have three minutes at the two minute thirty mark the yellow light will go on indicate you have thirty seconds to conclude at three minutes the red led will go on which indicates you sh we should maintain decorum in this meeting come forward and share your testimony with us programs that increased the reliability of the wastewater infrastructure and decreased the amount of sewer spills and system failures this was done by increasing staff and funding for operations a maintenance as well as replacing old infrastructure through projects over the past five years the way sort of division kept the flat budget even though operational costs increase each year this year we asked for eight point four percent increase due mainly to union salary increases and that service the committee chairs proposal reduces our operations budget by roughly six hundred thousand dollars or negative two point eight percent the proposal deletes salaries from to keep positions the operations superintendent and the plant operations manager reduces our premium pay and operations funding reduces all of our funding for projects by twenty percent with this proposed reduce reduction in funding in stuffing the reliability of our wastewater infrastructure will decrease and sewer spills and system failures  of funding in stuffing their love of our waste water infrastructure will decrease and sewer spills and system failures will start to increase just like the county did in the early to mid ninety's therefore i respectfully request that this body one includes the salary for the operations superintendent who manages all five operational sections and a total of ninety eight people to includes a salary for operations plant manager who manages all fight you and plants a person currently exists in this position if not this person may not have funding for his position three increase the premium pay which allows us to respond to emergencies and reduces the amount of funding to contractors if not more services from i'll take on structures will be required for increased operations funding which allows us to operate and maintain a reliable wastewater system and comply with the state and federal regulations if not the waste water system operation meeting is will reduce and violations of permits may happen in five increase our funding to the p projects which is all just to replace old infrastructure that is reaches and useful life and reduces the risk of catastrophic system failures unless the proposed capital improvement reserve fund can be used for projects where vids come into high if not contracts for projects that come into high will not be executed due to lack of funding in conclusion the program was developed over the past fifteen years have put that we started division on a path to ensure that the county has a reliable wastewater source protection for the nature conservancy preserve on the west side you'll see in this year's budget that for the first time the nature conservancy applied for a seventy five thousand dollars grant and i want to take this time to apologize because there was some miscommunication council member cochran i think our staff member kind of those a little miscommunication amongst our staff we did apply for this grant we did receive a pre award approval letter from the department of water supplies so it was  through the department of water supplies the grant approval process so we're very much looking forward to hopefully getting this budget line item back again but just a little bit about the project is located above  agriculture and potentially domestic use this project focuses on continuing critical ongoing management activities and including fence maintenance and get and we control monitoring and research although this project does receive state natural area partnership program funding our state funding for communiqu of for f y sixteen was cut by twenty two percent compared to this year department of water supply funding will allow for essential bare bones work such as keeping pigs from pristine areas near strains and targeting water hogging we such as strawberry guava from reaching higher elevations near stream head waters and addition this grant from us would allow us to tackle a couple of new and essential management activities most importantly will be working with the state department of forestry and wildlife to release and monitor a bio control for strawberry guava that has been approved and shows strong promise for success is already been released at two sites but five more have been selected and funds are needed for the work release and monitoring this is exciting work that could potentially save millions of dollars and resources in the future that would be spent on manual and chemical control of this highly invasive habitat modifying weed in addition funding from us will allow us to undertake more proactive fire prevention in the area west maui is already prone to fire and our access roads and lower elevations of component need to be you need to be kept clear of highly flammable was the twenty two percent cut in state funding and state funding we got one hundred forty thousand dollars last year and we're down to one hundred and ten for this year and it's over a six year period i was just at o i was wondering if this new grant and i know you have not asked for most before is why it's new but if it was going to address a different area of than what you already are you know caretaking so that is what i was asking for a map sort of show there seventy five thousand is it going to a new section because it's been now determined designated water high priority watersh hoping to do some more work with strawberry guava and the fencing the lower boundary elevation fence is critical in keeping pigs out and we really made a lot of recent gains with that and if we lose momentum it could be really terrible for us and leverag in there yes it is part of that leverage gene ratio as rob because you're correct so we'll have to come up with some private minding we're hoping to get some states the ip funding to to help with the fencing issues but you're right the dropped so we really rely on these funds ok well thank you for coming and bringing more clarity to thank you thank you for any of the questions thank you very much for you  we thank you good morning kerry and members of the council my name's aaron wade a small town planner employed in the planning department i was told i could testify today however i haven't discussed my testimony with our directors or members of the administration and therefore my comments represent my own opinion only and the items that i would like to address in the order of the chairs report also affect the work that i do in the small town specifically itemised these the first is the maui academy of performing arts line four eight three this is for thirty thousand dollars to build their own theater space and while loop good town is a very modest request that response that supports the while a good time vision with locally grown performing arts number two is line seven o five and seven o six in the department of management budget this represents the kiva replacement project as a user i can tell you cuba is outdated and glitchy yet it is the primary means of communication between dozens of divisions within the county replacing kiva will bring our permitting system into the twenty first century with its improved efficiency and create an opportunity for staff reductions in future years number three the liner restoration foundation for f needs the one point five million to continue the project completion number four thank you very much chair for the proviso on line nine three three ensuring the wells park master plan will proceed this year this is great  number five the c grant agent line one thousand this positions possibly the most valuable position housed in the current planning division having knowledgeable coastal geologist in the house saving our beaches and saving the county millions of dollars simultaneously number six thank you for the funding for the clean and safe program for the m r is and for the general general fund budget in full the cuts represented in line one thousand and four are to the infrastructure integration program this program represents the primary obstacle for private sector redevelopment within why we do town and without moving forward with infrastructure upgrades will remain stuck in neutral in terms of private investment number seven two and a half minutes why luke parking number line one two five two we need more parking we have proposed parking agency and we do have a series of proposals that would phase in parking however for the construction of any additional parking at the municipal lot would require offsite parking we their strategy and you know process my understanding is phase one is underway it's been to the cultural resource commission and can be funded for construction within the next month or so moving forward with phase two could start as early as october of two thousand and fifteen so these funds would be going to be utilized at that point ok thank you and then a second question i'll see gretsch or see grant you said helped save that position is very ent permit with that has shoreline impact and we can ask her about what the impacts might be we're able to get a very researched and educated response which in turn keeps us out of court because it does limit private property rights oftentimes within the coastal areas and she does provide expert testimony i also think it saves the county millions because my has gorgeous beaches and they're our largest attraction for tourism and a replacement saying that this and i know our system with antiquated but we didn't cut everything else but you feel this is not enough to get the system working the way we should or at least moving in that direction my personal opinion is this is a very minor investment for an extremely broad reaching system that affects all departments and as our primary source of communication across divisions  it is critical that we provide the best platform possible and whatever is being researched i'm not part of the maps team so i don't have the specific information about what's moving forward but i do know that having worked in other municipalities that there is much more progressive formats out there and that we can save a lot of efficiency and do a lot better job for the general public with improve system i mean richard you know the question was on the parking you mentioned you know holding up on the parking when we all have discussed this for many many many years well the parking acquisition this would be behind market street off of malo heah for a parking lot expansion and with that addition we estimate we could add about seventy to seventy five stalls behind the buildings on market street which opens up that frontage on market street and creates loading and creates additional parking in advance of investing something in the municipal law ok thank you for that clarification and two going through the approval process of the same time phase one is the only phase that requires a vertical construction and therefore that process is moving forward first the second phase is require special management approval and will be moving forward next and shoreline setback approval so that's going to be moving forward but the vertical construction was one of the easiest things to permit and to get started i believe the liner restoration foundation intends to submit the summer for phase t and you think they'll get approval for that over the culture resource commission has already approved the master plan in concept form and the next stage is frankly administrative so it could chemical center saw a number of commission who supported agencies that provide health and human services social services and in the kitchen opportunities for the residents of mali in recent years a number of factors good morning members of the county council's budget and finance committee my name is keith regan managing director for the county of maui i'm here this morning to provide testimony on the budget proposal that was presented yesterday during the budget and finance committee meeting i'd like to start by expressing our deep appreciation for the hard work and effort that's been put into this process since we delivered the budget to you on march twenty fourth we know it's not an easy task reviewing each page of our proposal spending long late hours in discussions with departments asking tough questions about their programs services and projects we know this because much like yourselves we too have been through a similar process with each department each division from the bottom of the organization to the top we to have analyzed each request weighed its merits and made the tough decision to either include it or not we've listened much as each of you has to the public and incorporated their needs their interests and their direction into our proposal we've looked for ways to do more with less we've attempted to live within our means while also ensuring that the future of our community remains bright we've pushed each of our directors and deputies to think outside of the box to search for new and innovative ways to meet the demands put before them to save money to extend the life of our infrastructure so we organize tasks and operations to look deep into their operations and improve efficiencies without impacting effectiveness it's not an easy task because the demands placed on each of us continue to grow because our four island community continues to grow every year more people decide to make money their home were a popular place desirable place to live to raise a family to make an investment into the future i personally believe that people fall in love with our community for many reasons this is by far one of the most beautiful places on the planet people are attracted to maui county because we've made some really important philosophical choices that go right to the core of what's important to our community we've created a world class community thanks to the combined efforts of our administration and the council we unlike many other communities throughout the nation have made a conscious decision to invest in our future we're not about kicking the can down the road so that some future generation of citizens will have to deal with the problem we're not about ignoring social welfare issues that other communities are now dealing with because they didn't have the foresight or commitment to set aside funding it's because you made these commitments and so forth and these investments in our future that my county is attractive and isn't much better position than other municipalities that have opted to ignore and defer these investments all you have to do is travel to any number of communities to see exactly what i'm talking about some of our department will come before you today to share their thoughts on the impact of the proposed changes we're all concerned about the outcomes and it's critical that we have that discussion as part of this the members questions we appreciate your cooperation also mr reagan is a managing director and yes this is still a continuing process this is and we appreciate the comments you and your departments will be sharing with us the chairs draft and that is what it is the chairs draft the final committee's recommendation to council for consideration so it is still a working document mayor's clerical support communications team in the budget office to b g and the members of our staff in these offices are individuals who are dedicated hard working and most importantly customer service oriented they often do not receive fanfare for the work to do relying only on the satisfaction that they were able to make a difference in people's lives the issues that our staff handles are numerous and varied one moment they may be handling a building permit issue another request to install a speed bump in their neighborhood or even disputing a water bill or staff listens to many such issues and assist our  processes and regulations many times receive calls from our constituents or they may drop in our office unexpectedly whichever means we never turn away someone who is in need of assistance and that you allow our office to continue to provide this service to the community last year our budget was cut by roughly three hundred thousand and as a result we cut the mayor staff by four positions our ability to serve the public was hampered because of these cuts but it did not cease we have been able to continue working with what we have however another substantial cut for office would be extremely difficult some of you may ask why our office has grown since the mayor's first term over twelve years ago our population has risen and the mayors directive of making our office more open has led to the increase of constituents seeking help we did our best in the first term however the need for more stuff is very apparent if our funding is restored it is not our intention to go in the mayor's office we will continue to make do with what we have another change which the mayor felt was necessary was the creation of a chief of staff position in the mayor's first administration the mayor who consistently had a full of meetings with the public had some challenges in managing the offices under his purview but the mayor returned to office for a second term one of the changes we did was create a position whose responsibility is to include overseeing person constituents while the managing director manages our departments my role as chief of stuff is to manage our relationship with people outside of county government which includes the general public media community organizations state and federal governments and foreign governments we also have the matters brought to us by the marconi i also serve along with the managing director thank you very much chair and members of committee for this opportunity thank you we'll check with the district offices ok morning cherokee morning members thank you so much for allowing us to come in this morning i'm here to ask you to please consider reinstating our energy commis commission our position and as well as the energy program fund you know i'm a firm believer that every position every employee in this county should provide far more public value than the cost of their salary sometimes it's hard to quantify that and sometimes it's easy and the case of our energy commissioner it is easy to quantify just the overseeing of twenty one p v projects being installed on county facilities has brought a five hundred thousand dollars per year savings to the county of maui for the next twenty years the energy commissioner serves a different but complimentary purpose to the civil service energy position the commissioner's role is visionary and project driven and policy oriented the civil service position is one that is charged with monitoring and monitoring p c dockets energy emergencies such as fuel shortages in the county hurricane preparedness research et c when we came into office four years ago now county was hovering around fifteen percent renewable energy and today we are at thirty to thirty five percent we are well ahead of our goals and i credit this stellar progress to the mayor's vision to a public that cares about these issues and a strong energy commissioner who pushed hard to implement that vision with the next era merger on the p c docket maui is facing the most pivotal and important era possibly in our entire energy history we need a strong experienced energy commissioner to keep needs front and center through this process now he is an intervener in this docket and we need a strong visionary leadership to see us through this position is also our liaison with  smart maoi program in addition to the position i would like to ask you to move the energy program fund back to this fund as partially used as a grant fund we have provided funding for various energy projects like sponsoring m power this year in the past creating a solar summit and providing seed money for the conference the civil service position that you move this to is not equipped to implement projects like this because it required other o e c d staff to wrap up i just want to say that maui exports two hundred million dollars in fuel every year to pay for me co's fuel two hundred million dollars for the purchase of nikko's feel now is not the time to take a low profile in the energy arena by a limiting this position just the opposite is thank you very much i ask for it that if position and your testimony i got it loud and clear question is have you been searching for this position because i haven't seen any ads in the paper or i didn't really look  online but it has not been publicly advertised but yes we have been searching we have collected resumes the position is very critical and we want to make sure that we get the right person with the with the most experience that we can afford with the salary here and as you know with our previous commissioner we have very big shoes to fill so we want to be cautious and make sure we get the right person and  but i thought that that position was filled my hours are there a body in that position there is but it is it was a very temporary situation until we could fix the shortage and this goes back to my my presentation on our admin budget where i asked to have a two thirds position reinstated because we had a situation at maui business resource center where we only had a one third position for the person at the front desk and we've had to rotate specialists through that position and it's been incredibly difficult to operate that center with that situation and so for a just temporary there is a person in there but it was never intended to be a permanent thing and it will be fixed with the twenty sixteen proposal that i put forward that that you have accepted so far so i would i would just urge that we let that you know continue thank you we thank you very i'm here to ask for your support funding being put into a budget of three point two million dollars for three hundred twelve acres between bay and jaws it's an open  space i've been involved with open space requests going back thirty five years and when we proposed one hundred fifty five acres that we kind of beach years ago there were people who had their doubts about it but i think we can all see now that that was a great investment in the future of maui and this is a similar property the hammock willow area of maui has received no funds for open space since the open space fund was created fifteen years ago so it's time to take a look at the growing needs in that area it's culturally significant was to know and he says this is raw land so the cost is minimal for the size of are willing to step forward and deal with the maintenance but there are many many groups that would benefit from this hiking routes cultural groups equestrian groups property like this requires a certain amount of vision to see play with the growth with the growth here on maui and the shortage of parks and an open space area this would be a tremendous asset to the community has been shared natural and cultural resources and recreational use and it's a natural fit for the  maui county open space natural resources cultural resources and scenic beauty preservation fund so i ask for your support and consideration of including this acreage in the budget thank you thank you very much any questions believe that is yes ok and we've received testimony written testimony about potential number of homes there is that that's all ag right now isn't it it's all ag right now there are there are various parcels other than made available to the was i think was at twelve hundred acres that and be released to a developer and there were a number of large parcels that were rearranged for various reggie county council member name is kelly pearson sorry and i stand before you as a chief executive officer for the boys and girls clubs of mali first of all i want to thank you for the support that you've given us over the last decade to serve more and more youth in the county of mali thank you very much for that i also thank you for the level funny and that's in the budget right now i'm here today to ask you to consider putting back two items  that i'm asking for for last years or for this current from this current budget to next year will allow us to hire it'll be at least be for part time positions less than four part time positions we are already in this current fiscal year have been increased since last year of eleven percent members so there's more and more kids coming into our organization to our clubs are finding supports for clubs resources our goal is to build strong teams so that we can right now in our clubs the attendance goes anywhere from one hundred twenty two hundred eighty members a day which kind of looks at a ratio of about twenty five to thirty youth per one adult stuff we can do it but our facilities and if we manage the facilities rate on a daily basis we can do it i just ask you that the more this five percent increase will definitely help us serve more kids because we don't just open the doors and  come in and participate in programs we do a lot of structure programs and as you can see from our youth of the year and the kids who have testified before you the second item again immediate need the on parents can come in and find out if their sports activities in the community and we have the information for there for them they can come and say i need a homework tutoring program that will have the information for them and they can come in and they can ask about any organization   i wanted to focus just on the planning department's professional services budget the proposed reduction while it still indicates an increase over the prior fiscal year in fact it one hundred seventy three thousand five hundred there was a separate seventy five thousand four title nineteen code revisions that we kept as a separate line item so our existing fifteen budget is one seventy three five what's before you today with the chairs proposed reduction would bring that down to just one hundred thousand dollars and that's a pretty extreme decrease so we'd actually ask if that professional services budget just as a standalone would be more in the range of about one hundred fifty thousand fourteen actual expenditures were almost one hundred twenty seven thousand f y thirteen was one hundred thirty one thousand one hundred fifty thousand is about in the appropriate range for what our historic spending has been for professional services i just wanted to make a couple notes about the begin crease that we're requesting for that and sort of treating that as a separate item would be the  erosion control studies for gonna be we requested a total of three hundred twenty thousand for those studies and just to clarify that the it's there are two parts one part would be one hundred thousand dollars to determine if there's enough sand offshore and the right quality sand for beach nourishment to be an option for kahana bay so that's just a study of the army corps of engineers would conduct this study to determine if there is enough sand to do beach nourishment the two hundred twenty thousand dollars also for the army corps of engineers would be to prepare models to see if any types of structures or what types of structures would be needed as a component for beach nourishment or to install those structures if it seems that that's feasible that funding would come from private sources the county would coordinate but that would come from county sources and there'd be permitting requirements  that says yeah you can spend the three hundred twenty but it has to be matched by the by other sources whether or not it's private i think even for the study for the sand i would think that you've got nine condos there do you think it's feasible for them to be able to talk to them and that they'll come up with some of the matching funds because it's pretty much their property that we're doing all this for so i think they need to have some skin in the game i do think it's feasible our staff has already been speaking with all of those properties not just about this first step of the studies but  also assuming and hoping that the studies prove that beach nourishment is an option they would be the ones kicking in to cover the entire events and they have expressed a willingness to do that i i certainly think we could do it the concern is that time really isn't on our side we have one property that spending estimate permitting for a sea wall and we're trying to determine if bea before decision is made on that permanent shoreline bring understanding if that's where the council wants to go then then again looking at our professional services budget the reduction would be just fifty percent of that similar concern mr couch is that if my concern is that if we are unable to get a decent landowners to kick in a little bit of the money to study what kind of assurance that we have the the money when it comes to doing the real work so i think for me this is the way of the for the county to say you know we're we feel this is an important thing to do we feel it should move forward but we'd like to at least have a test of just how much commitment there is from the nine condominiums a participant that i think it's it's important that we all participate this is in my view a critical thing to do but it's also in some respects a critical test of whether we'll get some additional participation because once once again you know this as the chair will always say the ocean is a state issue and you know it's but i think this is something that you guys have come up with that i fully support but i don't support