is wednesday september second and it is approximately nine o five a m would like to ask everyone before we do anything else if you please check their cell phones to make sure that we have them on the  mode i'll check mine too just to make sure it's a good thing i did that i had that tour of the water resources committee got us by sir and i'd like to welcome everyone to this meeting this morning my committee is here this morning and like to thank them for their prom guzmn and ricky kokomo so they are not required to attend as they are not voting members from the administration this morning we have dave taylor director of water supply good morning and we have jennifer or one of deputy corporation counsel good morning jan mr chris she is excused and we also have with us a number of other people that have come to help and i'd like to introduce them we have lieutenant scott english from the department of fire and public safety good morning scott we also have mr david good to rector of public works thank you very much we have also have paul meyer the deputy of the water department and herb chang who's rushing in thank you for being here herb and i think we have others and as we go we'll introduce them if we have to bring them up here to help us also have committee staff meeting today we are going to do public testimony this morning and it will be limited to the one item one our agenda today which is w r twenty eight if you wish to testify please thing up at the desk located in the lobby or if you are in one of the district offices please go and sign up their testimony will be limited to three minutes and upon requests an additional minute to conclude at three minutes the light will turn yellow and in four minutes the li read if you're still talking at four minutes i would please ask you to stop out of courtesy to others when testifying would you please state your name and who you are representing if anyone besides yourself we have practical i think it's compassionate thanks to the court consul council staff and stakeholders who have asked for this and especially you chair so thank you very much home fire sprinkler systems and basically what it will do will reduce the need for residential fire floral as you move forward for anybody who wants to build that you could do home sprinklers instead of putting in a water line improvements and there's a couple real interesting points to this eighty three percent reduction in civilian deaths with sprinklers sixty nine percent reduction in property damage with sprinklers and here's the one that i really think would be exciting for the fire department sixty five percent reduction in firefighter injuries at the fire ground per one thousand home fires real quickly it's n f thirteen d i've put it in all of my testimony there is a chapter six which talks about water supply and basically if you don't have adequate water supply there are a number of options to thirteen d a store tank a pump on the system there's multiple options that would allow the homeowner to put in a regular fire sprinkler system in their home even if the domestic supply pressure or flow was not  adequate so i'm just excited about this and think it's something that goes along exactly with what everybody's trying to accomplish here today and just want to plant the seed for the future the last thing is kind of interesting it's called travel time basically there's a  response time for the fire department the time the alarm comes in the time it's received the time it's dispatched the time the fire department has to get on scene the standard is about seven minutes so if you're outside that seven minutes you know it's give or take so this is an testimony do you have a kind of an estimated cost for an average system that would be adequate to help you know it would depend on whether it's you know you have to put in a pressure tank or you have to put in a pump so say maybe about ten grand sprinkler systems on the buildings themselves and when i talk in external on the outside walls it's you know most buildings do not have that right correct so if there was a fire a brush fire or some other fire from your neighbor or something that another upperton structure it has a well bearing as far as the fire pitching onto the house walk around then when we got in the house then the sprinklers would go off right right and we'd try to educate the people on you know doing a green belt or boxing simply because pressure from the public public to me i'm a licensed professional lance are very nice and in three states i've been doing does surveying for forty years now and i've watched literally a lot of this  subdivisions of country subdivisions especially go up in small basically because lack of water or infrastructure what we're explaining about the private fire protection sprinkler system is just getting kamaal you know as being all of this is the holy grail of everything but it is when you look at upcountry when you can't when the fire department cannot reach your house  paying for urban whatever we're paying for taxes we're paying for that so that infrastructure is supposed to be matched up to that it's not like we're changing our zoning upcountry does very little change you know zoning on all a subdivision is that i that i'm doing there's no change of zoning it's sackville you what it was on ten twenty years ago thirty years ago whatever it was so we're not asking for you know this new higher density it's been there it's been there for years we what we're asking for is a fair shake we know for me and i keep using my example tree point eight million dollars before i can put up even a garage in my in my property i think it's outrageous we have to go to the private sprinkler system and like mr buck blackburn are saying it goes from five thousand to thirty thousand and it can be more elaborate systems that you can but that's the system that we're talking about holds the county zero wholesome harmless zero the colony for that you have to sign off on it so which is some would you want the three point eight million that the county is fully libel for that if i have a fire on my on my house will be coming up put it out ashes and i will be suing the colony simple as that state sent a letter to the water department back in two thousand what every was demanding adequate fire full we do not have it we still do not have it and that that letter is on record so it's kind of like we need this bill and we need it to be fair we need it for