Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Today is September 3rd. The time is 3.32 PM. And we are opening the communications reports. And Council Oversight Committee is our 33rd session. We are meeting here in the Hawaii County Building in Hilo. Council members joining me today are Council member Kaguata, Council member Kimball, Council member Inaba, Council member Kirkowitz, and excused for the day are Council members Liloi and Council member Galimba, and hopefully joining us, and Council member Evans, my apologies, and Council Member Evans, my apologies, and Council Member Connelly, Klein Felder should be joining us again shortly. Do we have any statements from the public? Thank you so much, Chair. Just noting that we do not have any testifiers at any of your remote sites, nor it does it seem that we have any testifiers for you Zoom. So, nope, you do not have any testifiers at this time. All right. Fantastic. Can we go ahead and read in our first communication of the afternoon? Communication. So, reminder, we're going to do the second communication first. Oh, yes. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Let's start with communication 989, please. Communication 989, requested presentation by a man friend, Law Bickler, PhD, Director of Decision Theater, and Chelsea Dixon, Associate Director of Decision Theater at Arizona State University regarding Decision Theater, an innovative approach to address societal issues through data analytics, modeling, interactive visualizations from Councilmember Heather Elkimble dated August 7, 2024 and Con�ation 989.1. From Councilmember Heather Elkimble dated August 20, 2024, transmitting a slide deck from Arizona State University. Councilmember Kimmel. Thank you. Motion to close while on communication 989. It's been moved by Council Member Kimball and seconded by Council Member Inaba. All those in favor? Oh we don't have to do that. How we go to. We've got to have a presentation for that. If I may just take a brief opportunity to introduce all you folks to members of the Decision Theater community from Arizona State University, I will let them introduce themselves mostly because I'm afraid of trying to pronounce men's name, but I would like to just preface the conversation by saying I've mentioned these folks a few times, and the possibility of using this platform for us is a decision-making body to improve our data-driven decision making, and I think in particular, with respect to Bill 134, which was talked about earlier today, as this might be a platform where that data could be fed into and enable us to make better rezoning and line use decisions. So without without further ado I want to pass the floor over to our assumed guests from ASU for an introduction to the decision theater and the work that they are currently undertaking in the county of Hawaii. So Chelsea and Manfred please, whoever you'd like to kick us off. Well thanks Hedda and I cherish you, why don't you start the introductions because you are much better known on the island than I am. Sounds good. I'm Chelsea Dix and I am our director of strategy, engagement and impact with the decision theater and I'll I'll take over sharing slides right now if that's all right with everybody. Well, Manfred makes his introduction. Yeah, thanks, Shersey. Great if you could share the slides. So I'm Alfred Laubichler. That's how you do it, Hedda. But I go by Manfred because of the seemingly difficult is that in your speak I have with this name. I'm the director of the... Excuse me, just one second, sir. I'm sorry to interrupt you. We're just having a hard time hearing on this end. Can you hold on? Can you hear now, better? Yes. Okay. My name is Manfred Laubigler. I'm the director of the decision-sealte as well as the School of Complex Adaptive Systems. systems. And as Heather indicated, we have worked as Decision Theater for almost a year now on the island in a project that takes a lot of community input and participation and tries to turn that into models that traditionally discussed within the decision see of the framework. It's a pilot project. We have met some of your colleagues while doing that. And on Heather's invitation today, give you just a brief overview of the decision see of the as such and what it can do and how we do things. We are not getting into any of the specifics because that would require a more in-depth conversation. This is just to orient everybody in the chamber as to what the decision see there is, what it can do and whether we can be helpful for you. Try to see please take it over. You're muted. All right so for those of you not as familiar with our space, our headquarters is in Tempe Arizona where we have this room that you're looking at here. And it's a room you walk into and you're surrounded by seven different screens. We are very well known for our seven screen data visualization models. That's not the only format that we do things in, but if you happen to be in our space for the meeting today, this is what you would be looking at. So to take a step back, our main mission is to transform decision making. And to Cherry Combo's earlier point, a lot of that is making decisions about really complex topics where there's a lot of different aspects to involve and recognizing that within any system that you want to make a decision within, there's going to be intended and unintended consequences within that system and others that it touches. And so the more of those systems we can integrate together into one model, one visualization, the better. We do that through the co-creation of data-driven items. So that means that it's this community engagement aspect that Montfort mentioned is so crucial to what we do because it helps us get a more comprehensive view of the landscape and involve a lot of different kinds of data sets and real world knowledge of how those work. And then we create tools, methods and experiences. And I just highlight that to say that these aren't tools where we make a fancy data visualization and hand it over. And it's some type of, you know, magic eight ball to tell you what to do next. They are designed to be used in community, designed to be used through discussion and dialogue because it's about hiding nuances of conversation that need to be discussed amongst people. People are still at the heart of all of this and so coming up with things that make that experience effective and lead to more informed decision making is our mission. This is a quick little overview of kind of the three main pillars that were most known for. So we begin by mapping complex interrelated systems. We integrate a lot of different types of data sets and interdisciplinary research, we spend quite a bit of time on narrative development and use case design, which gets to coming up with what the exact conversation needed is for this context and how to best develop a tool that will be effective for that specific conversation. So not all of our tools are seven screens. Sometimes it's a single screen. Sometimes it's a web browser that people can engage with from across the world. Sometimes it's you know hour long workshops. Sometimes it's a full day. Sometimes it's it can take a really wide variety, but all of that is honed into the specific needs of that particular project. I can add one thing. So what those layers indicate that what the decision-seater is actually doing is bridging the gap between scientific understanding, data sets and people, because it's people who make the decision and it's people who are affected by the decisions. And we do that through those different layers and we do it in a highly iterative way. So it's not a one-stop solution. It is a process that is evolved in the decision-seer. And that gets exactly at this next point is those three things that we're most known for. A lot of people focus in on the tech because fancy things come out of it, but the tech, the data analysis and the human-centered design is all this iterative loop, to make sure that the final outcome is database and informed by a variety of different systems of knowledge. User-friendly grounded in real-world knowledge of diverse stakeholders and then tailored to that specific decision-making context so that it can actually be useful in real-world scenarios and have impact and recognizing that humans are the ones making those decisions and