it by fully funding it when there are other parties that i think legitimately should be asked particular a at this level thank you and that does seem i think it is feasible and i think it's very reasonable and like i said we're hoping just looking at our overall professional just thank you thank you very much and thank you mr mccain for being here i know you're in a hurry but one quick question you mentioned that a permit was pending where is that permit coming from that is property  toward the far end of gonna be the whole who's going to grant the permit that would have to be well they did already receive a conservation district use permit from the board of land a natural resources and an army corporal they would still need a special management area permit and a shoreline set back variance permit from the maui planning commission so that's a planning commission who would grant that permit correct ok i just wanted to know who was in charge of doing it because seems like time is of the essence and i want to say that you know i do support the idea of let's partner cos i think it's the right thing to do first thing i heard after the testimony was several people mentioned to me that they would like to see the owners participate  far as the beach erosion issue am i correct i thought that was mentioned along the line of some testimony from somebody at can recall i apologize but there was right the whole lot on me the one w kind of study out there from in that area in particular yes any other property done has done anything not that i'm aware of but there there could have been another but most likely it would have been just for their property rather than looking at the entire extremely cooperative in this whole effort so if there are any other studies out there i have no doubt they'd be made available ok thank you and i hope they'll work together because it's their property we're trying to see what anything else that you thank you thank you and other questions for the morning again mr chairman and thank you for indulging us my name is william spence on the planning director for maui county i want to speak a little bit to the to the church proposed budget just offer some comments for your consideration when i look at the budget i look when i look at the proposed budget i look mostly at what does it take the planning department to serve the county to serve the residents of this island so with that framework in mind that's the way i propose i go about looking at the budget and proposing things so i'll touch on four little fourth items in the budget one is  office operations expansion this would be a new clerical position for the zoning and enforcement division right now we have one clerical person for twenty people so that means as zoning inspectors are writing letters that means the plans checkers are writing letters and proofing them when they should be really doing other things when they should be addressing backlogs when the zoning inspector should be writing up the notices of warning or doing the research to do the enforcement that the council has been requesting and that the public has been requesting as they were questioning that that be reinstated the c grant position we have had a secret representative within the planning department for at least fourteen years this person has been as has been testified provides a scientific background for coastal geology she is in the position itself but in particular this person provides a great service to the department and also to  community as a whole the propose owning revisions the one hundred fifty thousand proposed for that we have basically a fifty year old car and as you know when you have an old car there's a never ending set of repairs that goes along with that and so i think it's it's really time to evaluate what we have look at and say ok do we need a new car goes really to budget program is very old it's been testified and buggy this is not just the department's communication with each other though that is a primary source it is also a primary source and gateway to the general public accept the importance of the kiva project and we know you know that we've we funded it adequately last year to get the process going and my recollection is the funding that we've provided this year in just this fiscal year is budget is equal to the total cost that we were given last year so we do support the progress of the progress and moving  us but one of the other things that we where very close to getting actual big numbers on it so i don't believe we've received that information at this point but it should be coming within the next that we should be able to get it this week we were told there opening bids by cameras last week of the week before so i just want you to understand we understand the importance of this because it it has a very broad application not only for the county operations but for public understanding what's happening with their projects and  fairly well staffed and i certainly understand the need for clerical help but i'm just wondering if you've taken a real close look at the assignments within your department to see if you would be better changing what are your existing positions to a clerical position or whether you have talked to the managing director to see if there is a position somewhere else in the county that could be transferred to planning if it's that critical a need we haven't asked about transferring from another department of ours within the department where sort of treading water as far as the volume of work and getting that out in a timely manner we are improving our efficiency has been increasing where meeting some of the goals that have been put before us you know with the adoption of the international building code where we have thirty days turnaround in initial review where we've increased efficiency internally to meet those goals  but all the same the permits keep coming and the increase in enforcement activities also is guys are pretty busy trying to get stuff out and mr white talks about the size of the department and maybe we'll have to bring this up in either my committee or another committee but  is part of the problem you being so busy the the over in the red tape essentially or yes ok we'll do with that in committee then ok and that and that's part of reevaluating our zoning code is i mean we have no doubt that we are fully staffed comparable to similar size cities across the united states however our regulatory regime is typically much more stringent and where we're regulatory heavy state and our county is not excluded from that so sometimes i wonder if we create work for ourselves that perhaps is not necessary and that's part of what the evaluation of our zoning we need to make improvements ok mr chairman i'm happy to have that discussion with you and the member much any other question mr spence we thank you for your time this morning thank you mr chairman numbers we appreciate your time  mr taylor who will be next in comes forward i will say that if if and when we get done with testimony judy it is the committee's intent to bring back parks planning public works and water today and tomorrow if need be and then fire and environmental management those are the arguments that have been requested to have further discussions with this committee just to let you know mr taylor thank you for being here good morning mr chair committee members my name is dave taylor i'm the director of the department of water supply i wanted to take the opportunity to compare and contrast the proposed budget with the committee chairs proposal especially and how it relates to the long term plans we've discussed in modern resources committee presented to the water resources committee back in two thousand and thirteen numerous options for future capacity needs option one was the county builds everything he's for it with various rates and fees option two was the developers build everything and dedicated to the county or operate it themselves this is in the attachments i've provided the marriage proposals consistent with option one f the committee chairs proposal appears to be consistent with option two now what we've said all along is these options aren't better or worse they're different so this represents a crossroads as we've talked about but which direction we're going to go in so the committee chairs proposals deals to implement this policy direction by deleting the water system development fee increases which is how we're going to pay for doing it ourselves plus things like the fifteen million dollar yele treatment plant and some other large c i p projects so it cuts revenue and cuts projects that's fine that's option two if that's where we want to go we can implement that if you want to go the other way we can implement that that's the choice between option one an option two the committee chairs proposal one point six million dollars for source transmission storage for the upcountry meter waitlist we do currently do not have a project that would be ready for construction in this timeframe and most of that money would probably lapse the  remove the water shortage rates that we spent the last couple years talking about i've mentioned to the committee before that without the water shortage rates it is very likely that we need to stop issuing meters upcountry we've always said the wells can be used for either new meters or drought relief we want to use it for new meters and use drought relief with the water shortage rates we have a decision to make the proposal cuts our administrative operations by one point two million dollars in the five limited term appointment that was how we were going to implement a new billing system we talked about in the sooner we get started on that the better we've always assumed that as an enterprise fund it was expected that we funded enough to handle unforseen events and if events have a carry over savings department so we shot for about two months cash flow usually hear that number in water utilities to three months so thirty seconds what this does it basically takes that cushion out  the chairs proposal and it increases the chance we have to come to the emergency fund finally prohibiting the a b c funds from moving with programs will severely limit our ability to repair our ties either has there been no accusations that we've misspent funds it seems unwarranted so the summary is we have some options we have some different choices to make and more than happy to answer any questions you have thank  funds but haven't seen any result and that that concerns you know that that is a disconcerting to me that that we haven't seen can you comment on that because you know i have a hard time allocating more and more money and nothing coming back thank you thank you mr couch in the last three years we have doubled the capital improvement production we've done that while we've done all these internal plans internally we haven't hired consultants for that so and if money isn't spent if it's cash it's rolled over to control rates the next year and if it's a bond it was never spent so my management strategy because we are so behind on water infrastructure has been frankly to bite off more than we can chew push everybody to their limits not waste money but if we don't spend it roll it to the next year and keep moving we are so behind on water infrastructure and i think everyone knows that that i came in with a slow careful approach in my view was never going to catch up so again bite off more than we can chew i'd rather lapse the money spent at the next year and keep rolling it over to control rates then just bite off a little reserve fund specifically for that area for maintenance and repair development would you oppose something of that nature member victory no i would never oppose that i would submit that it's a little late the purpose of a river reserve fund is when you don't have maintenance activities you start saving for it once you're in the middle and you're behind what are you saving for you know you've got to do it now so i think a reserve fund probably should have been done about thirty years ago we should have raised rates one or two percent and at this point we'd have enough for replacement it's a little too late once your car broke down to start saving mean if you're saying one thing and you have teams ready and ready to go especially in these dire areas i'm ok with it but i'm hearing just you say one thing and i'm reading another and you're saying that same to me so i'm very confused but committee thank you for your hard work and surviving this my name is lee c n d nay i'm testifying on behalf of the sierra club a group as its conservation chair i'm here testifying on open space matters but i would like to say right up front that i certainly hope that we will continue the position of the sea grant coordinator the county share of this this is a very important position and we have turned to coordinators in this area since the ninety's and we need that expertise that our planning department on the open space proposals all those all the proposals for the open space fund this year for the ten point eight million dollars are very worthy proposals and i hope you will support them all i'm here to folks grew up their folks worked in the plant plantation fields here the kids went fishing along the shoreline all the way between what we call jaws now and it's an area that's important to our community and it's a chance of a lifetime we haven't had coastal land for sale very often especially in a big chunk like this it's a chance to take all of the good things that are associated with this land you know the heritage from the pineapple days the association with the hawaiian culture and the multiple recreational use it's the site of one of the iconic service spots in the world jaws which has no manage coastal access it's a popular area for surfers divers fisherman to go bike riders love it years ago we had the pineapple scrabble in those fields for the haiku community association very popular a bit with the kids where they went out there dirt bikes and ran through the pineapple fields all of that would be possible this areas near schools it's near the youth center it's it's a place where our community could really use we haven't asked for much over the years the last open space funding we got in this is before the open space fund existed was the marine park i think it was in one thousand nine hundred nine so i think that you know are going to do please put this in the budget as a placeholder we need to work out the details the price that this and that the exactly which acreage but just like there was in the budget for years as a placeholder and yes eventually it happened and this is the way to get stuff done and there are groups in the community that want to help with the management i know that that's a concern but i only have three minutes here so i can't go into great detail thank you thank you mister christians for the your testimony members everyone and thank you very much for your testimony this morning david good please construction related permit processing and promising results going strong fears of suggestion in areas of highway maintenance one the transfer of the two construction equipment mechanics to d m is premature until a solid that with a proper plan and think this is a great topic of discussion next year the yield for for line is really important improve our productivity in the type of equipment we have the need for that great of an operator to run the equipment types of projects we have to do the foot control and sediment basins on the west side replacement also those are but also really hope at some point we will need additional funding at the mike while veteran cemetery depending on the exact time that project is turned over so please consider adding back the e p and if the funding ameri quest is not feasible consider placing a dollar marker for salary which would grease of a move to fill the position when the cemetery addition is ready we need to keep that place ship funds if we have come in from our provides hope we can get your fast support keep those projects moving i am concerned a million dollars for countywide drainage may leave us holding the bag or shall i say the bucket as we have plenty of projects and a lot of emergency work that comes out the needs us funding him out originally requested for the melanie parkway intersection improvements we will be getting here i am committee those deeds and results this week so it is the really that close to moving forward so that intersection just cannot wait another year the centrally signal upgrades we've just a little project in for the whole year so we're fine with deleting that pavement rehabilitation of various locations in south maui it was mentioned there's additional funds in the county wide resurfacing but if we use those funds for design of this vetted project we're just not going to be resurfacing in south maui for f y sixteen finally regulatory us four we can live with the four hundred thousand hopefully we can still need requirements if we find we're in a bind we may come back to you in the building permit revolving fund we are unclear if the premium payers are deleted but we need it well you mentioned that the central valley landfill you don't do the mechanic work for them correct we used to in the past five six seven years ago that work is incredibly ok yeah that's something we may want to talk about too i would agree and i think the director brings up a good point members let's not forget we should've split the same amount of actually reduced in amount that we got confirmation late last night early this morning that that was that new number is five ok very good thank you thank you thank you into the questions for director good members  being a good to go thing correct we've been going back and forth on the deeds the the owner of the roadway has done all the improvements and i checked with staff this morning to find out exactly where it was and they're actually preparing a letter to come to me to go to you folks so looks like it needs to be transmitted in full council first referral to your committee but i put in writing here and i'm committing to get it done this week i think that was a concern is question of you know should we spend the money if we don't have the chose to visit and keep coming back as my role as a police chief is to make sure that these folks feel safe as they visit i thank you for reviewing our budget and looking at it and i know you make a couple  recommendations and in these recommendation that there are four areas of that you had identified there we need to review as department head we apply the same principle as i mentioned to you we look at everything that we have and out of those four revision recommended by your face we chose to areas of concern and i'm here to testify asking you if you please revisit that and reconsider it and i list these two items in priority the first priority is that every placemen of our fleet vehicle for the uniform but your service program he would recommend and reducing our proposal by forty two percent as i review these vehicle or this we do have our policy and our policy is for years if the vehicle was in service for four years ninety thousand miles or if the cost of the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle or so these  s assigned to this district we have issues in this district the variability of service to repair the vehicle is not really a very liberal like our district here sometimes even the girls go down for a brake job it will sit there for a while until we provide the service to do the repair if we have major repair for this vehicle the vehicles will be shipped back to maui to do the repairs and then ship it back to the road district to unfortunate thing is mr chair i can't send a vehicle out there i can't ship a vehicle to be doing the repair is in and it's not practical and we haven't been done in doing that in the past and i'm asking you if you can reconsider allowing these vehicle allowing us to purchase these vehicle ladies for a rural district the second item is the preeminent for our investigative services you recommended a twenty five percent cut and i'll uniform but  service is a recommendation of twelve percent well uniformed services is the backbone of the department these are the folks that are out there day in day out as i made my proposal to you mr champ the recommendation was based you chief for being here do you have that in writing i know you haven't passed it out but it looks like you're reading up or is that your own handwritten notes that's my note but i will if you wouldn't  brought up with us this morning yes mister other questions for the chief members and chief we thank you for coming this morning and sharing your concerns with us thank you embers we're going to take a break until ten forty five this morning we know the budget finance committee will come back to order and we'll proceed with public testimony and our first test fire is pam polk and she'll be followed by gen for dial the sea grant extension position line one thousand budgeted for eight thousand nine hundred seventy five dollars i'm testifying before you today on this because i was a secret agent in rhode island for fourteen years secret was founded in sixty eight it basically or thirty three c grant programs around the country and essentially what it is it's sort of provides expertise from academia as well as folks who are local  practitioners addressing research extension education and communication to the better understanding and stewardship of our marine and coastal resources as what i would see run asian i serve all over at islands thirty nine cities and towns and working with the planning stabs building officials so on zoning officers town managers department staffs and their boards and commissions on a variety of projects to address the issues they faced with specific regard to the impacts on land use and future development i was involved  working with the folks in developing a twelve week course with all of the boards and commissions of three communities that shared an aco for where they had declining drinking water quality point source pollution runoff in the bays and coastal areas and loss of open space there is no county government no england and or dial and so there's essentially is no regional strategic planning we worked with the boards and commissions the chairs the town managers to try to develop that integrated better coastal watershed land use making after twelve weeks i can tell you that not a single council member or board member missed a session and from that point on an m o u was developed to have better watership planning and management decision making as a see grant specialist i work with all of the rhode island coastal communities and several eight state agencies to develop the first ever state wide public access plan identifying thousands of public access areas which had previously been hidden blocked in our subjects and contest contested case hearings grant specialist i worked with the state department of transportation in rhode island coastal communities fire and police departments to develop the first ever digital geospatial living hurricane evacuation plan and notification system road signs were installed red cross shelters for established and highway notification boards were delivered in a statewide coordinated vacuous notification system i have a lots of detailed examples but what i want to say to you is that what this position provides is an expertise that is not currently available and i am quite frankly blessed and lucky to have terrorism expertise in the expertise of coastal geology which is so present in maui and our permit in our planning our community planning this week terrorists coming to to have put to produce a four hour workshop on coastal hazards in those impacts konica kind those areas i could go on and on and on my time is up but i've got detailed examples of the value of this position thank you thank you members for thank you very much cheer and then you miss but for being here if this position is not funded and we don't have or is that we're something that we'll need anyway and that we may have to contract with folks to do that's a great question basically through federal laws and state mandates just in community comprehensive plans alone we need to address certain areas in terms of climate change the impact of sea level rise coastal erosion and so forth and quite frankly what is done now by other states i know this because i just returned from the conference is they hire out consultants for tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars tara the position is critical and tara in particular has that knowledge that we have every day accessible to us on staff not only do we have that knowledge and expertise which we're now able to include in our community plans in our every day permitting but i can tell you as a fact as being a you know oceanographer and so forth we have access to noah and a lot of resources simply because we have tara working on our staff thank you very much it appears that we might spend more money than having to position a huge amount ok thank you fishermen that i dive these areas all the time and i'd really like to see these lands kept preserved for the local people and also i'd like to support the  fifty eight signatures that we collected in a few short hours at the holo lael last saturday in support of using the open space funds to acquire land out on the north shore so i just want to say a huge thanks for getting that in the budget and i want to make sure that you guys keep that as a priority in your minds and a priority in the budget this really is sort of a once in a lifetime opportunity to use those funds to get land from the hammock work that you know you haven't ever gotten any yet from the open space funds over here and it's a really wonderful way to spend that money that's about all i have to say frankly you know we're out there were pushing for their stuff happen on facebook i hope to see a lot more people coming down and testifying you'll be getting things by e mail you'll be getting phone calls people really care and people are really excited this is the first time those lands have become publicly available on the market and to pass up this opportunity would really be a travesty and i've also been in touch with the bursa and the folks that have partnered with amby and they are they are cognizant of the importance of this plan and to  the people here and again i urge you to keep this money as a placeholder so that we can work with them to really find the best ways to use the money to preserve access to preserve the actual land and move forward with a really comprehensive project i'm hoping person a vote let me speak on behalf of them i'm speaking on behalf of my friends and relatives out there now i do have a question excuse me you mentioned that  there's some money in the budget i wasn't sure there there isn't one in the chairs proposal are you talking about the new addition that there's ten point eight total in the open space and that there was a three point eight number put in specifically for acquisition of lands and unfortunately there wasn't but we'll talk about that you're bringing that into your yes i think just to clarify i place that into my individual budget that was submitted to for for revenues that are above and beyond the open space proposals that are all together that lucy and a neighbor for two earlier so you know again as a placeholder in order to look at how we can really go best about using elaine good morning chair council members thank you for the opportunity to come here and provide public testimony on behalf of the fire department's proposed budget it's a long list as you know so i won't be purchasing any of that at this point because looking at all of the programs within my department the substantial deletions that we need to talk about and i was very happy to hear that budget chair was going to open some dialogue for us to come back and talk about specific items so i really appreciate that opportunity  back in two thousand and five i hope you folks remember the callie shopping center fire also known as the office fire you know there's a lot of lessons learned there from our department and what we set forth in two thousand and eight when i took over was upping our training and our ability to give you all of our citizens the opportunity for us to provide  service possible and we took that and we ran with it and because of that incident we know provide a much better service for our community not only in fire but in all of the responsibilities that we have and there are so many to list so i also want to bring up a situation that happened in two thousand and seven in charleston south carolina where they lost nine firefighters and one of the probably the reports during the investigation from the national institute of science and technologies was that some of the training that they had or didn't exists cause that possibility of all those deaths  that could happen to us in two thousand and five so my administration took the responsibility and did the research on how we were able to solve some of that issues number one protecting our firefighters and with that we also protect our citizens so i want you to know that we've spent a lot of time and effort in the last seven years to put together the budgets that we present to you with extreme deep thought from all of our bureaus and all of our personnel that work on that and we also go through the communities our districts and find out what their needs are and all the things that we can give them the tools and training for them to do their