all lots not just one extra meter we need more it's true lots of less that i was saying before and that that needs to come back into play that that ordinance got destroyed taken out in two thousand and seven two thousand and eight we need that back because  people i mean all the way up to linda you going to be putting in what sidewalks in you know improvements along the road for what there's nothing there well you can defer it to a later date when the county decides to put it and same with this bill that i had there i want to finish it up but that is just basically the thing is we give the colony enough time when it's time when they can when it's practical i put on there when it's practical for them to fix the infrastructure we as citizens do not have the time we only have three years to put bring the system up to par before we can we before we lose our place or we don't we lose our meter the fairness on that feel when it originally i had a hand outs but i forgot it at the house i was rushing to get down here for i wanted you guys to look back on what rick was what the original was we needed to go closer to that this is we're running away here but you submitted some testimony prior the last time we heard this i was just trying to chair i was trying to find is written if there was some as you're referencing verbiage that you had presented to us so i know today is that read a copy that are presented to your office i think with the rid the rich section the chills the wording that i had and that's what i wanted to bring today in our full got it i can have it shipped e mail to your office thank you today thank you chair thank you for bringing forward this item i i don't have anything to do with it but i've watched it progress and it's gained a little bit of complication here but i think it is ready for prime time now and ready to be voted out of committee i really appreciate seeing the water director here seeing the public works director here and seeing it here because the key thing here is that this results in someone actually building house and it's a three step process first they have to get their water meter approved then they have to get their subdivision approved and then they have to get their building permits approved so i just hope that with all those folks here everyone's working on the same page and working towards the end goal which is getting the home built for someone and that we don't get stuck in at any one of those those stops along the way and and that the people who can benefit from this will truly get to the end result which is building that new home for their family on trying to do here trying to get some folks home thank you miss well then bank any more testifiers no madam tethers know it all signed up to testify in the chamber ok let me check with the district office there's no one here are waiting for i thank you very much members it appears that there is no one else in the gallery or in the district offices that wants to testify so without objection share would close public testimony for today thank you very much so ordered members testimony is closed and so we're going to get into the discussion of w r twenty eighth the committe receipt of course sundin's dated august twenty sixth twenty fifteen from the department of the corporation counsel transmitting a revised proposed bill entitled a bill for an ordinance amending chapter fourteen point thirteen and section eighteen point twenty point zero four zero we counted food relating to water meter issuance provisions for the upcountry water system the purpose of the revised proposed bill is to provide applicants on the  upcountry priority list offered water meters from the department of water supply who are able to connect to the department existing water system shall not be required to make further infrastructure mainline improvements for fire protection or improvements to existing streets under certain conditions we have met here in the chamber and in administrative offices numerous times to put together a piece of legislation that works and overcomes some costly hurdles and barriers for our residents to take advantage of the vailable meters at the last meeting it came to my attention that we may need to incorporate language into the proposed bill that gives relief to applicants when they apply for a building permit mr good has assisted the department of the corporation council to include amendments to title eighteen to exempt subdivisions of two lads from expensive street improvements mr good i'd appreciate it if you could come forward and explain what your current practice is and how the amendments will help residents not only up the country but across the entire co of background for the members and spice of brought us into a meeting with the apartment and a room full of others to basically look at the question of well if they were to pass the bill that so that would be the streets fronting the subject property as well as potentially the street leading up to the property and so we discussed that at length and we've also had numerous instances in the last few years where people come in for variances for this very same thing over there doing a simple two or three lot subdivision generally older properties that folks have had a family for years maybe generations and find that their requirements for a small subdivision to do road improvements is too onerous and the b v a has agreed with them  maybe every time but once that we're aware of and we've been getting these types of variance requests but every six months and it actually reminds me of a conversation i had with the director of planning will spence once after he came back from a conference and i asked him what  conference and he says i learned a lot about variance as i said what you learn as well one thing if people come in and ask for the same kind of variance and over and over again you probably have a problem with the law and i remember that because you know as one of the departments that process variances generally for title eighteen this is the type of areas we've been getting requests on repeatedly and they've been almost in every case approved so for us who are our department we're seeing a recurring  issue that if for small subdivisions folks can't necessarily approve improve the adjoining streets and the b v a on almost every case it's said up there so clearly there are cases where you don't have to do improvements for joining streets if you're doing a subdivision