Hello, I'm Klein, this is meeting out of recess. It is 9.02 a.m. I believe our next part of joining us is the Department of Public Works, given the focus in the front row today. Acting Director Hazavito, if you would like to come up and introduce your team, run through your presentation. And then we'll go to questions from the council if there are any. Kalamaycha, just want to confirm you do not have any testifiers but just so that we're aware we do not have any testifiers this morning. Thank you, Mr. RSL. I appreciate that. Please introduce yourself and anyone who speaks today to anything please introduce yourself for the record for the captioners online, for the online stuff. Okay. Good morning, Acting Director Neil as the Wheel of Public Works. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Councilman Hermers. Right next to me is our businessman, Kelsey Calo Alois. In the back of me, Gilaan Sonomura, building chief, Keoni Thompson, engineer division chief, Aaron Takawa, traffic division chief, TJ foresight, highway division chief, and Darro Dittara, he is on count in four. Sorry Randy Riley won't be with us this morning forways. I'm sorry for automotive. Okay, thank you all. Pass it on to Kelsey as you go over everything. Just as a note to it. It was not more than a week ago that Mr. Onal had retired. So you stepped in and took over and just noting that you're a deputy director, but you've taken on the responsibility for the time being. So I appreciate you just being here and running through this because you just took this on. So thank you. Thank you. It's a great opportunity and it's fun. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go ahead. Okay, good morning everyone and happy Friday. My name is Kauzi Kuluwa-luwa. I'm the business manager for Public Works and I'll be presenting our proposed budget to you this morning. So we'll start with our program measure outcomes. So from January through March of this year, we were able to process 1,319 building permits our highway maintenance crews continue paving. I do have an up to date number. So currently we are at 22.22 miles and we're anticipating to have 32 miles paved by the end of the fiscal year. We issued notice to proceed and start work letters for two FHWA projects. Mamaloha Highway, Palani Road to Kamalani Street, and Kalamaka Road to Haavina Street. Our building division completed some CIP funded projects including the Alpuni Center prosecuting attorney chiller replacement. So hopefully there are a lot more comfortable now thanks to them for being patient with us in the Hawaii County Lava Building Lava Rockvaniaaneer. Our traffic division is working on a banyan drive crosswalk and procuring battery backup systems for at-traffic signals to keep our signals running during power outages. So thank you to traffic. Our objectives for FY26 remain consistent. Of course customer service is important to us. Improving customer service not only to the public but also to our partner agencies and fellow county departments. Community engagement we continue to see ways to to improve communication and information sharing for the work that we do here. Technology over the years we've been implementing different types of software solutions and we want to keep moving forward with that to help streamline processes, seek automation and continue towards digitizing and getting away from paper. Training, we always want to provide training to help our employees growth and development and standardization, so develop and update SOP, SOP, sorry, standard operating procedures, training manuals and document management. So some of our exciting highlights for fiscal year 25, we began construction on some critical infrastructure projects, including Highway 137A, which is reconstruction of La La Nandated Road. That is a FEMA project and Honoli and Kaevila-Hila-Hee Stream Bridge, which we are excited to see that it is 100% federally funded by FHWA. We continue our ongoing communication with the community, our information specialist, Cherice, Knaikani, continues to attend community meetings, work on trainings, our director and now acting director Neil has been attending the Mayor Town Hall meetings and we continue to work on improvements to our website to provide GIS maps and weekly updates of what public work is doing. We filled some critical vacancies including the Department System Coordinator in the Building Division. This position has helped and has already started, you know, with uniform guidance and training for the building inspection staff including our building clerks. Geographic information system analyst too in engineering division. This helps the engineering division. I feel like it was much needed so that they could get everything that is currently on paper in a system, aligned with proper maps, everything updated. This position has also allowed for our divisions to work together, their GIS analysts and our program manager, to kind of create this GIS working group so we can communicate our information as one department versus operating in individual silos. And our road construction and maintenance supervisor line in Highway Maintenance Division Puna Roads. And right now we are currently working through the procurement process for project construction management software. We're hoping to expand this with other departments who currently do construction projects and work order management software for automotive division. So public works is made up of six divisions. We have our administration division, automotive division, and building division. Those are funded by the general fund. We have our engineering division, which is unique and is funded by both the general and highway fund. In the highway maintenance division and traffic division, which is funded by our highway fund. Our current positions, we have 478 positions, and we have about 65 funded vacancies or about at an 18% vacancy rate. We still face challenges with the recruitment of critical vacancies, oh, sorry, critical vacancies, including our license positions to include engineers and architects, building inspectors, West Hawaii positions are a little bit hard to fill in clerks, of clerks of all level, a clerk's senior account clerks, clerks, threes.. So in overview of our general fund, we have a total budget of $20 million, $40,997, it was an increase of $420,420,243. I didn't know in the presentation, but we were awarded two sub, well, one sub of them in all award, which allows for two construction building inspectors in our building division. And we are excited and hopeful that this will decrease our need to hire consultants for our inspections. Changes in OCE, not too much changes, reduction of one time awards in fiscal year 25 and increases in controllable costs. We had an increase of equipment, $197,000, $197,000 $197,000 $200. I'm kind of excited about these equipment purchases. This will help our building division repairs and maintenance section. So some three transit cargo vans and a painter utility truck in our design and engineering section for building. We budgeted for an asset management system and we also budgeted for five vehicles for building inspection. For those of you who were here last year, we received funding for vehicles for the building division, building inspection section, and they do have an aging fleet. So we wanted to continue with our plan to replace the aging fleet, you know, in a process purchasing a few vehicles every year. Okay, next we move on to our highway fund. Public Works does manage the highway fund. The total budget is 63 million, 289,559, with DPW having an operating budget of 60 million, $6874. Sorry, I don't think all my caffeine has kicked in yet. And then of course, HPD's traffic enforcement unit is also within the highway fund. So we asked the divisions to maintain a status pool budget with just uncontrollable increases to salaries and wages and some of our miscellaneous more of the professional fringe benefits accounts. We did add in a $2.5 million to our transfer to capital funds account. We felt this was necessary, you know, with our current CIP funding and the outlook, we wanted to be able to have that mechanism if we needed to tap into our fund balance for any critical projects or also any matching awards for our federal grants. The equipment pretty much the same highly maintenance continues to purchase construction equipment, small tools and needed budget for SUV and engineering. Currently has budgeted four trucks. All our divisions are special fund aid and within the highway fund so we do budget for our own computer equipment. And then to the bottom little corner, we also have overstate over the beautification fund which is a public works and PNR. Our public works budget is $159,000 and $88. Okay, so we'll move over to our CAP priority projects for fiscal year 26. The Building Division Construction Projects hazard mitigation grant program, Public Safety Building, Flood Medication. This one is currently waiting for the FEMA Award. We did get the NOI from them. East Hawaii Animal Shelter, which I believe just went out to bed. Central Fire Station, ceiling demolition and host tower repair, re-roofing repair exterior plaster and paint, civil defense radio tower remediation in Ka'u, Nga A'lehu and Kulani. This is critical to communications in that area, and our Alpuni Center sewer rehabilitation, the HR and conference center side, in the Alpuni Center re-roofing and repairs. In some of the design projects for building includes fire station extractors, phase B design, and the re-roofing of various public safety facilities to include Waikia, Komaana, and Kailua Fire Station and Honoka Up Police Station. Over at our engineering division, we have the Hurricane Lane Bridge projects, repairs, Pihonua Bridge and other various bridges, reconstruction of lava-inundated roads. I like to call this phase two. I don't know if that's what it's officially called, but that would be a bohiki road. We also have wilder road cover and white lower dressing. In design, we'll be working on the Waikoloa Pani-Olo intersection roundabout, the Puna alternate road study, safe routes to school, Kilauea Avenue from point of course street to Kaua Lani street and hazard mitigation grant Wainawina Leigh Brun. Safe Roads to School, Kilauea Avenue from Poena Coast Street to Kauela Ni Street and hazard mitigation grant Waenui-Nui Bridge. So our priorities and initiatives for FY26, safety, of course, first and foremost, safety of our community, safety for our employees, safety of our infrastructure. We also have staffing, working on strategies, exploring strategies for recruiting and retainage, and we're closely working with Director Tocco Hero at HR to see how we can work together, also working with our public information specialists for some creative ideas for recruitment. Permitting hot topic. So we are improving, we are improving with processing times and permit issuance times. I believe it was earlier in April. We had PV training on both the East and West side of the island and really improving communications with our customers, maintaining conversations with them to see how we can improve processes for everyone. And we felt that, you know, this fiscal year was a good year to address asset management. It's no secret that the Fred maintenance of a lot of our county facilities has kind of cut up with us. So for asset management, we are currently recruiting for a facility's manager in the building division. We have budgeted for an asset management system, which will allow us to have our county-owned maintained facilities in a software system so we can track them better and plan accordingly. I also just want to give a shout out to Oscar who provided us an opportunity. They were awarded a grant for facilities assessments for energy efficiency for them but we will be assessing our structures and potential hazards so just want to thank them. And of course we'll always continue with our mission for building operating and maintaining public infrastructure for the success and growth of our county. Thank you. Tell me. Good. Yeah, so, um, yeah, we open the floor to any discussions and questions. Thank you. Councilman Broneci. Thank you, chair. Good morning. Good morning. Good to see all you faces. I see all familiar ones that I've seen from before and great to see you guys all. So I'll start. I'll have building questions later on my next turnaround. Okay. But first of all, acting director, I want to say that ever since you've always got in, I've heard from people, like contractors and, you know, consultants, whatever, customer service has really improved and they really appreciate that and they like was shocked in the beginning part when they got greeted and being thank you and they were like amazed. But yeah, so thank you very much for all the staff that you folks have and how you folks are improving. I guess the Aloha that is being given out to the public. So thank you very much for you guys hard work. That's first question. The safe routes to school on from Poina co to Coalani on on on KiloA street. So what improvements are that? Good morning, Nioas Vido acting director of the works. We could we started on KiloA, we started the side walks and we ended so far. Now we'll continue from where we ended off all the way to Pena Court for safe routes. Oh, that's nice. Okay. Then continue, I'm pretty sure we'll continue all the way to Waikihwina School too. Okay. What else? Really nice. Okay. And then drainage and all that can be included. Yes. Good. Yes. Because I was kind of shocked when they did the Killoware one. And drainage wasn't put in. And I had talked to Councilmember Lilo at the time to see that if they could have installed that because there is flooding, you know, when it rains hard. but it's in the bike lanes that it kind of overflows and so but then she said well it's in the bike lane so not too bad but still yet to me it's like if you can kind of solve that problem that would be awesome but great because in also back when I was on the council they did do that kind of like that swale on the Maul marker side of Kiloel going out to Puna But then the neighbors grass and everything would be covering that whole area So then it became flat again and all grass So I was used to wonder like I was in fact, I was going to call you on there and say hey you can go clean them up But yeah, that's okay. Yeah They're on right there and they got a dry well there 25 feet deep yeah they dry well right there so we got to check it out see what's the depth at it right now and for the drainage and there's one there and one I think about maybe quarter mile down there's one more I think it's 2020 the house got flooded there so I think they and if you're not putting it put in a drywall there. Yeah, I think whenever we do FEMA rough federal grants, Kion, you can call me if I'm right, right around. But I don't think you can improve. You can do the road everything, but you can kind of put new infrastructure there. Oh, you get to, old drainage. You can come up for it. Okay. There's a feature. Hi, Kylani Thompson, Public Works, Engineering Division Chief. Good morning. Yeah, so when it comes to sources of funding, for federal highway, if it's a rehab or maintenance and then depends on the environmental that we do, we are limited in making improvements. We cannot make extra drainage improvements that is not there already. Now if it's reconstruction or safety, source of funding is a big thing where it might allow certain improvements. It just depends on the grant that we get. But then with the drainage, that would be part of safety because then if there's flooding and water being catched and what's certain area the cart could go hydroplane and then cause an accident. Correct. So if you get safety funding and then it gets approved that way and you do the environmental for it, then it is allowed. So there's like separate different parts of money that you would have in our research. Yes, that we apply for it. Then we can get or if it's available Got it. Okay, so it's all contingent on what kind of funding we get But it's great to hear that yeah, it's gonna be that improvements. Yes. That's the plan. Okay, and since you're up there I don't see the four mile bridge on the priority projects coming in so probably I think Kelsey guys is limited to three small say So, it's a lot more of a party. I think Kelsey has his limit to three. So say, limited space. So there's a lot more projects because everyone's three on the point. We don't want that money to be lost. No, we don't. No, we don't. It lacks is on 630, 2027. So we are aware and we will act appropriately. And then also director Ono at the time mentioned about if we're going to be looking at those additional requirements that was given at the last moment. What is the status on that? So we met with the Army Car for the Disno permits and then right now we have a path forward to address. We'll look like we're going to get a nationwide number 13 exemption and then we're working on that right now. Okay, so it should expedite the process of getting that part. Okay, great. Right on. Thank you. Okay. Vacancies you mentioned. Is there a problem on the West side? Yes, we do have a little more trouble filling vacancies on the West side in our building division and engineering division. We've kind of looked at it and you know it's not really competitive out there. You have a lot of the hotel industries, comparable benefits so west to what is a struggle. Okay, so in the other department, my throat is kind of swelling now, but I mentioned about thinking outside the box, so maybe like health insurance, like the county right now, employees, they pay 50-50 or whatever, right, they have a higher share, I think, compared to counties. So we have to reverse it, maybe where employees pay 75%, on 25%, and county pays 75, or we just pay a whole thing for them. And that way that extra money could go for their rents and for their living costs. So something to have a discussion within administration to look at that, to help every department in getting more employees on the west side. Most definitely, thank you. Okay. I know automotive is not here. Randy's not here. But the folks know maybe direct directive. Like there's an internship with HCC, like with the mechanics. And these old guys acting directly new as video. We reached out already to them a couple times Randy did and just trying to get the guys in from from there after the graduated to get them in it's hard because outside money wise they offer more opportunity but we hired I think it was just hard one up mechanic one so we should get one field in here already. Maybe we can look into where even during their time to the process in school, have them during the summers to come in and work and maybe get some credit. So I can help with that with working, you know, contacting the chancellor, yeah, from HCC and see how we can do that. Because I didn't mention to her about that before, because I was trying to do that with the summer fund, so we can look into that. So I hope you guys with that. Okay. That's perfect. Thank you. Yeah. And it helped you always good. Okay. Next question would be how many vehicles that you folks have right now that is at Alpoony Center? That's part in that area. There is a bunch. So we are currently working on the building division and automotive division. We're going out. We're checking the vehicles, we do, we started the process of trying to kind of figure out which ones work, which ones don't work, and address them appropriately between the two divisions so we can free up some space. Yeah, and then also if some of them aren't able to be used and you folks are not using it, then we can transfer to other departments who are requesting in front of us to get new vehicles, for example, parks. They need vehicles and so forth. So yeah, if that can be done. Yes, so I can do as a video's asking director. We had them go out and look what vehicles are parked. You can tell underneath vehicles what it is. And, you know, so they supposed to go to reach out, get all the lights to pay to reach out to each department whoever the vehicle belongs to and ask them about it. Okay. And if it's not working or something, then we put it onto auction. You know, auction or some other department can use it. Yes. like highway, fire come visit us, we say, but what we get on auction, they look what they need and they take it. We just transfer it over to them. Yeah. OK. the department can use it. It's just like highway, fire come visit us, we say, but you know what, we get an auction, they look what they need and they'll take it, you know, we just transfer it over to them. Yeah, okay, good. And then I've been working with finance to see when they can start their auction program again, but they need to get some manpower for that, so hopefully it can be soon. Okay, and to that, like, what is that? I guess licensing for driver's licensing, they're going to be moving into the old bank of Hawaii, right? Then I was asking director finance about how model vehicle registration would be able to move there too, because it makes sense for both of them being in the same location, right? But I guess Park King was a problem for on the bank of Hawaii side, but then I mentioned to her, but the most of the employees who's there already working at a police center have a parking space. then it was I guess not determined that they couldn't park the animal because they're in a different location so who is the one in charge of this parking assignments? So that would be our administration division so that's something we can take a at. Yeah, because I think if folks can do that, we're allowed finance to have them work, you know, consolidating. It would help the public. And then the parking is already set because they have parking there. You folks eliminate those trucks and cars that are parked along a Boone Street, a Poahe Street, whatever. And that can really open up more parking. And then parks and rec could maybe use that building because they need to expand. So this way, everybody, there's a win-win situation. So yeah, so if we can look into it right away because then I think finance would need to know right away if there's a possibility of that movement, right? Because then they have to also renovate that the area space in order to accommodate, right? Okay, so that's what I went and for now and I'll come back about building. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Checking in in corner. I'm here. No questions at this time. Thank you. Back to you. Councilmember, tell you what? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for being here. I have a couple questions around. Well, all right, a couple things. The painting for the public safety building. I know it was deemed it didn't need to be a maybe separate CIP project, but something that you guys could just do. Is that on your priority list? Or that's what I would, the chief said. He was here. Is that somewhere? Do you have the painting for that coming up? It's basically when the chief came on board it was I met with him right when he got there. It was just like one of his number one things he asked me could I please help because it was really hurting morale and stuff. Go ahead introduce yourself. Jolansson and we're building chief. So this public safety building project has been cut into several phases because of grant opportunities. The original project did deal with paintings. So having carved out the roof problems we're having at the Mesonine and having carved out also for the replacement of the cooling tower. We finally get into the design to the electrical improvements, mechanical improvements and hardening. And so when I say hardening, we'll be looking at replacing the roof, changing out the windows and painting the exterior. When is that scheduled to actually happen? We are applying for a FEMA grant and anticipate being at 60% of design by July of this year. Which means when will the December? We are targeting document completion in December. If we meet the July deadline and we are selected as a project, FEMA will give us a construction money so they will not be a pause like we're having with the mezzanine project where we did two phases of initial design funding and now we're waiting for construction funding that should be able to go straight through. So can you get an estimated... When will we see people after painting? Really next year. Although painting would probably be later in the phasing okay because it really is I think kind of demoralizing it is agreed okay thank you I appreciate you getting on that I really hope that you get the FEMA dollars I know there's a lot going on with FEMA right now so I'm to is there a backup plan if for some reason the FEMA money doesn't come through? The grant application is for 15 million. We would be depending on finance and their priorities for funding, but we're certainly going to finish the design whether we get the funding or not. Okay, construction. I hear that. I've also heard from some of my colleagues here who've been here longer than I have and understand the stuff that having designs that we don't actually build, that's just a huge taxpayer waste of money. So I really, really, really hope we don't go down that route. I mean, I understand it's great to finish the design, but if we don't get the funding for construction, what's the point right so that would be up to the CIP and how they a lot the money for that so the many projects in need that's right while you're here I think you might be part of this answer as well the central fire project um when are we gonna see work on that and start? That project is being bid out April 23rd. Yeah, April 23rd is coming up and we are not unlikely going to make the excuse me. Is it April or May? April. April. Sorry. Yeah, so it's advertised and I don't think we're going to make the budget cut off to award in this fiscal year. So we'll probably be looking at awarding in August of this year and it'll probably take two to three months to get the contract executed. So the scope of work again, similarly we have to prepare the preserve, the exterior of the building. So there will be plaster repair and painting as well as roofing. Yeah so it says ceiling demolition, post tower repair, re-roof repair exterior plaster and paint. So once this project is complete. Will this building be in a state that Central Fire could move back in and operate and be a good? It could be, it's up to the Fire Department how they want to run their operations. This building would need major renovations to come up to current code. So we are just doing the preservation right now of the building. I don't know if the decision will be to repurpose the building for other uses, but it's a significant historic building for our town of Hilo. And so we are just trying to preserve it and not sure what's going to happen programming wise. Okay, so is that regardless of what goes in there, it's going to need major renovation or only if the use. It depends on the use. So when we determine the use of the building, then we would have the architect design, the appropriate infrastructure for that within the building. Okay, so it will not be in a state to be utilized after this project is complete by anyone. Well, it is a existing fire state. Right. But they're moving out. The meeting. Yeah. They're taking care of the immediate need. And it would be up to the fire department to decide if they want to move back in at that point. I guess what I'm trying to understand is after this project is done, can that building be utilized? Or do we have to do another project in order for it to be utilized? Say, fire doesn't want to go back in there or for whatever reason doesn't go back in there. It won't be in a state where somebody could just, we could lease it or another department or something could go in there. No, if someone else goes in we would need a change of use permit and we'd need to bring it up to code. Okay. Alright, so I just want to be clear because the public is seeing there's a project here and that it's going to look good from the outside basically but we're still not going to be able to basically get anybody in there until we do whatever needs to be done inside. Yes, so if we're changing the use of the facility. Okay, thank you for that information. I think it's, you know, this has also been one of those things since like day one everybody's calling me saying, Central Fire looks terrible. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I should gears a bit to you, one of your main objectives, community engagement. Appreciate that. I'm very glad to see that on there. Specifically when it comes to Safe Routes to School projects, I'm wondering if you can talk about, and maybe I don't know if that's your engineering department or what talk about Safe Rouse to School projects and how those are chosen because for instance one of your the fifth priority on your CIP programs is the Hilo Union Safe Rouse to School which is in District 2. I've never had one single person reach out about that issue there. Whereas Safe Routes to School for EBD Sela is number 11. And I mean, I'm constantly barraged. And I was so happy to see that you were able to get funding to get a Safe Routes to School coordinator. But I haven't been able to get that coordinator to come out to the community and listen and engage with the community around some of these issues because he says that he's been told to focus in this other area. And so I guess I'm just really concerned how some of these projects are being chosen without community engagement that I can see based on knowledge I think the New York as we know for me Around every school is a safety issue. You know, we need to make it safe for everyone You know when you start speed speed tables here in Derek, you know Raise crosswalks. This is slow down. I know why can we not getting one both sides on a kilowatt-cane oil. And we keep moving down. I think I know, I know how we'll be getting one for the EBD silver. And we, all main concern is the kids. They're walking safe. Everything's clear for them. For the, how they choose the safety routes, I'm not sure, but I have, orody or Keone come up in the plane. Thank you. Good morning, Council Melanie DiMelo, Deputy Chief for Engineering Division. Speaking specifically to the Hilo Union project, we have received some concerns about people walking on the road. on the this one is particularly going along from Shiloh Union, I'm sorry, Shiloh Union along my Nakhudrive. So we have had some community concern about people on the road, walking on the road. There is quite a lot of, there's some multifamily housing in that area, and being that it is within a mile of the school. that's one of our main drivers for a lot of these Seafrouts projects. Within a mile of the school they don't have bus service so that is the driver for some of the decisions regarding the Seafrouts projects. So but without any, yes we did have some concerns with people walking on the road. Okay so what is the project? I thought it was raised crosswalks. Is it going to be doing sidewalk and bike lanes? The one you see on the CIP list particularly is doing fixing the sidewalks along Kut Yulani, Waikluku Drive, and then portion of Waikluku Drive basically where there's the existing old-style sidewalks where they're narrow we're going to be replacing those with full width sidewalks and then Beyond that area. I think past Halalani. We're going all the way to Just before Kaviki Rowan gonna try to widen what we can within the existing right of wages So people have a little bit of a shoulder to walk on. Okay, will you be adding bike lanes too? We are going to widen. I don't recall on if we are going to straight bike lanes, but there will be a widened shoulder, so at least there will be the ability for pedestrians and bicyclists to use it. Okay, thank you. So, but getting back to my question about how we, as a county, engage with the community on some of these issues, you have a site for out to school coordinator. Is it something we can expect? The Safe Routes to School Coordinator will actually be out engaging with the schools and like coming to community meetings and things. Yeah, so our Safeafroud School Coordinator, he is engaging with multiple agencies. There is a Seafrouds coordinator, monthly meetings held by the state. So that is something that is held with the states, with the counties, with the DOE representative. There's a number of representatives on that board. So I think that's really going to help with the, and I believe it is open to the public as well, if they want to listen in and comment. So that is one way that he's starting to engage publicly. I know he does get a number of inquiries as well from, both from the public, from DOE's schools. And he is trying to keep tabs and reach out as well, so that we can start to have a more, to your point, a more comprehensive idea of where the issues are and maybe hopefully prioritize that way now that we have him on board. OK. Can I get a commitment from DPW that, so I was asked to please have a community meeting for the community around maybe disabled school, around traffic and safely getting kids to school and stuff. Can I have your, that he can please attend, be there, use email private secretary, Julan and chiefs put it on the schedule and get us there. Thank you so much. I have to really. We did our kakaibu to Vart for Keonepoko Elementary who did out in middle school, Kohala Middle School, Kuala High School, Kuala Elementary, with VT was there, sorry, raised crosswalks. And this reach out to us will go out to every mean he got. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I just want to put a plug. I have reached out to your office about this. I've got several calls, especially from the actual cross-sing guard at Chief S. Kapilani School about the, and this is a route that I, if I can finish, please, that I drive often coming down Moho Uli, that that is really a need of some support. and maybe these speed tables would be something you could look into for that space as well. Yes we will but more we could get a actually a rehab. Yeah and is that top to bottom? Yes. Even the new so from from from all the way down to Kilauea. Okay, awesome. This reach out and will move me. Okay, thank you. Oh, sorry, KMANA, sorry. Oh, only from KMANA. Yeah, okay. I was wondering about that. A copy learning is nice right there. That's right. That's right. Thank you. I think I'm out of time, so I'm gonna yield for now. Thank you so much. Appreciate all you do, all of you. Thank you. Council Member Kimball. Yeah thank you. I think I will follow Councilmember Odisha's lead and start with highways and then do building my second round. Wanted to start with, well first of all the big Mahalo to the South Hilo crew for the work on Conor Road. Thanks for the pictures last night, Neil. It's looking great. I know that the community out there is going to be super excited. So mahalo to your crew and forgetting that done. You know, one of the things that I'm getting a lot of queries about is the legislation that Councilmember Coney Kleinfelter, introduced last year about our ability to do some maintenance repairs on private roads through an application process. So my first question around that is we were expecting that application to be available beginning of this year. I know it had to be reviewed by Corp. Council the last I talked with former director Oh no about it. Do we have any updated timeline on when that application might be available for communities to apply for that option? Acting director Nioh as we do. For a total miles of private road got 1385. The. The 1385, throughout the whole island. And for finishing up, everybody will meet with the Card Council and finance to see how we can do it. Make sure we, our ends off close so there's no, I wanna make sure we cover our own county and making sure we do it properly in the right way. I don't want to make sure I don't want to do something and we end up Doing something wrong We want to make sure everything's covered so we'll get back to you guys on when but hopefully soon Okay, all right. Yeah, I you're kind of leading into my next question, which is There's also the bill at the legislature House bill 860. I'm actually not sure if we talked about that, but that is represented, Krish's bill to allow us to do work on roads and limbo, which is another 250 so miles I think. Road Z-Limbo is 101.9 and Road and road Z limbo 9 on the list is 72.6. Yeah, so throughout the whole island. 32.6, so about 200. So the house bill, a 60, initially was very straightforward and proposed that the counties would be able to do minimum maintenance work on roads in limbo without taking ownership of that road or having any liability. And since then of course the attorneys got a hold of it and said, oh no, you can't take away liability. And so it's become something, I bring it up because the HSEC was initially like, yes, thank you. And then we were like, yeah, no. because if the liability pieces there you know with the number of miles of road we have to do if we have to make a choice between doing work on something that we already have liability for versus something we don't have any liability for we're going to choose the other one right so I don't know how that's all going to fall out but as the department kind of considered any strategy around funding sources for these non-county roads to do any sort of maintenance, whether it's the private roads through the bill that we passed or if something does come through from the state on these roads in the bow, like is there any strategy to divert some of this road so that we put on our county roads towards those activities? So our highway fund currently does have a road in Limbo account, it's about $400,000. If this, you know, with the changes in legislation, if we need to increase that, we can do that for specifically ordinance 24 24-gashel one, we would need to work with finance. My understanding was that it would need to be funded by the general fund. So the 400K right now is the materials program? Yes, the materials program. If we were able to actually do, would we have to expand that line item to include beyond just the materials that if we were actually to invest some labor towards it as well? Yes, yeah, okay, that's it. Just one more follow up on repairs and road work. I see that you've hired the GI specialist too, which is I'm wondering, are you planning to restart that DPW map that shows where the work is going to be done? That was such a great tool for people who said, when is this going to happen? I'm like, go to this web page and follow it. Is that going to come online again soon? Yes, it would come out. Right now we've got one down highways and public works down there. I'm sorry, engineering. Right now they're both working together. What to make sure our information we give is correct. We get them two worked together with engineering, just double checking, making sure all the roads correct, the length of the roads. You know, we want to give all the information that is correct, and that's what we're doing right now. We double checking everything, making sure it's good, and we'll be sending it out real soon. Okay, all right. Yeah, it'd be great to have a press release or something when that is available to the public again, because it's been a very useful tool in terms of sharing what the plans are. I also wanted to see where we were so that the asset management system that was mentioned is that going to include our culverts and remember that was one of the things from the audit right as we needed to inventory of our culverts and all and all of that? Is that going to be included in the asset management? Are you doing that separately? And is that in the budget? So our asset management system talked about in our presentation is just for building infrastructure. For the culverts, we would do that separately. Is there a line item in that or is that just going to be done internally with staff time? Like we don't. The internal staff member. So right now we put out I think for next year we put a CCTV for highways so we can video other lines and you can see what it looked like and you know get the correct asmits for it so we can it on O GIS. And what kind of size, what kind of culvert it is? And also to note, our culverts are in I work. So we have high waste division has the capability to see that. OK, great. So where are we with the staffing staffing and highways division? I do want to ask kind of more details about the breakdown of the vacancies in which divisions are they in are you Concerned about staffing levels to to work on that inventory and all the do all the paving and For highways they don't look on If we don not men or what. We do what we need to do. We put that energy into great use and do our job. So at highway it's pretty sure we're about close to 90% field. And we'll continue doing what we need. And just make sure we be accountable for our roads. Thank you. Yeah, OK. Great. Two more questions. The first is, customer mechanical e-climbed filter noted the positions, I believe they were in HR, that were for parks to have folks on call for their maintenance crews, their park maintenance crews. And one of the things that I had discussed with the previous administration as well as Hugh is that I don't know how often this happens where you have a job that requires for folks and one calls in sick and then that day's working needs to be canceled. Would you have interest in looking at the ability of DPW to have a similar on-call program and was done as a pilot in parks and seems to be fairly successful but you know you basically have a list of folks that when you needed that extra person to fill out the crew, they would be on call and would be coming in. For highways we've got eight base yards. So whenever we shorted a base yard, we don't have enough men nearby base yard goes and help. So for on call we go in staff first before we move on to anyone. Is that usually able to resolve the issue so that you can continue with the plan work for the day? The hardest one is the call outs. Call outs if we get the man or what. But now we look at that different equipment we put in for the budget that we less call less men power and get them to the correct equipment we got. Yeah, the on call program is meant to address that call out issue so that if you do have last minute call outs, you have a, I mean, they get some additional. We get, we got standby. So whenever it is a storm or anything coming in, we put guys on standby. We'll put somebody on call. We need to pay them for the whole time. The only one's got a standby crew. It gives anything signs down. I think they are wanting to east and wanting to west. It gives any sign goes down. They can put it up really fast. But for but for highways, we should be good. Thank you. But my last good, I'm sorry, I'm a little cold. It was just gonna ask you to give us the highlights on the miscellaneous for highways, because highways has like 19 million pot of miscellaneous. Like if you could break down what some of that is, just so we have some more clarity, it's a little weird because you have the traffic enforcement right in there too, which is a big chunk of, well, I don't know, 5%. right? Yeah. So, um, could you just give us a high level overview? Um, the high, the high level overview. This is where I miss a miscellaneous account. It's correct. Okay. So, um, basic, in, in highway fun, yeah. So basically it consists of our transfer to capital funds account, which we can use as a mechanism to pull from fund balance for CIP projects. And then we do cover the health benefits, the retirement benefits, franges, any workers comp, you know, kind of sediment issues within the highway fine. the health benefits, the retirement benefits, ranges, any workers come, you know, kind of settlement issues within the highway fund. We also do have our own provision for training account. So similar to the general fund, just on a smaller scale to cover employees in the highway fund, funded by the highway fund. Thank you. How's my record? What's Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for being here. Neil, thanks to you and your highways crew TJ shout out for all of the amazing work you did just this week to clean up the whole town. There was a county property that was overgrown and folks started to squat and it collected just a lot of really nasty stuff. So thank you for helping to just kind of restore that space and help our community take back its town. I have some district level questions and then some broader county stuff. I appreciate knowing that Polikie Road continues to be a priority for community. Just want to confirm that there are no legal impediments for the contractor to start work once the pre-construction schedule has been submitted. It's no secret. lawsuit that Mr. Lyman had filed and I just keep getting mixed messages about whether or not work can actually start if that hasn't been settled. of the construction and gas for my car counselors that we can proceed moving forward and that's what I've got from my car counselors that we can proceed moving forward and that's what I've got from my car counselor right now. Perfect that was the answer I was looking for. Thank you just wanted to make sure it was on the record. Mr. Thompson's in through there could we also just quickly talk about some of the schools traffic issues that we are facing in Cioni Poco specifically and Pahoa High and Intermediate. We've had conversations over the years, my office, you Melanie, about just traffic controls, calming measures that we can implement for that area. Yes. So, Kaakai is a state process crew. It's a project that's on the federal steep list. It was a zoo grant, actually. And so it looks like that hopefully is going forward this year for the shoulder improvements for the children to walk in the shoulder. It was from a couple years ago and we had obstacles, but it looks like we've overcome some of the environmental obstacles and that one. For the traffic safety, I mean, I have to be for the traffic there isn't for that. You know, if there's any speed tables or that kind of thing. Mr. Takab, I can send you some videos that I get from parents about the traffic situation around Pahoa School during drop-off and pick up time. It's horrendous and it also presents a safety issue because we have a lot of cars in the area but also kids that are walking home and walking to downtown Pahoa. Is that something that we can solve together? Also, many of the videos and you can like design engineer solution. Yeah, sure. We can take over. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. A question about buildings. So in the past, we've been trying to, Mr. Thompson, I think this is going to be for Miss Sonomura. Thank you. Thank you. You're off the hook for now. Thanks. I just love that you're all here. Thank you. And thank you for being prepared. Miss Sonomoro, I think you've seen the reuse centers at the KEL transfer station. They're like these canopy tents that looked really nice maybe about 10 years ago, but they've fallen into disrepair because of, you know, just the elements, the natural environment, kind of moldy. Some folks have kind of cut a mold bin broken in to steal stuff which is really unfortunate because it's reasonably priced in there. Just wondering if we can work with Department of Environmental Management to if we can't change out the tent because the canopy because it's not meeting building code requirements, what more can we do? Good morning, Jolansson, or building chief. In answer to your question, we would be happy to work with the EM to see what options are available, what their needs might be. Very often when the facility or the structure is deteriorating, it doesn't make sense to try to repair it, but depending on what their needs are, there may be other options for them. Could we do one of those like mats and containers with the opening door on the front side with that meat building code that we made a permit also? Okay. So shipping containers that are converted for you are part of the I believe it's a 2021 IBC prior to that there is a pre-manufactured buildings relocatable buildings in the 2018 quotes so it is possible. We have had I think fire department uses the storage containers and we have a consultant design foundation for it needs to be secured and of course ADA provisions also. So we can work on something. Fantastic. Really look forward to the collaboration there. Can you let us know what we can do regarding the HPP fire station? Which was a volunteer station? Doesn't even look like a station, looks like somebody's house, and because we have the medic there now, we've had to increase staffing, and it's really tight. I've done a few visits, it's tight. I'm also concerned about the apparatus just kind of being out in the sun. The canopy cover is not large enough for these vehicles, so just wondering if this can be one of the priorities that we're working on because fire stations, they are the home away from home for our folks. Agreed. Appreciate your comments. Last year we did talk about HPP. It is in design right now. We have a concept design with the consultant. We're looking at renovating the dormitory, not sure if we'll have the funding for a new apparatus structure. Right now we're looking at installing a firewall between the existing structures so that we can try to meet code that way. But ideally as you mentioned, if funds are available would be to have a new apparatus building with the infrastructure covered and away from the dormitory. The original structure was like a HPM house and it's really not suited. You know, kind of I'll group from a volunteer station into what it is today. Understand, you know, it's becoming a real station. I think they have a captain there now. So we do need to look at it. We'll be meeting with the fire department on the concept design. Everything is a apologize a little bit delayed. It's we had other emergency projects that kind of put this on the back burner. And those project, that project will finish up. So we hope to start back up again. Thank you. Please let me know anything that I can do. I've brought it up in all seven budget hearings that I've been a part of being on the council. And we've seen a number of fire chiefs and I just want to make sure that this community is properly resource because it's growing exponentially. Thank you for your commitment. I really appreciate it. Thanks. I don't know who can answer questions about our dangerous flora program. This was established over a decade ago that would allow members of our community. It's a petition in the neighborhoods to remove the Abizia. And if they ignore the certified letters, they can activate county resources to remove Abizia. And we know what it's like when big storms, like Hurricane Azale, hit Hawaii, Island, and Puna, and Kaewu were off grid for weeks. So just wondering what kind of internal movement there is now to ensure that folks can take advantage of this section of code. Acting division, sorry, if I were to the right there. He put it out of being right now, should go out soon for a contractor for countries, because I don't want all workers going on in cutting private trees, but making sure the complaint is, you know, make sure the complaint, we look at it and see what it is, then from there we send the contractor, but we have to, with finance and court counsel, we get legal actions on it. Turn on either put a lien on the property or something. So we can cut the tree down. If the homeowner won't take care of it, we need to put a safety of the public. Thank you. I think I have copies of hundreds of submissions through this program. And I think over the last decade, there were maybe one or two instances where this program has been successfully applied. The next hurricane is right around the corner. And I just want to make sure we're doing everything that we can as an island community to mitigate this hazard. OK. And then to shout out to Deputy Salah Ferguson, he did a review of our ordinance, and I'll share this with you, director. He also looked at other municipalities to see about similar programs and where we might be able to refine ours. Thank you. I think we did it. We put letters around a private property before, and we did it when I first started highways. Fantastic. And we did the only thing about 30, Albezius. It was the people was happy. Yes. With help of the state. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to continue to work on this program. We've got a number of different codes that need to be updated soon, building code, energy code. Just curious to know if your budget reflects proper resourcing for you folks to undertake this work. And I also want to suggest, again, and I share this with Deputy Managing Director, the possibility of creating a county code council made up of folks in the community that are industry. They have to apply these codes to let us know how whatever is coming from international would be implemented here, the impact. That way we have folks that are boots on the ground informing any changes that we adopt as a county. So two part question. Do you have enough resources and maybe Deputy Managing Director talking about how the administration feels about this code Council of industry. Thank you. So on, I think Tuesday Wednesday, we'll be on the chief sort of more and we talked about how we can, you know, be a lot of plans are misleading on the codes and stuff. So I was asking her how we can get the architects and the engineers who have jobs plans, get them to go to a code class and learn the codes. From there, you know, at least it's easier for us. So from the second part, let's definitely manage the directory to take over. Thank you. Good morning, Deputy Managing Director, American Dishimoto. I love the idea, Ashley. Part of the mission and the vision of Mayor Alameda is open dialogue and communication between administration and the public, especially the public with subject matter experts such as county code. So let's continue this conversation. I do remember that in a columnite, kind of put it to the side just for a little bit, trying to get some other low hanging fruit done, but we will get back together, we'll talk about it and see what we can do. No need to apologize, you are juggling many things right now. I appreciate the consideration. Thank you. Page 296 of our operating budget has a breakdown from fiscal year 23 to 24 permits issued for a geographic district. And I just want to highlight the significant number of permits issued for the Pune community. It is a lot. And I just bring it up because we have to think about, yes, this is an affordable community to build and live in, but we lack really critical infrastructure that's needed, I think, to ensure that this community is well thought out, well planned. And with that, I'd like to start kicking off the conversation about permitting and the administration's goal of wanting to issue building permits within 60 days after it has been received and considering that all aspects of the application have been completed and no corrections are required. Just want to see how we're doing with that. I think we're doing great. I was talking to Chief Sonomura about this. You know, earlier, I want to say earlier in the year and we had some issues with some of our programs working and connecting with Epic. We had some staffing issues. Right now, she shared with me a graph. we are kind of getting to where we need to be to be issuing under the 60 days. I think right about now it's 45 days average for permanent issuance of course considering there's no backing forth with the plans. Okay and this division sufficiently resource to continue to meet these deadlines. Miss Sonoma, do you want to talk about the resources you folks need? Because I want to make sure your budget that you're proposing covers all of that. This is a really critical function of the county. Jolansson and Laura Building Chief, thank you very much for asking that question about our resources. So as you know in 2021, when we deployed the epic system, we're busy trying to configure it, we finally arrived at the point where our application process is maybe 90, 95% complete. And we are running as efficiently as we can. And so now we can say we would like to request additional positions, especially with the permit clerks. A lot of the problems we experienced last year, as as Kelsey mentioned, it began with a computer interface problem. And because it's dependent upon the permit clerks to prepare the plans for review by plans examiners, it really set us back and we are unable to recover from that. In addition with the shortage we have in staffing, which just highlights the needs and the important role that our permit clerks do perform. And right now preliminary numbers look like if we could have two more clerks, if we could have a clerk, we just reallocated a position to a clerk three to help with answering telephones and counter calls. That would help a lot. So our permanent positions have evolved from a point where it used to be everything in paper over the counter. You sit there, you process as long as you have that face-to-face contact into being an electronic permitting system that clerks really need to have that time to focus on the computer and do their work and With the distractions and demands of monitoring the you know customer service We still need to do that but with the demands of supporting that it's very fragile situation The two permit clerks are they in this budget or is this a supplemental request? This will likely be a supplemental. The data is just coming in. We've finally recovered from 2024. Our numbers are looking good. We publish on our website a three month average of the time it takes to issue permits. So we just posted the period from March back to January. And as Kelsey mentioned, our new construction permits when it's all correct is down at 44. Non-residential, so commercial alterations are at 54 days and new construction for non-residential is 57. PV is down to 37. So our staff is working hard. They're working tire, incredible months of overtime, which just indicates and it's giving us a data we need to determine how many additional staff we need to request, but could also do them there, they're really doing a great job. I agree. Thank you. And then you hinted to earlier a computer interface problem that set you folks way back. Could you provide a few more details? Yes. Our Our perm is Tyler, at Tyler Technologies, I believe, and it's the electronic permitting system that needs to interface with the Bluebeam Studio. So once the permit comes in and ready for review, the clerks have to open a review session in Bluebeam. And that's what was working. It was glitchy. It would take like ridiculous amounts of time to come through partially done so it added and introduced a lot of errors. So that's a critical piece. And just to for warn you, Tyler is constantly updating his system. So we have an update last November of 23. We have another one coming up in May of this year. And we're hoping that it will be successful without any, you know, any kind of an outage. But these are all the challenges you have when you have a computer-based system. Okay. The Tyler and Boo Beam interface well now, or are there in April and we spent the bulk of the year catching up from that fantastic thank you I really appreciate all the details and you being here today I yield thank you thank you Councilmember you do you already Councilor, use this. Go ahead. Thanks, Chair. Hello, Director. Thanks for your time today. I appreciate all the work that your unit teams are doing across the island. You know, from our paving efforts in White Claw, North Cahalla, our speed tables there for the community and the schools and the safety provided there. So thank you for all the work you're doing there. Really appreciate that. I'm gonna jump around a and we've had some good questions here from the colleague. So I won't dive into too much of those broad-ranging ones. So I'm gonna be a little more specific on a couple things. The first one I wanted to mention was on our disaster preparedness side. So I know your teams and your crews really support our emergency responders during events. So I really mahalo them and work that they do. And the question I have is about the equipment that we distribute across the island for those purposes when we have road closures. That's all stationed mainly here in our Heelow Basyard, correct? It's throughout the island. Every district has the own. Every base yard has type 3 barricades, type 2 barricades, whatever you need to close off the road. That includes a message signboards or emergency generators, all those sort of pieces and equipment. Each base yard, the generators are already message board, we've got a total of six with mobilized throughout the whole island. We moved throughout the island and it functions around the island and we put it out there. But you know we're getting I think two more on the budget this year coming up so we added this smaller versions of what we got right now for the smaller roads. Okay so pretty even distribution across on across the island then. Okay, so we treat every district the same. Awesome. All right. Thank you, Director. Just gonna look at some of the numbers here a little bit, starting with the beautification fund. Just curious on what these contracts are and what some of these charges go towards. So we have the miscellaneous contract for a Pahoa village Just kind of curious what what's used in that purpose. I know this may come from a Kirkwoods mentioned something about refuse collection. Okay. Yeah so basically our beautification fund covers refuse collection. I believe some of the water utility bills for the grassy areas. So that's what a majority of the beautification fund goes to. At the end of the year, we do charge labor charges for when we have our highways division go out and do some work under the beautification fund. Is that listed as the departmental charges there then? Yes. OK. OK. Thanks for the clarification, Kelsey. I'm going to jump over to Highway Fund. On, we have roadside maintenance services, budgeted 3.4 million on highway materials, fencing, other, it's just a very catch-all kind of area. Just curious if these are one-time use products or this what's this range of materials we have here in this kind of topic here. 530176. So that's mostly for the paving when highways has to do paving for the materials? So this is beyond because you have other categories on road materials, hot mix, cold mix, all this different stuff. So this is, I'm just seeing if any of you, because it's less fencing as well, just curious if these are just one time use things because every year you're asking three million, 3 million, 3 million, 3 million. So it's pretty much these one time use products then, right? Yes, for the fencing we, we're using our flood channels, you know, any fencing that we update, we got to buy and we put it on to our flood channels. And any, this, we got all, sorry, we got a lot of flood channels out all resting out we replace what we can right now do we get a contract for redo it all okay got it so no real extended life on a lot of these products then they kind of use what they needed replace OK. Yes. OK. Thank you for the clarification on that one. Jumping over to the, this is under traffic safety 528122. It's just a jump up in the striping contractor work. So we've never had any sort of contact for work specifically for striping a lot in before so We included that in our in the March the middle We are looking at changing that for our maidshaft to purchase a striping truck instead historically with you know the Conno law it is a Kind of sensitive subject to have contracted services for civil service work So you'll see that update in the main budget. Well, we'll move that to equipment Okay, thanks. I'll see and then kind of in that same area in the highway fund, highway engineering side. And this is kind of just a broader question because budgeted 400,000 for roads in Limbo, we've jumped up roadway improvement contractual services by 600,000. So I'm kind of curious, you know, this is an addition that asks and the increase of 600,000s also an addition to our road's in limbo. No, so very, very separate. Sorry, this is engineering, sorry, I got that, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. So road's in limbo and our high-wave light engineering is separate budget. So what are we looking at here for contractual service on the engineering side for one one point five million jump up and so so the difference in the actual is actually last year we had some years we spent about half a million in the actuals requested one million and now requesting one point six. Yeah so we had moved some money over from our bridge inspection, which is the, I believe, two, two, three wine accounts. We had some projects that were ready to go last year. I think it was for Hilo Union Safe Routes to school where some bridges projects needed a little more time. So we did a movement of funds, it's in Comberd right now. So I wouldn't show you the actual expense. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, thank you. It's a jumping over to the general fund side for engineering. So it's a smaller thing, but we've spent, there are actuals, we spent 16,000, we budgeted 16,000 and now you're requesting only $400 for license renewal for the engineers. Also, that's with the IT taking over the AutoPAD subscriptions, so that was a big chunk of the money. Okay. And I know this is, it's an interesting one. I've just kind of seen the actuals, the budget. And I'm kind of curious what our year-to-date expenses are and our automotive division for fuel expenses. So our actuals, 24, we're just under two million, budgeted three million. So do we need to, are we within that range? Are we needing, we're adding vehicles on? We're- Yeah. Give me one second. I'll take the last. Yeah. So our auto-motiv fuel to date is about 1.6 million. 