job safely so with that i want to conclude on the fire department's request and i look forward to the dialogue that will have in the next few days i appreciate that i'd also like to comment about the kiva system our department is part of the system and i think you need to fund that as a whole because the services needs that support to move forward it is very critical for our outreach with the public and also i'd like to say please support the boys and girls club of mali they do great service for all of our kids that you know  so thank you for the opportunity thank you chief members questions for that you see none thank you very much thank you and tomorrow paulton will be followed by tony craig i think that's a very worthwhile investment of our open space funds i do not support fifty thousand dollars of colony funds being given to the state for a non fire but for thirteen years we respond to every nine one one call that ocean related between eight and four thirty taking away from the designated colony beach park and it's a valuable service that a community that we don't get paid for we often go out in hazardous conditions without hazard pay heister i weaned at great expense to our own bodies and we do this because we care about public safety and after thirteen years of koku it goes beyond use to abuse and i notice that the council budget chairs has delayed the transfer of ocean sea from parks and rec to the fire department and i can understand and accept it is what it is even though the public voted on it and from what i see that has see just a county money by not doing it this time at this time so i would just respect operators it's not in the position description that we need to operate the specialized equipment that requires special life training it's not a mandatory training and i'd just like to ask you to recognize that you know a lot of times we go out trying to save a life but nobody seems to have our back so i'm just asking that you have a support council members coc three two or three life guard at the tower the person that goes on the disk is getting paid the same as the person that's in the tower as if you read the budget it's to provide high quality lifeguard service at the designated beaches so we're being paid to provide high quality lifeguard service at the designated beaches when there's a nine one one ocean call it's not generally not for our beach the p t b is not a co operating specialized equipment which is what it is because you need to go through two weeks of specialized training you don't get hired as a lifeguard in run a jet ski so we're being paid to do one job and we're doing something that we're not being paid to do ok ok so it's while you're on duty you're going out to these other spots where you're just not getting paid extra for the  specialized where is it hazardous duty or special equipment it's specialized equipment it can be hazardous to the pinion on the conditions if there's high surf or high wind it's like you know kind of saying like will give the fire tomorrow for coming to testify you said you had a statement saying that you feel like we said we probably may not want to volunteer these services in a much longer so what exactly does that mean well you know another thing that i noticed in the budget was that there's annual recertification maintenance training for jet ski operators for forty two positions that was in the mayor's original proposal we've never had annual training it's been to the point where you go through the class and you're a jet ski operator kind of for life you know if it comes to a point where we need to recertify this i can't think very many people would volunteer to go recertify it knowing that we're not getting paid and at the point in my history where i've been an operator and  where i've since learned that if you feel like your life is in the air by going out nobody can force you to do that and if if i'm facing like twenty foot surge i'm going  consider if i'm going to call in the scheme of two young children i have family and it's it's getting to the point where the thing that we are super human in the jet skis are getting bigger and bigger it's it's gone from like a five hundred pound piece of equipment to a thousand pound piece of equipment and you know when you have victims on the back of the ski on a thousand piece of equipment it gets more difficult to handle and then you add in high wind and high surf onto it it's to the point where you're almost creating a hazardous situation and if if i'm not sure if you guys monitor the fire channel but a lot of times  resources are being held back to let the skis investigate the situation first which is practically cost saving measure but it doesn't feel to me that we're working as a team when the one that's not getting paid for this service is all the time being dispatched to investigate every ocean call whether they're not sure it's a distress call or not between eight and four thirty if we were getting paid to do that was bolton i think you're you're giving a very good answer but and so the specific question we've got a lot of test for is to get through this morning so thank you thank you thank you ms fulton any other questions from people see none thank you very much for being here today thank you and mr craig will be followed by  for two hundred fifty thousand dollars in the maui county budget to provide some relief for the cost of providing physician services to many of holly mcclure residents at its two nursing homes and will assure that we can continue to admit people from the community and from our morial some of you know some of you don't that a number of years ago the physicians except for kaiser and a handful of others stopped admitting people to the hospital and  so we were forced to basically bring locums physicians temporary physicians at first from around the community but then the other community physicians wouldn't do that so we actually had to bring them in from the mainland and as you know we have a history of being self sufficient but we've been experiencing year to year losses for the past five years due to the reductions of medicare medicaid rates in order to be able to moving and caring for maui citizens from our memorial and the community we're going to we we have to fly these physicians in every four to six months nursing homes on other islands are not having to pay for this physician support and we haven't asked the state for funds because this is a unique problem to maui but i want i want you to know that this is a one time ask we've got is we've got to solve this problem some other way you also know that there's quite a bit of change going on with the hospital and with some of the providers and the payers so we recognize that the council has a difficult job in balancing the various human service needs in the community and will be grateful for any support you may be able to provide as we continue to work with other stakeholders to solve the problem thank you thank you mr craig members questions for the test fire scene and i've got a question for you you're just well he notes that north nursing homes on the other islands are not having that the challenge is what's different between our situation and that o basically compensating them to make sure that they go and attend a minute ten people there on a wahoo the university of hawaii has a program that trains geriatric fellows these are physicians who are already in practice but now they're learning to be geriatricians and they basically as part of their practical they admin and the ten people in a number of nursing homes and then there are the hospitals on a while who basically support physicians because gets people out of the hospital sooner so they see that in their interests to provide support for physicians i'm not as familiar with the big island but of course the a lot of the  example a hospital is actually a four bed hospital and a hundred ten bed nursing home so they have physicians basically around the clock that are part of their emergency room but also see people in the in the in the nursing home so they them are there are nursing homes and hilo that are service by the state hospital doctors are the doctors that work with the state hospital system all he lost bill itself has one hundred bed nursing home inside of it  but there are there are two other nursing homes in hilo that are private and i believe that they are they're part of a large mainland corporation called and they they are providing physician support services  through that corporation and is there any way that you could link up with the folks from the medical school we attempted that but they won't they won't send people over here they have to keep  your leadership on that issue and to assure you that we will work very hard to use those funds as effectively and efficiently as possible if they make it through the entire budget process i also want to assure you that i'd like to continue the conversation with you after the budget process is over about how to stop the continued introduction of kochi for example fire ants to maui county i would also like to urge you to restore the proposed cuts to other department of water other department of really has increased its rigor in going through these proposed waters it projects it's not just a rubber stamp amount and so any of those dollars that are put in now will certainly help to reduce future costs also would like you will be followed by you know highlights i have enjoyed spending time with you over the last year and appearing before a number of conferences i had hoped that i would have been able to achieve a little better understanding of the operations of the county my way i guess  need to come back some more next year and try to keep working on that the highlights for you are four main items first of all the reduction in repair maintenance of eight hundred thirty four thousand dollars means that we will not replace any p c s next year as member cochrane recognized earlier this month the definition of insanity applies to our situation so we had to change our approach to try and meet the constraints that have been faced with no comprehensive service this money means no p c s next year that means no improvement story ability to defend the p c s against cyber attacks since we will not be able to replace these aging p c s we've talked about for a while second the elimination of existing information systems analyst five position by not converting it from a ground funder to a regular position and it's really not an expansion it's just a conversion means that will negativity impact our efforts to integrate and secure our criminal justice information sharing efforts and this shanghai happens between the prosecuting attorney's office to our police department and many criminal justice agencies in the be able to move ifas off of the oracle database to a microsoft sequel server database to save on the escalating cost of oracle ifas is one of the last information systems still running on oracle we're trying very hard to move off of that chairs proposed budget continuing forcing us to continue with an aging application that's not meeting the expectations of functionality and security we will also be forced to continue with a group where i still hundred thousand is foot out as our e platform you've already abandoned we'd like to be able to do the same thing finally maps must happen keep us twenty years old and seriously obsolete you have to pay the bills for the replacement project and we must manage this complicated project involving almost all county departments g i s systems that will be to foundation and integration with a number of existing county three minutes information systems they have no but will i'm sure where are we with the bidding for the maps project at the end of march we selected one of the three finalists vendors were in contract negotiations and on the rules of purchasing i'm really not able to divulge too much detail because it all ties into an official notice of award that hasn't happened yet the one time cost of all three vendors are very much in the same ballpark and very little variation the methodology and the functionality of just software is something that causes one to ice to the top and will need to look at the ongoing five year cost that we asked for to make sure all of that is in line with our expectations but i can share all three of our leading solutions in the marketplace that will really help the new employer mentor program and i wanted to tell you a little bit about what we did with that money with eight full time staff and two part time hourly tutors we were able to help one hundred eighty five families  and provide advice and referrals to one hundred forty five to ensure that we weren't duplicating services so we have a filter where we bring students through to make sure that there's nowhere else in the community that they can be served out of those hundred forty served in a full time seven to three p m after school weekend placements and what we do with them then is we have excursions and take them off site during our school day and then we place them with either community services like habitat humane society feed my sheep or different recreational programs boys and girls club at the point that they're a bit ready to go into a larger group environment and fifty percent of the students as students that we serve actually go back to part to the department of education and finish public school successfully students who have come to us who could not read past the third grade level are able to reintegrate into the high school system and pass outside of special lead and outside of having special behavioral services over the past year we've developed relationships with twenty two local businesses longtime successful business and employer mentors in the areas of  agriculture or new about energy hospitality tourism construction health services and public services we've done our homework and we have designed a program that no one else is offering by partnering with other community resources so when we work with police c p s probation it's not just a referral we're asking someone else to take our kids we work with them to figure out what we can each do best  so for example working with the police having juvenile comm you know some schools might think it's embarrassing to have the police out in our parking lot more than once a month but by us joining together our students never get to the point where they're ar we've seen amazing results from working with social services and other folks to get the parents what they need and more the hub because we actually work with the parents and make sure they meet the appointments and get get to where they need to be as well as we listen to them you know we're not perfect we make mistakes someone may have suggestions for us we take them we are really grateful the places like m e b who help our teachers and help bring us all the resources that would be at the department of ed  what we're hearing is that national report show that forty percent forty two percent of employers say that high school graduates are lacking in preparedness  i've been honored to be a motor resident since one thousand nine hundred nine i have two children of how i descend and i call my home i have seen the development of this island with my own eyes from the times when i didn't even have a stop sign for the present day wh small island handle i believe these proposed corridor is a great opportunity to preserve and on our not only our land but the people in our community the youth of haiku have nowhere to gather for safe and healthy would be a great chance to help our youth to make a park where we can perhaps grow food gardens where we can write our bikes and walk safely a place where we can share our culture and enjoy nature safely with their families residents and visitors we know that the land itself needs remediation due to the hundred years of chemical inflicted by a pineapple crops this will be a praise when we can actually start trying new ways to help nourish our land back to health and give back to our community that way as well three hundred fifty acres of parkland would be a dream come true for most haiku and north shore residents three hundred fifty acres of new homes in subdivisions create havoc in or rule or rural haiku not to mention the possible negative effects on our reefs and oceans the wave itself has become an international attraction and we should honor it surf is a sport of or you know so it's an attraction to our island people from all over the world come to watch the giant waves and that they're devils who write them thousands of tourists and residents drive down to this area when the waves are big it's true and the traffic is horrendous small sisters daughters brothers cousins all gather to watch their loved ones write the waves and do what they love to do so what's going to happen if there's a subdivision there are we all going to be barred from watching our ohana do what they love to do how is this going to suction of these homes going to help our community problems i believe that building a subdivision will not benefit our community but the treatment that this large area from our community currently for fishing although we love all these great spots i do think there is a need for a park on the north shore where we can take our kids to play and enjoy nature in a safe way i was fortunate enough to be able to live in the area when i first visited hawaii as a child and i have so many great memories of k b and exploring that  area there are so many cool spots down there that i would love to show my son but is not currently safe to do so i believe if we allow this area to be the vela it would not be a good thing for the community this will bring more traffic to the area and more pollution to them and it will make a two hour drive to a three hour drive to hot and i'm sure it will bring many more on first scene implications if you allow the budget to be used for this quarter it will not only be beneficial for residents but also for tourists i don't know exactly what the plans are for this courier forgive me for not informing myself but i take our kids down there and teach everybody about how hawaiians used to live in that land particularly back in the day this land has already been abuse with all the plastic from the pineapple and i think it's a great opportunity to show these areas some love in the form you chair thank you council members appreciate being able to speak today we also appreciate councils consideration to the salt ways divisions budget thus far i would be his division chief i would be remiss foot in expressed some concerns regarding the nine percent that was reduced from a budget however i do ask counsel to refer to him for question number nineteen that explains the benefits of proactive management versus a reactive management mode was a great question that was asked and we appreciate counsel's review of the answer there as well as looking at the chart that we provided looks like this and i think you may have had it with you today as well but the difference of reactionary versus proactive and the benefits to the community and the environment as well as the division moving forward we did ask for a thirty four point eight million dollars budget three point two roughly was cut which results in that nine percent rough reduction there in the administration program there was a c three engineer cut doing so will require continued farming out to consultants just keep in mind that that cost is higher than it is for in house engineer again please refer to him for for justification and the actual overall cost savings of adding that engineer position cutting both the position as well as premium pay administration actually forces some cuts in some increased risk there because there isn't much alternative there there were also some computers that were cut in the administration program the computers mainly for operation and safety training of our staff and to try to build some of their skills to move up so we certainly can do without but that was something we saw as trying to build sustainability for our own staff in the operations programme we thank you very much for the hon operators appreciate council's consideration for those two positions much needed and thank you very much we do assume we're getting those two mechanic positions transferred we want to thank you for that as well we do have about fifty million dollars in rolling equipment and mechanical infrastructure with no current formal maintenance program and no mechanics so we feel that's justified for sure for those two positions to start that program we do have some seen the revised revenue and budget numbers that we asked council to take a look at an initially in the budget we asked for a year so that's down to four months so please refer to e m for for that  detail overall reducing the contract services are an m and premium pay along with cutting some positions leaves few management options except some reductions in increasing some compliance risk and we share the with just a question for you we have asked for and we have received i know there was a question of whether something's got through this weekend budget office we have asked for your analysis of what the monthly cost of all your contractor all services and and other such contracts were have you provided that yes thank you chair we didn't have a monthly comparison cost between the reactionary versus proactive mode again we we threw this together for council and i think it's before you today that's it's an overall broad brush picture of the impacts and some general costs for the next six years however we inhabit a monthly cost of ala we can work on that but it's not something we had readily available well what i was what i was hoping to get that you provided us that long list of contracts that are in effect and what i was hoping to get was for you to point out because you know i think we all want to make sure that we're in compliance but it would help us if you could share with us what the which of those contracts are currently in place and need to be continued and what the monthly cost is that you  because as we discussed earlier we've essentially moved one point three million dollars of cash out of this year's operations into future years by encumbering contract so it's important what we're looking at this year is you've already got one point three or more million of your budget funded for next year so it's very difficult for us to identify what you actually need next year since you've already pushed a significant amount of money out of this year's cut out of this year's reach into next year yeah that brings up a good in your your graph isn't going to cut it i think that the question i thought that was asked was more about the reactionary versus prior to so i apologize for that we're asking we're asking you what you need what you're spending now which i'm assuming is what you need because you you know scientific overspent so what i'm asking you to do is just give us a monthly cost so that we can identify what we need to do for this upcoming budget ok i do appreciate that we did make a couple of  fourth or actually if you could just have it when you come back to see us ok there was any questions from the right day see none thank you very much thank you very much share thank is the last person to sign up to testify so afternoon so if you would like to provide testimony please sign up in the lobby moratoriums supporter to testify about the fifty thousand dollar a line item to get an environmental impact statement which on the face of it sounds like a good idea but i understand the details are a little confusing maybe i'm missing something fifty thousand dollars seems to me like it should be enough money to hire a person to coordinate the event of arranging for an empire environmental impact statement that suits all the parties involved as opposed to allowing the agro chemical companies to give information that they choose without oversight and without independent review and with the agra chemical deep pockets it seems to me that there is more than enough money for them to pay for the studies that are necessary for them to continue to make the kind of money that they are making so i encourage the council to use these companies who are exploiting hawaii for their own benefit and to provide the resources necessary to make sure that what they're doing is safe for the people in the ajna and i thank you very kind attention thank you dr goh members questions for the test fire see none thank you for being here this morning and we'll go to the district offices next to hannah dunn do you have any test fires this morning thank you very much to the office on the night denise thank you and to ella do we have any test fires well we i guess we don't have a test fire or or an l so is there anyone else in the chambers who would like to provide testimony this morning see none members without made in the budget and finance committee will come back to order and members we will be proceeding with the review of the management section and the management section that will be dealing with  division and members and all of us have varying responsibilities through the week but understand that if you need time away from the chambers and e mail to the staff requesting to be excused will not be accepted it has to be a conversation with either me or mr holcombe when he returns and i'll just leave it at that time for the budget and it's critical for all of us to be here listening so that when we are in the midst of decision making that we know as much of what was discussed as possible so just  we will not be accepting email notifications of not being around but it needs to be a discussion with the chair whether it's me or whether it's mister because we need to make sure that as as many of us as i'm here mostly to answer questions but i believe you give me an opportunity to finish my oral testimony just morning and one point i had not had enough time to explain my perspective was on the maps project where we are placing kiva as you know to keep us twenty years old and its placement our systems are used by just about every department the project we are  engaging in will not only be a place to keep a system but will also modernize and integrate and correlate all the geographic information that is being produced and maintained which is one of the key systems that we are looking to integrate with and the integration with a number of existing systems with the upgraded we're planning makes for a very complex project that it's going to last about two years so besides the money to fund this we really do need help to manage this to make sure that everybody comes to the table at the right times with the right information vetted to make the right decisions to ensure that the end of the day we have the system that we all envision we all believe we should be able to have especially the integration is a key element of truly an expansion we have to position we just need to change the funding model the project manager is going to be charged with making sure that over the next two years just project is successful and achieve all the goals in the process he or she will also help the county realize a strategic project management capability that is necessary for a number of the projects coming up not only in i t but general purpose non breakup mortar projects doubt that available resources but the one area where we should think twice before we cut is in information technology because that is the  opportunity that's to vehicle that will allow a lot of departments to achieve these efficiencies that you're looking for without technology it's going to be a huge challenge for a lot of departments to really achieve their mission and so i submit that for you was for the equipment replacement and cybersecurity issues you mentioned chair i looked at the details and i saw that the total request for repair maintenance was cut back from two point eight million dollars to an even two million dollars so it to me it looks like it was just a  not something that we can even talk about that's going on and they have to have it for so many reasons to upgrade to the network and hardening of network is essential in our approach to improve cyber security so if i'm going to look at what does the eight hundred something thousand dollars represent i cannot help but focus on the effort to replace p c s it has an impact on cybersecurity if we continue to work with p c s that are out of date in our operating system it has an impact on productivity and the approach to comprehensive security was meant to create a stable funding picture so that we recognized the costs of doing business and and perhaps you can start looking forward on things so i guess my concern is that in your your notes here you talk about you know cyber security attacks and i know you only have three minutes so you were able to go into detail on some of this but i know from experience that old x p systems are no longer supported and easy to break into so do you do we still have x p systems out there we have a we have a number of them still in place it's kind of a chicken and egg thing to some degree because the key system is not capable of running on desktops to run windows seven windows eight it only supports all the versions of other browsers and so x p is kind of going to stick around until be replaced to keep  so we're looking at ways to alleviate that but you know and we have found some solutions and we're working on a virtual desktop approach so that's why we still have these machines hopefully in the next three months we can replace that we be able to get rid of