just to provide a road lighting want if you're providing doing a subdivision of the consolidation in a re  vision of three lots or less you don't have to do it what we're proposing here is that if you're going to do simple to lot subdivision you can basically be sampling from improvements to existing streets this comport well with the proposed ordinance related to fire protection so be the same as relates to the number of watts and it would be a one time only allowance so it's a it's a larger part like could be divided into fo six lots or more you could do the two lot get the additional meter under this proposed ordinance be exempt from the roadway improvements police for our ordinance are our purposes you would have to enter into an agreement you simply couldn't do that to lot exemption again on those two parcels so it's a one time deal and essentially would move the threshold of when these types of improvements are required concurrently at any sort of vision creating additional watt to three lots of issues and finally chair if i could add the the building you would have to do any road improvements until the fourth well it so to me that having two lots is kind of equal to four dwellings it's really more or less the same that one more final thought i just thought more than the value of that one additional one and that's why that's another reason why people come in house for the variance so we think you know appreciate being part of this and it does after we had spent a whole lot of time talking about the fire protection one of those nights where i couldn't sleep i was thinking i'm going to have a whole lot of people that are really angry with us they're going to say thank you very much you helped me with the fire protection but now i go for my building permit and they're going to want me to do all this route stuff so i can't afford it so i still can't get my meter and go ahead and that led me to ask mr good say if they would come and meet with us also and see what they thought and i was really really active x thrilled at their response because their response was immediate and supportive they said look we have a problem and we see all of these things being approved by b v a and this doesn't make any sense and yes we want to be a part of it and you know it was very nice to have that kind of cooperation and they of course wanted eating credit in this bill so that when we pass this we take care of the whole package so it kind of just evolved and i knew or i just know because you know every time we spend a whole lot of time on a bill and we still are sure that we've thought of everything there may be something that comes up leader after this hopefully passes but i think this is a good start it does give people an opportunity to get a meter and to go ahead and build those dwellings that we know are the best way to d o affordable housing when you have the property you know you're halfway there you're more than halfway there you know trying to find the land and pay for that is a big barrier then when you can and you can get your meter that's wonderful and now you don't have to worry about spending a whole bunch of money on doing a little road improvement that really is not going to make much of a difference i just you know it's exciting and i know that we you know there'd be something that we didn't think about but we will watch this very carefully to make sure that if anything comes up that we can go back and we can tweak this thing some more but we've got to start somewhere we have to start removing real barriers to building  are you know i had a conversation last night with someone who was really concerned about this and said oh you're going to have development and i said well i don't know about you but when i look at my family it's growing every day and when you look at the people graduating from high school and the babies that are being born the seniors that are living forever our population is not getting smaller we have got to be realistic about how do we find housing for people and you at this a little at a time we don't have a silver bullet it's not going to losing problem but it will help a few people and so that's where i'm coming from and i really want to thank mr good and i want to thank the to thank everybody who has seem is really focused on trying to a problem and this is to me what our job is and we're not going to do a perfect nobody does a perfect job but we're trying and i think that somebody's got to give us a for effort and i'm really excited to be here today i think this is really wonderful so anyway mr good anything more you want to say about this spawn any questions members any questions from the members mr white thank you chair and thank you mr good for your cooperation on this the question that comes to my mind this has to do with improvements to county roads but my recollection of that may have changed in the meantime but i looked at doing a family subdivision on my property fifteen or fifteen or more years ago my recollection is that the on site improvements would require me to put in a roadway that was sixteen feet wide with four foot shoulders so we've taken care of the street side improvements but if somebody comes with a lot subdivision in this case are they going to be required to do the same sixteen foot roadway with four foot shoulders or is that going to be exempt as well or is that still a condition  i'm not sure what your so there is and look like but if the subdivision requires its own internal roadway that would still be required normally a two out you can do like a flag lot and so i doubt it's all just a long drive why they would and would not exempt the need to do any internal roadways that's a big problem chair for some for some people it reminded requires  cost issue of having to put in way more than you need to a disservice to lots i've got several places where we pull off and let somebody look into that thank you thank you any further questions as you can see we have been through the bill quite a bit in terms of the matters that  referred to fire protection the edition that we really had not taken a whole look at today was the mood issues so members rather than going through the whole bill i would like to leave it open to you and if there is something in here that you want us to back up and take a look at again we will scroll down to that and do it so it's up to you guys additional water meter and that goes along with the rest of the chapter chapter fourteen