1.6? Yes. OK. Thanks for the clarification. And then the last one kind of in our general fund is on the on the building side. And I just have a question about our county facilities insurance. You know, I'm curious what these contracts look like and how these are, what's changing over time, what was the contract for insurance this year, this fiscal year, because you budgeted a per four million and now we're asking for another half million on time. So this is actually so building peace this cost, but it's provided by our risk manager. I have Deputy Finance Director, Dr. Jainer. Hi, Malia. Hi, Deputy Finance Director, Malia Kekai. Were you just asking how the insurance budget is? Yeah, and then what is the coverage that? For the for all our facilities and what sort of exposure do we have or liabilities or And what do you see the trend in this kind of insurance area too? Luckily, I will say we did have some good news this year with our insurance. It does cover all of our buildings. But so last year we are, sorry, this current fiscal year, we're seeing about a 20% increase, which is actually good from previous years, but also what is within that 20% increase is we're actually tripling our coverage. So we had probably about a $25 million worth of coverage last year. We will have $75 million worth of coverage going forward. So yeah, so we took, you know, we increased a little bit, but we're getting a lot more coverage. Okay. Thank you, Deputy. Appreciate that. Just a question. I'm going to jump over to the CIPs for, I think for the last piece here. Chief Thompson, it's a good conversation with you. I just have a question on the last priority on the CIP list here for this cycle is the White low-road rehabilitation project. You're requesting 200,000. Didn't we complete that contract? Are we finished with a pow-d finished with all of our work there? So we're finished up the project but it's not complete yet so that's this change out of it for this additional work that was done in the project. Can I ask what what are the additional work is still outlined? So right now the DIN REs payment market is back. That money was this poor, as you know is that they leveled the shoulders so it's less steep. So that was extra AC that was required for that kind of work. Okay, and that was from before. Okay. Okay. Yes. Thank you. And then, yeah, I appreciate the conversation. We had about the White Klo intersection on P Punilo Avenue here to support you on that. So please let me know when you're working with community and kind of the process that you're kind of unfolding with all of that. Definitely. Yeah, we can talk about that afterwards. It's okay. More detail. Thank you, Chief. And then, you know, we've had an acting director. You were here on the first day of the budget hearing and a lot of administration here as well. We had testimony, a lot of testimony that came in the budget was about white color village. And I don't know if you've director, yeah, that's fine. If you've had ongoing conversations with the mayor, manager director, deputy manager director, and these are, you know, happy to sit in these conversations as we kind of present the CIP list. I'm going to ask for the community there about the growth of, you know, we have all of our communities are growing. Like a little village, we were putting in investing a lot of workforce housing, a lot of growth happening in that, in the north end of the village there. So we'd like to see and love to work with you on engineering the next phase as we map out the growth of the area, safeguarding that community, protecting the community members there, and our investment from Workforce Housing to the state investment of the library coming forward and all the different partnerships there. And you asked that with you and director O'Neill, former director O'Neill. The figure that was passed around here that was news to the mayor I guess was the $2.5 million for planning and design those initial stages. But that was something that you and I talked about with former director O'Neill as a possibility to kind of identify the need on the north end of Waikolo village. So this is something that I'd like to work with you on and present in this in the CIP budget to formalize this and then really find the help work with you to find these funding sources. I know there's a lot of layers to it with the private landowners with state highways. The money that Representative Tarnis and Director Sniffin put in their CIP budget at the state level, they pulled it because we didn't see a priority here at the county. They were looking to us to take action and show that we see it as a priority. So they're ready to come back with it in the future cycles, but we need to take that step forward in that action. And I think we've had these conversations, Deputy Manchin Director as well. And you're aware of all of this. I don't need to kind of rehash a lot of it, but this is a priority as I see it for the white color community, especially what we're invested in there. The dangers all around that village and that community, I mean, it's across the board for a lot of our communities that are growing on the lack of infrastructure. It's something that we need to address when we're helping to offset cost of living make this, we need to make this concerted effort and investment in our infrastructure piece. So acting director, I don't know if you wanted to chime in any of that or welcome your thoughts. Acting director Nioh as a leader of the program. So for me, I was looking for a second route. I was looking for another road, you know, never satisfy one, how we can do more. And yes, we're looking to it and we'll get it done. Thank you, thank you. I want to thank you for the work that you've done on the Hulu Street evacuation road. And some of the community sees that as the second road. As you know, it's not a permanent road. We can't use it all the time. It is for evacuation purposes. But I really thank you, Junior Cruz, for putting putting that code on there and maintaining it on a regular basis, going down there after big rain and flooding events. So that's one of those assets of the community that we work with civil defense and fire to have regular trainings there. So people are aware and can utilize that space and know that's there. But it's really as we work with housing and we develop out the north end of the village we need to kind of really come to the table about what is that permanent arterial road for for Waikolo village. So I look forward to working with you on kind of bringing this forward and finding funding sources. So thank you so much director. Thank you chair. Thank you council member Golemma. Thank you just briefly. I'm main thing I want to do is just thank you guys for all the work that you're doing. I really appreciate it. But I guess the issues that I have in my district are state highway, really. Like, so I'm wondering if there's anything you guys can do to help with that because there's just certain places that are just getting ridiculous, especially after that big flood, and while he know that road is just getting so awful. Um, yeah, is there ways you can help? We can reach out to the earth to see how we can help each other. and I mean like, oh guys, oh highway guys, the document, a lot of stuff, so on their iPads, so we have pictures of everything, so we share with everyone. And I mean, like, all guys, all highway guys, the document, a lot of stuff. So I'm there, I pad. So we have pictures of everything. So we share with everyone. You know, so I can share with Sniffin. And from there, he can see what he needs to do. OK. We here to support the state in general. Doesn't matter who. Thank you. OK. Yeah. maybe we can work together on doing that in course. Yeah, so the other thing I just... Thank you. Okay, yeah, and maybe we can work together on, yeah, doing that in course. Yeah, so the, everything I just wanted to ask about is update on Epic and how that's going. I know we had some issues last year, but seems like they got resolved and there's moving forward to increase the capacity of epiclets. So I wanted to see what the update is. There are going to be a, excuse me, Jolansson and Laura building chief. There is going to be a series of updates. So first thing that we are doing is updating our payment system to a Tyler pay. That will be sometime in the next month. Then we're going into the update for Tyler's EPL, 2021.4. And we need to do this because there's a mandatory blue beam update happening at the end of June. end of June. So it's a series of challenges. We have available to us different environments to work in. So when we're on live it's called a production environment. We're right now downloading the new software into a test environment so we can try it with all of the configuration improvements that we've done to make sure everything is working and we're right now scheduling for that Tyler 1.4. Yes, it was just released 1.2 and 1.4 have been released so we're working on that and doing everything we can to meet this tight deadline schedule. So our building IT section is working very hard on this. Okay, thank you. Thank you. And so right now are you in a pretty stable place as far as like how how much time in on the average building permits are getting processed or would you say you're kind of still recovering from what happened with Bluebeam last year? Yes, I think we've recovered from Bluebeam. We're at a point where we're still working a lot of overtime. And if we're able to sustain that, it's going to be very difficult. It's been a long time now. So getting the additional positions will really help with that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That's all I have for now. Thanks. Thank you. Council Member Oh, you see. Thank you chair. Okay. First question would be how would the department feel if on you new development like residential subdivisions commercial adding a fee for repair maintenance for flooding because you know like in my district there's a lot of streams and now development is happening above right like Komo Han and so forth water flows down you know, the flood controls that are down like on Kiloia, Kenola, it's like built in 1960s maybe, and they cannot handle all that water now that's being diverted, right? So in the previous administration, well, when I was on a previous council, I tried to propose that, but at the time planning and public works wasn't really for it, because they said it would add costs to, I guess, to the developers. But the thing is, we've got to worry about the existing houses or homes that are below that era that gets flooded. And then sometimes becomes live because of that right so I wanted your feedback on that acting director knew as you know for me at highways I was there eight almost ten years and I seen it all and I was wondering why you know so we work with female, I with FEMA, work with Army Corps, see how we can do it. And last year of main concern was thinking of a lot of big trees all in the front channels. And we did that, you know, whatever county owned. And we did it, you know, but for out of fee, I'm not sure how that works, but we'll be always great. Get Army Corps in there and give us the right of way to go into the ditches and clean what we need to, making sure everything's open because doing an installments is too late. It's too late to go in there and clean it, you know, so much. I just, you know, I've been there. I've seen it on this feels hard for the people. Right. Yeah. Okay. Melanie. Yeah. So. Hi, Melanie. The melody, um, Deputy Chief Engineering Division. I just wanted to add, um, you know, I could understand the concern. I know that, um, I think planning department might be, might be a little bit better for us to answer the question. I know that they have fair share fees that get allocated to subdivisions. I know it's not a larger amount, but I believe the intention is to cover, you know, those types of actions because it's subdivision is going to be impacting the surrounding community. So I'm not sure if that's a path for this. Yeah. And like I said, I did propose that before, but then they were in support, right? And so I needed to have where funding can come to public works, to have you folks have their resources to clean those streams that are overgrown. Because sometimes it gets cleaned by the floods, right? Because it's overgrown. Then this big floods come in, they wash them all down, right? They're not not a grass and so forth, right? So I know we need, you know, I know if folks need more help. So yeah, and that's what I was looking at, like having a fair share. Part of it would have been the repair maintenance for flooding. Yeah. So if folks are in support, I mean, I would really want to move that forward for future. You know, so, but I can send an email again to, you know, acting director Ezvilo and then I'll send it to director Jeff Darrell to see how we can do that. And also with finance. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You know, it's interesting. I hear Safe Routs has a coordinator now. I remember back then with Aaron Takava and Ron Field. They were in charge of Safe Routs and everything had to go through them because they were working with the state. So it's really great to hear that and one one of the projects we did during that time, and I was on a council, was with Kilka Ha. They really helped us out. And you too, you helped pave the areas that was needed right for the seafrows. But yeah, so thank you. And I want to say traffic division, you guys do a great job. And you have any comments on that? Hi, Aaron Takaba, Division Chief at the Traffic Division. Yeah, anything we can do to help. Yeah, that was a while back when we did the Kel-Kahaw stuff. Yeah, but thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. And thank you for helping moving forward with some of the projects that we're looking, that I district. Yeah, so thank you. And hi, ladies, thank you very much for all you guys' hard work. You guys are doing a great job. I mean, the paving that you guys are doing and I am hearing great compliments about how the roads are getting paved and wanting good is not an election year and you guys getting the work done So great job. Thank you The other thing I want to bring up about fire department okay, so fire police and all the other resident departments I guess DM to its all comes under public works for CIP or for repairs Is it possible or or are you folks, like maybe in agreement that maybe fire can have like a separate, like certain powers for them to do certain, like repairs, maintenance and possible small CIPs, instead of referring everything to public works. Hi, I think it gets a little complicated because when we talk about CIP, we're talking about construction versus regular repairs and maintenance. So I think we're trying to bring that back under the building division so that people who don't have to do or identify these possible R&M issues, it's kind of going back to the building division with no birth, no one has crew. And then hopefully with the facilities manager that we're currently recruiting. So we kind of bring it back on to under building division. Because like the state DOE, what they did, they got away from DAX. And they hired their own consultants to do all their projects. But the problem was they hired a mainland consultant. So they weren't like as knowledgeable about the county codes for Hawaii County because every county has different codes, right? And so for example, had one where when I was on the governor's office, Kapilani School cafeteria, there was reroofing. And then one I think public works inspector was passing and looked at it was like, hey something is wrong. So then they went to inspect and they forgot to include the, what is that, below the roof they had to put the insulation, right? And so the project had to stop. And then the school capital improvement person called me up, because I was at the governor's office asking, hey, do you know anybody at public register can help us? And that, and all right. So then I, at the time, with director Young-O-Moro. So he told me that the state had passed that law about having the installation put in. So I called them back and I told them, this is the state. You guys don't want to pass that energy code thing and have to include that. And then there was a consultant from the mainland that didn't know about the change and that's why this whole thing came about, right? And so, I mean, well I don't know if we've got a talk to the administration too but to see if you know like certain departments could maybe have you know like maybe on certain project that they could maybe reach out because to make it faster because they know how fast or within the council members district we know that certain ones got to be rushed right so and we know you folks have a whole handful so if they can go out and contract someone to get their project moving forward like to get it shovel ready right is that an option that you thought would be okay with? That usually, I mean, Julien, feel free to kick me out of this chair, but that usually requires some consulting work, like with design and engineering. So usually it's on a professional services and we have architects or project engineers review the proposals and see who would be the best fit to perform the job. Right. I'm not sure if other departments would have the staff who are specialized to kind of critique their resumes. Yeah. But I'm definitely open to suggestion. Yeah. As you director. Comments. Good morning. Deputy managing director. American-ishimoto We'd like to jump in a little bit because it is like Kelsey said, a little bit of a complex situation, a little bit beyond what just public works needs to be involved with. Then with that, I'm actually going to turn it over to Diane Nakagawa, Director Finance to help me out because it's complex. Good morning, Councilmember Zayanakagawa finance. You know, ideally, of course, these would all be projects under the management and control of DPW. As we all know, there's a lot to get done. And the intent behind some of these repair funding that we've added in some of the departments is really for the smaller things. You know, we still hope that there is communication and coordination with DPW to have the proper specs and oversight, but the attempt was really just try to get some of the little things if we could that could be bit out done and out the door. Now like the department is saying, ideally, that's not the best thing. It should be handled within DPW, who have, they have the resources and the expertise to do it. But the intent was, if are there these little repair items that the department could just push forward? And it's really just a resource issue to try to get some of these things done. So what you're saying then, maybe we should increase the departments, other departments RNMs. So then they can do the smaller projects. So we've done that over the last few years. So we've done that over the last couple of years and that funding has remained in the fiscal 26 budget. I wouldn't advise an increase to what's already in there as the department, those departments have told us what they can actually manage and do based on their own expertise and resources as well. Okay, because I mean, I really like how building, when you think out of the box where you did the contract with the consultant for like four different roofs, right? That was very smart instead of going individually every, you know, different project, right? So I mean like if that kind of situation happens most of the times, that would be awesome, but not always would have a lot of same projects, right? And as I mentioned to Mr. Thompson guys with with director owner at the time about thinking of having projects ready uh shovel ready so when we get the funding projects came more forward but we cannot be waiting where like well congruent he's just mentioned that senate the house had some some money appropriated for this role, but County wasn't ready. We will lose other kind of funding, right? And we may not be able to get it back. And so we as council members will push our legislators to get money for our districts to get projects done. But the County needs to be ready to move. Right? And so for example, we're doing one in Kukahah, right? We're going to be with Workman with Parks and Rec, and we're going to be renovating that whole gym. So now we're looking at the state house, providing $3.5 million. All how are going to be put in in $3.5 million. going to be put in in 3.5 million. So if the house and the senate agrees on the budget, this coming budget, we're going to have 3.5 million come from the state, then the county going to come in and at most times almost guaranteed all are going to get in. So that project will move forward and that's why we need parks and rack to get everything ready to move once we get all this funding. But we're in the process of moving this along. So that's how as council members we can help with the projects for everyone for a different districts. And the other one that we're looking at is trying to redo or build a new maintenance shop for the fire station. So right now we're trying to acquire properties. So we're looking at one, well, we need just the, I guess the final paperwork from Dylan R for the property right next to my strategy. I also went to look at the Kukaha military reserve. There's empty warehouses that are not being used. So we're in discussion now to see if we can get acquired those plants and look like it's going to be good. And fire would rather go there than behind by mass transit. But also in the working of that property by rubbish, well, mass transit, I'm looking at connecting East Calo Pia to the rubbish road. So fire has a better access to that area. So we're working with the HL and all them. So that's where we can come and help and move projects forward. Yeah, but so. Great, thank you. We definitely appreciate the support and help and coordination. But yeah, but we need to somehow get the departments to get, you know, their smaller projects moving forward faster. So maybe increasing in their RNM is the best. We do understand and like I mentioned, that was the intent in the last couple of years to add a little more to those specific departments to try to get smaller things that can be done internally within that department done and not things that are going to be added to all the list of projects under DPW. Okay, I think so something to think about. Okay. Okay. My time. Oh, sorry. Okay, now you for now. Thank you. Hello, I'll overuse this. Thanks, sir. Just one quick question. Thank you, acting director. I know you are very adept with your iPad and I know with all the maps and show that so that I'd love to see some of that sometime and have access, but that's another question from their time. I'm curious about the iPads that you're requesting and how you're rolling that out amongst the department and one of the line items here. And how, if you add in your sort of training to kind of bring that forward with staff. Which line item? Yep, that's 52, 3206 under Building, Building Inspection. Okay, so we actually, we did make an update to that as well. We had some extra funds in Inspection to purchase the iPads this year. I don't know if Jelang can go into more detail, but this would be for our inspectors. Hi Jelang, so we're building chief. The iPads are used by the electronic permitting systems. So the inspectors use the iPad to supplement what they have on their desktop. They can use it for locations. They can have a copy of the plans, the permit plans. They record their inspection notes, status of the inspection, pass or failed, and then it gets recorded and emailed out to the permitties. And interface between all the different software assets are seamless. I mean, you mentioned something. It's a different application. It's not as good as a desktop, but it's also limited by connectivity, right? So, you know, certain blind spots that we have in the area, and I think the inspectors are experienced in knowing where they are to do the proper preparation before they go out. This is just dependent on like the cell network then. Yes. And not something that they would come back to the office enough a little later or can be on a fly. Yes. OK. OK. Thank you, Chief. You're welcome. Thank. Thank you. Thank you. Check it in the corner. Yes, good morning. Acting director as a veto. I just wanted to check in and maybe for you as well that beauty managing director Nishimoto. We passed the bill regarding our special use permit, special activity do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. members reaching out asking when and how to apply. So just wanna throw that out there. And if folks have any response to that at this time. Meloniti Melo, Deputy Chief for Engineering Division. Regarding theivity Permit. I know our division is aware of the passing for the portion of Anak, so we did reach out to our Corporation Council, right now I do have a draft for a permit application that people could use to submit my understanding of this ordinance is that now that that section of ONAK is written into the code, people could apply with this permit to utilize that section. So we do have that application available and we can provide a copy once I finalize it with Corporation Council. Okay, wonderful.. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we are ready to not just receive the application but be able to process and grant those applications or those permits. So, tell me just please make sure that within the department we're ready to see the whole process through in a timely manner before we get applications out and the sitting on them because we have things to do and I know there were some improvements to be made. But besides that I don't have any questions about the budget sorry that's a little specific at the moment wanted to throw the reminder out before, while I have the opportunity. So thank you so much. Thank you. Hello, Chair. Councillor Mav Vegas. Yes, thanks so much. Aloha Acting Director, as a veto. Thank you for being here and stepping into this role. You are one of the backbones of DPW and your reputation precedes you. Thank you for everything. You have done in District 7. My community recognizes it and appreciates it whether or not it's paving or when people call about roadside maintenance needs or whatever it is. You and your team always come through for us. So thank you for that. I just have a quick question because I'm having a lot of constituents come to me. Under the prior administration, decision had been made, even though there wasn't legislation passed directly requiring it, but to transition away from utilizing roundup and glyphosate products for roadside maintenance. That's something that kind of unfortunately went back to the prior practices. So, I've had a lot of people reaching out to me. They misunderstood the legislation that is in effect that relates to parks and rec facilities. But I'm just kind of wondering what kind of support you might need, the department might need in order to continue transition from those practices. Any insights on that? I think the director knew as a video probably works. Yeah, we put it on pause for one year. We try our best to catch up and cut with equipment we had and the men power. But it fell away behind. So there's more safety issues than anything. But you know, we're open. You know, if anybody gets any suggestions and can help us guide us in the right direction we will. So this we can meet after we can talk starting how we can do it and make everybody happy the same time. Thank you. Thank you yeah making everybody happy that elusive ideal. My only other question right now and we we can follow up offline, but it relates to notice of violations that have come through DPW for large landowners and accumulation of fines. And so wanting to connect and ensure that things are still moving forward to hold people accountable for utilizing spaces that aren't permitted for commercial activities and not paying appropriate taxes based on the zoning and I think you probably know. Which particular situation I am referring to, but I just look forward to following up with the department to ensure that the progress that was made it doesn't get lost in this next next four years. Thank you. We're off together. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilmember. thank you chair. This is mostly directed at your traffic folks and maybe engineering as well. But in 2023 we had 15 traffic fatalities in our county. Last year we had 29 so almost doubling doubling our traffic fatalities in the state, there were 104 traffic fatalities and of those 42 involved vulnerable people, so people that were either pedestrians or on bikes. And so I'm just wondering what we need to do to support you and your team and your everybody to make sure that we're utilizing all the things that we can to make sure that we try to get those numbers down again. So we have, for instance, our street design manual, which costs the county a lot of money for a consultant and a lot of hours, both of county people and our community members. We also have our multi-modal plan. We have our vision zero, which is about reducing those traffic fatalities. We have all this important stuff, and I know there's a lot of best practices, both nationally and statewide, around some of these issues on traffic calming, you know, multi-modal transportation, all these things that can really help us. So my question is, do you have what you need either? Personnel wise, training wise, or even consultant wise, whatever you need to make sure that your team is got all what they need to make sure that going forward we can try to reduce these numbers. Acting Director Nioh as Vida. We have a lot of phone calls on signs, small signs, stop signs, where they need to implement any flashers, the stop signs. So we hear the people out the residents and we improve it with the tell us and anything safety, safety is number one for us. And we, we worry about everything, making sure we do everything correct, clearing the roads, making sure there's no rocks, no animals on the road. This making sure there's no, no vulnerabilities of the colony. And again, that has to Aaron, Aaron, no more about it. They go to the traffic control. Thank you. Thank you so much. I know Hayways does a great job on that, on like responding to people's concerns and requests. This is more about a more proactive, like ahead of time thinking about how we engineer streets, how we put things in place to calm that traffic slow people down because most of these had to do with speeding and going too fast in an area as well as a lot of other things. But yeah, so I'd love to hear. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Takama. Hi, Aaron Takama, traffic division chief. Yeah, we've been involved with a lot of traffic coming and safe traffic safety concerns since I've been here. And we have some ideas that I think we can discuss within the department to help maybe be more proactive with projects when they're being developed and planned for. Okay, Yeah, because there's a lot of, it seems like there's a lot of new best practices happening too. So I don't know if you have training dollars that you can hopefully get your folks trained up on for those new practices. I think that would be great. So just, I mean, I guess I'm asking, is there anything I can do budget wise to support you, your team, Mr. Takaba, anybody that might need additional support in that way to learn about new practices, best practices. I was aiming training is good. So whatever training you can provide, please. Okay. Okay. I'll work with finance to make sure you have adequate training dollars to do some of this. That would be great. And I know, for instance, we've been talking for, I think the last year about Cucuau Street and doing some traffic calming there. Can I just ask for a quick update on that project? Yes, traffic division chief Aaron Takaba. Yeah, we're still, we have it on the schedule to strike. We're trying to finish up Kauai Lani right now and it's on the list to get it completed shortly thereafter. Okay, please let me know when you're about ready to start. So I can let the community know that they've been heard and that we're getting to work on it to appreciate that so much. All right, thank you so much. And for all you do, I really appreciate it. I yield. Thank you. Councilmember Ronny Shae. Thank you, Chair. OK, the ethnic programs. I guess July. Sorry. So I can introduce yourself first. Building Chief July and Sonomura. Okay so I know before you could pay your permits for building online to the system, but when you have to go pay for engineering, you have to use a check. Is that fixed? Because I've been out of it for a while, so I don't know, but back then, when I was involved as a consultant, yeah, that was one of the problems that people used to trip out. Right. Melanie DiMelo, engineering division deputy chief to answer your question. Engineering division currently does still take cash or check. Only we do not have the online payment set up as building has, we have definitely talked about implementing it. Right now we do still have the cashier check only for engineering performance. But the thing is you need an applicant needs to apply an app deck to get their reviews from engineering, right? Like grading, grubbing, and so the yes, so we I will say ours are a bit in transition still right now. We have our grading grubbing and stockpiling permits in Epic our right-of-way permits are still We and take them through email. We are in the process of trying to or we were in the process of trying to get it into the epic system So my thought there is once both of our permits are in there, that's when we would move to the online payment. But yeah, still kind of in transition there. And you know, it's not this present administration, but it was a previous administration that started this implementation of this program, right? And I just don't understand why all of this wasn't thought out first before doing it. You know, I mean, it's like now we're trying to catch up and now I'm hearing you first going to put in one new system or join something together. Is that true? Or is this still the same? Okay. Is that up great? upgrade to this system. Using the same company. Okay. Okay. Is it up great? It's up great to the system. For using the same company. Okay. Okay. You want to say something? Oh. Hi, Kelsey Kulowicz, Business Manager. So basically for Epic, we'll still be utilizing the program through Tyler Technologies for the building division will be updating to Tyler payments, which is basically just a different company. We'll be using Tyler to intake the credit card payments. Oh, OK. And so, for you fees wise for those applicants to pay online is there a charge? Yes, there's a small percentage charge. You know, for me, and I talked to finance about this before, is to make it more friendlier. But in your guy's situation, it doesn't matter because everything has to be electronically input. So, paying with that fees, maybe it's not as bad, whereas if we got to pay, or someone has to pay like their car registration, or so forth, you can either go in, pay cash, check whatever, but if you want to do the chaos, but then you got that fees, right? So I was so I was talking to fancy we can remove that and make it more friendlier so I think that more people would be able to pay online. For example we found out liquor they're going to start doing implementing that program and they're going to waive the fees or they're going to absorb the fees and so right now these same in 30% of their applicants pay online So with with waving the fees and having that opportunity I told them to report back to us to see if there's an increase because if there shows like a 60% increase of payments online that means it's work So then the other departments should be looking at that, right? So, okay, but thank you. Okay, next thing is, okay, so building permits. Sorry, but... It's good. Thank you, Lance. member of Building Chase. Thank you. I mean it's good to see that like within 90 day calendar survey applications complete with no corrections are required, right? And it's 90%. I mean, but how many of these applicants are like 100% like no corrections. I'm sorry I didn't bring my metrics binder. Right now I think we're looking at 57% in the residential market are correct and what's concerning is in the commercial non-residential market, it's down at about 29%. So to Director Azavito's point, you were looking at, we have already contacted the International Code Council, ICC, to get links on education that we can provide to the design community, and as long as getting, as well as getting them certified. So this, I think the errors that we're seeing in the permitting processes with the design community and maybe education. But then I think you gotta go one step more. And I've been a small portion of the involvement because there were some house bills or senate bills about the building codes, right? And there is this organization with the builders and I guess with the professionals trying to amend that, right? But I don't know what the process, I mean, what has happened because they never contacted me back. And I was telling them, because I met this one woman on the mainland and she was involved with the national and I told her you know what like in Hawaii what happens like in the mid you know western states or mid states or even the east states they're different right like we don't have tornadoes right I mean we don't have as much hurricanes, but this international building code is the whole nation. And so certain things like, in Hawaii, we don't need to follow. So there needs to be a mechanism where we can amend it, right? That's correct. The previous, well the existing mechanism is through the state building code council. It's unfortunate it's been suspended. They have not been active in the adoption of the 21 code which we have been using and educated in. So for ourselves in our staff we bring in the code council to do the training for us so we had in last year, 2021, 2021, called updates. And in that, 2021, 2021, called updates. And in that, they'll just breeze through the part that's unlikely going to be affecting us here in Hawaii, like a mass timber use because we have termites, you know, it's probably not going to be a popular building product. So they'll tailor the instruction to the audience. And you know like I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must, I must the audience. Yeah. And you know, like I must, Mahalo's the Kinoids administration, because when we had to adopt, I think it was like the 2008 building code. They reached out to the council in trying to do amendments for what was upcoming. And I took in charge of like the fire part. And so at that time the requirement would have been for having two catchments on a new home with no public water, like one for fire and one for home use. So working with fire, we consolidated with one tank. Half of the tank would be for home use. The bottom half was for fire. So all you have to do is put two separate figures in some. So that saved them a lot of money. We had where we did the safe home, the safe room. Right? It had to be like a separate room where it had to be, you know, I guess built to whatever, you know, wind speed and others. We made it where any room in the house could be that safe room. So like the bathroom, a bedroom, and so forth. And that would have made the requirements. So that's the good stuff that, you know, Mahalos to the Kinoa's administration that we could do that to help the people in this island on building new homes. So like the state to me they don't I guess do they reach out to the counties to ask for our advice or what you know what our thoughts are? The state building court council includes a to speak for our advice or what, you know, what our thoughts are. The State Building Code Council includes a seat for every county. So Aaron Spillman has our CTs of Architect, Professional Architects. So he has our seat, but because they've been suspended, they have not been meeting. But what about the previous times? It was Deputy Kelly Wilson. Because, you know, to me, all the counties, the four counties should be on board, and fighting that, right? But every time it seems like it's just gets approved, and it puts more burden upon the homeowners or the commercial people, right? Correct. We'd like to be more active and have a voice in representing our county and our particular needs. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. The other thing is, okay. I think till today, my previous client is trying to get that occupancy certificate. And when Director Ono came in, when we confirmed him, I mentioned to him about that, that it seems like the public works never had a process. And during the time when I was representing my client, there was nothing online and everything was hearsay. And so what happens in Isawai, not always happens on Westawai, so everybody was on the same board. So I emailed multiple times in the previous administration and nothing had happened. So I was wondering if you folks have finally come up with a plan and a process? We are redesigning our websites. So for me, I always have a problem. I'm looking for forms. I'm looking for checklist examples so I can answer constituent questions. And it takes me five or 10 minutes to even find it. And then the next week I can find it again. So we are redesigning the website to make it more user friendly. To clarify, I think a lot of people think East Hawaii and West Hawaii are totally separate. We have one pool for permits. So clerks on either side of the island will review them. It's not particular to a project being in Kona will be reviewed by Kona likewise with the plan review. So electronically has electronic process has allowed us to be you know take geography out of it. So it should be the same. But this is what I was told. So I went to Kona couldn't get it went back to Hilo. Oh no I'm sorry I went to Hilo first to get information. So they say, okay, to get a renewal, all you need to do or replacement, you just gotta call up the inspector, they'll come back and reinspec, and then they will re-issue. So okay, so I went to corner. They go, no, that's the first time I hear about that, right? And then I'm like, no, that's what I was told. Like who told you that? But I didn't want to say mention him. So, but then they go, no, we don't do that. That's not the process. So I'm like, okay, so now I come back to heal. Is there a process? Oh, no, we don't. You gotta call a inspector. And we're stuck. It sounds like you're talking about a permit extension for a permit that was just an application? No, the certificate because they lost a certificate through whatever transitions, right? And then we just needed one because we needed to get a liquor license and to get the liquor license you needed that certificate. But because we couldn't get one, thank God, liquor helped us. Right? But so, to me, it's something simple, just gotta get something written to let everybody know on East and West, this is what you need to do to get. Once you get it, you're on replacement. I mean, to me, it's not rocket science. Councilmeber I'll come right back to you I'm gonna have the customer Kimble okay thank you sorry I guess we can talk about that after I mean what you go next time thank you Cosmeber Alicia Cosmeber Kimble yeah thank you I'm gonna kind of be all over the place because a lot of the questions I had have been answered but some people maybe think about the things I don't want to ask about. Stay on highways. Do we have reserves of critical materials and things like fuel in the event of a disaster or an anticipation potentially of supply chain issues deriving from some federal moves around tariffs and working with other countries for materials. For fueling, sorry, acting directly, as we know. For fueling stuff, we get a pretty short, there are a few guys, feed us first, they feed us up first. They're from there, hopefully we end there last long. So we don't have anything that's specifically dedicated to county. It's just likely that some of the entities out there would recognize the public good in serving us first, is that? Yes, those are the first. Okay, yeah. It came to my attention because of something James, Councilmember Hues just said, with respect to disaster and disaster related supplies and distribution around the island. And just since we have administrator Acasio in the back with Oscar, something to consider with respect to preparedness and maybe an assessment we wanna do is with particular respect to highways and transportation is thinking about the indirect impacts disasters and transportation infrastructure in particular with things like when we have also have electricity go down or also have telecommunications down or also have supply chain issues go down. And we don't typically think cross departmentally and cross industry that way in terms of disaster preparedness. about getting your ear to kind of think about that. I have some research that I can share about how some of other municipalities are kind of think about that. I have some research that I can share about how some of other municipalities are kind of addressing that, but James made me think about it. I wanted to respond just because Councilman Broney she's brought it up a couple times about waving payment fees. And I have to disagree. And I'll share why, because regardless, if we say we'reaved, that somebody's gonna have to pay them, right? So if we waved them, we pay them. And we pay them from our revenue stream, which is for the whole community. And so what I think is there's potentially an issue of fairness where you're saying, you're asking all of the county members, all of our citizens to pay for a fee for somebody actually to get a benefit. I mean that's the way that it ends up and so I would disagree with passing on credit card services. I think it is it's typical you know I use PayPal to send my kids some money and if I send it for my bank account it's free. If I send it for my credit card I pay 3%. I mean it's something I think the public anticipates already in terms of being able to provide that that ease so I would I would disagree. With respect to the building code I recall that last year the year before that we had looked at supporting members of our county to participate in the National Building Code Council to do them walk out. Okay. So maybe that's a question from her when she comes back. I don't, I remember Deputy Vanishing Director, do you know if that's still part of the plan? Yeah, because one of the conversations when we adopted the 2018 building code was that, you know, it comes down international, to the state, to the county that we hadn't actively been involved in that national review. And so there were a lot of aspects that were put into the national building code, which then comes to the state, that didn't take into consideration some of the factors that we have in Hawaii like the fact that we don't need heating and cooling systems if we have adequate ventilation and things like that. So one of the mechanisms to kind of address that was to be more actively involved in the national level before that those codes even got to the state building council. So if that's something that we can continue to support and have our participation and membership there, I think that gets us even one step ahead of the game with respect to building codes. I had another, okay, Julie, I was right here, so I'll stall. Change order, okay, here we go. Change orders. Do we have, you know, how we have workers comp? We have a blind item for that. We don't know exactly what we're going to use it for, but it's there. Do we have, is there something? Is that the mechanism for change orders? Like, how do we deal with preparing to potentially fund for change orders? Obviously we don't want to say here's project X. And we're going to budget this much for change orders because the contractor's going to look at it and go, okay, this is how much you have to play with, right? But do we have like a general funders? It just coming out of capital, the improvement budget? How does that work? Yeah, so usually if we do a change order on a contract, we don't have it like exactly as a budget item, but for our CIP projects, it would come from the associated account that we're using for the project, same way, General Fund or Highway Fund. Okay, okay, great. That's helpful to know in terms of some of the things we had. Julian, I had the, sorry, division director Samara. I was just mentioning while you were out that if you recall, we had talked about previously having greater participation by the county and the National Building Council review of Building Code. So just I put that back on the radar. But with respect to the increase in permanent, or decrease in permitting times, I mean, just to summarize what I've heard, it seems like it's really the staffing and the increase in the number of clerks that you've had has been the primary thing. It hasn't been any significant changes with... It's actually... I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead. Building Chief