them before to keep projects completed but finding the solutions really you know dealing with twenty year old system is something the industry is all over we have kind of have to find our own way around that and look for the best solutions so yes we have them and we have suffered the consequences in the past over the last two years we've doubled the number of infections around somewhere where you know data gets encrypted and we have to be stored and loss of productivity and what have you little bit remind i guess i still have pieces from the gartner study that talked about our spending and our size of our department versus the industry peers half percent so we're less than half than what does the average in the industry similarly for for staffing levels although we need to acknowledge that we don't develop software we help implement and manage and support and what can you live without i mean basically tell us what the most important aspect of your budget is and all if you're not going to get everything what can you use now that can keep would have asked for the moon you know see where i landed i don't think that's respectful to you it's not fair to the community so i work with my staff and with madison to be responsible and  because the environment just changing five years ago yeah we delayed a year not a year to replace is outdated equipment no problem right now the bad guys out there will jump all over us and make us pay for it  so it's not the answer you're looking for but it's the answer i'm comfortable and i want you to be truthful i want you to tell it like it is because if you don't then the public doesn't have a good understanding on what's occurring you know if you feel that what you've asked for is them you know that you need to continue to protect this colony from cyber attacks and other aspects of computers and what is occurring out there then i have no problem you know then i can see all right that's what he really really  and i my job is to see how some some way to make that come to fruition ok so was that being said if that's what you're telling me that's fine because a lot of times i've asked this question and all of a sudden i got an answer like walking used as i can use that i in the past the question was asked of me and if we look at the final bottom line on previous fiscal years she'll see that i'm within one or two percent of the total expenditures or of the budget so i have not had any problem i'm hanging on to the money because i'm in the final stages of negotiating for different contracts comprehensive contracts and then placement of maps contra all of the will take somewhere between three and four million dollars just to see the first year so i want to make sure that i have you know the money and pushing off other things and we always have to prepare for something to go wrong in the last month cost a lot of money and you can't really wait for the next budget cycle you know two years later so i want to be assured out in the current year there's not going to be a problem spending the money next year  i have i have a list of this twice as long i think we have about nine different projects queued up and we're only looking for funding for maybe five or six so again there is way more money we can spend an will ever have access to so that it's not an issue ok again thank you very much for that i think it's important because we run into it so frequently in other areas thank you very much and thank you for nursing our computers through their old age thank you heard you see reparation for that so when we talk about the supply what is it one one million plus  with the proposed reduction what does that leave you with what you have from previous years in the current budget we were allocated one point three million dollars we use a little over two hundred thousand dollars for project management and other costs with issuing our fee evaluating out to doing site visits if you and we needed assistance with like i said earlier today we're still in negotiations to be a little bit over four million dollars so we'll need three and a quarter million dollars or so to finish the project i've asked for three enough million dollars so back in november i was lucky and i guess pretty pretty fenderson this market deal exclusively to the public sector so they're used to that budgeting cycle and what have you it means that we will have to pay close attention to how we structured the payments to make sure that we're not obligated make a payment that money is not available for so we'll need to really analyze that closely but about the project like i said will take about two years so the payments vendor will be spread out over the two ok thank you thank you for integration with state wide information criminal justice information sharing to help with the implementation of the maps project on the coordination do all the departments and vendors and everything else is program manager expansion positioned just a second position that is identified in the butt so those are two separate things one is just kind of changing the funding picture for a position that already exists the other one is is a new capability that we desperately need and that's why the earlier question about you know the water billing system yeah the funding is not our position but the water department to look to for support for project management so that's an example of the kind of projects that are already queued up for the the thousand dollars to allow us to continue moving from group price to exchange sixty five thousand dollars to help move to a mix of sequel so we can start cutting back on the bills that we pay for and the number very appropriately so issued a standard not every department you know really should be using their own cashiering solution it should all be to same county wide so it's easy to track and there was fifty thousand dollars in the budget for that and ten thousand dollars position i guess general management project manager if we don't if we don't get that position which you know we're we always balance do we take it outside and let them handle  actually hire a body what are the cost to us if we have somebody on the outside manage the project i think the going rate for somebody with those skills in the private sector as a consultant is of course of two hundred fifty dollars and typically an agreement we have would be limited to a specific project having this person on board well costs considerably less than two hundred fifty dollars an hour because otherwise i'd apply for the job and it also gives somebody in house that can develop an understanding of the whole organization that can be have to deal with the culture of the organization you have to deal with organizational change management not just change tickets on a construction project and that's a skill that is out there but we don't have it and it's also a capability that really needs to have somebody within the organization to understand the culture to work with the administration on the strategic priorities to make sure that we do things at the right time in the right order and and not just because somebody you know speaks more eloquently but it's really out of sequence on so that's a long term capability as a project management office perhaps that really helps a concept to to do forward looking things in a  way that build on each other rather than compete so to put it in a little bit different terms it's essentially a c i p coordinator for software instead of buildings not that we're doing c i p but it's that type of deal where they're taking care of the project overseeing the project yeah there's definitely that aspect of strategic prioritiz and you know working with the funding picture but that softer aspect software skills aspect of taking an organization through to change has to be you know responsive and not be a twentieth century organization and the twenty first century oracle is extremely expensive and you're saying s q l is less expensive that's one aspect and that's definitely the case and the other aspect is that  disk ills necessary to manage databases in oracle database environment are much harder to find a much more expensive to engage areas or a large pool of talent has been trained and capable in a microsoft sequel sort of a fireman so the county of maui has a better chance attracting that type of workforce than we do or we have not been successful at getting anybody even interested in coming to work for us so i think that some people from what i might but is there a difference in performance or i mean are we getting what we pay for if we go to the cheaper route or ago i would have had my answer a little bit about there is no doubt that it's capable of doing anything that the county you may need to do oracle is is really evolved maintaining the oracle database for the next year versus i guess the question is is this a project we've got lots on your plate at this point is this a project that can be i do not know exactly for this specific application you were talking about that i first cost difference between or sequel it's part of our strategy move away from oracle altogether i think the cost of modern version is is struggling to meet the needs and expectations organization so i'm not in position to put a hard dollar amount on that but i don't know what the cost of frustration is but it's probably a con that around here we do frustration and the other question i had for you regarding the x p s my recollections we gave you money to replace at least a good d a large portion of inventory we had of new p c s we've we've focused on getting doors deployed and they have been deployed but we felt for the long term  effective approach a comprehensive maintenance program sort of somebody else gets to deal with these problems so the funding that you provided for the p c s will be used for the first year comprehensive an about three hundred fifty to four hundred p c s from the funding in this year and then next year and the year after year after the steady level we will be able to replace the appropriate number so that we really do achieve a five have a visual if you could identify for us what the first year cost is the subsequent your costs it's different from the eight hundred i have worked with vendors to be able to be flexible depending on what the funding picture for next year looks like on the steady state it would be right about a million dollars a year for four hundred  i'm trying to achieve something that is predictable and steady every year so it is just really break it down in five equal if you would give us the breakdown for everything on the installed timeframe is about two years that's correct and then mr couch is question about the project manager you know keep it's a much bigger project  degree does the company that's possibly going to do the give a replacement to what degree do they provide that kind of coordination and expertise because clearly we're not going to be able to hire anybody who's defender will bring a project manager to table and the project manager who is responsible for managing their own resources their own timeline their own expenses and is responsible for coordinating with the customer o and we need to have somebody in a similar role that's can coordinate with upwards of a dozen different departments that all have an interest in the how does system is going to play out we also have the need to make sure  resources on our around are committed at the right times in the right quantities so that we can hold up our end of the bargain the vendor will not be able to clean up our data because although day no data in this marketplace day don't know our specific data we have to provide our own expertise to make sure that the data gets cleaned up that bad information gets filtered out that it gets formatted sort of can be moved into the next system we have the dick ordination when the vendor says you know you have to go down this road and we thought we were going down different world we have somebody that can help us figure out indeed if something happened that needs to how to suggest our expectations or if they're just trying to cut costs and deliver an inferior project to improve their profits and what have you so successful projects have a very well designed governance which provides balance between all the different parties involved and and it's like herding cats you know it's just really a handful for somebody on both sides of the you and of the one point four billion you have left on the computer contract is executed and then you get into progress payments based on accomplish certain milestones but they need to have that investment in software licenses right up front and that's kind of seed money because they'll have to come and money for people to come out and mobilize their teams and what have you so we expect to execute concert before the end of his fiscal year so we can come  it's questions i had for you  i'm sure there is one reason why he doesn't want to be up here but we'll let him off the hook for now thank you afternoon council members so just the budget that was proposed we have a couple of small things that possibly we could take a look into for a possible add on or reduction of as long as they're very small yet very small you know the biggest one that we saw that came off of it was of course the the million dollars for the restroom renovations that proposal just to keep that in there as you guys are where the parks restrooms rather be the beach or the parks itself with the conditions that it stands in and the elements of the weather you know there is a lot of unforeseen  sometimes with abuse sometimes with the various terms that we don't know some of the repairs of course the major renovations whether they're for but having that as well as we go along the lines of that  you know so that was a thing we can survive we could just maybe take a peek at that for a possible reduction in doubt and not a total deletion the other you know not even a big thing again small small thing  was going to recreation or west side department there was a deletion of replacement vehicle for thirty thousand dollars that vehicle actually was a replacement to begin from the state surplus and with over two hundred  vehicle so we could reconsider a possible reduction of so called or putting that bike on the line for the recreation west vehicle before by to contact a cup truck and again based on parks and rec we definitely are happy with what the council has given to the parks department our other big concern just from looking at it is the kind of  ocean safety coming back into parks and there was testimony today from lifeguards and a couple comments made almost the extent you know we've been running a streamline right now from the parks aspect of hauling over the ocean safety in parks department we've been running a very very streamlined operation and with them coming back and us not having the budget or the operations being put into parks that was deleted you know  it's going to be a pretty hard time for ocean safety if they don't get the funds they need if they're going to continue with parks i don't mention that is going to cost money to take into fire however that money that is being cost is because we haven't been requesting it due to the transfer we take a look at that as far as an ocean safety ever go to bring it back into the park in the interim we are going to need some operational funding we're currently using our park ranger a t v s for the down a t v with ocean safety so i just like the concept take a look at that as well with the transfer back into the parks department until we can maybe ratify the unit fourteen dollars some of the reasoning behind that as well but we're going to need some funding to get them up at least up to a part where everyone safe the community as well as our workforce being compensated as ocean safety versus just being especially those who have the special training with the jet skis right and so i think that's another issue that  you guys will have to look upon so you're saying that your primary budget by excluding them bringing them back and now the way the chair is proposed those revenue that you were seeking you're not going to turn around and been completely renovated completed with this renovation program what was the percentage from my understanding the original allocated money that was given from understanding it was all completed monies were used and the bathrooms are on the list were completed as far as percentage wise i can get back to you on that you know would be very curious on that if you can and as soon as possible because there were others that weren't as as dire need but in need of and i think that's what you're referring to by cutting this now those that may now become in dire need you may have challenges as far as funding part funding for those yes ok thank you thank you yes i think that was a concern you know based on our conversations we had during budget as we went through the renovations you know rooms were a big renovation as well you know with the basically everywhere in every district so we did we did allocate those funds there for those particular assumes but i think along the lines there were a few that didn't get to realistic terms they didn't get to those restaurant ovations or they were done to an extent of seventy five eighty percent complete may be exterior but interior still needed to be changed out as well so how do you find the least small portion of a very reduced portion having those for those that really need to be fixed immediately we have those available so actually your percentage of completion those that are on the list but is that my understanding that you have restaurants that have not made that list that needs to be addressed sells yes hundred percent for sure and i can get that as well but it has been completed i think you do have that already that was sent up there but i'll confirm what has been completed and yes we do have a handful probably more than a handful that needs to get to that point as well back to you it says here reduce equipment ninety seven thousand two hundred you adding up the all the you know i'm just looking at where the reduction of equipment budget see that reduction of ninety seven thousand that was a reduction to the the remaining portion of the aquatics program that is still in parks so that reduction is not related to the ocean safety equipment that was proposed in the fire department it ok this is but but ocean safety does go back to aquatic says it not correct but none of the equipment that none of the expansions proposed in the fire departments but have been included in the rest cochran thank you chair and thank you director for being here so i was hearing the one piece of equipment that you did highlight and it's a pick up for west maui is that kind of like the one you just can't live without kind of question because there's a ton of other mowers and i mean you name carden are these things that  actually renting a vehicle so we don't have a vehicle at all that has been down again it's lived his life span so it's been already done for about three months and we had a loner out there from our own site which again ha its life span as well so yeah that's why we can go to these carts everything is well i didn't want to throw everything back at what was being deleted but that's one of those things where we definitely back on the list if possible ok but that's good i mean if you had to pick one out of a laundry list i mean that's a good way to put it thank you and then in regards to that million dollars for repairs and maintenance in the park assessment for use be utilized for any impact of those developments on the community in lieu of actually providing new parks right so that if the developer provided a new park that be wonderful but in lieu of that you know they're providing money in this park assessment so me thank you get typically it's expanding a park or improving our park but not necessarily maintenance type it's you know it's just bodies decision also how they want to maintaining repairing of some of that broken apart now you need to improve it because so but as i understand the improvement means i mean yeah expansion is supposed to be used to purchase land you know to create more parks but anything new is safe to say like you have a facility and it doesn't every see and you want to install a new air conditioning unit park assessment fees can be paid for that not existing you're not trying to fix the existing air conditioning unit but you want to install new the chair would just call that a bit of a stretch to say no i think you know when you think when you use the word improvements in public terms it's generally when you are building something new and it's so i think you know we should try to stick  i wouldn't want you to access your park assessment funds and have them get whittled down to where the rest of ours ours are no i wouldn't like that either but i'm just because we're utilizing it for but for the bigger improvements for sure lighting and stuff would be allocated from the council for the assessment but one thing that we could be talked about is cochran was batting cage that would be something that could possibly be part of the get turned over with realistic it's a basement no use it's a basic reason for water that something like that work line would be perfect to expand to that scope as well so what thank you very much because that's where i was that this was kind of a surprise for me i don't know if work line itself but it's to the clerical position that was requested by triple c and chair okama felt that he didn't want to pay for a position that was  working for the state go ahead i recall the deputy director had said that the position would be to support better reporting for that grant on the m triple c side of things so that they can more accurately reflects how the money's being spent from their program but you know as it appears on one line and we have no explanation it appears to reduce the work line and that's not where we wanted to go we wanted to see more because the payback is so good  might part of the reasoning behind that was yes to have you know we want to countability on the money we give them so they want better reports but the other part of it was this actual scheduling of the work lines it's very difficult sometimes for the staff in the parks department to handle scheduling the different work lines to other departments right there prioritizing the scheduling or for the work when they're go they're going to be focusing on what their needs are and maybe not necessarily what some of the other county departments or non profits that utilize the work line need necessarily right so that was kind of the idea behind go through the parks department and and wait a significant period of time before something that scheduled sometimes if we knew the manager of the work line of the a c o that was managing the work line we might be able to get something squeezed in that we fed them the right amount of food and that but it was it was a huge challenge doing doing the scheduling of that and i think the parks staff could be better utilized you know doing their own stuff versus scheduling in triple c for other things i think that was part of the request i guess i would have the question of why would parks be responsible for scheduling every every other departments use of the work line because they're managing the grant right so the they're the ones that are coordinating the efforts of them triple c work lines because other than that you know the departments wouldn't know who to call at that i'm triple c there's no single person to call right so we had like i said we had cell phones that we could get a hold of but there needs to be some kind of coronation whether it's at the county level or at the  level that coordination effort needs to be done so i think what i heard from when i was because i asked the same questions when i was reviewing and before we proposed the budget right and what i heard was that you know th their staff is burdened with a lot of other things that they're doing and this is just something additional that could be better managed if it was not within the parks but i wouldn't we had a couple of years ago we had a problem getting them to spend all the money in the work line budget and i agree with you and i'm sure the chair and all the rest of the members agree that we get a huge bang for the buck utiliz even though we eat separately and we still we have to coordinate that just a chair and it was it was some time over someone of a challenge to get it all together so i'd be all too happy to see some way out somehow some ability to can help us the better it is for plus for them this is a self esteem building you know these guys get out there they build self esteem they feel like they're worth something you know to see them when they help all this disabled when we have the special fare when they're helping all these people off and on and off the transit and even sometimes helping them get into the fear area because we have volunteers high school kids that come out and help us also but you can see that in their feet and their idea smile they have helping someone they know is even more disadvantaged and they are has more of a challenge and it wasn't because they chose to be that way that's the way it happened so i really hardly support this program and whatever we can do ok on the one million dollar request the chance recollection is that the one million dollars or thereabouts was put into the two thousand and fourteen budget for the shown in the budget in two thousand and thirteen there was no expenditure there so can you point us to the line where that money is being replaced yet mr chair from my recollection the fiscal year two thousand and thirteen appropriations were ones that were appropriated in the recreation support services program per district there was a certain provi sos that were were allocated per district and so it wasn't in the park maintenance program it was in the recreation support services program can you show us where it was and are you looking at the fiscal year two thousand and sixteen proposed as the details we're working off of parks maintenance without the million dollars of parks maintenance is a little bit higher than it was in two thousand and thirteen so if we're putting it back it's going back into where it came from has now been pretty much moved in to see ip to give the department six months longer to  spare well take a look at the and i also have staff adding up what the increase is in ca so mr i found out where they're at in the details throughout the recreation support services index called nine one five zero one two and then on page twelve seventy eight there's one from a while and then one five one one zero parks building repair maintenance repair slash paint i don't know what it but again it's operations i know that they had challenges i got involved with some of the challenges they had with the finance department on expenditures for basic repair and maintenance items coming out of the capital program  budget and finance department had a problem with  that suggesting that lists of items that we haven't seen currently none of them have that kind of repair and maintenance to them i'd t and replacing the sink you know is more of a repair and maintenance item then replacing a roof it's early or something like that and so the you know that's where they're having problems and they're ordering new faucets out of the capital program that's where finance is saying no there that's not that should be repaired regular repair main tonight i'm not a capital item back to ocean safety if we don't have the equipment operations moneys to get what they need ocean safety will suffer and i think they definitely have been in the back shadows for all these years man nine thousand four hundred fifty dollars rather it comes to us or fire if it was to transfer as we go through those moneys would have been allocated rather safira to the parks when the transfer does take place all of that will go with them as well but again right now they're in a running on very streamlined very you know some hardship of hardship with their vehicles as so that's number one priority i think parks immigration department standpoint if they are coming back to us and the transfer will be on a little more delay and we go forward they need to get what they need to survive out there and for our community and for our employees so that's the number one i was a priority for ocean safety when it comes to parks again we were year i don't want to touch bases on too much of the equipment when it comes to moore's and everything else i think we were fair on both sides that we got so looking at that and again if we are looking to increase our work is maybe increasing that funding so we can increase some of their expansions for work claim to get out there more in the community and get some of that stuff done that has been neglected in certain areas that we can't get to so basically you know with that being said without going on the whole list as important  seventy two thousand one hundred i'm sorry five hundred forty eight miles so it's definitely that's life that's the vehicle there and then again with the work line i would say you know possibly increasing funding for that  and ocean safety being the priority with getting what they need for the equipment expansion that was deleted that could make expansion at least back on track so we can get them what they need for the rescues  one hundred percent i think all these years they definitely have been going over and beyond what their scope of work is and you know i think i mentioned today during