point one three point zero four all see where it says requests for new are additional water service shall be limited to one meter size upgrade to the next larger meter size or a single you help we're talking about any kind of structure that would be necessary for residential purposes so we're not talking about you can get a house on one lot and then you can go do some commercial building homes for essentially your family members garage accounts or no that would come ok i just wanted to make sure because you can get all kinds  you can get into the weeds there so i just want to make sure that that's clarified on the record yes think this is for the purpose of you know our citizens building homes for their family on their property not for them to do any commercial cattlemen's association take testimony fay were asking if any part of this language will affect allowable farm employee type housing so is that considered associated purposes farm worker  ok so that verbiage does relate to that particular kind of housing ok ok thank you thank you is that one further questions members in the section on any part of it any part on a number for a for give us a chance to pull it sure i think it's helpful that everybody can see what we're talking about is exempt from fire protection requirements however this section would still require this section says that that exemption when it does not apply the fire department would review this for fire protection requirements so right now the first and second is exempt from fire protection but because this  yeah that's kind of what i thought but isn't that what this bill is to get around is the attic the fire floor fire requirements or is this saying if you don't have fire two that requires the sprinklers so on any comment on that i think they were trying to keep this simple and when it's already written in laws or policies somewhere else you want to bring it all in here but w confusing yeah i know you have to put it together and i can imagine somebody who just is getting involved in the process looking at this saying well can i can't i so we obviously need to suggest that they reality here i can tell you that it's been an education you know you don't realize how complicated a lot of our laws are as you know because you do the planning stuff when you get into or you get into anything with water the rules are complicated there's a lot of technical stuff that is difficult for people like myself to understand but we're very lucky that we do have the experts and we do have the people that do this every day and it's like you know water they just do it and they understand it and they're very good at explaining it people need to be not afraid to ask i encourage the public that if you are confused if you don't understand to please contact them they're really really good about helping so i think it's important i think you raise a very good point that people should ask rather than assuming and don't ask your friend because your friend doesn't know  may give you a really bad place you know sometimes people think they know and they will tell you yes or no but they really don't know so it's better to check with the experts ok any further questions from the members anything from our resources saying nothing the chair is ready to make my recommendation and unfortunately my vice chair for an appointment he could not avoid so i will ask someone else if they would please do this for me the chair will entertain a motion to recommend passage on first reading of the revised proposed bill entitled a bill for an ordinance amending chapter fourteen point one three and section eighteen point twenty point zero four zero code relating to water meter issuance provisions for the upcountry water system incorporating any non substantive revisions made today and filing is there any discussion miss crew below thank you chair i'd just like to comment thank you thank you to you and your team i think when my colleague mentioned it's can be so confusing this sure makes it less confusing in my opinion and it does provide opportunities i feel far local families who've been on the list for a long time so thank you to you and your team and i'm for the discussions for a long time you know it goes to the this goes to the point that we have people out there in very ur areas and even further out than rural areas that don't have urban services and really shouldn't expect urban services so this helps them to at least be able to build and have some sort of protection because even if you have the fire hydrant right next to the house if something happens by the time the fire department gets there because they're so far away everything's gone this is just to help protect in apparently a large number of instances of property damage so this is really good the thing i would like do is well want to see how this works how well it works or what tweaks we need to make and then hopefully we can spread this out to other rural areas other than just up country so i hope that within a year or so that we can take a look come back and see and say ok now let's extend this to you know other rural areas that may be affected by the same issues that are happening so appreciate all the hard work and for your passion and persistence on this issue and i want to thank the departments that have been involved in and helping craft this because i think this is a step in the right direction it's going to make things move a lot  well i think it'll move a lot more rapidly and and this is a very fair step for us to take and i want to thank you for your leadership and pushing this forward thank you chair way i should thank you for the just once again like to give my my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been involved in getting us to this point today i want to especially thank the department you know the directors have been absolutely wonderful and i want to thank mr taylor we have pretty much taken over his office and said in his conference room for hours and he's very gracious letting us sit there and rag on him but i think the fire department they have a serious responsibility to protect us and they have been willing to help find compromise and they want to think public works for their coming aboard and helping so everybody my committee thank you very very much for your support let's take this forward and we'll keep an eye on it and see where it goes and without further business the meeting is a three government and public affairs