committee meeting of march seventeenth two thousand and sixteen please come to order i'm don couch chair of the committee before we get started please everybody turn your cell phones on the silent mode apologize for being late we had director went to check and a whole cast of others out there will they introduce them as they come down if they come down then we have deputy corporation counsel michael hopper good morning and somewhat related and council chair white is the one who was wanting to discuss this and he's under the weather so it's the chairs intention to defer those two items you may certainly testify on them  right now but because we are barrack warm chairs intention to defer those items after the presentation from the department so you may certainly testify on them if you'd like if you want to skip we're going to have to bring them up again after budget and you may testify on them as at that time as well so that being said members without objection will start public testimony ok before we start public testimony for anybody wanting to testify in the chamber please sign of at the desk outside the chamber door if testifying from the remote sites please sign up with the district office staff testimony will be limited to the items on the agenda today pursuant to the rules of counsel each testify will be allowed to fire for up to three minutes prior to him also be allowing an extra minute in the way the lights are going to work as you have green for three minutes yellow for one minute and then when it blinks red please wrap up your comments all right here we go first to testify is signed up to testify as tom crawley followed by mark rooney below a chair low a committee members you all know me that i won't give up an opportunity to stand at the podium and tell you what i think so i do have comments to make on all three and not on behalf of the mouth because your rental association as i usually do first in regards to p c twenty six i have reviewed the suggested language proposed to be sent by resolution to the planning commission for their review and comment and while i support the intent to set up a clearer process for enforcement actions to take place i do not believe that what is proposed will result in any better results than we have so far in stifling short unpermitted short term mental activity i say this for a variety of reasons first putting it to code specific time frames for each action to take place is neither practical nor internally enforceable we're all aware that in foresman personnel are both understaffed and have broad areas of responsibility and that new issues come in every day that from a practical sense makes it impossible for them to respond to each and every new araa fest in whatever time frame and specifically to follow up with the regularity required to make sure that their enforcement efforts are effective second the department already had a cough responsibility to make a list of one permitted short term rental operators and notify those operators him for the need to get a permit as part of the original s t r ordinance that was never done katherine clark and myself offered our system in this effort to the zoning and foresman department and ultimately conducted a training session for each of the important people in september of two thousand and fourteen to say that our efforts were met with great resistance would be a gross understatement finally it should be noted that some operators who have been previously cited fined and ban from getting permits are continuing to operate unabated so the efforts that we're taking to this point are not effective i think it's time that we discuss whether the approach that we're taking to enforcement is the correct approach and what other alternative approaches might be more effective on tuesday many of the council members said her presentation about controlling kochi frogs now i don't want to compare short term rentals to kochi frogs but what you heard was how difficult it is even in a small area to control them when one homeowner doesn't participate in the in the process all county laws depend primarily on voluntary compliance by the public and short term rental use is no different from incomplete building permits from other zoning violations or from the prohibition for of using a cell phone while you're driving if people don't do it voluntarily well what are you left with what i've learned in helping people make applications for short term rental permits is that about eighty percent of the residential construction in this county is not properly permitted by building permits by electrical permits and plumbing permits that is eighty percent of the homes if we were to conduct a miscellaneous inspection would fail all that miscellaneous inspection now if we turned around and said ok we're not going to let anyone live in those homes until they pass that would be completely impractical just as i believe that it's impractical to say that anyone who previously operated should be banned from being able to get a permit that's not going to get us full activity or should unpermitted short term mental activity is going to require many more positions than are currently staffed putting aside bed and breakfast in short term rentals for just a moment let's consider that in condominiums unpermitted short term rental has been going on for years and continues to go on yet despite hundreds of requests for service in fact of vast a huge number of the requests for service that we talk about for short term rentals are those for one permit short term rental in condominiums that's not what we're able to permit by the short term rental permit or by b and b s and despite those those requests that use continues to go on i checked a b or b zero last night she coconut grove is another one that's had many many are ephesus filed and they still have units listed so right there putting aside short term rentals there is an enforcement issue that we i don't have the staffing and we've been ineffective in trying to address so i to the discussion to to figure out in a budget how are we going to to address these in the future number two they did with the department stating that approximately two hundred properties are currently banned from making short term rental applications but that some of them will be able to make short term rental applications over the next six months i think