalation of land prices over a double digit or it brought their housing prices down to something that their people could do you and your peers meet on a regular basis and talk about subjects such as these  vendor and our type of software that we're using and just so common practical appraisal practice towards a lot of the problems that we not only fee share in hawaii but there we face th totally agree with you you know i was very disturbed when i heard about the agenda for the meeting which huge issues that we have going on statewide i thought this it would have been a great opportunity to sit down and discuss these kinds of things but it's a different agenda and you know we're not in charge of it the island it takes it decides that and so we're we're good sports we'll support it but i i do think that you know  such topics because it's good to sit down and have a discussion of chitral issues and challenges i for one would appreciate a whole lot because that kind of a communication would help those of us who you know have different ideas thank you know thank you for those comments mr white questions to our resource people regarding this subject agenda item  question is on the condo's if you look at the the lead page on a condo i just looked at the whaler condo and their land is a little over twenty one million dollars if i if i were to go my understanding of this if i were to go to the condo unit and the appropriate assigned land value that that  because it seems like traditionally if you have the means to build it you could afford it that's just my thought of it i don't i'm not saying that that is the better approach to it because i said the allocation for certain types of properties it's valued a land residual and some are a building residual so i think it could be unfair to have one higher than the other in that aspect furthermore far as speaking on behalf of my department it's more problematic when you have separate rates because it makes a complex situation muddy because now you're going to have people appeal based on what is the higher rate when it's not the problem the problem is the total value correct or not it's the allocation that we must do by law that gives you the opportunity to appeal one versus the other and i think that is the reason why more municipalities move to one rate because now you can pick apart just lead or just building it's really about the total value so my next opinion on behalf of the department is we we would prefer to actually have a single rate which we had proposed before however the circuit breaker rule required the building value to be four hundred thousand so therefore we left the lab and building components separate so in my my opinion i think we already have enough classifications by making additional rates makes it out much more deliberation on part of the council so if the current process is laborous it will be twice as labor so i just caution you that we have enough classifications to begin with myspace thank you very much here in thank you for this discussion today i think it's really important because every now and then somebody will bring it up and say you know we have to take a look at this and we are taking a look which is good but it kind of sounds to me like listening to  that this is a solution looking for a problem again it appears that what we have is working and so if it's working and what i hear is other municipalities have tried and they're coming back to what  doing so i don't know if it's worth a whole lot of further investigating i think we have more exciting things to think about but i really appreciate this discussion i think it's important thank you thank you very share with you additional information your choice because thing i thought is that if you want to talk about residential and whatnot then one of the things that this county does that our sister counties have chosen not to is unless you have a better substitution in its place if you recall the history of the exemption discussions of max tax and the impacts of huge annual and we had to put a price in this county because some property sold ten cents on the dollar because the national government required all their corporations to get their debt in place and of course it was hurtful for no problem to fix ok as i appreciate that comment because i would say our county does some things very very well but everything but we do certain things really well with it i think we at and we always talk about these during budget and i really appreciate the fact that we are discussing this away from budget just because that's the time to discuss about this kind of stuff and when we get to budget we have other things to think about but you know there like you mention you know we could sit here and discuss the home exemption is it the right amount is it people are or should be everybody be getting it should we put them in some kind of scale we could talk about a lot of things you know we always have testifiers that come in talk about the categories and the description of the categories and those kinds of thing i think we could dig deeper but what is on the table today and that is just straight up thing of separating them and buildings i just don't see that there's a whole lot of merit in doing that chair thank you no thank you i appreciate your very straightforward candid comment misplace ok anyone else at this time members mr coach of anything i just want to put it on record i think we have a an item at least from the budget talking about reclassification are you intending on doing that any time soon because i stat is this more advantages than disadvantages department division or user comments i am fine with that my thing to the community is that we've held the discussion and we have diligence we believe that the current is that this is the best for this community that's fine with me if in the discussion you know he comes up there we should look at a specific point maybe tweak it i'm fine with that too but we are following through from the budget session on subjects that we don't need that clock pressuring right so the fur is not an issue today a proposal comes up today not an issue because this is part of process and that's what i want to do is just bring it up so that people know that we take our responsibilities seriously as far as their monies are concerned about fairness in what they paid to the county but they should welcome to the community to hear it also and then again i would do more due diligence and you know the university is pumping up a lot of  regarding the short term investments fourteen dish three is something we discuss previously but on number five zero fourteen as three we did send the department it also because i think i also took action where now for a residence or some other form considerations we've supported the ability of the free to america loans so they can qualify and get some advantages in their purchasing support mystic chair because when i was at those hearings you know the support the lead up support that you guys have really helped but unfortunately the worst day and we didn't make it and i'm intending to pursue it money and the investment committee met in march with a lot of our last meeting and we actually revised the investment policy slightly to allow us to to purchase  more certificates of deposit and have it be a little bit larger percentage of our portfolio so that we can take advantage of the higher interest rates and the safety of the cd currently  of the cash runs for the projects so the next report that you will have missed the chair as far as the loan transfer is concerned he will state now that we will be probably in the summer arthur six thirty one i think it is it's not listed in ours and we were trying to mimic that and that's the one that a we have invested i think about thirty six million on that because it's an more of a return on our short term investment but i don't understand why they can't do one if they're not going to do the other but maybe that's why we need a con con and lots of things i don't understand well we appreciate the update mr director and we appreciate the good work you do mr cope does begin the committee would just issue that we are concerned about the ability of your fallback position read are going to file fourteen dish three indeed for forty one members we have completed the need mr baez mr director any other comments you wish to share we have to give you an opportunity if you have anything else thank you mr i just want to thank also the members of the best men comes we can do official actions so it's interesting but people would law degrees come up with so saying dead and i would entertain a motion to