the more people that can be involved in that co-creation process, the better. And so to the type of challenges that the decision-seater is good at, it's all the problems of the real world that you are very familiar with because if I would be able to write down an algorithm that would create the optimum solution, you don't need a decision theater. But as you know, once people are involved in complex issues are involved, there is no such thing as a single optimum solution. So the decision theater has a process that guides everybody to find more widely or ideally universally acceptable decision knowing fully what that not everybody gets what they want. But through that process that everybody has enough of an understanding that they can accept whatever decision is to find a lot of outcome. So a lot of what we do is in this area of what we consider regional transformation. So we do projects for that that involve global challenges. But we feel strongly that the most effective and integrity full way to do it is to look at it through the regional level so that it can be contextually relevant, take into the needs, the specific area that's going on. And then in all of these topic areas around it is kind of our key projects. We do a lot with economic ecosystems, education, workforce development to Chair Kimbell's point earlier, a lot of like, technology for your transformations, which is we consider a lot of the city utilities, water, treatment plans, that kind of a thing, as well as health innovations. And when we talk about risk and security solutions, here we're also getting at just various threats and shocks that might happen to the system. So what would happen if for example, Hawaii Island gets a lot of its food supply through import. A crazy amount of that, something like 90% comes from a single port in LA. So what would happen if something happened to that port? And then knowing that information, how can you strategize to make your system more resilient, that kind of a thing? And if you, that's why we like to be at Hawaii, as you can say, because everything is of course globally or as a connected, but regionally effective and an island is a perfect experimental space for us. So I hope the screen that you all are looking at is large enough that this is somewhat legible. But what you're basically looking at is four different rows of different models that we've done. And we don't need to be able to see the details on each screen. It's more to show the variety of the way that we go about creating these tools. So the one that you see at the top is very map based, what you're looking at on each of those screens are heat maps that reveal land cover from different types of forest station or deforestation. And it gets into intervention methods on a land geographical information system style. The second model was when we worked on about education in the state of Arizona, but it allows you to pick two very specific custom groups and then compare them across time and compare the impacts of different interventions to those groups across the different screens across economic values. Vulnerability to automation workforce development those types of things. The third one is a highly technical tool that we created for a very technical audience who is used to looking at a lot of data that explores workforce and educational outcomes again, but it helps get to the very specific school by school level to determine what outliers are and which ones are performing better than expected, worse than expected and what might be the specific contexts in their scenarios that are leading to those outcomes. And then the final one is just an example of we also do some that I would call more game based. So this one at the bottom is most similar to what you would consider a choose your own adventure type of a book where you're presented with a scenario, you get to make a decision, and then the storyline progresses a few years and tells you what the outcomes of that were and then gives you the opportunity for another decision that you get to make and see how that would play out over time as well and on and on. So these are just kind of examples of different ways we can go about doing tools. Each one again is completely custom designed to the needs of that particular conversation, the amounts of data that are available, and specifically where and how those conversations typically occur so that it can fit the format best suited to that environment. These are more for, I know there's going to be a type or Q&A, so we can flash back to any of these as needed, but we are prepared to discuss a few different modeling techniques that we have. It's not letting me hit the dance. We do statistical modeling, machine learning, deep learning. We've done several things to even incorporate what's referred to a sentiment analysis while I showed you that picture at the beginning of the seven screen room, that's just, that's just one, that's our ASU Tampa campus hub. We also have locations in Washington DC and at the, there's a helios education campus. It was also done in partnership with us. And then we have mobile ones around the world, including most recently the one that we have set up on the big island in partnership with Hawaii Community Foundation. Okay. Are there any immediate questions? Thank you. Thank you. First for the presentation. I'm sure my colleagues are probably pretty aware that this was a very, very surface level presentation about the kinds of tools that the Decision Theater team is capable of developing. In our conversations, we had a demonstration, I think as far back as April now, where they went over some of the tools that they've built for other organizations for me. And they were at a stage where they were really looking at poor and looking at questions that we might, as decision-makers in Hawaii County, want to have answered. And so I think, and feel free, Chelsea and Manfred to add to this, part of what would be beneficial for you is not just to have questions from this body but also to have some feedback from the members of this body about the types of questions that might be useful for us in terms of the future development of a decision theater tool. So please feel free to provide that to the team as well. I think we have some perhaps preliminary ideas based on some of the recent conversations we've had in other areas. But with that, I hope this body is intrigued and has some questions and ideas for the guests from ASU. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kimball. Opening it up to Council members with any questions. Council Member Inava. Aloha. Thank you for joining us today and for sharing kind of that preliminary high level overview. We have some legislation going through right now here at the county relating to a change of zone subdivisions and what development looks like and the potential impact on existing infrastructure and existing communities So wondering in terms of scope, you know, how? Does the decision theater help to kind of be able to map those things out at what costs and you know are those licenses that the county would be able to engage with you folks in to to provide us with those tools and those instruments to help us make better decisions here at the council. Yeah thank you for those questions. So let me sort of start with the how we would go about doing that. So we actually have quite some experience in data layers, some of which are immediately relevant for some decisions, but we would sort of work with you and figure out what else we need to incorporate. For instance, infrastructure we have of course a map. So we know where the roads are. We do not know where the sewers are in suffice. They exist and where other sort of buried infrastructure is. So this would be something that by working with you, we would add additional layers so that we get a representation of what is there. And then we would start this process that Chelsea was describing by a soliciting input into what are the, who is affected how by any kind of zoning decisions? Because that would give us an idea, if you think about the seven screens. So imagine the first one would be a map where you highlight your proposed zoning decision. Then we still have six screens where we would then highlight with the underlying modeling that we do, how certain communities, certain groups, certain