the department needs to ramp up and be prepared for perhaps as many as one hundred permits coming in and i say this because the maximum number of permits department has ever processed in any six month period was forty seven and that was when the the ordinance first came out typically about twenty five permits are processed in a six month period so the staffing needs might need to be adjusted to to be ready for this onslaught of applications that i would expect if they have all have to come in in the six month period stopping on on that issue i'd like to provide further comments on p c twenty four the letter from the planning commission urging the council to repair the repeal of the s you're a ordinance i am deeply offended by this letter and i believe that every member of the county council who voted to create the short term rental ordinance should also be offended by this correspondence from the commission as sensually the planning commission is saying in this letter we reject the three years of work that the planning department that that commission that the county coun did and that the public participated in in creating the short term rental ordinance the letter clearly articulate how some of the individual planning commissioners feel about this use this letter is full of misstatements and draws a fundamental conclusion that's not in any way supported by fact much like many of the planning commission hearings are held for short term rental permits these hearings usually start from the basis that the person making application is a bad guy and that the use that they're asking for is something that the the planning commission would prefer doesn't take place they often result in many deferrals because they can't come to a conclusion because some of the planning commissioners have specifically said i will not vote for this use and they they watch stain from voting or they will vote against the use it's not fair to say to the people who are coming forward that you have to go before a commission who based on that letter can tell you right there were against this use and that's one of the one of the problems fundamentally with with this with this process as has already been pointed out many times now he's housing shortage has not been created by short term rental homes as mayor pointed out it is state of the county tuesday now he's population has increased by thirty percent in recent years while new resident housing starts have been nearly nonexistent during that same period efficiently regulating the maximum of four hundred short term rental homes represents less than one percent of maui's resident housing stock and that is not the driving force in the valid realty of resident housing so coming forward to get permits should not be pointed to as the as the reason why we have short term we have a housing crisis here on maui denying permits for short term short term rental permits for multimillion dollar homes some of whom have never operated before is only serving to discourage compliance with this ordinance the triggers that send in the ordinance that send most new applicants before the planning commission to get their permits continues to be the biggest obstacle to widespread compliance for properly permit in this use this is not this use is not just going going to go away this is the fastest segment of the independent traveler market regulating this use and meeting the demands that exist for these combinations with professionally managed permitted and inspected homes must be our goal or we are just accepting a game of whack a mole that we will never w i have committed my own volunteer efforts to this for over ten years and controlling short term rent on regulating short term rental is something that i i continue to be committed to this is a vital part of our visitor industry and i believe it's worth the effort to have responsible a responsible permitting process and this serves the greater good for all the people of maui despite the objections of some and i urge this council to send a message to the planning commission that it seeing none thank you next up is mark rooney followed by brenda buddy my name is mark rooney i'm speaking today as an individual i would like permission to give public testimony on each of the three separate agenda items and you could have your questions after each one or at the end which ever you will do at the end just identify each item that you are going to say please allow me to begin by commenting on the planning department's budget over overview presentation on behalf of a grateful electorate i humbly ask that all acronyms be defined otherwise at some point in the future i may become the founder and president said that today's presentation will be given by a department of planning expert you'd all know what i meant now compare that to me saying today's presentation will be given by a dope dope stands for department of planning expert anybody can create acronyms it's not difficult understanding them requires a knowledge of jargon and when you televised the general public doesn't necessarily know dozens and dozens and dozens of your acronyms here's a partial list of some undefined acronyms that will actually be a part of today's powerpoint presentation this is real i am not making this up f f this committee has a long history of speaking in undefined acronyms i cannot believe that all of you intentionally come here spew meaningless verbiage but that is what undefined acronym sound like so out of respect for the general viewing audience i ask you all to please that if you do not then all of this will just be televised toda theater of the absurd and i happen to kind of got glazed over zombie looks like someone is actually testifying on st patrick's day other bars are open i asked the department of planning expert to include accurate projections for all costs associated with two thousand and seventeen court litigations where there ever any accurate projections for costs associated with ongoing two thousand and sixteen court litigations is there now documentation for how much taxpayer money was spent on two thousand and fifteen court litigations two thousand and fourteen two thousand and thirteen two thousand and twelve yesterday went over to the courthouse and i looked at the epstein case is this tall i sat there and read through it i ask the planning department to consider imposing