testimony i mean they did it with love and they still do love it but again they need to be compensated for and again that ties into the fact of why we're pushing so hard for the transfer i think you know being in the parks and rec department you know we're not a rescue team we're not a thing where the fire they compensated for every call they go out they can only fight a shifting them out compensation for it so there's no question that something needs to be done our number one goal on the parks department though was getting the transfer through bargaining in fourteen which would be the ocean safety guys that is in there  we were relying on that for the supplemental pay that they do these are so there's no question that they deserve the pay and it's long overdue but i feel that fire would actually even have their tiers of those hours you know as far as putting in x amount of hours on the ski and you got to and it's been and it needs to be retrofitted type thing and there's a part from another area that they're willing to move over in this and that but it needs to be funded for some things something like that can guys feel that it's within the code we can advise you guys and show you what the code says and what the state law says but it's going to ultimately be up to the council whether or not the council feels that's an appropriate funding source thank you  but again as mentioned first future scope of work out there that's something that we can discuss but that particular subject is already being worked on i just want to make sure there's funding to carry it through and i'm trying to figure out where to get that i think we do for that  any other questions for the department move into public works in ten minutes so we're back at three o'clock and i guess the first thing i'd like to talk about is the construction equipment mechanics proposal transferred to positions to d m as i mentioned in my testimony earlier this morning i think there's there are some opportunities here but it really is premature and we need a plan to do this and there's actually a lot of services that we do it with course we service other vehicles for other departments but we do landfill equipment on we don't do landfill equipment central we do all the refuse equipment in every district and we also pick up refuse in hama so our always division is anxious to certainly stop doing refuse collection because it takes away from our activities on the road for the entire day and also we would if there's an opportunity to not do the refuse equipment and have a d m had a dedicated location of the raj and mechanics to do the refuse equipment especially here in they don't like to speak that quickly but we made it so i stand on the testimony on everything to add since then and you have to answer any questions you have on this or anything else mr couch followed by mr vick thank you and thank you mr good and thank you for the written and concise testimony the question i have with the construction equipment mechanics and the very understandable to move them over but what does it cost you to do that just say fix the truck that they bring in for you to fix we essentially what is it costs versus i'm going to have to ask them on the other side is versus taking it to an outside service and having the outside mechanic do it mr jerry mr couch we don't have i got on our site we have some data the sawed waste fund does reimburse the highway funding expenditures that is as part of your future we need to really evaluate well how many man hours are we spending per year right on this equipment and jobs daily so i imagine we're pretty competitive with the outside how you add up all those costs is another matter question but the question i have for you me good news you said something about environmental management reimburse you for some of this how do you determine how much they reimburse you  you have a set fee being one drop in one hour you get twenty five dollars an hour how do you guys determine or is just like thank you here is hundred dollars i'm happy i don't know sorry i just am asking i think for environmental management separating from public works still today is still having challenges was never transferred or was transferred and you know i think you guys have worked it out by now but for us there was a lot of back and forth or we didn't get t that's that's the challenge mr couch than that brings up a question mr chair if they aren't if those two mechanics aren't doing doing any work for the landfill and we move them over there then what does that take away from him with no mechanics so you can make an argument either way but you know what we heard from our little sources was they don't like working on landfill equipment because it's stinks whereas construction equipment that goes up the stream and that's a piece of cake it's nice and clean so i can understand that but but we've got equipment right we've got to quit and we've got to take care of my question is if we move the two mechanics from his department to the landfill guys that's work that they haven't been doing before so whatever work they were doing a used to do it well yeah but that was just in to a lower time the department split in two and they took over the landfill and that was a great opportunity to say ok get your own gear here and so that what that did is a lot of change the work flow refuse is still a priority that we need to make sure that gear is ready to go so i would say it's less productivity i'd say it's it's re prioritization and so so the highways gets a little more better shake so i wouldn't but if i were you i would have agreed with what i said either yeah but but i guess the question is we take those two guys away the rest of the mechanics you have are go us right if you take away the refuse equipment but it is a sound like the refuse equipment there the solid waste management side they're not the landfill side so what i fear is that they're going to take the two mechanics put them over the landfill cannick i'm not sure that would be to me i'm not sure but i'd be part of the plan is to understand where they're going where they're working under they should have a garage supervisor understands what they do activity no i think they asking for one  maui landfill for i think three out of the four years that i've been here the mirror continues to tell them no the mirror's initiative in having a consolidated base yard in one hundred acres he wants to have all of these mechanics combined under an entity that's not i don't know exactly how it's going to work out but n c it's not highways in and through it's not so yeah member by so that's a very good point and i kind of had that discussion when this chair's this proposal came out yesterday i thought process of like how is this going to work they can go up kind of maintenance items but as far as if something breaks down yes they'll have to trailer it to some facility and so these two mechanics being that they are just do regular in in the field kind of situation is what i'm kind trying to imagine but they will definitely need something up at this inter milan for the lease to store supplies equipment you know even if you chair and thank you for being here yeah that was my initial thought like taken away from you and i'm trying to give you two didn't quite add up subtracted in my mind and sure they get reimbursed the parts i'm not quite sure about the labor we have i have a spreadsheet with labor costs in their form ok and then a but i don't know if that's actually reimbursed  ok i remember too well let me just say so far just in this calendar year it looks as though we've spent about seventy seven thousand dollars mentioned my testimony this morning i say it again but you know i just take a lot of work they have last year they spent sixty percent of their man hours doing seo coding throughout l but also helping the other districts as because as we moved into pavement preservation we've had everybody jump jump in and do do the work and so that they put a lot of focus on the roads which needs to be done they have front street to deal with which is a whole nother set of issues in time and finally we have these sediment basins and now the portion of the line of watershed is being turned over to us that have a lot of stringent controls a four so that's great and also labor to you it's called for west for law in particular and when my office had spoke to your department it was asked if it could cochran that the two additional position positions will allow us to do a lot more work than what we provided in our budget so we're thankful the consideration for sure using the speed but we are getting a bit more for speed tables and there's other techniques out there so we thought that for you know for fifty seven thousand you know roughly going from two hundred to one fifty was something we could could handle so we would association relating to a whole lot of issues that i'm sure one of the things the court will be considering is where not to have a stay some parts of the project are all the project so that's a new a new uncertainty but say that does that suit goes nowhere we've been told that they're looking to start construction or issue notice to proceed in july i would think it's going to take at least six to eight months to get to a point where they could turn over to us and we understand the growing period where the contractor responsible for going in the grass it's there and get it to a condition that meets their contract or something like ninety days so we could be looking at march you know things go swimmingly so it's it's just hard to say we do know we're getting more facility to maintain more structures certainly more requirements we are supplementing the existing one person staff with our michael bay sure they come in and you know help out with when they can especially in advance of memorial day activities or veterans day activities so we're going to we're going to be the person  we also understand that they're looking to have what they call shrine status i was very important of the vets it may require a little bit more of a white glove and we may have be subject to more inspections it's something i've asked to better understand i've also asked that they consider potentially we may need an intergovernmental agreement i think it's a little odd that they could increase the requirements without us being a vailable or get additional funds so we would be coming back to the committee you know with the hope of getting those because we at that point would have bid so we want to get to contracts and i know you have concerns about the five wiped out and they can be expensive at times we also need additional funds for projects that come in over bed and if there's a fair amount of drainage work in that project we're justified to use those funds so we've been using  we're pretty close so i checked this morning and in fact our staff was actually in the process of writing up the letter that i would sign sent to you so hence i was i felt confident we can make the commitment that we'd be setting it up this week so based on the chairs comments  that i heard you know we want to make sure obviously that we on the road and in order to spend the funds but i'm ready to commit to having it up to you this week course it's going to go through full council   at some point near pop up we own it we don't know and i are those legs and we don't all the remaining leg of my life parkway heading out to me so that would all be part of this package those three legs  they're in for about a million and where for about a million for and that would be you know figured out once we go to  bed members questions on that project got there not on the federal list at this time of course we would type a road that ultimately would be so we will start that process but in order to  see i mean try to get a get an agreement between the state and the feds and ourselves that if we were somehow do this and get reimbursement later oh indications were that that type agreement  is almost impossible to get and we acquire redoing all the plans redoing all the specs by doing type construction might be different in the cost would go up so given and given that uncertainty that we can get that agreement  we do have it on the step for fiscal years seventeen so this year we were going to do design and we had a half million dollars to design i think it was three or four roads  because the roads are fairly sure we can put them all together as a package and so the chairs proposal had eliminated that funding and in the comments i heard yesterday was  that his proposal had it put additional funds and countywide resurfacing and so i took that to meant to maybe take the design out of countywide resurfacing so i'm not positive there but if we do so i just want make that clear that's that would be our intent if that's the way to go if the funds are we stored then we'd have monies to do resurfacing as well gregor county wide resurfacing not the in addition to the  on the federal aid ellis going list right so that's the key on the list and we thought we could because a relatively short in length that we could package and that was the concepts been approved and we want to move towards design so what because they got federal aid is only twenty percent so it's a good bang for the buck kind of thing right now yeah the construction twenty but at the expense of what roads were you planning on doing you know if you were i have a copy of it here and so that would be given up for the for much longer section quite a few questions come back and so internally we're trying to figure out how we can do it but at this point that road is a dirt road it's not improved county standards and we would recommend the county taking  percent increase in that there now maybe some willingness to do that if we take over responsibility for the emergency medical services and and roads in limbo so give us the money but we got there so the question is what if we don't sign up for the half percent do they still give us the roads in and he's also been hearing from individuals that are our concerns that we've had for years that the g t has been under discussion that oh yeah y the country is a municipal tax and that's there to provide support for all the services that we provide visit as no one can present as talent as  service mr and mr chair keep in mind that that would include the helicopter which we only pay six hundred seventy thousand although it does have so that would go up as well y a deal you know when you horse trade with the legislature they have all the horses they're going they're going pretty well actually he's he's really happy with the product that they've laid down to date they're working through through some challenges related to the weather and it's not just weather  miley but the aggregate that we purchase all got soaked and so when there's too much moisture in it we can't use the product so he's making arrangements to store dry haggar get in coming with a lot of ideas so it's up and running as is the good news  working through a lot of issues and how to be productive over the long run and provide a great product but he's very very confident and willing to try new things in just wholeheartedly encouraged him to keep going on that crew is getting filled out that will relieve some of the pressure on some of the districts that have been putting people are making people available for the baby projects yeah so like line it does the seal coat that's their specialty so right now payment preservation crew is just doing a slurry because we have we have a lot of that to do and it's a little more tricky and candy  labor intensive least trying to you know clean the equipment and everything so we stand we have a lot of still cold still to do so there's a there's a lot of work to be done on the roads all hands on deck mr couch thank you mr good you know i think you know what five point some million dollars last year now six point two if we make all these changes i asked you this question before could you i mean say we give you ten million dollars you could still use all of that in getting as many roads as you could with that prepared  finding good bitters which tells me they can they can absorb more and i'm coughing up to confident to say if there is some way you could find ten million i don't believe there is but maybe there we would pave a lot of roads with that so you would be able to spend that so you so you're not we're not running into the high end of your you know trying to find a way to spend that amount of money no no i don't think so maybe at twenty million e ability to get some stuff out that's those are fairly easy projects for us to push out and in how many lean miles are we preserving your or repairing in this with this six million like four million does or some may have to be some design services or testing services so you're looking at was that quite to be eleven and fifteen miles maybe les miles and then  eight miles out of one in twenty years about a twenty year cycle and that's a lot better than the forty to fifty year cycle that we were on right that's correct ok thank you  by the asphalt for a little less than what we pay a contractor to provide and lay it down but we do say like the case it is the amount of engineering procurement and all that other stuff that goes into actually getting somebody to do it has had some engineering help but not a lot it's pretty much you know the guys are pretty much doing it they're also doing a lot of other activities to they're fixing culverts and a lot of other stuff that's not exactly pavement really so it gives us the flexibility to jump in areas that need it right away without having to do a big design got a bit tense a bit protest and everything else and i think sundried also keeps the pavers you know conscious knowing that if for some reason there's consolidation in the industry and prices are going up you know we can compete and we can say you know what we can do a lot of store sells so having that check and balance i think is important because it's a type of industry where you we have seen consolidation to the point where there is one paper so it could happen again so that's why we're focusing more or less on repaving because we have good competition in our beds we're doing it where we can calculate a big project we may not be doing one of those for a while but we're concentrating on the slurry and the seal in the neighborhoods ok thank you i would be interested to see at a later point maybe each one of those communities what what the a real cost breakdowns are and to get a better feel i mean you know you need to add the other amenities that you're bringing all the other my take on this thank you i think i think mr good's point is well taken that probably the main benefit to having the paving crew is just letting others  is that we're letting people know that we have other options and that we i think just that keeps the keeps the bids as close as they can get so thank you for pushing forward with  every district on your survey that was sent out highway was number one and whether they can distinguish state from i don't know but roads is very high on everyone's prayer list and i think that once even these other districts get trained what i am looking forward to in west maui in particular because i can speak directly towards the public works department can get back to public and because they've had to forego and put things on the back burner in order to assist other  and that is fine i mean we really are about working together and for the betterment of this community as a whole and you know how it's often to that but i think just getting back to the true and you know the cemeteries they keep harping about can get done and things like the curb baskets they came to or you know proposed so we could not find the time and source of resources to do it things of that nature can be implemented and rolled out so you know the list goes on and on  their responsibilities but they're doing what they can what they got and i think by giving them some more they're going to make everything will just be much better and run that much smoother my question though and it does go back to the  you do not get that what will happen when that  responsibilities there too so it's it's different than the other districts and the piece we quit is really important i know it was a couple of years ago there's a big storm and a lot of material came down to houma if you go to the very k any questions about m s for program reduction and you had mentioned you felt there might be some downside to that you want to elaborate but i did talk to staff this morning and  you know it basically means is that what i have to push some of the activities out into the future year we can't do be as aggressive in the mapping project we have to cut that back a little bit and so  i think there's some advantages to this proposal so we can work with it i may have to come back with a look at i think there's a handout as to specifically which items are being cut  mechanics is there a way that one or two mechanics at the central base yard could be allocated to landfill equipment it i suppose it's possible we'd have to look at you know what i guess what we will be servicing as a result of that since that's currently done by somebody else maybe something i'd like to talk to our staff about know i just i don't i wouldn't know at the top my head but obviously the displacing work that we do now so i like to know what would likely be displaced you know the questions for the director you know the budget and finance committee will come back to order and will be proceeding with the review of the finance department joining us for the review as director i think it's fair and provide some remarks there's a lot of detail in this and i'm not sure i'll be able to get to all of it but what i'd like to do is let you cover a couple of the highlights and then open it up for questions and then we'll have and we don't have to spend it if we don't need to i think our training that i have spent less time mr chair it really shows a good result on my staff handling the work so again mr chair i would go by paid with you but the most that i have is the grant manager for the account section and the that's address in our single audit findings and also requests that we have again it's being proactive to help our staff they have done a good job so far with the training that we provided them with the better more i'll now i would like to be able to  and and i'm going to use it one more time what do you really really care what can you really live with and what can you what is really really important that i mean you were along listen so are you telling me everyone you put down is that you cannot live without or can you live without somebody so that we can have a better idea what's your priority what's your top three ok if we look into that since i have new internet control officer we just hired mr chair after a four years of trying to get that person on board i would really like to have to get some training so that would be in the professional services under my  administration in that their affairs over there would help me get to train the new people that we have and i would ask you back the same thing if it is  think we can but again sometimes it's just sometimes we become victim of our own success i guess when we push them a little bit more and then if we don't have a complain then becomes not a priority so i mean how do we look at this so i don't really need your help i will i will work with you whatever you guys can give me but i can tell you that the budget that we have  except for those but the expansion that we have been asking you it's just a proactive to maintain the level of services that we've been providing to the community and coming from because i am here requesting for funding for the department to do the same level of services that we have been doing or better ok that's me we could get the actual work in progress or the completed one together so we really need someone to pay attention to that work with our engineers in the departments so that those work in progress are documented accordingly and the current managers the one that would be in charge as a coordinator with the department to make sure that they are getting all the grants in order with the timely reporting as well as the compliance of the circulars and the federal grants that we have this going to be a federal grant type of monitoring not the grant that we g are we managing without a grants manager and we have the departments who apply for these federal grants and however it's divisions work with the program manager and get their invoices sent to us they check that and then once they have all those documentation it's being paid that way the one part that's not being done right now though because i do not have a staff to do is to go and audit the recipient of the the funds  maybe random audit to make sure that whatever compliance circular of the federal grants needs to be done so i cannot guarantee that everything that comes have to follow this circular or whatever is for that particular grant or else you cannot even qualify to apply right so in order for us to request the moneys to come down every most of the reports or the requirement aren't those on line for the department so as well as the applicants to have some sort of cross reference where they can in other words if i apply for grad and then i put in to pay for salaries i have to go according to what that circular requires as well as what the grant applications is as well as what the department is requesting and according to the grant so how would the grant manager have some sort of knowledge or as much knowledge as the department who who manages to grant right now i mean i've had experience prior to coming year that there are so much that has we have to me as a nonprofit to meet the requirements of  any kind of federal grant whether you go to the county or separate still and they're pretty stringent about it so are we missing something today because of the cold  requirements thank you very much and thank you that you really understood the federal grant and i really appreciate that our departments are expert in getting that grants the challenges that comes is in the implementation of it as far as what you have mentioned the restrictions some of the grants only allow maybe twenty percent or fifteen percent and the rest will be people program right now i cannot tell you that that requirements or any of those grants is being met i don't know if they're using seventeen percent or fifteen percent i don't know that because i like i said i don't not have the check back which is that random audit to them ok but we paying according to the product program managers whatever to submit to us what's missing here is that the interpretation of what requirements in a circular or a particular grant some of them do not require don't allow you a penny to do administration it's all poor program so those are the type of things that we should protect with the with the crowds that our departments are going so if we have one coordinator some some of it's it's really quick to know but the the compliance how can we make the department comply with it that's that's that's what i want to try to get a tight lead on it mr o'keefe thank you thank you i think you've hit on the the crux of the issue you got the expertise based on specific grants in part and from our testimony and listening to the department it seems as though part of the challenge is the is important ifas and making sure that the the grants are managed in a way that is consistent with what find out sesa do from an accounting standpoint so i think we've been grappl ok with not having it but i think you know the o m b circular eighty one thirty three suggested it you know maybe that's a government agency saying get more government workers because we need them so i understand where the apartment is coming from it's just up to us to decide whether or not we're ok with living at least this body perplexed as we are but i guess that's a decision we all have to make yeah but it's similar to the issue that the director has discussed over the years regarding internal controls that there's a there's a point at which the level of exposure isn't great enough to necessitate the expense and that's the same question we're doing with here you can go either way on it and  you know to some degree defend either position because we're not getting doing this not costing us interest rate points or you know all right we're not losing money i mean there's no i don't think that there's a lot in where somebody can do some strange things because each grant you know department that runs the grant there they're pretty good at watching so you know and then the but the department has  potential is that we become in the bill for all federal monies so the exposure on that is sixty one million dollars or something that he may know references and letter that's the only thing i wanted to add to should we have put that in finance instead you know as we've as we talked about all the time it's a matter of where we put the positions so you know again if you want one in finance fine we've got one in and around and so i'm reading the first paragraph here in relation to this grants manager and the very last sentence says grant manager as a way to further negotiate higher overhead rates allowable for reimbursement undergrounds so is that see that you can get more funding from these grants in order to pay you for this position  ministration costs as part of the grants that we receive from federal government on some of our grants to cover all of the administrative overhead