costs in terms of infrastructure and everything that's determined to be important, how that would be affected by the one decision that you select on the screen with the map. And so then you would see this. And the participants in a decision theater experience would be able to discuss and assess and sort of weigh between costs and benefits of any sort of decision. What might happen, but generally happens in such a first engagement, is that then issues are being raised that have not been incorporated in the first round of the tool. So all of a sudden new dimensions show up that nobody had thought about because there was no such visual and modeling aided decision-making tool. We will then again discuss this and sort of visit the group figure out how to incorporate those additional dimensions and do that in an iterative way. So finally, sort of we all feel that this tool is now useful and ready and can be deployed for specific planning decisions. So this is about the process and how that would be designed. The way we will do that with you, ASU is a university that has a charter and part of ASU's charter is that we should be useful, so I'm paraphrasing here, it's done more elegantly, we should be useful to the communities that we existed. And as you know, ASU has a presence at Hawaii. And so from the point of view of ASU, we should be useful to the community of Hawaii. And so that means we are very open to collaborate with you, to help you, to offer our technological expertise. And as to what the costs are, I'm running an organization where my only concern is that I need to pay my people. So basically we don't make any profit, we are not interested in those kind of things. And I think we have very cost efficient provider of the services that we do. So it depends on the complexity of the problem, how much work hours we need to invest to help developing that with you. And so we own our IP and our technology. So any kind of agreement would be that you would basically be a cooperative partner and there wouldn't be an issue that you won't have access to the technology that we have. All right, so just to clarify before, I mean the seven screens and those things that you folks have, is the intention that that technology exists here or that the... Yes, so we as part of the project that we currently have in Hawaii, we developed that mobile seven screen version that Chelsea talked about and that hit us all in April. And it's our intention for a variety of cooperative agreements also is the Hawaiian Community Foundation that those mobile version of the seven screens stays on the island. So, you know, in that sense, if you want to get started or test it out, the technology is already on the island. We could sort of develop it with you. I think we could, I'm sure you have a room that can accommodate those screens and we could even hijack the council chamber because the way I'll see it, you know, where you are sitting there would be the round of the seven screens and you would have to sit in the other chairs, but I'm sure you have better rooms for that. So that would all be there. And to do a first project that wouldn't require any big infrastructure investment on your part. If you then decide that you would like to have something that is more closely what we have in Tempe, sort of you want to have your own room as a decision-seater because you think this is useful, then we can help you design that. But that would then be, of course, a capital investment. But for a first project to see what the technology can do right now, there would be no infrastructure investment on your part. The technology is on the island. We would just have to figure out how complex the problem is and how easy it is to get the data and all those things and then we can sort of do it together. I would also add just emphasis on how iterative our processes are. And so the projects that we keep referring to that we currently have going not only is it a very useful project for Hawaii Island and its own right. It also could serve as kind of the underlying foundation for any projects you want to build on top of it. It's kind of like a layered onion approach where we can just keep adding layers of data or layers of questions that we need asked of the model on top of each other. And each layer benefits from having the others present. So for example, you mentioned zoning considerations and even what we're working on right now, we already have data. Well, we've already combined more than 50 data layers in a single kind of map analysis. And so we have data on the current zoning. We have data on the current utilization of that zoning. And then we could just as likely after this project is completed, if the county was interested in it, we could also start building in what different hypothetical zoning decisions, what impacts those might have across the island on a variety of features from economic development to housing affordability, to food system security, all of those systems as a result of these zoning decisions. So it all can build on each other is what I'm saying. And having the project already on the island. It kind of speeds that up and accelerates, but we have to work with to launch into whatever other questions the county wants to consider. Great, thank you so much for that insight. Looking forward to seeing how the county can take up this resource and help our people here. Try you. Thank you, councilmember Kagiwata. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for this presentation. It's fascinating and sounds like something we should definitely explore further. And do you have any experience working with communities that have extensive, we have something called the Sunshine Law here that we work under? Do you have any experience working in communities like that because our decision-making as a body all has to be done in public. Well, I think that the decisions here as a whole is designed to be totally transparent. So I think it would actually support your requirement because everything that's done, you know, benefits from being in the open, having as many voices at the table, or even, you know, if you have to document a session and have people have it accessible via a recording or things like that. If then somebody raises a question, who was not immediately part of the discussion that is a very important insight into the third development of the tool, we welcome that. So we are completely transparent. And intentionally so I think one of the biggest stereotypical weaknesses of a lot of data and modeling companies is this idea of the black box phenomenon of you can only trust it as good as what's been input into the system and when you don't completely understand what that is or what happened in the middle, what happened in that box, it's hard to trust the output. And so we do a lot of intentional effort to make everything not only as transparent as possible, but as authentically participatory and inclusive as possible. So the project that we had on island right now, for example, we've already done four different rounds of different types of engagements there. And each time it's the participants from last round, plus the ability for them to invite additional people to the workshops. And it's meant to be a very open process not only to get more perspectives and insights into it, but to increase familiarity with the tool and help people understand what went into it. Create a little bit more trust in the tool and help people understand what went into it, create a little bit more trust in the tool itself, create a little bit more trust in how it was developed, and understandings of its limitations where it can be very useful and where there are certain assumptions that have to be taken into account. But all of that is done, yeah, incredibly openly and we're very used to working in those types of environments and we've worked with other, we've worked with different tribal areas across Arizona and the Southwest as well, where it struck the dual harmony of being very transparent and open for their citizens while also maintaining data sovereignty within those nations itself and doing a lot to protect that those data privacy things as well. So we are we're familiar with walking that line. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Go ahead. One more quick remark about this. So when you are, you know, as a council, realizing about that you are most important asset is trust. And we learned that too because the decision-seater itself has evolved and the first version was more what we now refer to as a kind of technocratic fantasy. And that didn't work out that way. Now that we have discovered a process that actually facilitates, as Chelsea described, through that iterative engagement and people being able to see what is going on and also being able to see how their input gets processed and affects the which data to select, which model to build. So in that sense, we discovered that if we invest in obtaining the trust, the results are transformative. And I think you all know that too. All right, thank you so much. That sounds amazing. And I still am not quite sure how it would work with us given that like I said, we can't just like go and have a meeting and tape it and then share it with people like we would have to, I believe, do it in public with people present. We wouldn't have any meetings that would be separate from the public. We would have to do all of our meetings, including even just learning about the tools in public. And I think that, like you said, it could be great to do that because that trust could be built. But just knowing that also just like I'm thinking of like the time that that would take, given that we generally have meetings every two weeks. I was going to ask you something about length of time, your projects. You know, people invest, communities invest in these projects. Is there a range of length of time that most of your projects take? Is it a year to three years or, you know, what kind of time do these projects generally take? It depends on the level of complexity that they want to look at and how well developed the question is that they have in mind. So some of the projects we deal with, they know very specifically for, you know, for today's example, we need to look at lens zoning and we want to deal with a hypothetical of what if we converted more lens that's zoned this way into this zoning statges. And here's all the data we have to back that up. If it's that well developed, then we can do stuff fairly, fairly quickly. We can turn stuff around in, you know, I mean, three months if it's already super, super well developed, but usually that's not the case in our ideal world. Usually we are helping to co-develop this process together, help pull out what some of those questions behind the questions really are that the data do a longer thing. But that goes back to this iterative process of the the pro and con of an iterative process is it can kind of go through point, but you can also add layers at any point. So it just kind of depends how many of those layers were adding our best projects. In my opinion, are the ones that we have going on for several years. But that doesn't mean that it's because it took us several years to get to a useful product. We have useful products within the first month. Right. Within your adding additional questions or queries. Exactly. And it just kind of grows as the conversation evolves. All right. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for your presentation. I look forward to learning even more. I yield. Thank you, Council Member. Call you out. Council Member Krakowicz. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for the presentation. I'm on your website combing through project solutions and one that caught my eye was mega-city disaster response. I think we have a lot of responders here on island that are ready to mobilize during times of disaster. Things still feel a bit disjointed despite our ability over the last decade to respond to different natural events and the global pandemic. So I think it would be useful to map out those resources and begin to identify how these responders could better work with each other and coordinate with local government. The question I have though is related to community emergency planning. Our county is also in the throws of updating its hazard mitigation plan, which entitles us to federal funding to mitigate risks and hazards. The consultant for this project recently hosted a community meeting and I was really disappointed I was one of 11 people that attended the Hilo event. Seven individuals were members of county government and so very few members of the public were there so I'd like to think about how the work and the tools that you have available could be used to help each community plan for emergency events, but also for us to take stock of what sort of hazards we first step and then Charisikin offer many more dimensions of that. So again, sort of going back to the previous question about the importance of transparency. So the way we would approach something like that, sort of let's take sort of taking stop of what challenges you have and how you could by knowing where they are and what they are tap into potential, you know, federal and other funds that help you mitigate this. I mean, that's always the same game that it is a limited resource game. There are always more challenges that you have resources. So the first question that will arise inevitably is the communities is how to prioritize and what is the process by which you make those decisions about priorities. So the first step would be to really create a detailed map, what is what challenges are we are? And then invites the community into not just talk in the abstract, but show them the math. And then show them the consequences. And show them what the benefits would be if we invest here first and here second and things like that. And then of course listen very carefully and say, what are the arguments that come out of the community that might want to see a different priority list? And so you would build from that input and try to explore and see, well, if you do it that way, then you know, you might be happy, but so in so many other people will not have a chance and show all of that in a transparent fashion in those maps and models and then see whether you can as you said you are required to be completely open and transparent but that leads to at least an acceptance of a plan that emerges as part of those deliberations. That's sort of for the mitigation part, for the emergency response coordination. I think it's the same thing, because we have somewhat limited, again, because of the limitations of resources, but we have a limited set of expectations about what an emergency response is. And generally, it does not take into account a lot of the feedback from the affected people, because the fire department knows what the fire department knows and so on and so on. So if you would integrate all those plans and perspectives and then again do it in an open way and have the public there and say what's valuable to them, what needs to be protected, what is the first issue that they really worry about. You might be able to develop again a plan that probably looks different than the one that you currently have, but again that has more buy-in from the affected people. So that's how I immediately would respond, how we would design an engagement like that. Chelsea, but you have more soaps on that. No, I mean, I think all of that was great. I was gonna say we did dabble a little bit into current risk scenarios for the island. And so I think another aspect to add on to what Montred was saying is kind of those scenario development processes of like what people see as the most likely risks and disaster things that might require a response. So is it hurricanes like a couple weeks ago? Is it wildfires? Is it sea level rise? Is it day-to-day emergency management? Like if a fire in a single house breaks out or a flash flood in a particular area. And so talking through those scenarios and then actually running through what the current response strategy kind of would dictate verse what might be a little bit more idealized. And so we did get as far as pulling up what those current risk scenarios have been identified as, especially in relation to sea level rise and wildfires, and what the different areas were, and then what the different emergency response kind of districts were to approximate various response times and that kind of a thing. But if that became the the underlying project current that we wanted to invest a lot in, we could yes, we could easily pull together a lot of those different things into a response management platform where plans for those different systems are designed and with full participation and knowledge of the island so that when those things happen people are already empowered and how to respond and it's not dependent on this thing to be created or information to be disseminated that it would already be accessible and ready. Fantastic. Again, really appreciate the presentation and look forward to taking advantage of your connection to our county and the tools that have already been invested, have been invested here on our island so we can, you know, support more community engagement. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Kerkoids. Anyone else? Go ahead, and then I'll go. Thank you, again, for being here. I know that Chair might have a couple of additional questions. We do have our new administrator, sustainability administrator for the Office of Climate Sustainability Equity and Resilience. Gosh, I almost forgot the name. And she had a question about the utility of the system for potentially decision-making around wastewater buildout and cesspool conversion. Obviously, one of the high priority concerns with some good data sources behind it. So I'm first of all, I want to make sure that we connect you with her Bethany Morrison and then also Anything that you're looking at already with respect to wastewater near-sharp water quality And I just wanted to highlight for my colleagues this idea of the seven screens is you know at already with respect to wastewater near-sharp water quality. And I just wanted to highlight for my colleagues, this idea of the seven screens is, you know, there's this set of data and then there were levelers that you push and buttons that you select and then all of the screen screens change. You know, basically you're seeing across a broad range of areas, all these potential impacts. It's pretty cool because it happens all in real time and feels very sci-fi. But I hope we can do another demonstration at some point over here, but back to my question with respect to cesspools. Anything that you guys are already looking at with respect to wastewater? We did add a hunt. Oh, go ahead, Malford. And I'll go ahead, Sherry, so you know more about the status than I do. We have taken it as far as we can go without your assistance is the short version. We were able to pull quite a few different data sets on, you know, water treatment plants, kind of the infrastructure behind it. We had more trouble finding things related to the quality of those of those systems or where weaknesses in the system might exist that need to be augmented or extended. So we have some preliminary information in that regard, but I would also say, so our community engagements for those of you who weren't aware have occurred in all the different geographic regions of the Big Island. We've traveled around, we've met with a lot of different people, and I only say that to say that water treatment and waste water concerns was a prevalent theme across all of those different groups. So it's definitely one that we had kind of earmarked as probably something worthwhile for the the island to consider doing as a full deep dive project. But we weren't able yet to find all the all the data sets to truly investigate that system. One thing. Yeah, same with purchases that but what we are what we are learning and this is sort of the beauty of the decision seater that we are building tools and solutions and approaches in one project that then become useful in another one. So one of the one that we currently heavily engaged here in the state of Arizona is the energy system transitions and how the energy system adapts to the increasing demands. So from a simply modeling and data perspective, that is very similar because you are talking about certain types of infrastructures, some of which are existing, some of which are not existing, and you have projections about what you need to build, what it costs and what the benefits is and how different communities are affected. So in a way, it's a very similar similar challenge and so what I'm saying is we know how to handle the challenge and as a jrc said if you can work with you and get the exact data that we need to build a model and also work with the community to figure out you know what are the concerns so that we can then model the impacts along a number of dimensions that are relevant for the community. This is something that would be very straightforward to build. Thank you. Thank you, council member Kimball. Just a quick question. First off, I guess, and I don't know if this is Court Council or maybe Chair Kimball, but some of this seems very relevant to us as Council members. However, the majority of it with these projects sounds like something the administration would actually need to be in the different department heads would need to be more specifically engaged with your team. Have you worked with other municipalities? And how has that worked as far as you know we've got the legislative branch and the administrative branch? How does that work for your models? Generally pretty well because wrong because in many ways it is always a benefit for the legislative or the political and administrative layer who have their own interesting longstanding relationship if there is an independent cert party in the room that they can both talk to and that can help them sometimes sort out some of their challenges. We have been approached by the advisor to the governor, most senior advisor to the governor of Arizona, who then brought in the whole administration of the state of Arizona, who realized that they have very disparate data sources, some of them are very useful and some of them that don't even know what they have. And they said, well why we need to bring you guys in, can you help us build a data architecture for the state of Arizona that allows to facilitate what we are just discussing here. And so that is at the beginning, but it immediately sort of brings in the two layers, the administrative layer and the layer of the distance, governor and legislature because we're also talking to state legislatures. And all of them say it is a good idea to have another party there because then we can make more progress. I don't know about how that is in your situation, but I suspect that it is like everywhere or somewhere. Yes, I appreciate that. I just am thinking logistically, like let's say, we, or I wanted to come and meet with you to talk about wastewater. And they brought, you know, the director of the Department of Environmental Management, and then we had that conversation. And I don't know if this question maybe should go to you, Chair Kimball, but just about the process moving forward. I mean, there is some expense for the projects you do for us, and maybe I can talk to Councilmember Kimball outside of this. But just wondering moving forward, here's this incredible resource that we have the potential to utilize. You are already on Island ASU is heavily invested. My daughter works for one of your projects at the Accord Co-Refresoration Project. So I know that there is a lot of synchronicity in the work that's being done. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how what the next step would beday design of a project and the acquisition of data, we would be camping out or working with basically your administrative departments. And we would also and we have met some of those folks and we have a very good rapport and we sort of speak the same language. And but you know the administrative departments do not set the kind of agenda that you as a council sits. So the collaboration would then be such that if you decide that we now really need to have the priority that we need to have this engagement and we sort out the wastewater problem. Or we begin a discussion about the implications of summons. That is where you come in as sort of the council who listens to the people and sets an agenda and we would be sort of primarily partnering with your administration there to get the data, to build the models, to give you the opportunity. And then another branch, this would be sort of me and my tech geeks. And then when you are ready to have the engagements, you know, everything will be handed over to the likes of Chelsea, who actually know how to run those engagements with you and the participating community. So look at it this way. I have a data science department, a modeling department, a computer science department, and so on. And all of them will speak, will be perfectly happy to speak. And I think vice versa, we with your various departments in the administration. Once you run a decision-seer the engagements, you deal with Chelsea because she has been running those engagements on the island for almost a year now. And she knows how to do those kind of things. And then it's a different than that. But then the feedback comes back to us, and we adjust, we add additional data layers, we refine the models and things like that. Thank you. That's really helpful. I can just off the top of my head, think of a number of different topics, including our Department of Water Supply, getting our mapping of all of our TMKs and allocated water credits versus the number of wells that we have in aquifers and those kinds of things having those mapped as well as obviously wastewater, short-term vacation rentals, just a lot of the things that we've been a little behind as a county for a number of decades. And so technologies like this could provide an opportunity to catch us up pretty quickly. So thank you for your time. And bringing this forward, Council Member Kimball has another option that we, as a Council now, more and more about. And the mayor and his directors also no more about as well. So as we navigate ourselves continuing to the future, we can make better decisions on the best information possible. So we thank you for being here today. Thank you. All right. All those in favor of closing file and communication 989, please say aye. We have six eyes. We have council members, Galimba, Liloi and Evans excused. What's up? Thank you one more time. You guys have a wonderful day. Oh, yeah. But we can all meet with you separately and not have sunshine law violations. So that's an option too. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on, Mr. Clark. Is there any testimony for communication 988? Hearing 988, fiscal year 2023-2024, photo-phasing production program annual report from housing administrators Susan K. Cohn's dated October 2, 2024, pursuant to section 2-2 of the photo-phasing production program to demonstrate the rules. Motion took close by on communication 988. It's been moved by Council Member Inaba and seconded by Council Member Connelly E. Klein Felder. All right. Aloha Administrator Coates. This time I'll go ahead and invite you up to the table and you can share with us the annual report you brought for us today. Good afternoon my name is Susan Coons I'm the housing administrator for the Office of Housing and Community Development. So I come before the committee today to follow up on the annual plan report that we provided you last year. And this is regarding our new grant fund called the Affordable Housing Production Fund. Last year we provided you with an outline of projects that we had selected utilizing about $17 million worth of affordable housing production fund. And let me just take you back there really quickly. Last year's award or RFP for $17 million was an accumulation of two years. The first year that we were awarded funds, we spent working on administrative rules. And that was in 22, fiscal year 22, 23. In 23, 24, we did an RFP for the accumulation of the two years, which was $17 million. So what we're presenting to you today is our reporting back on how we did on those awarding of funds. So we provided you with a hard copy of the annual report, and I'll just take you through it really quickly. You know, before I go any further, so I don't forget, I really, really want to present to you or introduce you right to my staff who really was critical in doing all of this work. So Linda Boy is our housing specialist who really has done majority of the work on all of this. And of course, you everybody knows Royce, Shuroma, who is the Grand Division Manager. So I really wanna thank them for their work on this. I'm being reminded that we do have two of our developers on Zoom today. So I believe it's Jeremy MacCumber from the Hawaii Island Community Development Corporation and Stanford Cards. Okay, Rain, Kimura from Stanford Cards Group. So if you have any questions for them, we can call them. So there were a total of seven projects that we awarded for a total of 17,324,559 dollars and 46 cents. I told Royce today, I said, that's such an ugly number. Can we not do it? Anyway, so the report does walk you through our progress on all of those projects. Now, I don't wanna read through the whole thing, but do you want me to highlight each the characteristics of each of the projects? Sure, if you like, okay. So the first project that's on the list is Nahale Makoa. We awarded $2 million on that project for 140 units. That is going to be ranging from 30% AMI to 120% AMI. We also awarded to Menago Mau, which the developer was MHK $5,500,000 for the Plan 72 units. And I will tell you right now that that project has been cancelled. So you'll see it as we progress through this report. We had two land trust awards. One was for Pali East Street, single family home for 300,000 and the other was for University Heights. 300,000. Ho-omalu. What information? Sorry, I'm sorry. When you look at the districts here, that's the actual council district or those are? The actual council district. Council district. Thank you. again the districts here that's the actual council district or those are actually council district yeah homaloo at Waikaloah $3 million for 229 units Kamakua Nui workforce housing $5,400 for 643 units Haleola or Mohu Uli for $2 million for 90 units, totally your seven projects. The map on page two of the report just shows where those projects are located, island wide, and from page three it kind of goes into a little more detail about the status of each of those projects. So again, you know, and I can tell you that the report here takes you through June 30th of 2024. So obviously in the last two months there has been even more progress. So I'll tell you in the report, for example, you see Nahali Makoa, the grant agreement is still in progress, but I can update you on that that the grant agreement has been executed on that particular project. And I believe the blessing for that is coming up very shortly, maybe within three weeks or so, but with, before the end of the month. As I said earlier, the Manago project has been cancelled. The two land trust projects are already completed and funds are obligated. Permits are already done and I think they're going to be, we're going to see completion of those projects by January. Yeah, next January. Ho omalu et waikaloah, that project's grant agreement is still pending because my understanding as a developer is pursuing funding on that additional funding on this project. Kamakorn Nui, Grand Degree Minister in Progress, and you know that that one is an in-house OITCD project. And Halai Ola Omoho Uli is also pending same like the Waikoloa project because there's additional funding that they're pursuing on that. On the bottom of that page, we also give you a little highlight of the administrative funds that we're utilizing to administer this program. So you can see that although the admin rules allows us to take up to 10% of the total award for admin costs. We have utilized 3.75% of the total and actually only utilized a portion of it, not all of it. I'm going to stop at this time to see if there's any questions. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to demonstrate your codes. Opening it up to the Council for any questions. Council Member Kauiwata. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here, all of you, and for working on this. Very important. I remember, and I could be wrong, but correct me if I'm wrong, that the Hale Ola Omooli was a partial funding that you did for that project because you basically ran out of your funding. Now that the Manago Hotel one isn't happening, are you going to be able to award more money for that project? I'm going to ask Royce to come up there. Royce, Sheroma from the Office of Housing and Community Development. We actually had a new RFP done or a process start and they have come in for additional funding. It may not be a balance of what they were doing requesting from last fiscal year, but they have added numerous other items from their proposal that I cannot really disclose now. Okay, so it's not a straightforward just funding what they had previously asked for. Yes. So you're going to hold off and wait to see what their entire ask is and then see what you feel like you would want to fund. That's how we want to award. Yes. Okay. Alright, thanks for that. Thanks. And then the other question I have, and I guess this one is for Susan, I guess. It says the pending funding decision from HHFDC was gonna be July, August 2024. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, you know, it's, their award process this year seems to be a little different from what I've seen in the past. Normally, in around July or August, they would do a full analysis like we do and make an award, right, of their total LITECH funds. But they did not do that this year. They've already come out with a couple of awards that we've been working with projects on. Hormalo, Moholuli are some of those that we have not heard about yet. But what I do understand is that they're not finished with their total award for the year. So it seems like they're doing it in segments a bit. So no, we were anticipating that timing, but we're not seeing it there. Okay, yeah. All right, thanks for that. I don't know, and I should also say the two developers are on Zoom today, so I don't know if they might have updated in the animation or not. Who'd you say was here from? Surrey from HICDC. HICDC, Jeremy Macumber. Are you with us? HICDC. Jeremy? Hello. Hi, Loha. how are you? Good. I was just asking a little bit more about the project you guys have been working on. Because we had anticipated I think that we might have a little bit more information by this time. And just wondering if you had any more information if you were listening. Not really other than it seems like we will have favorable results to the tune of whether or not it's the full amount of what we've requested I don't know. Susan's correct in that the process is a little bit different this year. There's actually quite a number of new staff, so we're not familiar with all of them. And the application process itself was a lot different. So we're not really sure yet other than to hear that, you know, we're on a favorable track. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll just keep our fingers crossed then. Thank you and thanks for being here today. I think that's that's good for me right now. Thank you Chair and and thank you to OGE CD. Thank you Council Member Kauwara. Council Member Kaniyla Eklenefelder. Thank you Chair. Thank you Susan. Thank you for introducing your department. On the map, it shows Ina Loha. I don't see a project for them. I know we just had a groundbreaking ceremony for the Ina Loha housing. I think it's through HICDC. I'm maybe incorrect. Yeah? Is that coming in the next report? I'm sorry so you're not seeing it on the map that's why you're asking. Well I see the line directed towards Ainel Loa but I'm also seeing no box. That's why you're asking. Well, I see the line directed towards Ainaloa, but I'm also seeing no box. There's also a line directed to Hawaiian Paradise Park. Only things that have lines on there are projects. Those two have lines with no projects. So I'm just wondering, because I know there was a project that is going to happen in Ainaloa. Happening, happening. Oh, I see. Roy sure. Housing office of housing. That those two basically were, it's just a pointer, a locator of those areas. There was no project at Hawaiian Paradise Park, nor I know law. Okay, we have a, there's something going on through. That the self-help housing, HICVC, yeah, that wasn't funded by our program. Okay, yeah. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. I thought that I was just putting all the pieces together, but incorrectly. Yeah. Okay. I appreciate the report. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Inava. Thank you, Chair. This is the first report for the Affordable Housing Production Fund. Yeah. Okay. With that, I know similar to the credits and to the Affordable housing availability reports. We're trying to improve and make sure it's as clear as possible. Just wondering in future reports, we have two different tables here and it's difficult to try and go back and forth between where maybe we could just have additional columns so that with one table. Yes, that helps us to kind of trap easier and then looking at the rules that you folks had set for, you know, some of these at the time you folks have submitted this report, the Monago project had already not been or had fallen through so just wondering if we can maybe get the things that are actually happening because that's what I believe the intention of the report is based on the language in your administrative rules but we don't want to you're reporting on things here if you just look at this page it looks like we added 70 which page number are you on page one it would appear just look at this page, it looks like we added 70. Which page number are you at? Page one. It would have here just by looking at page one that 72 units were added, but if you go later in the report, then you're going to try and uncover that project was canceled. So it might be more beneficial and more representative of what's been accomplished. Yeah. Not to include things like that because technically funds weren't expended and based on the administrative rules were reporting on reporting reporting to counsel on the expenditures and accomplishments. That was neither. on page three at the bottom just as an educational opportunity for us to understand administratively you folks can use up to 10% of the appropriation for a fiscal year. How is it working in terms of you folks are giving out funds of what is a 10% based on for that fiscal year? The 10% is based on the budgeted amount for that fiscal year. So that's what we would. Well, it's not necessarily what we would hold for admin. We work through a budget and see how much we need. You can see from this the period here that we're presenting we only needed 3.75% of the funds and we didn't even use it all. So we budgeted what was allocated here and you can see what we spent and what was left over. So the next round is going to be the same thing. What was in the budget for fiscal year 2425 was 9 million in change. I don't know what that total amount was right off the top of my head, but it wouldn't have been exceeded 10%. And then we'll report back to you what that budget amount was and what we ended up spending. God, okay, perfect. Thank you. Okay. I think the project by project summaries are great and helpful for us to get, you know, that kind of thing. But maybe just summarizing the activity on one spreadsheet. Yeah, because I think when we look at those other reports, there's a lot of columns, so we can make sense easier than trying to flip back and forth. And again, just making sure we're getting things that were actually expended and accomplished. So thank you so much to the team for all the work that you folks are doing in the process. We're making. Chair, are you okay? Thank you, Councilmember Inaba. Councilmember Kimball. Thank you. I just had one quick question. Did we use any of the Monaco money of the five, no, it was none of that was used for environment. Not in that fiscal year, so. In the previous? No. OK. So remember, this allocation of funds was for the first two years. The 5.5 basically never got obligated. So they got put into the pot of the next round of funding. So we're right in the middle of, we already are reviewing applications now. We should be coming back to the council very shortly for an appropriation of funds and an annual plan or a listing of projects that we're going to be recommending. Okay, great. I would disagree a little bit with my colleague in the sense that I would actually like to see projects like Monago on the sheet, but maybe some of the columns not included like the number of units or the amount expanded because the amount wasn't expanded and the units will not be created. So not including them in the summary, but maybe just including them in the list somehow was signaling more overtly. I mean, I saw there was a little asterisk there next to it, but I do think that, I mean, hopefully that's rare, right? Where we assign something and it doesn't actually get used, but I actually think that's informative. I think we can talk through how to label the columns properly so you guys can get all of the information, but I like being able to present to you what was awarded. So you know the full scope of the projects. And then, but the additional columns that Council Member Naba is suggesting would show the actual status or the outcome. So you could see that all out. I think we can work out something to give you everything you need. Yeah. All right. Thank you. That's all you need. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Yeah. That's all I had. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Kimball. Anyone else? Just quick. Good. All right. Thanks. Just one more thing. So just clarification. So the money that was originally slotted to be for the Monago Del and this remaining money are those part of the 9 million plus or is it the 9 million plus this will be added to that? So the amount that you that was budgeted for fiscal year 2425 plus the 5.5 plus whatever was left over from our admin got is going to get calculated into the next round. Okay great okay so that's going to be an addition to that nine. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. All right, just quickly to wrap it up. Really, a lot of people were so bummed about the Banago Hotel project falling through. Thank you for taking all the constructive criticism on presentation, but this is very helpful. I just have a quick question about the Homoğlu at Waikaloah. I might have been just my naivete, but I didn't realize that the county was going to be providing funding for this affordable housing project. This was kind of tied to their request for zoning change and approval to build 1100 more timeshare units. And then they were going to build this workforce housing project to kind of sweeten the sour for that. So I just was wondering how and what the parameters or how the agreement for county funds of $3 million to be allocated for this project. And all facilitates or comes together was that part of the prior agreement. Do you think that it might help to hear from the developer? Yeah. If the rent is on the... All right. Sorry, I keep forgetting because they're not up there. Yeah. And I'm sorry you said Ben? Ren. Ren. Hi. Oh, you're muted, I think. Hi, Chair, Council members. Can you all hear me now? Yes, thank you. Hi, my name is Ren Kimora. I'm with Santa Clara Valment, the developer, a homeowner, a white pool LP. Sorry, could you repeat your question? I just want to make sure I have, I guess, the question under the table. and the developer, O'Malo, Wai-Kolo LP. Sorry, could you repeat your question? I just wanna make sure I have, I guess the question, I understand properly. Sure, I just was curious. It was my understanding when we passed the legislation in approval for this project. It was not directly tied, but it was closely associated with Waikelow Alans' ask for a change of zone for half of their golf course in order to build 1100 time share units. But this was, you know, another part of Waikelow Alans' project was to build this affordable housing workforce component for those that live and work. Excuse me, not necessarily live, but work in that area. But I don't remember a part of that being that $3 million of county funding was going to be contributed to the project. Yes, and I apologize. This may predate my participation in this project, but the affordable housing production program application, this was we applied to this program after the development contract or the development agreement was entered into with Waikolo development company. Okay. That's what it is. Okay. It's good for me to know because this might be the norm of the process. Yeah, but just to have a better understanding of where, I know they get federal funding and they'll get 201H and they'll get tax subsidies and all those different things. I suppose I was just a little surprised that they would then get funding from our affordable housing pot to do the project. Yeah. You know, there's a provision in the admin roles that where we are not projects that have an affordable housing agreement. Is that what you're talking about? It doesn't qualify for this fund. Is that what you're talking about? So if they have a a they cannot use these funds to build Affordable housing that is a part of an agreement with the county Is that what you're I'm not I'm not sure Sorry, like the county cannot fund projects that have an affordable housing agreement. Okay, that have a affordable housing requirement. Okay. Yes. Is that what you're talking about? Yes. That makes sense. But no. This isn't that. This is all workforce housing. This is 100% right. The whole project is. Yeah. Councilmember Inaba, did you have something to add? You I think you're on to it. I'm going to share your cones. So yes. Can you? Yeah. So share what you're going to it and I'm going to share your comments. So yes, can you share what you're going to share? The question to the staff is making sure that the Ho-O-Malu project is not an affordable housing project that is meeting the requirement of another rezoned project. And my understanding is at Waikoloa land, which is the project that spurred this homolo project. This has had already met its affordable housing requirement by conveying the land that Kamakorn knewi to the county. Yes, you're correct there. Right, you're correct. They were very, they were separate projects. Yeah, yeah. So that's why I believe that the office of housing felt that it would be not in violation of our admin rules to provide funding for this project. But I think that's what your concern is. I just, yeah, you nailed it on there and I just was learning the process. Sure. That one Stanford, you know, Stanford car can come back then and look for any and all pots of money available to help fund the project itself. But it was not there. This was not, they did not have an affordable housing requirement based on the zoning change for those other timesher units because of the already large, I think it was 300 acres correct that was associated with Wikoloa land from decades prior to fulfill their affordable housing. Okay, I'm going to yield for a second and hand it over to you. Oh yeah, just one. Understanding that they had previous people filled their requirement, it was a condition of their change of zone to produce affordable housing units. So there was an agreement, right? Yes. Okay. So perhaps we can just circle back with Corporation Townsville because I had some questions just regarding the use of this funds even with 201 H when we're granting exemptions already and being mindful obviously we want to support affordable housing development, but also be mindful of potential double-dipping or representation of this, but then we're going to come back to you after and ask for money and obviously it comes through us to approve grants over 25,000, but oftentimes they come in a package right of numerous grant applications that you folks are forwarding for approval. So I think we just need to have a closer eye on that as corporation council reviews these applications and these awards for housing production but I don't think you were off base. There were conditions that we worked hard to include. Was it a requirement? No, but it was a commitment and a condition of, so thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Inava. Thank you for the validation that I'm not losing my minipausal mind. Some statistics are still sticking in there. And thank you for the report and the maps are very helpful. So for us to see and which districts they were in. And we'll look forward to continued progress on all of these projects. And taking a look at that because, as you know, better than anyone, Office of Housing, especially with everything with the credits and all that, there's always going to be eyes watching. So we want to make sure that we close any loop holes and remove any potential opportunity for being viewed as nepotism or incestuous funding or any of that kind of stuff. So, and we get where we need to go with the least bumps and bruises. All right. So, if that's it from everyone today, all those in favor of closing file on communication 988, please say aye. We have six members in favor, Mr. Clerk, with council members Evans, Glimba, and Liloie excused. And if I see no other business on the agenda, we are adjourned. Thank you. Aloha.