a five year ban but a five year ban on planning staff employees who fail to professionally perform their county government job duties fire each and every derelict employee deny that employee the privilege of working for the county government for a period of five years a five year ban if a planning department employee fails to enforce the county council's ordinances a five year ban if a planning department employee approves of faulty vacation rental permit application a five year ban if a planning department employee renews a faulty vacation rental permit a five year ban if a planning department employee overlooks deficiencies on a vacation rental site visit and a five year plan band if a planning department employee ignores non conforming non permit it non inspected and non approved condition ins on a vacation rental property site visit a five year band this is how it should be agenda item that pertains to enforcement can really since mike white's not here and it's going to be deferred can you could set about summing up with a simple acronym where the exception confirms the rule that an acronym can in fact make things easy to understand agenda is by far the most important i support repealing vacation rental ordinances i am deeply uplifted by the letter that you received unanimously from the planning commission it was a glimmer of hope you wanted to get lost and from the time i started with the board of education to now there is a state county federal there and what academia did they are words in the dictionary i greet you and so i will see what we can do to make sure that fire means put out what the acronym me so that we the public can have a better understanding what we're talking about i will not disagree with that the rash you kind of lost me and should do here is but i think i know what you're saying a really hard time finding a place to stay the resorts are so full they are very expensive and especially if you have a family with children it's really a lot just fine here and finding a place to live so  i don't even know if i'm quite saying the right thing in this forum as far as the these p c twenty six i chose forgive me if i'm on the wrong one but i think it's beneficial to have short term reynolds for people that do visit maui it even if you know it's not like a resort like but at least it is somewhere people can stay says they can't have a hard time finding places or sometimes they can get into a resort for part of their stay but they can't for the entire stay so i think it's really a good idea that we have shared terminals here for visitors and i think they should be regulated to some degree at least i'm not sure i understand you have to have a permit  but also is long as they're paying their taxes on it i think that's a really important it helps the state with that and also brings in monies that these people are signed up to testify paul law anybody else wants to testify please go and sign up commission last year and essentially it is why there are no affordable homes in maui from the developers point of view if you look at this you'll see the basic problems that have to overcome the odds by the developer and the problem is is that they're not being overcome because they can't be overcome economically if we had a situation where  economically developers could make money they could build housing that frankly now they cannot i mean everyone is aware of the spencer problem right now i think they're talking about having to get  analysis for the fourth time and it's not economically feasible to do that and so they're giving up what we want to do is we want to have the housing what has to be done to do it frankly it has to come from the planning department and the planning committee the county to make the changes so that the the construction can be done it's too costly i repeat of course it's too costly so how can we do this one bonds for infrastructure etc bonds we have a very good rating for bonds and we can get a lot of in structured done by bonds another concept perhaps would be an area that is vetted let's say we had an area from point a to point b to point c to point d that area looked at and vetted by the county and says ok we can so that the island planned and is like the overall big one we get down to the community pan and is more specific so hopefully we can have these vetted areas and we could say yes you can build housing here no problem ok members first up on the agenda is p c thirty seven one which is presentations by the department of planning in anticipation of the upcoming budget session i've asked planning to give a presentation to us the subject of the presentation is the department's management staffing anticipated budgetary needs for fiscal year f y o mr rooney left f y twenty seven my name is william spence on the plan director i'm michelle mclean the deputy planning director i thank you chair this is our proposed fiscal year twenty seventeen budget overview you actually should point to the computer which is over on the other side of the room that our administrative group of the four divisions are zoning administration and enforcement also referred to as i ed the current division the long range division and the plan implementation division and we staffed eight standing boards and commissions plus community plan advisory committees when they get impaneled we have three planning commissions we have the one advisory committee which advises the maui planning commission urban design review board the  our f y sixteen budget was five point seven six seven million and salaries and wages make up sixty eight percent of our total budget so a fair amount of our presentation will be focused on personnel for f y seventeen we've asked for an eleven percent increase in our budget to six point four million again with salaries and wages taking up sixty sixty seven percent of that total budget in f y sixteen we have sixty six employees  sixty two are funded from the general fund with for grant funded and for a for seventeen part of what the increase in our salary budget is we are requesting for new positions bringing that up to sixty six general  funded keeping the same for grant funded next in our administration group that's the planning director as we go through the slides of our different divisions where a position is in bold font that's someone with supervisory duties then the ones that are in a