cost fringe benefit items  if one of the things that the conscious a minister thinks is that this this great manager can then assist the departments in negotiating with because they would have better information and write they'd be able to negotiate with their  federal grant managers on see making sure that you know that money is appropriate that we can either get if we can get more money for it to cover those costs wonderful if we really allocate those costs then that would be good too i mean you know either way it's a but to make sure all the costs are covered and come out of concern about that he brought of this here as well so currently no one has the expertise to negotiate these type of things like the director mentioned you know we have grant application people in the departments the do excellent work in applying for the gra s and they do that with the information that they have a lot of it you know a lot of grant applications are based on need you know you had a identify with the need is you have to  work plan of how you're going to solve that problem and that kind of stuff the budgeting piece of it is a kind of the the back end of it that the ground managers may not quite understand and you know they work with you know the one person and department of finance that they have now but that one person also does a whole bunch of other things as well as supervise staff and different things like that and if there is a dedicated person then the  of information that's going to be available to those departments like the police department that apply for and received lots of different grants is going to be a much better opportunity for them ok ok thank you so just i think chair from budget chair holds his justification is that stated anywhere in regards to this deduction on this because i would himself of all people really following what audit will be you know the independent audit its summary on this particular you know area i don't know which my committee you know oversees a lot in regards to the water there's a list laundry list of water you know can be public works and so on and i guess the audit revealed that it was just i guess not being trapped in a timely manner or something it just wasn't up to par by the time we're trying to figure out our kaffir and things like that so you're looking for a particular body person position to just oversee the fact is what you're looking to do here with this person and to address the issue  be on a scale in accounting to know what's going to be depreciated what we're going to put in service this year that type of things but again it's not going to take over replace the copper bull managers engineers in that department very important position for me thank you and you mention to establish formal policy and procedures and who will be creating that is that something this body would be assisting in or is that your department it will be internal intern l processes and procedures working with the departments the engineers the hundreds of projects there are managers so that i was even telling them that we should have meetings regularly with is being reported as our assets because once it's already completed in both in service we need to start putting it in our capital assets for a depreciation and that type of things thank you and lastly with this p projects which the chair i think you very much and i think that's going to be two separate responsibilities because i know excel in in building in getting it done that reporting part again it has to be an accountant not an engineer that is purely making sure the project is small being to accomplish and there's a difference between the completion of the project and the reporting it say that i am fully in support of getting a grant and i'm concerned that i don't think we have the capability to monitor all of the federal grants that we have and i think it's a detriment  one of the things of course that pointed out by the auditor is that we're losing out in negotiating indirect costs rates and i mean is money back to the county we you could save and you could help pay for this person if we got a better rate because that rate is negotiated it could be used in applying for all of the grants and with the skills of somebody who dedicate their time to this it's a skill you learn as to what can be included in computing that rate and we have that in house and i think it would be very helpful for the folks that are doing grants in the various departments that know how to write grants but don't know how to negotiate indirect cost rates it's a very specialized thing so i merely like to see us do it i'm tired of seeing this in our it reports we're losing money and you know when you're losing money you but of people look at what you're losing as opposed to what you might have to spend and helps you make that decision i also think that the idea of this overseeing  construction work in progress i'm concerned because there's a lot of discussion in this piece about a water supply grants and capital projects and it seems that there's a concern there and that we need to do a better job of tracking  what construction is happening and what has been completed and what should be kept alive and what should just be left in the projects and i don't know if this is something that can be brought in house to somebody else or you know it's it's kind of sounds like everybody somebody and nobody kind of somebody is really it's kind of an afterthought you know i got the purchase orders out i paid the bills i made the report so now you want me to do something else so it kind of gets to be an after after thought and it obviously isn't being done so of the two i mean i'd dearly would if we had to make a choice i want to branch manager because i think that's where the goal this thank you thank and i know and you probably can discuss it with your staff i gave them access to it the navigation is not that easy and i it's man they're standing that one solution mr chair according to in upgrading to the one solution so i i think that would be one of the things that i would and i ask you to look into it how solid are the numbers for the  appreciate it as if you could work with the tomorrow and just get in an outline of what the what the upgrades would allow for you know i will do it out ok thank you i will not be here tomorrow but my deputy will be i'll be in honolulu but i will make sure that mr booker t and my deputy will work on it ok and then what would your third priority be discreetly going to put a lot of work on my stop it will be done manually meaning we print our report and they see something or that starts in the salary that starts in the operation which is the b  fourteen thousand into one solution upgrade the paperless form initiative on page five and the a t p payroll processing on page six so i guess that's where the connection is ok in budget and the same structure as been there since i don't know when but when i was in the budget office they have the same number of people that  proceeding with currently is this an additional one of an idea and also the online services and so whatever you can do to increase the of online services and increase things you know lighten up the load on your staff members other questions on any other part of th that's what your pleasure if if he if he stands by his testimony this morning we should be done reasonably quickly so if you're going like you come and join us we you know there were areas that are of concern i mean for areas that was recommended by the chairs report as we look at that we decided that we'll focus on two areas only the replacement of fleet that would be the top priority and then the second will be the premium for the investigative support services and the uniform support service support on the island of maui if we do need major repair we need to ship the vehicle back to maui and we do the repair and then ship it back and by doing that you're looking at least three to four you have identified four areas our administration investigative uniform and support services but why are we asking if you can really state the investigative and the uniform services program as you know these are the frontline services the uniformed services the front line these are the folks that are out there and i mentioned to consideration the overtime we adjust their schedule if warranted but our uniform services program we have a many members acquirement off officers to be on the road at any mister let me just point out to one of the things that service the mileage ninety thousand and the repair exceeds the value of the vehicle of the vehicles that i mentioned to you from two thousand and seven and ok but we're not we're not really questioning your policy even though i have a little bit of a concern with for years and the mileage we're talking about anyway but you are your concern is getting back the two  from all of the one for behind right e d s ok and then the other is a premium pay do you have an amount that you program the requested amount for premium pay was three million five hundred six thousand have been ninety eight for that program the fiscal year two thousand and fourteen actually was three million seven hundred forty three thousand eight hundred twenty six so thing but as we all know there was more than enough funds available in the in the overall budget because of the vacancies so if they need to they they don't even need to come back to a mr chair i in fact that's what we had been doing over the years and right now what we are focusing on as i mentioned earlier we're not focusing on expansion but try to fill those vacancies we're running to recoup class we in fact one that is going on right now we're going to start up one in june we just finished one and  something happened and on in the future that we able to still provide the service right you know we will if you run into an issue you can always come back to us for amendment even with these adjustments you all generally come in with between a two and three million dollar carry over savings so mr tucker how she does a wonderful job of keeping your finances straight and and so we have a lot of confidence in him and to you know to to make do and you can have confidence in us that if you need the money if you have a major incident to the best of my recollection we have about thirty six to thirty nine officers that's including total personnel assigned to that you know including  including the two that we need to have thank you and the other questions members as to count just real quick you know cheap you get a bunch of new cars every year which is i mean you've got a lot of car so it's just the regular rotation do we get money back for the old ones because i see them being sold all over the place and are those dollar amounts factored into the cost of that you're asking for yes we do we trade in we have a trade in program where we turn in i don't know the exact number mister the money we don't actually get money for trade ins what happens is when we bid it out that we include that we're going to be trading in these vehicles as so the cost of those new vehicles to us is reduced and then maybe next year buying seven one thing for essential i don't know i'm just asking what you're doing up a really good point because they but i believe eleven different vehicles and budget so that brings up a good question where did those eleven vehicles interesting how many vehicles do you have in total around that i think so around three hundred this is about them and how many if you do if you do the policy of even  a new one every five years that's still sixty vehicles a year we're not buying them sixty vehicles a year are we not only not not at this point right so i don't recall what we've bought them in the in the us and that's a five year rotation i mean you've got to think that you know sixty vehicles is a lot a year and we aren't meeting that numbers we're not budgeting  we're not budgeting it but they are and end up with a good comment on it i don't know that high even if they bought it on budget i'm sure the chief would be happy to provide us how many vehicles he's bought in the last four years ok thank a breakdown between the fleet and the non fleet no that's ok i was just thinking that you know i don't know that we get them enough every year anyway so to me if i am not the numbers i was doing was a five year rotation  and members of his what is your pleasure six forty five it is will be in recess until six forty five a part of the water and has been a part of the water through the believes that's not a good idea even a small reading continues the operation or the ability for you and your that were allocated in last year's budget for us so that's my first question why haven't you and what is the intent and can you tell me and tell the public some of the accomplishments what you have accomplished over the order your rate increase question yes all the members of the budget and finance committee heavy there are there on the water resources committee or been on the water resources committee and sort of the flagship of what we've been doing in that committee is the twenty year plan we've been trying to lay out everything we're going to do costed out over ten or twenty years and give a clear vision of the future now based on that we  look at what the rates how they have to increase over the long term and we've had to decide should we try to spread the reed increases evenly should we do them every other year but a little higher every third year et tried to do what we've decided that's best is to try to spread them evenly by using carry over savings and borrowed money to spread those rate increases evenly you know work we can do but have basically three to five percent rate increase every year rather than go a couple years without any and then have a bigger one so again we're trying to look at the long term give people a chance to plant plan long term and not surprise them with no rate increase in the next two years eleven percent and none again have to be predictable so that's the long term plan is how we've tried to manage this as far as some of the other questions about how much money we're spending  we try to manage as an enterprise fund utility and i know there's been a lot of discussion a couple of weeks ago about how much carryover savings is good to have i saw that general discussion with the budget director and finance director as an enterprise fund we've always been under the impression i  sort of led to believe by previous councils that we should expect unless it's a huge emergency like a natural disaster we should not have to tap the emergency fund so we shoot for carry over savings like any business would have a couple months cash flow so two around ten million dollars so i think our goal is is if electrical prices don't you know are sort of normal and there's no major line breaks that have huge repair costs we would like to have around ten million dollars  carry over savings use that to control rates the next year we don't as a lot of people think government does we don't rush to spend the money at the end of the year we don't need it we don't spend it and we use it to control rates next year and that roughly two months cash flow carry over is really part of our long term strategic planning to balance rates and not have these spikes so that's the whole point of the long term plan is to not have spikes in spending that have spikes in rates and balance far as what we've done over the past couple of years i can tell you that in fiscal year two thousand and eight the department of water supply encumbered fourteen point one million dollars of c a p two thousand and nine it was eleven point eight million two thousand and ten seven point eight two thousand and eleven ten point nine million so roughly around ten ok since we started our new program two thousand and twelve was twenty one point seven million dollars in convert two thousand and thirteen was twenty two point three million dollars roughly double twenty fourteen was fourteen point nine million basically because of one nine million dollars project that we had to decide not to go ahead with because it was a well that had a bad soil boring and we have it on hold for now but we were on track and we were ready to spend twenty five million dollars last year so basically just in the past four years we have ramped up capital improvement from around ten million to twice that what else we have done is all of these long term plans you've seen there were no consultants hired our own staff did that with no staff increases we've gone from month by month budgets every other month or a bi monthly billing to monthly billing with no staff increases so when you look at the actual work that's been done with no staff increases we've doubled capital improvement we've doubled the amount of bills we're sending out the amount of services we're processing we've done essentially all the fundamental technical work that will go into the water used to element plan we've done that ourselves with no no extra position so i would say that the people in the department really ramped up their efforts over the past couple of years to try to recognize that this situation has been behind for way too long and i think they've done a fantastic job of of ramping up those efforts and i think the numbers prove that can you tell us what projects you've completed or should be completed in the very near future that is added or will continue to enhance your water supply especially we just completed a major modification about the skater system and the granular activity carbon to comply with the phase two disinfection by products rule so that was more than a four million dollars project  we've put in the high lift pumps we've initiated and finished that project that can pump that water when we have it to the higher levels to balance the water upcountry westmount we have a well that basically the whole is completed and we're so well i've talked about before that it's not getting the yield we had hoped and we're trying to figure out whether or not to develop it or or move on we just finished drilling a well there is another backup well we have a well development deal that is in member cochran's committee ready to be heard and i can go on and on but there are numerous projects all over the county that is what these these dollars i talked about are be very useful projects they're not and they're exactly the kind of projects people have wanted we've got a lot more in the design permit ing and early stages of professional services that are going to take a while but there are some that are mired in sort of very difficult regulatory process and those early the county the state every municipality in the country and even the national government the federal government have is very bad about big projects that have these long life cycles and so we tend to have these spikes spending spikes and so nobody wants when we really need it is usually when developments the prices are high cost a lot to borrow money and nobody but then what's too late for the projects to me what would be better is to gather the money all along when the recession when the economy sort of tanks prices are low that's the time to build so if we had what you're talking about this reserve fund we could target the good times to build when no one else is willing to take advantage of that so i am one hundred percent in favor of that kind of thing it takes foresight and i think it takes political courage to start collecting money years before you need it knowing that you're going to need you know just like you sa for a new car or save for your kids college or save for retirement you've got to do these things a long time before they happen so i am a hundred percent in favor of that sort of reserve fund for the long lifecycle costs like infrastructure and along with that have funds for many many years what makes those funds very good for us as far as appealing to what the county needs as far as maintenance and repair and other  enhancements the state revolving fund loan process is really a federal program for congress or the e p a where the federal government gives money to the states they go into the state revolving fund loan pot and then the states lend it out to utilities water and waste water utilities i think even solid waste paper different pots of money they loan it out we pay it back a very low interest rates and every year the feds get more money so that part grows i heard you ask earlier you might ask me how much there was and i asked the head of clean water safe drinking water ranch so she texted me back that there is two hundred thirty one million dollars currently in the state of hawaii safe infrastructure is a long lifecycle cost doesn't happen overnight you can't do a major project in a year or two a lot of water infrastructure projects can take from the time you decide to do it so the timing of the ribbon cutting ceremony easily ten years and if you look at what the sort of preferred method i think of the council is we do get a little bit of money call it maybe one percent of the total project cost and do a feasibility study is it worth it what will it look like how much  bring that back to the council probably two fiscal years later to say look we're ready to start professional services design here is what you're looking at and then we get maybe ten percent of the money to design maybe next year another five percent to do environmental permitting then probably we skip a year maybe even two years while we're doing design and permitting then maybe there's some land acquisition finally somewhere maybe in your six or seven you might ask for ninety percent of the money or eighty percent of the money to build the thing and each step in that process we would come back to council and say you know we're ready to take the next step here's what that next step looks like so just imagine you know a five year process for simple projects and a ten year project for a long tenure process for a long project if you have that long that's that's the way we like to do things so if you catch your infrastructure when let's say it's at eighty percent of its capacity you have time to do that eighty five percent of it's once you're at eighty five percent of its capacity maybe you have time once you're past ninety percent you don't have time for that when we came into the department of water supply four years ago upcountry is at one hundred percent right at the meter list by doing the well we've basically backed off to maybe ninety seven and a half percent central is doing best of the areas that's probably in the neighborhood of between ninety and ninety five percent of its capacity west maui i put it you know ninety six to ninety eight percent of its capacity ninety six ninety percent of its capacity that's where we are and i would love to do this very slow deliberate hire a consultant to do a feasibility study come back to fiscal years later for the design you know on and on and give you guys very detailed numbers and very clarity of exactly what's going to happen if this had started at eighty percent capacity you would have to go back you know twenty years to get to that point this would have worked but it seems that what happens year after year is everyone's in a rush to solve the problem that they try to go too fast and so nothing is gotten done what we're doing is trying to take this middle ground again bite off a little more than we can chew by putting the money together in these groupings that allow us to do multiple projects which everyone runs into problems we shift to the other one and keep it moving i would love to get the department of water supply to a point where we can follow that preferred method but you've got to get down to eighty five eighty you know ninety percent of your capacity before you can do that and we are in this battle of rationing show me the water is a rationing bill that bill is passed because everyone felt there is not enough of a contributor this is a rationing bill when you're already rationing you just don't have time for this long slow process so i think that's this big question in front of us is can we afford to be so careful or do we want to give a little more flexibility but as long as you're ok with the end results give up a little bit of the control to let us move faster that's what we've been trying to do that's the bite off more than we can chew do multiple things we don't have time that's what i meant by that and it's kind of a long explanation but these projects are very difficult there's a lot of bureaucracy at the state level mostly at the state level to try to get these projects done and we don't own the land even if you own land where there is water you still need water commission approval a lot of the places where we have to get water are our designated areas they're involved in contested case hearings about stream flow about groundwater there is not an easy way to buy a piece of land and start drilling a well i mean it is not that simple and so these processes take so long and we're getting so far behind that in my view we don't have time to be super slow we need to make sure we don't waste money but at the same time we need to make sure that we are not so slow dotting the i's and crossing the t s that the time is ticking away underneath our feet ok thank you for situation and in particular the water meter to this and i know that it's the feeling of this group in the you know actions we show it and we've talked about how we want to do something to help the situation so can you and you know would you please give us a little more information about this body has been incredibly supportive to lead us to the point where we are issuing meters  all these are not even a couple different members and probably seven of nine of you were probably here when that happened reversed that decision which allowed that extra water to be added to the system we also through our analysis showed that if we juggled water a little differently we could the wells and juggling water a little differently we could support more meters so this council this body allowed us to use the wells by changing out ordinance allocated the money to rehabilitate those wells allocated the money i which we understand have not been made with that was that we heard that today so if you could address that first let me apologize that was my testimony and let me apologize for the water shortage great mistake when i look through the chairs proposal of the rates and fees i didn't realize those were just changes because almost all of our rates were in their red marked in blue marks and i thought that was the whole thing and they weren't in there i didn't realize that was just the changes of what we represented mad at me so anyway i that was my mistake ok the difficulty with more water source up country is is in two realms it's surface water and ground water surface water is the streams case going on in the state water commission so until that's resolved us getting more water from from surface water is not going to happen that could easily be a decade ok so now we're talking about ground water we're talking about wells any well the county is going to develop let's say between baldwin avenue linda road and that whole area we are going to have to prove that pumping water from the ground water does not affect filling those  streams or that is going to have to become part of a centrally of that stream flow case in order to do that we've been working with u s g s for the past three and a half years to develop a methodology to do some hydra geology testing in that area to determine if you can whether or not you can hump groundwater without affecting stream flow no matter where we do this going to have to answer that question ok so we came up with a plan we put something out to if find out how high the ground water sort of backs up relative to stream levels and do all kinds of other computer modeling and stream testing ok so we have a process we worked out about three and a half years ago with u s g s we designed the test wells we put them out to bid and we originally got hit with a restraining order from a activist group we've been to court we lost we went we filed something else in court we recently lost that and this is all tied to the details the east now we consent decree that we've talked about in executive session so even though what we're drilling is not in that area i won't get into details in open session but you know it's it was in an open court hearing that we were told we couldn't go ahead with us so we are currently working on yet another methodology of how to move forward to do some hydra geology in that area we have been at this for three and a half years and it is very frustrating for the department i know it's frustrating for you in the public i don't have an easy answer for you but at some point before we develop groundwater anywhere between you know  environmental impact statement is going to have to address whether or not pumping from that well if extreme flow and there isn't enough science and we're being stifled from doing the science and all that was in you know open court so that no there's no secrets to that  we're going to try something else but that's why we don't have something ready we've got some rough sketches of what could be done but we're going to hit a snag that yes anyway this data gathering is the key to the whole thing and we are we have been trying we've been working with corporation council with our own engineers with the u s g s to try to break this loose but we have been mired in this and so between not and the  flow standards and he's now another you know very complicated legal case developing either surface water