tally those are the subordinates to the ones that they're listed under the planning director obviously is the most senior supervisor in the department reporting to the director are all those individuals the deputy and the director oversee the private secretary and then our administrative officer jackie talk of who's here today oversees our account clerk an office ops assistant next pleats where is situated in one main plaza suite three fifteen in the zoning administration into forstmann division we have twenty one employees and all four of the requests for new employees would be for they are situated in one main confirmation forms which indicate all the land use designations on a piece of property as well as any special designations like s a mayor or historic district and respond as owning inquiries they get walk ins and phone calls people asking can i do this on my property or what can i do on my property they issue flood development permit sign a banner permits farm plans landscaping plants parking plans they staff the board of variances in appeals so they process applications for variances and appeals and the enforcement folks respond to our if ss rif requests for service complaints they conduct their investigations and if the investigations conclude that a violation might occur they'll issue notices of warning if the violation is not cured then they can issue a notice a violation this division process is more than ten thousand permits reviews and responses each year of phenomenal amount of work goes through that office with the descriptions of all those items above that's why we are requesting the additional personnel continuing with ziad it's headed by a planning program administrator john repast who's here today they have a secretary to boards and commissions that's the on a staff person who staffs the  they also have a secretary one they have a planner six who oversees four planners they have an administrative planning officer who oversees for land use in building plans examiners and to land use and permit clerks  and then a supervising zoning inspector who oversees the five inspectors and the request in order of priority or to add an office operations assistant that's a fundamentally clerical position then another building plans examiner another zoning inspector and another land use a permit clerk the office operations assistant as you can see with with all those positions and the great variety of dut have there's really only one full time clerical support for that whole division so having another clerical position would assist all the different duties that at the division performs in the current division we have twenty four employees they are located in one main plaza in suites five ten six one thousand nine hundred forty and they process administrative and discretionary permits there's a long list there of our administrative and discretionary permits i don't need to read through them all for those who don't know our acronyms i will say that a b and b is a bed and breakfast s t r h a short term rental home is an environmental assessment is an environmental impact statement they staff the three planning commissions as well as the one advisory committee the urban design review board and the redevelopment agency they process approximately fifteen hundred permits reviews and responses each year and staffed about sixty five board they staff about sixty five board commission meetings each  year continuing with the current division it's headed by the planning program administrator clayton yoshida who is here today because of the amount of work that they do with boards and commissions they have three secretaries to boards and excuse me and our long range division who are located in and one main plaza suite six zero one eight they manage the community plan updates they staff the cultural resources commission and the main tame the geographic information system land use database it's headed by the planning program administrator pamela eaton who's here today they have two clerical positions to support them a planner six who oversees four planners and a g i s analyst six who oversees three other g i s analyst positions each year they have approximately ten meetings with the cultural resources commission and i estimated that annually they're looking at about twenty five community plan advisory committee and commission meetings related to community plan updates each year and our newest division the planned implementation division with three employees they are located in one main plaza suite three thirty five they work on preparing the community plan and now island plan implementation reports they are managing the request for proposals to update title eighteen or zoning ordinance they are assisting with the desert project the dead sea scrolls replacement project to digitize all of our ancient zoning maps and they are researching changes to special management area boundaries it's headed by the administrative planning officer who's kathleen oaky who's here today and she overse so really quickly just looking over the budget as we started out saying it was five point seven six seven million in a four sixteen requesting the increase to the six point four million and includes the four new full time equivalent personnel step increases a couple of budgeted reallocations and a very significant increase in overtime for travel for vacancies because when we have vacant positions other folks work overtime to help manage the workload and also for the maps project which is mary's automated planning and permitting system which will replace our  system and our operations budget which makes up most of the difference other than salaries and wages a little more than two million dollars a fourteen point three percent increase from fiscal year sixty the majority of that is for professional services  we're requesting additional money for contractors to map our important agricultural lands we're also looking to be proactive and i think that's it thank you jay thank you members and he questions i'm sure there are a few we will  take a look i mean one of the things that this is to give us a heads up for budget so we don't have long extended interrogations during budget time this is the time for ease or and if you are how many and what is that budget up like right now one of the request in the desired division is for an additional zoning inspector so that would bring us up to seven in june doctors part of just to be honest we're having a hard time keeping inspectors they they're not and they're not paid horribly well there's other opportunities that and certainly much more pleasant positions than go around telling people no we're looking at state wide with the other planning to departments they're also having trouble keeping enforcement people because of the low wages so we're exploring that with the other counties but and we get good people and it's just hard to keep them but the more directly answer your question yes we are requesting one more enforcement person and the other the one clerical person would help them immensely so they don't have to send out all the letters you can see in one of the except it sooner and go report we sent out over a thousand notices warning  a lot of time these inspectors could be out in the field doing more inspections and doing investigations rather than typing letters and putting it on letterhead one more position that's correct and we are actively recruiting ok for for their own inspector thank you for the information since and it's good to hear that now are and rather than later thank you two in the morning a little bit more background the position class for zoning inspectors is a state is a little bit closer to the mike is the position class for zoning inspectors is the same as building inspectors an electrical inspectors who just have to administer one code zoning inspectors look at a big variety of codes they look at special management area they look at flood they look at all kinds of things and as will said the other counties are having the same problem attracting and retaining good people in order to change the position description all of the counties and the state need to agree on changing that class changing it away from the same is building an electrical inspectors and so that's what we're working with them on to make it a different class of position and to to notably increase the salaries so that we can attract and retain  a better group of people even though i have to say the folks we have are outstanding you know commentator sides a variety of laws that they're they're supposed to be enforcing they have to take because these are these are employees out gathering evidence for possible violations and enforcement they have to keep in in mind a potential violators due process rights the evidence house to be gathered correctly i mean it's a lot more complex but the laws are more complex the process that they undertake is a lot more complex than in building inspectors and that's not to break building inspectors they have an incredibly important job but it is just it's just a different job categorization than than what those other inspectors do questions for spent let me ask if if we were to if counsel were to include so a little bit more and in professional services for a  concerted effort of evidence gathering for your and zoning inspectors if you also got the clerk would that help your zoning inspectors this would be a you know one or two year process where they do a lot of the evidence gathering and then after that backlog has been cut down we wouldn't use those services anymore would that help you guys out at all helpful we would have to discuss and determine how to use the inspectors and if we get the additional clerk how would how we would  use those following the gathering of evidence i think the inspectors obviously would have to do review whatever has been gathered make the decisions as to whether a notice of warning notice a violation would have to be issued and then with the additional clerical  they could then process those and without the additional positions i'm not sure how much it would help ok and part of thing is after a notice of violation has been administered in in our case we're talking either short term mental homes or being b s or whatever some follow up but i know you guys i mean you can see with all the numbers you've got you've got a lot of front end stuff that you've got to investigate and go on and then once you issue your notice of violation then that adds more and so the thought was to at least get some of that under control with without hiring permanent  people except for the ones that you're looking for so in general yes that would be helpful and i think we could find a way to to use that ok well i think i'll try to bring that up during budget because the inspectors having to enforce all aspects of the zoning code and that's true it's not just short terminals it's all aspects but but there are also all of the other land use regulations that we enforce and some are in title nine are and other other places but so we have to deal with flood which is part of title nineteen we have to enforce and administer permits for a commercial signs and most folks don't know that for a commercial signs over twelve square feet they need a permit and we have to maintain a database and we have to enforce and inspect all of the commercial signs out there s m a shoreline area violations even when estimate permits have been issued and there are conditions on those and then when we get a complaint that the conditions are not being followed we have to enforce those it's a long list of items kate thank you we agree with that i think the other area we need to start to really look at is where can we start to eliminate the process of permeating especially when we talking what i call the small changes all add on's and you know things that people get really frustrated with because they need a fixture column they need a electrical box that counted when can we get to a point when you know we don't need it and maybe that falls back on us more than you folks but where we can i understand you have colds and national and international codes that you've got to follow and i think people have to understand that there the other question i have for you is these additional positions are all that thank you and council member that's that's another common misperception is that that this division doesn't force me well it does but the enforcement is about a third of the staff and about a third of the work that we do the rest is that ministering the codes processing all of these permits and unrelated to the enforcement itself so maybe it's kind of misleading always saying you force me yes me issued maybe read review