or ground water anywhere like i said between baldwin avenue in the road and he is fraught with difficulty of uncertain thank you very much it is a complicated thing and i'm doing a lot of learning in the last few months as i try to say well why can't we do this and why can't we do that because everybody has an ideal i have one more  and again a one point four billion gallon reservoir are cock up our reservoir i walk in my system is one hundred thirty million gallons so just imagine ten times at one point four billion gallons state agriculture engineer tells me that the current usage daily usage from that reservoir is about less than five million gallons a day and they consider it tapped out they can't support more users a one point four billion gallon reservoir supports a daily average flow of less than five million gallons a day because the differences between the rainy times and the dry times is so great that the reservoir is enormous it almost goes dry sometimes now the upcountry situation isn't that dire it's not that exterior but it shows that just building a reservoir in order to get a serious amount of you know to get these very short high flow high flows captured to use for a long period of time these reservoirs can be huge at a cost of you know depends on where it is and what it can easily cost let's say fifty cents to a dollar per gallon so a you know even a three hundred million gallon reservoir could easily be well over one hundred million dollars so then you run it all the issues  public works director good talking about dams the dam rules are very complex it's difficult just to get another nobody wants to nobody wants a reservoir and a dam built uphill of where it might you know affect their lives so there's also more complications of that but when you have an area that has sort of general even rainfall through the year reservoirs don't have to be very big but if it rains a lot for three months and then it doesn't rain for two hundred seventy days you need two hundred seventy days of storage so for a while you know for a one million gallons a day you know you might need a two hundred seventy million gallon reservoir just to provide one million gallons a day reliably for a year so the reservoirs just get huge and again it's back to money so what we're trying to do and that's the point of the twenty year financial strategy construction plan is to lay out how much we can afford to prioritize it and not just start projects that we're not going to finish you know and if i could just say one final word on this during a budget we spend we tend to spend a lot of time on on these index codes on you know piece of equipment and his actions and thing i've been here at the county twenty three years always involved in big c h p in my opinion the single biggest waste of money meaning we spend money and get nothing he's when we do professional services for engineering and never build it blueprints that end up in the trash feasibility studies that sit on shelves we spend not tens of thousands not hundreds of thousands millions of dollars because we think we're going to do something and we say this is really important even though it's a hundred million dollars so we put two million dollars into professional services and then when somebody talks about putting in the budget everyone barks at putting one hundred million dollars project in the budget so that two million dollars we spent on designs and all this kind of stuff stakeholder meetings all the stuff that's just that's a waste so my point of the twenty year plan it's interesting is the same point you guys have to save money the reason i've been so focused on the twenty year plan i want to figure out what we're doing what we're not doing and if we're not going to do it we really can't afford it let's not do the engineering feasibility studies let's not do the master plans let's just save that money it is millions and millions of dollars i get in my view that's where the money is wasted so i like a truck that we didn't buy this year and we by next year it's money we spent that we don't get anything out of and so that's why i've been so concerned about the twenty year plan i've had too many projects in my early years that we spent way too much money on early studies and things and we never built and if we looked at it from the beginning we probably would have realized we were never going to build them so that's sort of my from the department is we're way behind these things take a long time we have to be honest about what we can afford what we can't and not do the easy money of spending one or two or three percent on the professional services that just go in the trash thank you very much to thank you mr chairman thank you mr taylor for the lesson again now you have the twenty year plan and you showed us you know if we increase rates at four percent we're going to slowly and do a controlled crash six percent i believe it was then it was going to be a status quo maintain the status quo and eight percent was going to be we actually will increase soars where are we on that plan mean we're drifting away drifting a little bit i mean i think you all know we were at six thousand dollars meter fees went to twelve back to six you know we're asking for fourteen this year to get back on the plan and here we are  i tend to over simplify this maybe because it's there's some big numbers to look at the carry over savings this year was sixteen million dollars every ten million dollars you borrow whether it's house or of loans or geo bonds the next year the year after you start paying back about a million dollars in debt service so we're borrowing twenty million dollars a year right two years later the fixed cost debt goes up two million so it goes up two four six eight if you cycle down the carry over savings of sixteen and you keep having it sixteen eight four two but the same time you're doing twenty million a year and see i p two four six eight in your three year run out of money right i mean you're you're going to balance at that point you're going to have every time every year that we have two million dollars more in fixed cost even if there's no inflation you've got to absorb that entire increasing debt service just with rates you add in a couple percent inflation and there you are you're at fifteen percent rate increases i mean i just don't know any other way to look at it it's like we're borrowing much faster than revenues coming in and you can plot when you you know when you run out of savings and so that's essentially the basis of what our graphs show and that's why we're so concerned that if we're going to do these big things if we're going to keep doing twenty or twenty five million dollars a year in c a p you keep carrying on this debt you've got to raise rates you've got to raise revenue somehow to pay for that and adding that debt without some form of revenue is a problem or you can not you can stop doing that and then obviously you know you're not going to that debt but that that growing debt two four six eight million a year if we keep doing twenty million a c f p a year just keeps but we're down to six part of that a big part of that revenues coming from there from those meter in the long term projection what we had tried to do if we're going to go up to towards twenty thousand dollars  r twenty year plan i think we calculated it roughly seventy percent of the money would eventually come from those major fields and i mean i understand in theory how that works but i think we talked i think we asked  when you were when you were here at the beginning of this session how many meters did we give out this last year and it was a astronomically low number and the beauty of that i mean that's the beauty of this is this water system development fees if growth is low we don't bring in a lot of money but we can slow down you see if you project this growth as high we bring in more money but it means we've got accelerate things so it sort of self regulating from the sense that you don't have to guess what growth is going to be you the faster growth is the more money you bring in so balances whether it's steeper or shallow er you know growth is steeper you bring in more money we get to build faster so i think that's one of the reasons that water system developed fees are a nice way to balance revenue because again the more you bring in you know balances with the more you  what concerns me is that you're saying we're at ninety five percent capacity and so if you want to bring in more money you have to grow a little bit faster we're going to hit one hundred percent i would think faster than we would get the fun except that honolulu has managed in the last decade even with a growing population to reduce total water usage what the council's been supportive of we've completely changed how we do the water rates right we shifted the  cost variable cost we had the fourth year you know these conservation rate structures etc we've been upping our advertising message if you listen to the advertising it's focused on saving money it's telling people if they want to save money save water we're trying to push some conservation to try to hold let's say at ninety five percent to give us time to you know if we can have the conservation rate match the growth rate for a few years that can give us some time so between not the leak detection if you don't we could between and some of these other little things we're doing to d bottleneck that can give us enough time to catch up with some of these projects gotcha and last you talked about the country list and one of the things that you said last time we discussed this really struck a note with me because it has to be part of effect part of my committee is that if we were even to do half of the up if we were to fill half of the upcountry meter list that would far exceed the total amount of growth that we had planned for in the plan that that i hear that right that's correct in fact just just the meters that we're giving off each focal wells in these systems are going to come pretty close to the basically the two thousand and twenty population projection water use that's in the these plans part of it is regulatory and if we exceed the planned growth in that area are we are we bumping up against some regulations in the plan that could could prohibit another person from developing an area a country since we're already at the the growth limit going to exceed it pretty soon it sounds like what happens to the people who have their little section of land that they want to develop ten you know small ten unit subdivision they they can no longer do it according to the plan so i think the question in my mind is how many of those meters would require plan approval anyway many upcountry also limit what that suggests is that the people up country should be forbidden to do what everyone else in the county has been allowed to do for years use their property however they wish and where is where restricting them from doing that by our policies and the and their departments practices and their ability to move in a direction that we have been asking for can be set came up with the plan numbers might have looked at the water meter waiting list progress and said i'm going to be until twenty seventy before anyone gets another meter true so i don't know what they looked at but they obviously came to a that's set aside for grant money in particular just for water i'm looking at the reduction that is being proposed for the different watershed project that those monies are just part of our normal our operations revenue our unrestricted funds and there's no there's no limit unless council wants to set one we look at those the same way we look at any other kind of operations what we did in the grant review program is as you heard when some of the staff was here the other day we looked at what work to people want to do how valuable is it and how much can we afford so i had to set a number saying look i don't want to grow any more than the rest of the budgets growing and so if we can find good work that people can do that they can get done at that level that  help works for us you know that's sort of the range we're looking at so when the grants review committee looked at those they had that number in mind they did it was going to be around two million dollars making we didn't have an artificial cut ok thank you and we have  thousand reduction for the laptops  those i mean we're going to need those and i think as we go through every year i'm most concerned with a total value in the sea account but individual things like those are necessary  date software then they can't run those systems so they are they are important ok so that means to say you have computers for years what is it different with the tech going out there to do diagnosis andi elementary or your skate system as opposed to needing forty thousand dollars of computers for a skater plant basically just imagine that each piece of equipment being controlled has essentially a computer assigned to it that tells it to go faster or slower they're all networked together so there are a lot of tops at the electronic techs use to it's primary purpose is control so it is monitoring water quality making adjustments it's also setting alarms and they communicate with each other to balance out  the the system ok so we're having quite a bit of discussion and you know our chair has proposed nine point six million as council member bison mentioned for  a country resource development and i understand about the concent dig the agree with the not and all of that but that being said do you have any plans to be able to have some sort of storage or water resources for the people who deserves fair and equitable opportunities to have water meters for their upcountry lots absolutely and part of the long range plan has very specific projects the first and earliest one is a storage reservoir at the commodity treatment plant just at the highly miley elevation the plant comes right off the lower ditch has no storage at all you can barely see the water on the bottom of it so when it goes right basically just shuts off that's when we have problems up country so our analysis shows that over the last ten years there's never been a time where that goes bone dry for more than say five days just even a five day reservoir thirty million gallons we could dramatically increase reliability of water upcountry that will allow more reliability and certainly some more meter so where we are now is we have a consultant who's doing the feasibility of various reservoir alternatives our vision is that hopefully we could design it in such a way that it could be modular maybe in ten million gallon increments or something so we got some money we could build ten have all the plans finished for something much much bigger and then when these issues come up in budget where somebody wants to put it up country water we would have a project that was pretty approved we had all the environmental permits we'd already built one section and we would be able to take that money and go right to construction so and just keep adding modules of reservoir storage that is our vision for that we are in still in the preliminary engineering feasibility other than that the next major thing is going to be wells we are looking at where we could place a string of wells that would not cause a legal problem with the east valley consent decree agreement and once we can get that worked out and do hydrogen start moving forward on that project so what could possibly happen no promises with this one point six million maybe we might be ready at a stretch maybe for design of that reservoir maybe probably not but maybe and we could also maybe use that if we can get something approved to build the logic testing apparatus in the area that would eventually lead to those i can't imagine those two would be more than a couple million dollars we were planning on taking those out of some of the other funds that had you know county wide names in front of them so we wanted to move forward with those but again the big issue is the long term cost issues and if there is rates and fees to support all of our twenty year plan those are included our concern is that if there isn't enough projections to include everything then before we start working on things we need to really work with the council to understand you know what are we going to finish and what shouldn't we start so when do you start up country wait until you start you know we hired the consultant they're doing feasibility of that reservoir so this year's budget this question of water system development fees i mean to be frank that decision that the council makes about either leaving the water systems well if he's at six thousand or raising them you know to some higher level that's the fork in the road i mean the way i see it that's the well i'm hoping you can come up with a plan how it be finished before we can continue talking about what the needs are so what what is the allocation amount needed to accommodate upcountry list or rough number for that is about and my question bring us all back and it's in regards to the grants the watershed protection grants that you folks assist with over there and the new grant that's been  brought to us for i believe i guess nature conservancy will be the recipient on that one that's correct ok and then it's actually four and it's for the  reserves that they are in management so it's an existing area that they've had for many years so this particular grant is going to assist in lan an extensive discussion in our operations budget and our division head who handles our deputy director were up here for i think more than an hour they know so much more than i do i don't know much more than what's written in  description in the budget the details that you're asking i don't know those details and i would have brought one of them tonight but i thought we had sort of finished that detailed discussion and i apologize i didn't i didn't well as we've been going there this  always getting let me just address there was a testified of this morning from nature conservancy who came specifically to address i think and she apologized for the confusion of why you know they did ask for the money and i think during her testimony she addressed exactly what they'd be doing and again i don't recall the details but we recognize there was some confusion and with her testimony we called her and asked her to come call the mass and come testify and clarify that and again i apologize i thought that that testimony had clarified this dollar amounts to take from peter to give to paul kind of thing but my concern is if there is one that this land is defined as state and encumbered so i would like to know is basically settles down into their purview to be caretakers of it but in essence unencumbered nobody is and has covered it or whatever it so that was just and that's why i was asking for a map and now i'm hearing that it's no it's not any additional lands it's current reserve that they've been management of throughout the years so now my question is is that entire parcel so if nobody has a question here today chair that's fine but i would like some answers in regards to this if you do have the definition i guess i  can answer yes the state does own these lands in a sense just the wee history has served i believe it went from you know the king to territory government that might be argued here and there but essentially this property is in the control of a man from the state of hawaii and on income but essentially means not set aside or something else and not basically just serve people from that same reservoir but not go through the linda treatment plant so there is no more volume of water what it will do is it will cut down the cost of treating that water so agricultural users will get non drinking water at a lower cost but there won't be any more water just happening from the same or all water before treatment but there is no more water just two different spurs one of treated water and one of untreated water this is where this gets complicated because if the same if everyone who looks up to the ag line is an existing t w s ag customer and they use the same amount that they were using before everybody wins it means they get water cheaper we save costs and all the balance you know how much water they got yesterday they get tomorrow but if they start taking more water because it's cheaper now all of a sudden somebody who was getting water yesterday isn't going to get it tomorrow so that's the whole trick of i think one of the reasons why the state department of agriculture you know hasn't really finished that because there's some uncertainty about exactly how to allocate the water  i do not know whether or not i but i seem to remember that how much money people get from other sources was some of the information they provided but i don't i don't know how  especially ground water users have to pay some fee or some sort to the state water commission for water should protection the issue you bring up is a valid one it is widely discussed and i think it's something that deal in our state water commission has been pushing to try to see exactly what you're saying is if you're using a little you should pay a little if using a lot pay a lot but agree with you that everyone should share this burden and he has actually seen as the leader in this probably you know credit record it's you dave craddock i think a long time ago saw a watershed protection as an integral part of water supply management and i think it's taking every one else a little while to catch up with that thank you very  can wait another year or two to really get that underway as we discussed to committee and i think we provided some written information on this the existing contract with honolulu out of water supply goes up every year so the longer it takes to implement this the longer the more it's going to cost because we're just paying on a little more every year so we're ready to go the r is i think almost ready to go so we're ready to get started  k basically this fiscal year fiscal year fifteen we budgeted four hundred fifty thousand for water meter inventory i just printed out as of today our balance and we have about and then encumbered balance of about ninety thousand we are going to be spending that we have to because we do need the inventory we have meters going out all the time we have transponders going out we do need the inventory we put in for we increased it to five hundred thousand for next year so we do have the inventory we can change out transponders meters as we need to and any new new projects that come up that we have the meters available on that same line the stores inventory if i can comment on that we budgeted four hundred thousand this year as of today we have twenty thousand left un receive those meters and they will be in inventory so we have the ability to use them as we need them so how many if i was to ask you how many meters do you have right now in the warehouse today i mean more or less transponders meters yes over a few hundred over two hundred on an average about how many you place it varies average i would say over one hundred to two hundred a month  well it could be some you know less some more yeah but we do have stock you know so they they we do change out as we need them like i said it's we need that inventory to be there so that when the meters put that number in our original budget that we thought was adequate to handle what i'll call a sort of reasonable reasonably predictable dry weather with you know higher than usual prices if you want to call it that and even if we get everything that we asked for you could have problems in the middle east plus an abnormally dry year and it still might not be enough but the number we put in we felt had sort of a reasonable buffer that lowered our chances to have to come back to the emergency fund unless there's a huge emergency that's question before we move out of the last question my recollection was th t those numbers for electricity were based on two thousand and fourteen plus the budget director's adjustment of eleven percent recollection is that last year mr taylor asked us to take all of our cuts out of electricity and i believe we cut either one million or two  group to what i'll call medium proactive approach in the same way of showing you a twenty year plan for c h p they started two years ago developed a hand drawn five year plan for all of their replacement  parts this year to an excel spreadsheet based more detailed a five year plan where we're trying to we try to get them to divide the treatment plants into all the different sectors and project replacement needs down to about fifty or one hundred thousand dollar level about when is this going after your placed so i i believe that that group has a much better handle on their actual projected costs now than they used to because they were very reactive a few years ago ok so they feel that with the membrane filters replacement program that they've developed that they are going to do those because it's part of their plan the maintenance staff had developed saying we're going to do this this year it wasn't just a guess what did we spend last year it came out of some calculations of how many do we have what years did they go in which ones are scheduled for placement and coming up and working with the the areas of the prone water supply we did just take the f y fourteen actuals and apply an inflationary rate of eleven percent for the only place we did not was in the water treatment plants just leave that up to the director and you know and i do it he did it he did convince me to understand a little bit more about the emergencies you know that he  does describe and since water supply is charter required to be self sufficient you know we want to make sure that they have enough in there in case they do need it for any emergency in site like you can just increase water rates on the if i could add we've been working with now electric now electric was ordered by the public utility commission to do a camera what is called like a load shedding kind of balancing methodology and as the biggest user they came to so we've done a lot of work with them and their consultants to try to characterize our electricity usage of the past few years and that's helping us characterize the kilowatt hour usage and frankly it's all over the place you know they're trying to project what if what if what if and the envelope of what ifs are so wide that we're all having a difficult time generally pretty relatively small global events and precipitation events and if with these big shifts and we're even having trouble with a lot of expert statistical experts trying to really nail down how much kilowatt hours we're going to need and what drives that so i can just say there's a lot of people trying to nail this down better but it is just been a very difficult item to predict ok unfortunately i only have to march thirty first and it looks like we spent about three hundred sixty thousand there's about four hundred thousand left but i know i just spoke to tony and he told me we're waiting to get prices for these new members that we're going to be putting in a come and we're going to have to put in just for clarification on the filters how often these filters get changed those are usually seven to ten year range and they're they're  tested there's a certain testing protocol that based on how worn they are that's when their schedule kind of like checking your brake shoes you check in every so often and when they reach a certain point you schedule them for replacement but they usually last between seven and ten years ok so how many of the filter i'm just trying to get a sense of we if we set aside eight hundred thousand this year and they give us four hundred replaced fifty percent of the  now i don't think it's even close to that yeah out of the four plants that use them let me just say that preventative maintenance of the surface water treatment plants is item for a seven to ten years or whether this is whether we and the issue is whether we cut back on that six hundred thousand of we got a good portion of the ones that were that needed replacement replaced we have how many increases that the rector would like to see obviously the director has made his case over and over and over it if you knew this money and they said put it in a pot so that we have it when we need to develop source or do whatever it is that we're going to big projects that we're going to need we're sitting on some cash we have cash from last year and you're proposing to add to it this year another nine point six million with what we already have we like it twenty two plus million dollars is it possible they we could as the budget makers put some of that money in a line item which the director has mentioned to us that he doesn't have a direct line or a budget line to use for when he does the fifty percent and seventy five percent reimbursements for people who install lines he has to kind of finagle his budget to find those reimbursements could we put some money in that line and maybe put the rest of it like solid waste has a pot of money that taking why can't we have a pot and water so that we have that money there and we can live with a lower meter installation fees because we already have some i mean i'm trying to figure out how we're going to do both things we've got to make sure he has money when he needs it to do what he needs to do and i have tried working in my water resources committee to find a way for us to create twelve point six million that we put in the twenty fifth we've had a really hard time but the real suggestion that has come