approve any enforcement  foresman all the spec to shows up ok ok ok it's done instead of well now you didn't do this and you got to come back in six weeks and get it done right that's the that's the clerical part of the enforcement part right and then we've got all the permit processing as well i mean literally thousands of building permits come through that we then have to check and make sure that those building permits comply with zoning requirements as well yeah daunting and the more you talk about it  wrong ok i'm sorry and one of that your first question was a was a good one very important one about what we're doing we're doing to reduce the number of permits to reduce the details that we have to be involved in and we have what we call a continuous update process  when whenever we encounter an aspect of a code or regulation that we find difficult to interpret big gray area or a loophole or something like that we make a note and we assemble those and try to propose code changes for you folks to consider so that's one way we try to to work on that we're always trying to reduce the number of permits that's one of our annual budget measures is how many permit types have we eliminated we're always trying to  standardize them so there are fewer of them we're always trying to amend the code so frequently so that the director may have more discretion to prove things that are reasonable without having to seek a variance and those all of those types of things take a lot of time and right now where you know just barely treading water so it's hard to find the time to do those but we do manage to do it somehow so with the additional staff we would have much more time to make those kinds of improvements and then that would in turn lessen the workload and we could improve the quality of service and i thank you f there but maybe a no point in time it was imported right now we need to get eliminated that's just like a lot of things in this you make it more efficient people just just waste your time and the other thing i've always asked and i know questions i know you guys have done a good job i've heard that from the public do people feel very good with some of the workshops and other items that you guys have changed in your process so i'm very pleased to see there are many people going to happy but still trying very hard to improve a lot of the our regulations a couple of things that we're doing internally one of them and in consideration of of requesting for additional positions we have and we are taking a look a very close look at our internal processes how we handle a piece of paper when it comes in does it go to the clerical she clocks it in and goes and sits on the supervisor's desk for a week before that person can get to it and then on down the line we're looking at all the different meaning steps and we're streamlining a lot of those those just the way we handle applications on a very you know fundamental level and we are cutting out a lot of steps we are improving a lot that way so we we're getting a lot of efficiencies in that and we we expect to continue to examine and improve on that at some point though volume no matter how much we improve volume is just dictates you have live warm bodies doing the work so then as one of their current work we're looking through all of our administrative rules seeing where we can streamline those  maybe some things you know a mailbox doesn't need to file an estimated susman you know that porch you want to put on your ohana doesn't even esmay assessment you can just unless it's like on the shoreline or something like that so we're trying to eliminate what you're talking about with some things just why you do we have to file a permit why do we something coordinated out of the managing directors office and they would have a permit ing open house yes i don't know that there are any planned any more of those plans but i can certainly let them know if you feel there's an interest in doing another one  public i got positive reception on response from the public and i think we know i'd like to see that ongoing you know it's not because i mean you get so many that way and then and then there's others now that may need the same help but what i want i was really impressed with with all of you in the same room that person didn't have to go to five offices they were right there in one room and i really thought that was a great idea i supported i mean even willing to put money towards it because i think it really really helps the general public in the process is so you know please mention it to mr reagan did you know i think i'd like to see it it continued in you know if there's an issue of funding they come and ask us because i think it is one of those programs where i really believe the public benefited very something needs to be done it goes to the bottom of the list and then i mean it's first come first serve kind of situation or do you have priorities because it's been you know a couple people have come in and said that they wanted to do one hundred percent affordable housing but sometimes if they have to come in for something else they have to change on a permit to get at the bottom of the the pile and it has to work its way back up is there a way we can other option then first come first serve a building permit comes in you have twenty people waiting ahead of that person you you have to deal with you know it it's unfair to the other twenty to take somebody else's permit first for something like two one eight or an e t a or an ass or even a land use commission action you know there are legal council wants to hear a two a one h application we don't we just don't say counsel you'll have to wait i mean you know you're under legal deadlines you have forty five days to deal with something and so we pla mr carroll that you have any questions i know your way over there i'm that side of the room department discussion right members if there's no further questions on this item i would like to defer it looked action and since  the proposed twenty six is the next thing up and i talked about it before mr white is the one who is the advocate for this one and we have a bare quorum so then there are no other items before this committee i want to thank the department for coming out here being ready to answer questions we didn't have a whole lot of deep questions for some of the members that ca