up was can we subsidize the fifty and seventy five percent for installation of lines so i'd like the kind of cure that the rest of it somewhere so that we can offset this reduction in the meter fees and still have money so when we problem are you talking about just taking a century that is nine million dollars or the carryover whatever it is and just putting it into the restricted fund wherever it needs to go sit it you have it when you need to you know you're talking can i know that we should wait for the budget director to the wreck he told me before and always gets back when i brought up that up to him before this he told me sort of very wisely he said why would you save money when you're still borrowing money he said you would you would move the borrowed money to cash projects you know not of the interest before you would save money while you're borrowing money so i thought the same thing and he explained to me that fiscally it would make more that's fine i mean is you have that amount in mind right now we have five hundred thousand dollars in a line item for that and depending on the bill that comes out of your committee if it turns out which i know is based on the twelve and a half million dollars or if we're going to support more of that depending on how aggressive that is money to pay for that would be needed i think we'd previously think four hundred thousand or a few hundred thousand dollars a year is what we pay for that now was about three hundred thousand dollars a year so if we were if we change that ordinance to make it easier for more people to get money obviously more revenue would be needed to cover that but it really depends on i think we talked about in your committee is how how many people who want to help and how much we help them and that's very difficult for us to know because i understand we don't know who's going to come in asking for it i understand a lot of this is estimating but you know i just do not use the money that's available and you know since this console and i think our cheer is very reluctant to institute those big meter fees meter in your installation fees we've got to find a way and here's a p carry over savings amount that isn't going to be there every year so i don't look at it that way and i don't think that what we do what we seem to have come to some kind of place is that what i'm guessing from the discussions in water resources and from in the budget that we really want to help these meter situation and we need to put money there that's what i'm understanding and i can't speak for my colleagues but that's what i'm getting and it be nice if they could chime in want raised meter fees and will borrow money and when the debt service comes in we'll raise rates on our projection for that rate increase was roughly that's going to catch up to us and average out of the around fifteen percent a year that's fine that's another thing we can do and we can spread  evenly to everyone if that's ok with the council there's nothing wrong with that in our eyes it's just a different way to bring in the revenue i don't think i'm being clear i'm sorry but  i'm not communicating well what i'm trying to express is that you don't want to get all of the money that you need from meter rates and fees i totally agree that we've got a raise water rates we cannot continue give water away at the rate we're doing where the problem comes in is when we talk about the meter fees because it's a lot of money we're not talking about two three cents we're talking thousands and we're trying to say how can we h how can we help you with that and i know that you feel that you don't want money coming into the water department but we don't have a problem with that sending the question was could we put any of this money that we have set aside last year's and was possibly this year's in some kind of a pot so that it would be there and kind of help because we can't get money from big meter fees could we use this money i think if i could interject the the challenge is that ten million of the money from last year was was bon bon money so we can't that's not a pot we can take what we have but if you if you put money in to a pot from bond money you start paying interest on it we have other money we have the other two point six you can see it's mil that is that is water money was your intent this year to use this is this nine point six going to be six million in cash are we going to lapse at the end of this year we don't know well at this point you know i know a number of isis committee i know that's one of the things she wants to do is come up with a methodology to spend that so depending on what that looks like i think we've all seen some of the examples if if we're going to let the guy who needs three million dollars do it will probably spend all of it but if you want to give it out and you know twenty five thousand dollars you know probably most of it we can't give and i'm getting little frustrated and i know you are you're being very kind this evening i'm not feeling all that kind because i don't see any determination or any level of determination coming from the water department to solve the upcountry water meter waiting list and we have people that have been waiting for much too long and i'm sick and tired of hearing the dance you know dancing with the stars was last night but we got it again tonight and you know i just think we need to get a little more conviction from the director i know he's he's done some things but for us to set aside and twelve point six million dollars last year should have been enough of a policy statement from this body that we want that to be worked on and worked on hard i don't feel that we've gotten the kinds of input and assistance that we should be able to expect from the water department and i know you've been working very hard on it you know mr victor you know worked hard on it but it's time for us to see some results so it's count you had a question after that i got a i got to put some reality into this it costs money and as we were told if we wanted to do that twelve million dollar thing and start doing it was be up to one hundred million dollars to clear the country water less i don't think anybody here has committed to that i understand to start but if you're going to start it then you going to have to finish it all the way through because you can't say oh you know we spent the million dollars and we really don't want to spend one hundred million and so the first people came in get it and we're done so if we're going to do that kind of thing which you know i spoke against the last budget as well then you got to be prepared to go the full hundred million dollars that's what's going to cost as an estimate to get everybody their water meters which is fine but where is that money going to come from well let me come in give it let me give you one little place we have the  pays no overhead charge to the county the water department on co i pays i'm sorry the county of co i paid the water department one point nine million dollars a year for their fire hydrants big island doesn't get any money for their water hydrant or fire hydrants they pay two hundred six thousand dollars in  overhead who pays three point three five million in and ministry of service fee i'm sorry three point three million in the ministry of service fees and then it gets a total of three point five million  cost for a corp council and worker's comp they don't pay fica you guys are one of the departments or charge fica or or any significant overhead charge our overhead charge for this year is six million dollars so and i was asked mr buys to please calculate you know when we borrowed the six and a half million for loney a poco the annual that we spend on principal and interest is four hundred thirty four thousand dollars that's a point six point six seven percent so if you take and i did the math on a smaller amount if we took the increase the full increase in the water fees last year as i said the other day was four point two million dollars that entire thing went to the increase in overhead charge so we did last year and give mr taylor any more money f and mr taylor just accurately said loans are less but using the bond calculation just last year's increase would have paid for a sixty million dollars in bond so that's where you get some of the money and i'm not suggesting that it should all be spent up country but what i'm frustrated about and i think one missed by shares in my frustration is that nothing is being done of any consequence to change to move the needle up country so i feel it's time for them and i don't think we have to fund it all at one time because we've got a lot of other needs and i don't disagree with that sentiment but we've got to start somewhere and we're not starting anywhere and you know he's talking about three new wells that are outside of the consent decree area why couldn't we have figured that out four years ago and what you know and i don't believe private wells are subject to the consent decree we could have purchased the whole well i don't know if that financially works out but it's at least puts a little a few little more eggs in the basket anyway i don't know what the heck we can do with the over and charge that's not mr taylor's decision and i'm sorry he's not  my point on there was i think the users need to pay for it the system which is understandable so i always have a spouse the you know the meter fee is what it costs to develop the system so we should keep the meter fees as the twenty year plan says that's my comment my question to mr taylor testimony to us that he wrote he has a summary here and i would like him to explain that a little bit more he says committee chairs proposal appears to shift department water supply out of the lead role in developing water sources and place that burden on developers in addition proposal appears to direct department of water supply to run lean while simply pushing off critical needs to future years and rely on the county emergency fund for unexpected events that's kind of harsh mr taylor can you expand on that a little bit because i don't agree with the shift if that if that is in fact the chairs proposal  i'm not sure i read it that way but maybe you can explain that a little bit more thank you and i didn't mean that to be harsh i mean part of what we've been doing in water resources committee is even saying look there's a lot of different ways to do this and one of the ways we presented from the beginning is saying we don't have to develop source we can strict we can mix show me the water stricter and basically that the private sector know that that's that's their job develop wells develop these kind of things like just talked about and dedicated to us for you know a large share of the source credits there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with running lean and saying look we'll count on the emergency fund that that's a council policy choice that we can live with i just want to be clear that when i saw the chairs budget you know a lot of people go in and they start looking at individual things are looking for i just looked at my twenty year plan and said ok if we pass this council passes this how does that change the direction of the twenty year plan what what shifts and i don't mean it to be harsh or not harsh or anything like that is just different and i just wanted to give the council because we spent so much time on the twenty year plan and the implications of what we can build not to pay for it or what i was already looking at ok what is next year's budget about the time you guys finish this year's budget we start we get really serious about putting next year's budget together so i'm already thinking about what direction is are these policies sending us and that's my take on where this  be harsh or even that it's bad if that's the policies we can optimize a budget that does those things if that isn't what you want and we have to do something else so i think that's consistent with what we've said before in the water resources committee on the different options person but that's all well and good for a system that is pretty even though it's at ninety five percent capacity for the most part it's it's a healthy system we have the upcountry meter lifts that is the difference in this whole thing it's not that it's unhealthy it's just it is a situation that happened a long time ago and hasn't been resolved and now it's coming to a head i mean you've been telling us for four years now that it's going to cost up to about twenty one thousand dollars a meter if we raise the meter rates per year for as little as long as we need to do that if we keep them down at six thousand dollars  then eventually either we aren't going to do this plan or we're going to have to kick it to twenty one thousand maybe higher to bring in the bucks that we need to do this system whether it's upcountry or the rest of the county i'm just or we can raise water rates or we can supplement from general and if we raise water if we keep the meters at six thousand dollars we've got to raise water rates fifteen percent a year i don't think anybody on this body would want to do that or take it from the general fund which takes it away from other projects that we want to do and no longer makes the  water department self sufficient now you know if that's by charter or if that's just by design right now i don't think it's by charter so we don't we're not we're not violating any charter  mr or mr can you know what may where's the rule that says the water department has to be self sufficient i don't think it's in charter have him look that up it's just that we're trying to do go in two directions at the same time and we're not making a decision which way we want to go we're trying to do it both ways and this is one where we have to be decisive and unfortunately we have to be decisive for future counsels too because if we start in one direction and then somebody goes in the next direction then it's really going to be complicated but you know that's that's up to future councils but at least we should have the vision to set a direction one way or the other and i'm fine with whatever way you want to go just so we've got to not go in two directions at once we've got to focus does allow specifically that all or a portion of the surplus is may be transferred to any emergency fund or it's a capital improvement reserve fund by ordinance so if this council for the fiscal or sixteen budget like they're proposing like the chairs proposal is for the waste water fund is by ordinance putting it into a capital reserve fund that's appropriate  there's any monies in the power water supply you know that you surf for seed to be able to do the same thing that's that's your purview for fiscal year fifteen monies that would have to be a budget amendment  to designate that those monies be by ordinance put into that reserve fund so is that my that's my interpretation of that thank you very much that's very clear regards to the concerns on the meter fees maybe from the five eight suite leave it at that receipt raise it up raise the fees to meet whatever demands that  are being asked to three quarter inch to one cetera that that's a consideration instead of reducing that the other  question are i don't know so i have to you know i think i get kind of harsh because i hear so much of concerns about the upcountry meter i am just am just dumb folland it all along these people had do we but i also recognize the constant degree the cre that we have on this so if you're considering deal with surface water and reservoirs for surface water but you also mentioned earlier that groundwater you know will use a pumping has its effect to surface water which is the stream sort it ditches we're talking about with the east irrigation system so essentially that the coming of the reservoir basically how would function when there's when the streams are really full when it's raining the streams are really full no one has a problem with removing water from the streams during those days so essentially during those days when the ditch is really full and the streams are full you could fill the reservoir those days are not going to stand that that's all it issue you all were nice enough to present us with the average water bills for the other counties we were looking at just the basic fees and you'd provided us the other other costs were would you be able to do that for us with respect to the development fees facility charges because  in we could do that ok because looking at the big island they have a twelve hundred dollar facilities charge and then depending on where you what kind of road you're on they add three thousand dollars if you're on the same side of the road as the pipe on county roads and four thousand if you have to cross the road so on a county road you're if your water meter fee insulation seems to be between forty two and fifty two hundred dollars and then it goes much higher if you're on state highways but i think most of our most of our folks are on one county roads than the other and koichi i don't find a lateral charge but the five it's meter fee is forty six hundred so if you could put together what you know we may be missing other county that's what i'm interested in because it looks to me that the that collide and wahoo are right about where we are as long as we're on a county road and i thought i had a walk with my recollections a while i have for a while who are systems facilities charge for residential thirty seven zero six sixty but like i said i have to put something together in the morning i think mr chair if i may i did some calculations on on the relationship between the meter fee and how that relates to how much we could afford for a well to provide that i mean basically i looked at if we bring in six thousand dollars for a five essential meter and it uses six hundred gallons a day and there's a peaking factor of one point five or whatever i can with the numbers i used i came up with that a six thousand dollars meter supports building a well for about four and a half million dollars so essentially the way i look at the meter fees the water system development fees is it sets the maximum price that we should look at sort of go or no go with developing a well so i look at it is if the council setting the fee at six thousand dollars so what you're telling me is if i can develop a one million gallon well for four and a half million dollars go ahead if you set the rate at twelve thousand dollars you're telling me if i can develop a one million gallon well at nine million dollars go ahead because there's enough money to pay for it and so on and so forth because a one million gallon well is probably going to cost a neighborhood of ten to fifteen million by the time you build the well in a tank in connected get electricity that that high is to these you know twenty thousand dollars meter fee so essentially if we leave it six thousand dollars and there's no other way to pay for system improvements it's kind of like putting lobster on menu at four dollars but you never have any lobster because you can't find lobsters for that cost so i think and i share a chair white's frustration with our country and it goes back you know not as long as his but as long as i've been watching before long join the department and i said why can't they fix this and as i get more into it and look at what happened in history it's this issue it's that it just costs more than the revenues coming in and no one can figure out a financial plan so no one gets started and that is why i've been focused on the financial plan is is if we can get it going what's the revenue source and it's that it's that meter fee that seems to be the kicker is that it's a cost so much more to develop well that size or bring in revenue and if we can get around that i think the rest will fall into place well let me just share the at the fourteen thousand dollar tab per meter that fourteen thousand dollars is fourteen thousand five hundred dollars at places eighty dollars on your mortgage every month so for me that's you know that's a lot more than a water bill and so i'm not one that wants to charge all the new people  coming on line for the entire cost of development because the reason they need to build more wells is because somebody else is using all the cheap water so i don't have a problem with fee increases if they're moving in the direction where we're actually going to be used using the money for something other than overhead  so i you know and just that one fee increase would have funded sixty million dollars worth of if it had gone directly to the general fund so hoping for a million gallon well or bigger if we develop it would be somewhere around two hundred dollars tells us maybe around seven hundred seven hundred fifty thousand gallons a day so what we're doing is we're we're running some cost analysis of what it cost to develop because we got to bring power there and pipes and all this kind of thing looking over a thirty year time frame basically and saying is it still worth developing or should we give up on it just put the money into something you know possibly better so we're not ready to give up on it we want to do a very thorough analysis about maybe it's worth developing a seven hundred fifty thousand gallon well we know the fixed cost because we already went to bid on it once before was about nine million dollars so whether we develop it at seven hundred fifty thousand or one million it's still nine million dollars the question is just getting it hooked up is it worth nine million dollars and it might be that it is even for a seven hundred fifty thousand gallon well so we're looking at that we're comparing we're saying look if we're willing to spend nine million on a one million gallon well what's the difference between that over thirty years on and getting you know something of twenty five percent less capacity it may be that it's still worth it we're also looking at the next sighting to see if we can share infrastructure we're looking at some different options if we can develop the infrastructure to get to it and use that for the next one it's probably worth doing even at a lower yield so that's what we're taking a really close look at we don't we do want to throw good money after bad but if we can develop it even a lower less it still might be viable at at you know twenty five percent less than what we had targeted ten million for this project about a million fourteen years since i started with the water board and we've never solved this problem and it was a problem that existed long before that so it's frustrating questioning for those who live up there and i lived up there for a long time and i understood that so you know i'm not happy how slow you moving on t that i was stating does not include any of those it doesn't include everything else i don't believe so they may but still we're we're still comparing apples and apples i'm tangible at least some of us will see tangible evidence when it comes to water meters understand about storage understand the differences that occur you know well it's very expensive especially upcountry because you've got to go really deep and then it's  in west maui comes from the fact that there's many different sources so there's no specific backup to it they would be a essentially equivalent of firm power you know firm water of seven hundred fifty thousand i can send you my way you go two thirds of two thirds you developing sources you're looking for reliable sustainable sources right that's correct we you have been looking to the consent decree was signed in two thousand and two when our first came into office in two thousand and two because i was in the water water water supply and when he walked in he said he had come to a settlement and this is a settlement and he also said some other things like we don't need you bought a water supply and he forgot to look into the charter but that's another story in and out of conversation have not forgotten even though it's thirteen fourteen years ago i have not forgotten what was said that day he walked in fine i forgive and forget and i move on i never forget i  can we ever ever in your opinion get the country modern we do this based on what we have based on hopefully some new sources coming online can we ever get that completed in the next five years that's that's a simple question five yes i'll give you five yes is that possible and if we put in let's see we've put in one hundred million dollars over the next five years can it be done as a potential backup for the water potential water shortage i'm actually very much in favor of that and in our i think if there were wells somewhere on a side of baldwin avenue somewhere wherever that somewhere is about every elevation having those wells be able to serve up country tying them with central at their core is not at their edges and that's part of actually what our our plan looks at  it would allow us when there's a lot of water up country from the ditches to shut down the wells down country and bring that water down there for letting the awkward for rest and balance between larger areas i'm i think it's a definitely something that once those systems are not geographically that far apart and i think it time once you've got wells in that area to be able to use them for central or up country i think that's a great idea at the same same string it's the same sort of location and to be able to go either way and sort of switch between them i would be one hundred percent in favor of that and then why aren't we considering that that would be again after this i know everyone is frustrat said right once you get those wells and then it's a matter of piping so about the environmental impact statement says this whole thing hinges in my opinion on this you've got to be able to put in whether you buy piolo south or anything else anything on that anything over there even if we buy an existing well we're still going after us on it use of county land use of county funds it triggers it before we use it we'll have to do this somebody is going to make us say yes is inadequate unless we can show that taking that ground water doesn't affect the streams in my opinion that science and scientifically proving that to the point that we can absolutely get somebody qualified on the stand to raise their hand and say pumping this thing will not affect the streams that is the key to everything and that is what we have been working on for three and a half years and i know it's hard for most people to grasp that there are so many dominoes that have to fall before we can start designing something that is the first domino and we've been working nonstop on this with corporation council for more than three years in this decree that was signed was approved by council back then in two thousand and two doesn't have to be and how binding i mean how binding is that it's not  binding so i don't tell you i mean i mean we were in court twice on in the past year and the judge seems to think it's binding so i don't know i'm not here to give legal opinions but i can tell you what happened in the  was when that transitional period when we went from semi autonomous to under the colony all of this happened and that's why it's binding you cannot look at that time didn't even know how to get involved you know how to get involved as far as what was going on as far as water was concerned and the administration was kind of handling everything at that point and it was until later when the council really got into it and that's when we you know many of us came in two thousand and seven that's when we really started to understand the dynamics between the council administration and the department so i'm not blaming anybody but that's the way it was back then do you have any idea how much the co i paid for their pays the water department for their meters you know we're getting some revenue from the county co i must be charging and significantly servicing the fire hydrants correct so i'm just wondering if we used that same fee for hydrant we must have way more hydra do think we have twice the number of hydrants that co i have i would think so i can find out that information for you if you wouldn't mind finding out we may consider establishing a fee to get some of that overhead money back ok well i think unless you have more questions i think everybody else is questioned out you have any other questions or comments mr taylor  least i can only speak for myself but i'm not terribly interested in funding funding major projects elsewhere in the county until you guys with you wholeheartedly you know i've been very disappointed like i said earlier and you made that clear thank you i just think it's something that no other part of this county has had to as been put in that same position and i think it's unfair and it's unfortunate are you aware mr taylor or are you aware of any other counties in hawaii that have a water meter waiting list i don't know that any there are a lot of directors tell me about a list but i'm certainly aware that they all have areas that they don't serve or don't have meters for that's a common and i think we all know there's a lot of rural areas that don't have water service and all the counties so whether or not they went through making a list of those areas or not i don't know i'm not aware that they have a list but i'm from what i'm familiar with the areas that have no service have no service and we have areas that have service next door but not on your property i think there's a distinction there and you may be correct and i i i am not  aware ok i think we've done our work for the evening and in case you want to call another department sure