Jolansson-Umaral, it's actually a combination of factors that have led to the improvement in building permit production. I think the most important was in August of last year, we were able to hire that permit system coordinator to produce guidelines and instructions on how to effectively use the epic system, and that we do errors on our site. So we didn't have to spend time doing corrections. We have staff more confident able to work efficiently. And so that started out in August and we filled the number of key positions, one of them being a supervising building clerk in Kona. So that helped a lot. So with the support that we have for our staff, even if we get we're down one right now, when that new employee comes on that you'll have the support to become productive as quickly as possible. So that in addition to just working ridiculous amounts of overtime and a very committed staff has helped us. Okay, this is one quick follow-up chair with respect to that. Are there other pinch points that you can identify now that we could target as areas to continue the improvement that's already been made? Pitch points as far as permit applications, I think we're mostly limited by staffing. On the plan review side, we're down to position. Hopefully we can fill that. The workload has been more manageable, but as we increase the pace of applications, we increase the pace for plan review. And in our staff, we have, although we have positions for six plans examiners, we're down one. We're also down a key position that oversees those plans examiners. That's a license architect. So we're missing that. We're unable to also fill a plans examining manager who oversees the architect, the plan reviewers, and also the specialty reviewers. We have not been able to hire an electrical engineer. We have right now our mechanical engineer is T8 up to the plans examining manager to help us oversee that. And we have a structural engineer. So it's an overall shortage with license positions that we also need to fill. Thank you. Okay. I'll go for now, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Back to Miss Kimbo's comments. If you I'm not with you right now, but it's about that fee charging. So if you have a family, they have two cars, husband and wife, we waive those fees for like, say, car registrations, the money that they save going towards their family. So I don't see why taxpayers would lose out. The families would gain in their cost of living expenses. So just want it to make a note on that. So about getting this certificate, so if can, just something simple that it's understandable on both sides of the offices of how just to process, because I don't think we're the first, and we're not going to be the last, right? And so, like I said, it's so simple, talk to the inspector. They'll go out, reinspect, and they're going to issue. We can look into setting up procedure for that. It's going to have to depend your experience if it was pre-electronic or post. That was doing both. Okay, so I know we've had some problems being able to locate the records, so maybe that's what you got caught up into. Oh, no, they never mentioned that. They just said that on the east side was that you just got to contact because they already had one before, right? So you just contact the inspector, they'll go reinspect and then if everything's all good, then they're going to reissue again. Okay, well, look into that. So something real simple. I'll add the new as video. So we had this title, I think a couple days ago about making a checklist for inspectors, the clerks, for the plan reviewers to get a checklist so everybody's on the same page. Instead of one guy checking one way and the other guy checking the other way, we're all one time, one complete. Right on. Thank you, thank you. Last thing, we hear about having meeting more reviewers. You guys ever thought about upgrading your clerks up front to helping, getting them more training, getting them upgraded to help with the reviewing? Building Chief Jelana Sunomura, we've actually had a revision in our position, so we have a five-step program for plans examiners. So you can come in as an entry level one and work your way up to entry level, excuse me, a level five full-fledged plans examiner. And last year, one of our clerks did take that opportunity to become a plans examiner. And um... level 5 full-fledged plans examiner. And last year, one of our clerks did take that opportunity to become a plans examiner. And she decided she'd rather be a clerk supervisor, so she got out of it. But the pathway is there. And the... My thing is, just having them at this certain level, so they can help the rivers when they're overloaded to help them because they're qualified to review, right? But their main job would be at the clerk level, right? But having that extra training or education and with the extra pay would give them that authority to help review. Like for example, I'm going to bring up back in 2008 and prior what I understood from someone was that your inspectors used to also help with reviewing. And for some reason during that time, I think after Mayor Kenoy's, then it changed where inspectors just did inspect the work and reviewers did review. So is it possible to bring that back again. or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or marijuana or summer Tokyo D.H.R. has contacts in looking at blueprint reading class opportunities that we can have our employees attend to help them read plans. For the clerks, it's a little bit more challenging to just depend on on the job training from the permit perspective. Oh no. I mean, there's funding for training. Right. Finance has, I think within your budget, folks have and that's where that's where the training on coming in right Come because I think if you have more cross training that will help you guys department Especially the building side you know for review and so forth and process can be faster. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Appreciate your comments. When we are fully up and running and our clerks are not working so much over time, we would like to expose them to other tasks and increase their knowledge. Right now, we're just kind of like the mouse on the wheel. But, you know, in the future, hopefully in five years, we can be there. So, you know, and this is the last thing I want to mention is that, is there a program that we can, like I guess, get into the system where it can help with processing or reviewing the permit or the applications? That's the coming of AI. We did when former director Ounu was here, we met with with DPP, Honolulu City and County, and they have a program that they're using that somewhat prescreens their plans. And I believe out of like 21 points, they were able to eliminate maybe 13 and more. We need to have to be looked at manually. A large part of that's going to be able to get the design community on the same page, right? So as you know, AI depends on consistency, right? It's all one and zeroes, one and zeroes. So it would be also working with the design community to make sure the plans come in the correct format. But that's down in the future. Good. I mean, because I know if you have an architect an engineer on this island, basically they're going to know what the county code is, right? So it's easier working with that. I'm most, right? And I've heard stories and stuff. But when you work with outside companies, they don't really know all updated code. So that's when we find a lot of problems, right? And I had one client that they were from Canada and they couldn't understand why how he counted had these codes and requirements and went to just pound on them like you need this, you need it and one was just a two-part statement. They didn't understand that and I said if you don't put that on your paper is not going to even be looked at because that's the first thing we'll get rejected right but yeah and so I mean hopefully yeah we can you know move more forward and that going help with you know with the review and then maybe you don't need as much staff I mean well you know like what you need right now, right? Yeah, so something to look at. Thank you. Thanks, Neil. Are you? Thank you. Checking in in corner. Okay. I think ready to move on, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you, Bob, it works. Few of my questions are answered today. I got a couple of olives for you. Okay. Well, I think you, Bobbi, works. A few of my questions are answered today. I got a couple of follow-ups for you. Oh, water spigots is in your budget. It's a shared cost with the water department supply. How are you basing the cost for that? For water spigots, a lot of it is just for water consumption and utilities. Okay. Who does the maintenance on the ground areas around the spigots? So kind of depending on highways division, part, I mean, highways division, I'm not sure the parks in Rec do maintenance too. Okay, so just the highways division for the smaller repairs and then for bigger items, water supply. Okay, so given the growth of communities in our rural areas, are we budgeting more to make sure we can provide more water? They get a lot of phone calls for water spigot increases. We currently don't have anything in our budget. It is part of the status quo. So I know we were awarded $50,000 in everything the previous two fiscal years, but once we took that out, it remains at its same budget. We also do similar to other items, like beautification fund department, those charges for labor incurred. Okay, so maybe looking at the beautification fund as a potential source, it's not a lot of funding needed, but we have so many people moving into districts that are rural, not districts foreign vibe, but across the island. We need access to water, because we don't bring water to them. They rely on us. If we're not bringing in county water, then we have to bring in this biggest to make it available for them. If we continue to allow housing to build. So please look into that as far as how we can fund that more and do more for a community. Thank you. I think that was brought up to the mayor as the Department of Priority in his outreach meetings during his campaign process as well. Thank you. Electricity expenses within the, I think this is the public works administrative budget. One pointy million dollars a year for the county in total. I believe it's administrative. The administration? Yeah, under 114. Under the general general services equipment. Oh, building R&M. Building R&M. Yeah, that's for the various buildings. So when we have buildings that are a shared space, sorry. I did it. It's coming. We all have electric bills. I guess my point is 1.8 million. I'm going to tie that into working with Oscar to make sure that we are looking into the future because at 1.8 million dollars if you apply that towards a solar loan. And he started to pay off a solar system in 10 to 15 years, maybe 20. You're paid off and you're net zero. And our kids aren't paying for electricity costs when we could have implemented this 10 years ago. And I'm saying that because as far as I know, DPW maintain solar systems. Okay, the solar system on this building is down. And it's the second time in my tenure in this office that I've come across a system down. The first time it took almost a year to get it back up and running because of what was involved and how we had to go out to bid to have it fixed. I'm hoping it's easier this time, but I don't know that we actually check. I can check on that, yeah. Check, check on it. See who's doing it? Work with Oscar. And I'm gonna ask Oscar the same question when they come up. It's, I'm guessing electricity cost for this building is 280,000, I'm not guessing it's in the budget. But $200,000, I think that incorporates what we feed back into Helco and lowering our bill. If you remove that, then our budget is skewed because if it takes a year to get that system back up and running, your plus about 300,000 expenses for this building. It's big. It can work for us if we keep up on it. Looking in your highway fun budget, Neil, I can see that the engineering positions are open. You have a number of vacancies in the engineering department, is that right? Okay, when the engineering positions are not filled, does that lead to problems having jobs engineered? And this doesn't have to be like a major question, but just kind of touching on a high level. If you have vacancies, is that limit here ability to do work basic question? So, County Townsend Engine Individuals and Chiefs. Yes, it does, but we've always been running short. And actually right now we're the most filled we've been in years. Right now we have currently off-the-sistering engineers, we have on staff for Cohn and Hillside. We have three vacancies, two of them for regulatory, and one is for construction engineering, designing construction engineering. Also, the two regulatory positions are actually that supervising sex and heads, one in Hilo and one in Kona right now, currently for the Southern Visor Review and any complaints and regulatory enforcement. But we're working on trying to feel those positions. Those are the vacant positions. Yes, correct. regulatory positions. Yes, two over more. Yeah, okay. Just thinking out loud, if we want to get better at paving more miles a road and we don't have the engineering staff to back up, how is the vision or other divisions that need your help, fire department, wherever you folks are being tasked to do, if we can provide engineering positions into other departments to help them achieve their goals, similar to what Mr. Onishi was talking talking about That might be a good thing to look into as you walk into the new or even just adjusting positions into different departments You're not plus or minus positions. You're just moving them around as needed so a good example we know is We're actually sharing and one of our engineers our bridge inspection and bridge, is down at how he's have to time to assist them with some of the maintenance working stuff. So we are looking in two ways that we can help out the other divisions. OK. I think I gave director Paul Zahar a hard time about this a year ago. I don't know if it was here or if it was offline. But he said he'd look into it. He was against it, but then he kind of opened his mind about six months later a year ago. I don't know if it was here or if it was offline, but he said he looked into it. He was against it, but then he kind of opened his mind about six months later a year later. So good to see that we're tracking towards finding efficient ways to get jobs done. Ultimately the county just wants to see taxpayers want to see us pay more roads and things be faster and smoother and that's what we all want. So thank you. Thank you. I'm safe routes to school. I don't know if it's Keone or Melanie. Okay, who's the coordinator? Jesse Tomien. How many projects? So he's actually, he's our representative and he works with you out to the schools. He's on that state board, I'd represent in a county. He resets out, he reached out to the community, he doesn't run projects per se, he's the coordinator for working out, reached out to the schools and stuff. Okay, that's probably a new elementary on the list. All the schools, he's reaching out to all the schools and stuff, yeah. Try to look into it, last time I checked there was only two or three schools and what I didn't love about it is it seemed to be Hilo and Pohoa. We have a number of schools in this island. All that needs some attention. If we can focus some safe routes to schools money across the board, that would be beautiful. Just looking into the farming. I think you might be surprised what you find. Private road maintenance was touched on. My actual question is for Corporation Council. Corporation Council, where are you in reviewing the application? It was due January 18th, 2025. Per the ordinance that created it. I went back and forth with Director Ono about this. I don't know how much you can share, but I, Bill 82 was a private rose maintenance fund. We created it last year. And then we, I gave the department one year to effect an application. I think the new administration walked in to figure out how to get it done that was in February but it's not April and last year it was sitting in your department. Good morning Renational Corporation Council. I'm not sure I can check out and get back to you. Yes please because I was told you guys were working on finalizing the application because that application we can't actually Provide money into the community. Okay. I Actually have an update on that so we did work with deputy Sinclair. Yeah, he did a review of Director on those initial application Kind of left at a critical time. I think we're going to do one more review of the application. We had a suggestion to add some admin rules which wasn't done. So I'll talk to acting director as a to read all about that. Okay, beautiful. There was a back and forth that happened via email. I'm not going to read that. But I like the direction it was set it in with the mayor's office and with public works and with Corporation Council. Please review. My comment was, we passed that law in 2024 early. And then I gave the department a year to have an application ready. I don't know what happened in that year but no application means nothing happened. So thank you for getting on top of it. The community is just really looking forward to it. It's not supposed to be a major expensive project program. It's supposed to be able to help maintain and fill potholes, replace gravel, simple fixes in private roadways that are open to public use, allowable via state law, and we pass it as an ordinance, which means it's passed through every single step it had to get to us today. Please look into it and get it moving. Thank you. Building the apartment. My question is, permit times, you gave us, I always us always hear beautiful numbers but the public tells me otherwise. What is our intake time to get a permit into the epic system? I'm sorry I don't think I have those metrics on me, but we do have goals for managing the queue. Is that what you're referring to a time from when they submit the application to when it actually gets worked on? Yes. Okay, one moment please. But I'm not looking for an estimate. If you don't have the numbers on you, I can circle back with you, but I think you'll be good for the council to see intake times, which is before we process the processing times, and then the actual figure for when it is dropped into the epic system by the customer or the county person and then approved by the department and ready to build. Yeah, we have a number of different types of permits that come through that are treated in different lines, if you will. If it's, for example, an emergency permit, a cell tower, something like a real high priority that has a little time in the queue, the average, like a residential, 30 days. 30 days from the queue. So generally, we've been doing better than that. I don't have these are these are the goals that we have. Just to clarify though, 30 days in the queue meaning 30 days it's sat in the epic system waiting to be looked at by the review team. Yes. Okay, so 30 days and then plus roughly 30 days to get reviewed in submit. No, we're looking at 44 days when it's all correct. So generally, I'm looking at, I don't have the data in front of me. I can meet with you offline and go over the metrics that we have. So we do keep track of the intake time, the time before, the intake time, and then the time it takes to review in every step of the application. So even the time in the queue before it gets out process, you'll hear people saying I'm stuck in out processing. And then once it goes back to the customer, we're waiting for fees and the project declaration that names a contractor. It comes back in and then we call that the issuance. So we track all of those different lines for all the different permit types. Okay, maybe just on real clear succinct timeline that we can all see, because we want to budget to make sure that you folks are doing this. But I've sat through Mayor Kim, Mayor Roth, and now Mayor Alameda. And I've heard building permit issues in every administration. It's always the top priority but besides putting in the epic system I don't know that those numbers have really been getting amazingly better despite how much money we've thrown at the problem and how many people understand it is and issue and how many contractors come to us to ask us to help. So yes please, I'd like to see that breakdown for the whole way through the system. Sure. Thank you John. Thank you. Neo, do you have all the equipment and well paving stuff that you need to get the job done for DPW and Highways. Active Director Neal as we don't arms. We got a new paper. All right. Right. I'm asking you, but you're always my Highways guy, but I mean, teacher, if you do want to answer, go on, I'll teach you a teacher. I apologize. It's avoid. Neal's always been the guys, huh? Yeah. And we, and this is the prep is this comment. We've been providing with NEO's help a lot of equipment to the department, the county taxpayers like seeing pave roads. And it's our job to get us there. So where are we at with equipment and near needs as a department? TG4 site, highway division TA chief. So right now we have two pavers online, cat six, AP65C's, they were running on both sides of the island. We also have a bohemang paver that we do like a smaller paver to do parking lots and smaller roads and our roads and stuff like that. We put in for a new paver within this fiscal budget and so I think we're almost through that process of getting that paper. This current year, we know. Yeah, this year, yeah. Yeah. It's all worth it already. So we're just waiting for taking delivery on it. So that's four papers and one small and three larger. Yeah, so we have three large papers and one small paper. Yeah, considering that over the one. And that allows you to do a paving east and west projects any of a backup if needed. Yeah, so we have a paper currently on the east, one on the west, that bone marrow paper that's smaller and just kind of floats wherever, you know, so we're doing a rolling limo right now up Kanna. With that other peover, it'll just, you know, allow us to pivot out one road, like Neo say, we did 22.22 miles this year, this fiscal. We're projected to do up by the end of this fiscal 30, you know, so this is an administrative issue with Neo, you know, it's get it done, get it fast, do it safe safe so we're on track with that Just with all the support everybody and yeah One with the small bullmeg we use it we put base cars in their co-play material to for any gravel road we need to get it ready we use we use the paper for gravel put on co-plane material and this recycle asphalt in there and we compact it and it comes solid and nice we're not playing with material we just get it done thank you thank you finally for the building department what is the next is there any building codes upcoming you You was touched on, but we're going to check back in that. What's what's coming? Or any energy conservation stuff, anything like that? For our colony, what we need to do is update the chapter 5a that references a 2006 IBC with the 2018, which is what we've been practicing. And it's more to more realize what we've been doing for the past few years. So that we would need to have the amendments and references from the 2018, similar to what we had in the previous 2006. The next, it's every three years. So the next increment would be the 2021. And we'd be looking to do the similar thing to adopt the 21, the state adopted without amendments. But we were preparing to request that we hurry over the same type of amendments we had in the 2018. So that we are not doing anything extraordinary. We're carrying through with how we've been reviewing and issuing plans. State projects, I think, are all 2021. Okay. I'm thinking back to when we were almost required to pass through the legislation to create the last building code change. It was a mess., honestly it was a mess. And it was real, it was real rushed. As I look back on that code change, what I have noticed is we affected a huge cost increase on building houses, plywood, on all the roof surfaces, increased foundations, continuous foundations. We have increased the cost of construction so much while we battle to provide cheaper housing alternatives. We really need to hone in on making sure that the bills coming in are not pro supply house bills, which is what I've come to realize what is what we did in a way. And that we are building a code that helps people build houses for cheaper that still makes them safe. Please, with your team, review what we can do to lessen the cost of building. And I think Aaron Junk said this in some of our previous hearings. We had hurricanes, we've had tsunamis, we've had earthquakes. I don't remember any houses falling down. Not even the old cane houses built in 1943 that are single wall with tofu blocks on four by four posts. They didn't even fall down. I've been in those addicts. There's almost no Perlins. The Raptors are six feet apart if that and there's it's all rough cut lumber and they didn't fall down. So I think we have some wiggle room there on creating a way to build housing. A little bit cheaper and not providing so much money at $60 a sheet for roofing sheathing on top of our underneath metal roofing. Thank you. We will take a look at that. To your point, there was a huge difference between the 2006 and 2018. So that was a big jump in building codes. We're going from 2018 to 2021. We did a preliminary study with one of the pre-approved model homes to see the difference because of the legislation happening at the state level where they're afraid of the 21 code. And our finding was the same except for the moisture barrier, moisture barrier going from a 6 mil to a 10 mil in the 2021 but the 24 goes back to 6 so we'd be proposing to stay at 6 to not incur any additional costs. So as far as residential or preliminary assessment is that we're not adding costs like what you experienced in 2018 code. Okay, but they already exist. So we can review and see if we can adjust and work with us to get that done. I think that would be beneficial to the community. We will. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. It's all I got. Great, guys. Thank you. Look forward to seeing what you do in the upcoming year. you coming in with a fairly status cool budget and you've got a lot of good direction today. Aaron please work. Guys, thank you. Look forward to seeing what you do in the upcoming year. Appreciate you coming in with a fairly status co-budget. You've got a lot of good direction today. Aaron, please work on the traffic signals across the island. I think you had some projects that you were working on this last year. Chair, what? Just one. Council member on issue. OK, thanks. So what was requested by maybe council members to direct to whatever information if we can send them to all council members since because of the discussion then we can also know what's going on. Okay, thank you. Just please. Any closing thoughts, Dr. Acting Director? Thank you so much for this opportunity and thank you to all public works crews. We have one family who worked together before our division was separated. But when I first started I said we all together we have one group. We represent the people of Hawaii Island. We need to get together and make sure we all on the same page and working hard. This thank you all. Thanks for supporting. Thank you very much Mr. Azavito. I cause members we're going to take a brief recess while we reset. For the next department, we will be back where I recess. you you you you you you you you I'll call council members. We're gonna go out and get started with our next department. Checking in with Kona. Do we have? Are you guys in Kona? Yes, chair. I'm here. Sorry. Council member Inava has stepped out. Council member Inava, Council member Vigiegas are you in the corner chambers? yes chair I am here councilmember inaba has just stepped out but we'll be returning shortly. okay so just just for you folks we have five people right now so we have quorum I'm going to go ahead and get the meeting out of recess our next department joining us today is the Department of Research and Development. We have today Deputy Director and team, Deputy Director Elaine, go ahead when you're ready. And introduce yourself. For anyone coming up to speak that anytime, please introduce yourself for the record so that we can put it into our system. And Mr. Elaine, when you're ready, introduce yourself. Your team will go to your PowerPoint presentation, and then we'll go to questions from the council to show their B&E. OK. Thank you very much. Deputy Director Dennis Lain for the Department of Research and Development, my fellow chair, vice chair, and council members for having me here today. Director Medina has a personal issue and couldn't make it today. We send him our support. We appreciate the support of finance director and deputy finance director and their budget team and Mahalo Tamir for his support in our efforts. Behind me, I have, I think, all of our economic development specialists, as well as our support specialists, as they get called up for any answers to your questions, they'll introduce themselves. I wanted to just start off real quickly with the Council on what R&D currently does. And I think there's a misunderstanding with the public and maybe within the county of what R&D does and what its function is. So R&D is a grant management kind of department. We don't necessarily have grant writers and I think that's a misconception that a lot of community members have is that R&D is the department that writes grants and brings in money. You know I had the similar understanding before taking this job. So four months in it's a it is a grant management department. We have a lot of funds that goes through our department and we help get that through to the public. So with further ado, we'll go through our slides here. So some of the measure outcomes here, with agriculture, we've been able to get some, the funding for 50% of two extension agents would see tar, we have a pharaoh pig management program that is part of a bigger invasive species initiative. Now we have our food systems team who conducted a conti-wide food access needs assessment. You know we continue to participate with island of Hawaii visitors burrow with a showcase and tourism promotion and then we we developed a point-of-based communication for regenerative tourism, and that's really to help with the stewardship and destination management side of our tourism program. And then evaluate the needs of small business community and the entrepreneur ecosystem so that we can help support small businesses. And then, you know, in September, we had a, we have a new film commissioner and creative media specialist step into the role and trying to get our Hawaii Island Film Office back up and running a little bit more user friendly with the website. And of course we also have immigration that sits within R&D and that's one person but she handles all of the immigration inquiries that come through the county. She's currently with a client so as soon as she's available she'll be able to come. So some objectives for this fiscal year is really to transition the mindset and the focus of the department from research and development to economic development. All these different initiatives that we do affect economic development. And I've been watching all the different budget hearings and R&D was mentioned a few times so I will address some of the things especially with the audit that was ordered by council last year. So in discussions with Mr. Brenner one of the recommendations was was to establish a strategic plan. And a strategic plan also envisions a new vision, mission, and core functions of the department. Now we don't want to be working in silos. We want to be working together and moving the department forward. We understand that there's been a lot of stuff that happened in the past, but we're going to we're going to move forward from that We're going to figure out what the direction is and where to move move the entire department into the future And then we're going to try and reach out to every single council district have meetings with each council members and discuss What is important to your district? How do our focus areas align with your initiatives that you have for your district. We met with a majority of the council members here today and we continue to have those meetings as we you know have when we when we're in your district we'll try and pop in you know we had meetings with council member Houston's last week so, and we want to be nimble. We want to be flexible as the environment changes, as the economy changes, we have to be able to adapt. So that's what we're trying to do as well. And then the last thing, Director Medinum wanted to make this very focus here is that we have to be consistent with our local culture and the values that come with our local culture. So that's the focus for this year for R&D. Okay, some highlights from last year or this fiscal year. 31 impact grants. You know, the impact grants were a big issue in the past, formerly known as Innovation Grants. When I first signed on here as the deputy director, one of the tasks I did was, where are we in providing impact grants? And I find out that the impact grants were, the notification was provided the week of Thanksgiving. When most people are with their family on vacation and the deadline is two weeks from Christmas. So I said, this is not enough time for people to properly create their applications, but submitted to the press for review. So we moved that out. We did a press release on the new deadline. We did social media. We did all we could to keep to make it transparent and accountable that we are getting money out into the community. We also were in charge of a whole bunch of money for ARPA under the Small Business and Recovery Support. We have an ongoing invasive species effort to control and eradicate the coconut and an answer speedal. The EM Deputy Director, Kauguci and I, we went over to Kona on Wednesday to assess a potential breeding ground for the coconut and rhinoceros beetle. And it is within less than a mile away from Kona, Kohaneiki, less than a mile away from the airport. So it is a very concerning issue. And, you know, we appreciate the council for funding the Violin-based species funding for 250,000. That is a continued effort. And we appreciate any support that you guys can provide us in the future in that regard. We also have hewlbe resiliency and watershed management RFP. That is a $2 million RFP that is from the federal level, at which we hope will help with the technical studies and knowledge needed and data needed to help clean up and make our HiloBay better. We had our inaugural Creative Media Summit thanks to customer recruitwits for her support and as well as NLL TV. We brought in about 150 community members to join us in discussing what is needed for Creative Media to thrive here on Hawaii Island, especially from the state level that, media and the film industry is struggling. So how can we make it thrive here on Hawaii Island so that we're not reliant on other sources for that industry? And then the long awaited one-stop operator for American Job Center, that is through the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act or WIOA. We finally have the RFI out. We are no longer in non-compliance with having the county run both the program on the administrative side and then now we have somebody hopefully that will apply to be the operator. So we don't have county employees running back and forth. We had our early childhood conference in September. We have our, we had a Hawaii County Mental Health Summit. We had agriculture policy and water summits. All in line with what Director Medina wants as the department's goal to convene for action. We're not just convening for everybody who's sitting around the table and talk, but what is the goal of all that talking is we want action to be done and who's going to do the action. And we also on the agriculture side I'm ensure some farm and food worker relief programs and I did forget to mention here that we recently did have in February a local food purchasing event with our food systems team that brought together all the different hotel industry, wholesale distributors to come together and say how can we buy more locally versus importing from the mainland or other places. Okay, so in terms of R&D staffing, so we have 26 positions, 8 vacancies, and actually the contract positions are, this is an oversight on my part, is actually 8 contract positions currently. One of the struggles that we have is with the minimum qualifications, how the classification of these positions are written is hard. And it's primarily based on how the department was created in the beginning. In the beginning R&D was meant to be a data driven statistical department. We had had economists, we had a library of different data sources that people would come to the department and pull. That is no longer the same way that we operate. So one of the goals is revamping all those classifications and the job descriptions that we have. We have limited applicant pools. Everybody is fighting for the same people, right? You know salary concerns based on pay and that's just a normal issue across the board. The length of time it takes to create new positions. So currently R&D is going through a reorg. And the reorg is to define a middle management position, but as well as just to kind of give more positions so that people can move up within the department. But to start that process, we are now in the fourth month and we just got the union to sign off, so it takes a while. So it's not as easy as just saying we want a new position, let's go recruit for it, right? Now we haven't even gone through the recruitment process, which we will hopefully that will take not as long. And so with the RE org, it's trying to bring a little different structure to the department. So currently, if you look how the R&D is structured, we have everybody situated on the bottom and then they directly report up to the director. This is about 80% of the staff here. It's very difficult to manage. So what we created was a a middle management, which we hope that the council will consider in funding that position. As we have more contract workers who are coming to their end of their term, we do find that their skillsets are very valuable. We would like to encourage them to apply for these civil service positions. And we have public support and public testimony asking for more funding for more positions, particularly in agriculture and the food systems. But as well as, you know, how can we just provide more support staff to all the specialists here? So we appreciate the council's support in that aspect. I know this is a busy slide, but I felt that, you know, as R&D did have more discussion last year, it was prudent to put a little bit more granularity to this slide. And it shows you where we're all broken down in. And travel has been reduced significantly for those who are here last year. We are monitoring that closely. Impact grants is lower. If you look at how much we awarded this year, 540,000 versus the budgeted here, 275. We were able to pull a little bit more fun this year just because of just going through our financials and seeing what else was available. But this this fiscal year was 70,000. For fiscal year 26 2526 it's at 55,000. So that's 15,000 Lord and what we have this year. So we appreciate any support you have for that and bumping those impact grants up. Okay, before I go on to the last one, I want to highlight that, you know, our department and a bunch of very bare phones. We consider what we call programmatic funds, right? Funds that each program can use to help support the community outside of impract grants. And currently there are none. In the past, the number has fluct, we have some some program areas that may have a little bit like 50,000 or so. You know, we like to see if we can at least get a minimum of 50,000 for each program. That would be helpful. We understand that, you know, we had abused certain aspects and processes in the past. We are not doing that in the future, and we are not doing that now. So we appreciate any support that the council can provide in that aspect as well. Because an example that I'll pull here is through agriculture. So our agriculture budget has the C-TAR agents, the impact grants, and invasive species. And that's it. There is no funding for food systems. Similar program areas are like community wellbeing. Community wellbeing was created during COVID to administer to Kuliana Health Initiative. And we created a position within R&D, but now we have no funding for it. So, you know, this kind of chicken on the egg thing, you create a position, but there's no funding. And then you have funding, but you have no position. So, we appreciate it if we can combine those two together so we can have a successful program. Another program area is, you know, early childhood. You have Angela here, she runs our early childhood program, but that was all ARPA funded. There is no general funding for early childhood. So for that program to continue in the future, because her funds run out next year. If the council and the administration continues with early childhood, we have to figure out how do we support that in the future. Alright. And then lastly, you know, the director has laid out four different initiatives and priorities for 2026. One that is currently in progress is a La Lima Countywide Survey. This is a citizen sentiment survey. It talks about quality of life. And we find that, you know, that's something that is non-political, non, you know, there's no agenda behind it is really to get a sense of everybody on Hawaii County, how are you feeling about your quality of life? Do you feel safe? Do you feel that you can raise your kids here? So we are currently at the last phase of it, getting the mayor's approval to print and distribute and we'll be communicating with all your departments here or all your offices here. The second one is the establishment of a Hawaii County Economic Development Foundation fund. This is particularly in relation to federal funding. So the Whiawa program is federally funded. And if that program disappears, how can we continue to do workforce within the county? And on a broader level was how do we do economic development. It should be a not just a county thing but a community thing. So how can we combine together to do private public partnership? Third is bringing together all the people who do workforce First development because development and economic development are tied to the hip. You can't have a successful economy without a successful workforce. So we're trying to bring people together, really talk about what is needed, you know, because everybody has different ideas of, you know, internships, mentorships, incubators, whatever, but bring it together, and so that we can all move forward in one direction instead of having different people doing different things, that may not be at the same scale. And then thirdly is Project Palina. And unfortunately, I don't know too much about Project Palina, but it's a way to help small business is trying to bring all the tools for small businesses to make them successful. And unfortunately, I have to ask Director Medina to provide more detail on this one, but it is business focused as one of the sectors for our department under business development. And with that, I'll take any questions. Thank you. Thank you, David. Director, Council Member Onis. Thank you, Chair. Good morning. Good afternoon, already. You guys were supposed to be here this morning. So so first of all breakdown on positions in all your staff what is county what is county funded and what is grant funded is it possible that you can give us that later yeah I can actually provide that to you right now oh yeah, so employee numbers one by one or. Yeah, so because I don't want to take up too much of my time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We have a food access coordinator, which is Sarah. She is funded by Snap funds from state and from the federal government. And then we all are, which is content. We can get this one list with the employee numbers in which is what. Because then we see there's some like, temp, I guess, positions that is grant funded, right? And so forth. And I don't think that's those positions, correct? Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So if you can get that to all the council members. Yep. Okay. Thanks. Okay, you mentioned about agriculture, right? Yes. Why are we paying for a C-TAR extension agent? Okay, that is before my time, but Glenn, do you mind coming up and explaining that situation? Thank you. Because I know there are the C-TAR, I guess, agents like in West Hawaii and then there's an East Hawaii, or is there other positions? You can introduce yourself. Glenn Sako, economic development specialist in the agriculture. So to answer your question, Councilman, the Extension Service has been cutting back on their workforce in the previous years. And in fact, we were with one livestock agent for the entire island for about four years at one point, which is a very difficult thing, especially when that agent is located in Kona. So as a result of the build back better regional challenge, we had a contractor conduct a survey of the producers to ask them what did they want from the University of Hawaii's extension or what did they need to be successful successful and one of the top responses was for technical assistance. Now to have C-target another extension agent on board they would probably have to go through the legislature which is actually what they were trying to do right now and so that takes time and it's been kind of difficult for them. However. So that means the money we're paying is that state funded? Or this is a county funded? Well, it's half. We're paying for half of two positions. Half of two positions. Yes. So that $86,000 is actually half for the two positions. Okay. So the C-tar is paying the other half. Okay. So it's a it's a partnership with C-tar. Okay. Because for me it's state. These are state positions, right? They come under the university, right? OK, so that's been true for the history of the extension service here in Hawaii. But we keep, we always get reminded. And I was an extension agent that says county extension agent. So on the mainland, the county pays for the funds the extension agents. So CTA has been seeking county support for many years. And so this time when we proposed, you know, funding half of two positions, CTA jumped at it. Of course we wouldn we wouldn't. Right. And so now we're able to provide two more extension agents for this island with their support. Yeah, but I'm looking at this is most, it's a state function and basically agriculture, the Department of Agriculture is a state program. Right. And so I remember back then, Councilwoman Willie wanted to create an egg in the county, but we told her that's not feasible because we're going to be competing against the state. And the state would welcome the county to provide their own department of agriculture, because then they don't have to worry about maybe the big island, right? They won't push everything. But they're not going to provide any funding to us to conduct the Department of Agriculture here. So to me, I mean, like we have an agreement with the Fire Department on EMS, right? EMS, the Department of Health provides all the funding for the the paramedics, right? So now we're limited on, because on the neighborhood islands, or they all have their own private, like, EMS services, right? Only Hawaii County has it with the fire, I mean, with the firefighters, right? It's a combination. So we get the money from the state health EMS program to pay for our paramedics, they run the ambulance that you see island white. It's not coming from the county fund but that was because that's a function of the state to provide that funding, that services. Okay, so for this, I can't say because we don't have really one egg department, right? And we have your position, but then, you know, it's hard because we cannot go if there's like a set of position that we want state funding to have with us. We don't get anything like that, right? no matter what we do, we're not going to give, they're not going to provide us any funding. So I don't understand about why we are continuing. So how long have we been doing this? Well, we just brought on board the Pacific Crops agent, I think was in late spring of last year. We are trying to get the livestock agent on board. The first candidate left the position so they're working on the soil. How long have we been providing the funding? Two years, three years. Two years ago I believe. Two years. Because to back then when I got on the council, we had the fire ends, we had the cookie frogs, we had all that. State never helped us, okay? They was beating C-tar and stuff. We created Mariki Noise Administration, we created the fire and crew for Parks and Rec. We did go to the Hawaii invasive species council to get the money for the startup, but I told them just past that one year and then from there the county would take over until today is still running. But that was through grants, that was through that council, that's why we got the money. But if I went to the Department of Ag, they wouldn't, right? They wouldn't have given us the money. And our legislators never looked at doing something like that for the county of Hawaii. So I don't know, I cannot, I mean, I really don't agree with that part. Impact grants agriculture, what does that mean? So if I may cause a member like 55,000. Yeah, so impact grants are part of the impact grants that we do as a department. So impact grants are general funds that are given to R&D to distribute to the fund the state. No, no, this is from the General Funds, County General Funds allocated to R&D to help community organizations that are trying to do important work in specific focus areas. So there's agriculture, there's tourism, there's film and creative industries, there's business development. Each sector gets a part of funds that they can help through RFP process. Certain projects that we feel that they are doing a great job and just need a little bit of boost to do more. Okay, so in AG they get 55,000 to do give grants to agriculture. Agriculture foods. You can have like any like what you guys did so far. Who you guys provided funding to? Yeah and so then you might just some of the historic. So some of them that were awarded this year is Hawaii Tropical Flower Council, Hawaii Floor Culture and Energy Association. That's basically those two are involved with research and promotion and marketing of the ornamentals of products. We also have educational programs with the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation and the Hawaii Institute of Pacific Agriculture in North Kohala. So I don't hear you saying it's going directly to these farmers that are farming right now. Is that this money could go to those farmers that are farming right now to help them? These are support organizations So I know what it is but but when I say directly to the people in the fields is this money could be used to help them yes Okay, so I think it could be you guys they could through a certain Vehicle but the current vehicle that we have right now does not right or so what would we So of council would have to change that or would it's between the certain procurement that we have to change? Okay. So that can be something that we can discuss with finance. Work with finance. Okay, that would be great. Because I would like to see the support going to farmers, ranchers, you know, because they need help, they need like with water and so forth, right? Because like, for example, Cujala digesting, they have a problem, right, with funding. And I just talked to David Fortis and he said that they have to kind of pick it up upon themselves to try and get more water. Could I just mention the food basket program, my mother farmer, which is going on right now, is giving money directly to the farmers. And it's money, arpa money that came through R&D, that's good. Food basket got the Wanda RFP. And so that grant program is directly to farmers. So there is money. Good, thank you. Thank you. Okay, invasive species, the management, so basically that money goes to big island invasive species, right? I'm okay with that, but also, again, during the time Again, during the time when I was on the council, I had got $175,000 or whatever. And, I mean, Sussanaka, you know about it, and it was to help fighting the fire ends for the communities, right? what was happening is when parks and rec, the fire and crew used to go out and treat the facilities or the parks, it would be good for like one month. Then after a while, they came back to me telling me that the problem was, is the neighboring properties would have fire ends too. So the answer would come back into the places, into the parks, into the facilities. So we got, I went back to how I invaded the species council to get more money to help those surrounding neighborhoods. But to me, the money went to R&D, but it went to them, but it didn't really go to where it's supposed to have gone and that was to be one of the problems. So I don't know I got a I guess talk to you know director and deputy director more about this account. Okay sure absolutely. Thank you and you. And then, all you right now, and then I'll come back later. Thanks. Council Member Kimball. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Director for the presentation. Let's start with the question. Do you mentioned reorganization of the internal structure and the potential for intermediate management position. Can you speak a little bit more about that and how you would envision? I mean, presumably it's not like one more level of administration between the department and the economic development. Yes, Deputy Director, Dennis. Yeah, so when we first started, it was actually two middle managers. So we could split up the responsibilities, not just, it's just adding on another layer where everybody just reports back to that person and goes up to me. In this current situation where we were recommended to just do one manager position, I would share the responsibilities with that manager. Is that we would figure out who would be best to split up, you know, if it's for specialists on his side or her side, and then for specialists on my side and then we split up the support staff. That's still kind of in the works because we weren't sure exactly whether or not we were going to get the position or not. So that would be the goal is split up the duties because it wouldn't fix the issue if I was just having everybody just report back to one person. Okay, I'm, yeah, certainly. So I'll just like make the taller, the tower taller. Correct. You know, I'm willing to discuss with you what that might look like and what a budget amendment around that might be. I think a lot depends on whether or not this would be a civil service bargain position or an additional appointed position. This would be a civil service. Okay, the idea would be that this would be a civil service. Correct. And we got the classification approved by HR under jurisdiction review. So it is a classification that can be used statewide now. Okay, okay cool. Alright, maybe send that to me. Yeah, I just got it this week. So, yeah. Okay, perfect. Yeah, yeah, because I do think that one of the issues with like this really broad position arrangement is that there's no opportunities for growth, right? And you want to to provide that to folks right to have that opportunity for managerial experience in addition to the technical expertise so I'm supportive I think we just need to think about how the money might work and how this structure really would improve the functioning not only and I'm happy to have a discussion with any of the council members who want to understand our restructuring. Yeah, okay, great. Looking at the positions and the vacancies and which ones are funded and grant funded, So you have the economic, just specialists three that's grant funded, the, well there's two, right? And then the, no there's three. There's three grant funded. You mentioned that something about turning one of them into a permanent simple service? Yeah, so if you look at our list here, the 3.edu 3 is under Rio. The EDS 2, the solo ones, I say temp, that's because it's the grant funded. Right. So that's the Rio positions. positions. We have a accountant that is also grant funded for Vioa and then we have a vacant clerk position that we fall under does as well. So the unfunded one that's in there, yeah, which, let me be more succinct, which is the one you're looking to fill for the eggs. That's unfunded one. That's the unfunded one. That's unfunded. OK. You know, I want to just express right now my full support for funding that position is a permanent position within the county. I think, you know, when we're talking about priorities that we hear from the community, food security, food sovereignty, are things that rise to the top of the list. And as we've made some adjustments here around the AgTax programs and other things, having that sort of expertise available to provide to the community, I think is critical. So I'll just say that right now. Additionally, one area of economic development, sort of bridging the gap between Ag and other things, is APIs. They just are like taking off. We already know we have this queen bee industry. I'm wondering if we can incorporate some, that there's actually no state, Apeary, yes, yes. I don't know what the terminology, whatever a person is who does apiaries, bekeeper. No, yeah, there's a technical search, do you know what the term is? The person that's an expert in apiaries, apiaryologist, I don't know, but there's a term. But there is a one at the state. So I think we have an opportunity. I wouldn't see it as a full-time like current position, but maybe somebody, because this is another, it ties into the whole property tax rate. We have this explosion of people that are beekeeping to take the AgTax class credit. And what I'm concerned about is if you have this proliferation of people doing bees with no expertise, you provide the opportunity for all sorts of invasive species and viruses and mites and blah, blah, blah. And so given that the Queen Bee industry is an important industry that we do lead the market in nationally, I think it's what we need to think about protecting. So just thinking about supplemental and in pop opportunities, maybe a contract position, quarter time, or something like that, just so we can have that expertise available. And this is kind of a request coming from RBT2. Like they're getting all these people submitting applications and not being able to evaluate if it's really a farming operation or just a bunch of boxes in the field. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. I want to mahalo for the inclusion of the continuing of funding for the 250,000 for invasive species. I think that was effective and glad to see that. You mentioned the grants program, impact grants program. You know know one of the things that I think we need to think about in terms of the the May budget is I do think given some of the things happening at the federal level the county is going to have to potentially step in and provide more of that direct service to nonprofits and community groups. So as we look at what the revenue stream is going to actually be, I think we may want to look at both bumping up your program potentially our grant-made program so that we can be set up to fill some of those gaps. Oh, who's taking Riley's spot? That's currently vacant. Okay. All right. So I forgot to mention that, you know, through the establishment of Oscar, so I've been in discussion with Administrator Akasio, which I tried to envision what the energy program would look like in the county going forward, because what with Riley's departure, he was largely involved in the energy infrastructure and policy. You know, we were thinking that maybe the policy side goes to Oscar, the infrastructure side, and evaluating what is, you know, what the different types of renewable energy sources for Hawaii Island still fall within R&D. But yeah, that's our current discussions. For sure, we'll miss Riley, right?, right? Very, had a lot of breath of expertise, but I'm sure we have not, we'll see him pretty frequently. But yeah, I think that there's an opportunity there to really tie in some of the concepts that were initially intended with Oscar by putting some of that more in their purview. So we'll see, we'll be hearing from them shortly, but then can have a conversation about that. But that was one of the things that when I heard he moved, I was thinking about us maybe a little bit more of that. Kooliana goes over there. Thank you. I think that's it for me. I hit my time button. Thank you. Council Member, so I'm checking in with Council Member Zane Kona. Nothing at this time. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Kogiwada. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here. Deputy and team. Great to see you all. Can I get an update on what is happening with the ARPA funds for childcare going forward this last in this last year to spend it all down whatever is left and Numbers as well as what it is going to be used for Thank you Would you mind coming up Hi Angela Thomas, early childhood resource coordinator. So we ended up with about $5 million that we were able to RFP out for lack of a better word. And we're doing about five or six different projects. So one is to increase family child care programs. We are providing startup money for people who are interested in creating businesses in their own homes. We have an apprenticeship program that we have a chunk of change in to support either raising the quality or the level of qualifications for existing teachers, but also bringing new people into the field. So we're also paying their wages while they're working in a childcare center and paying for school at the same time. So it's kind of like a fellowship opportunity. For them, and it also takes the burden of the additional of a staff person off of the director. So it helps with the school's budget. We have three of those right now that started in January. Yes, January because it's a semester and we have two more that are coming on board for summer so we'll have five all together. And it's a nationally recognized program registered with DLIR and DOL and run through which is K. K KKYOKAINA in Onoahu. And so they have the other ones with the registered program and they sponsored us to do that here. We're also doing a lot of work in Pahoa around the community work. That's where the bulk of our money is. We have $400,000 for the sort of oversight and the convening of partners in Pahoa. And then we've also put 900 into the implementation of programming. And we're really excited because we've just got that started. Starting bidding august first, we had four babies in Pahoa, born since then, that we've reached out to. We've also done cross-training between our teachers in the preschools and in the kindergarten classes so that we can support the transition into kindergarten. And ideally, what we're doing is a comprehensive program that supports families and children from zero to five, trying to change our very dismal kindergarten entry assessment scores. So that's what we're working on. So it started at sort of both ends of the spectrum. We're calling it an OY starting upstream and trying to connect with all these families. Our next piece of work is going to be to distribute a lot of books because our literacy scores are really bad on the silent. And so we're going to support them through book bag programs, rotating book bag programs in both preschools and in kindergarten and also distributing through whatever FCIles or family childcare there are in the community. We just want to get books in the hands of kids. That's pretty much how we're spending the money. All right. Thank you so much. I do really appreciate that. And a lot of those programs sound really good. I'll just say I know that you were not in this position for what happened with the childcare money, the arpa childcare money. But I will say I think it was a huge disappointment to the community overall, starting with a very large sum that it looked like was going to go out to the community overall, you know, starting with a very large sum that it looked like was going to go out to the community to really support this super important industry, especially when you look at economic development, but also on the social services and community well being side of things obviously. So I you know I continue to say that it's really important that we look at this but I think the place that has to be targeted for if we're looking at it in the economic development piece of things is finding ways to bring in additional funding stream that will break the different that link between what parents can afford to pay and what it costs to provide childcare. We have to find additional funding streams. We have to find additional ways to help people with that cost and to help the industry survive by getting more than what parents can pay because they can't ask parents to pay what it really costs. So anything we can do, I think, going forward around economic development that really looks at this part of the childcare system, broken system, I think is key. And I think for $5 million, Angela is trying to do an awful lot. The five people doing apprentice ship, that's great. Getting books in family's hands always good, but none of these things are going to make a difference if we can't, if parents can't afford to pay and the programs can't afford to stay open. Right? So we have to focus on that piece, I believe, if you want to include it in the economic development program overall. I don't know if you have reactions to that either. And thank you. So, just so everybody knows, preschool open doors is the project that the Lieutenant Governor has put additional funding into. And this year, it will be eligible for two-year-olds as well. So now it's two, three, and fours in the years on the DOE schedule. So they have to be born by July 31st. But she's also put, there's $50 million in that part of money to go to families. So while more people will be able to access it, they've raised the eligibility requirement. They've raised the allotment that they're subsidizing families with and they've also lowered the age of so more kids can participate. Having said that though, our issue is capacity. Where do they send their children? Exactly. So for existing families who have a space, they can look into this but we still need more spaces. And right now in this island we have one space for every 4.5 children. Yep. Exactly. appreciate the supports for new supports for new family child care, because I think that's super important, not only to a child care overall, but especially to that infants and toddlers, which, as Angela just noted, are not necessarily included in the state program, trying to help with child care. So I applaud you, Angela, and the team for doing what you can with the 5 million. I do have to reiterate. It was a real disappointment. I think we can't remember them at we started with. But at some point it was 14 million. And there were high hopes for what could be done with that. So thank you for working on that. Okay. As far as the grants, both the writing for, which you said is not really your Kuleon, I just want to give a shout out to Beth Dykstra, who did write a grant, which was that Helo Bay watershed project grant, and she was successful and bringing that in. I really appreciated her work on that. And I'm just wondering why is it that you don't see yourself or couldn't also do more grant writing? Yeah, and it's not like we don't want to. We have provided training recently for the entire county on grant writing. It's just, we would have to dedicate with each specialist, especially this specific duty. Are you gonna write grants or are you gonna be out there in the community doing the work? Right? Because it's writing grants is a full-time position. It's not that you can balance it with like, okay, I'm not going to write grants half the week and I'm going to go and do community outreach and manage, manage grants the rest of the time. We ideally want, you know, we have a budget line item here for grant writing professional services. We would, we would hire out a professional service provider that could help us write the grants or you know continue with the grant writing seminars and workshops so that or not the only department doing grant stuff but every other department has you know grant opportunities as well then you to you know be done yeah I think oh yeah go ahead please add to that. Sarah Freeman, food system specialist, R&D. Just for a little bit perspective, when we did write the Build Back Better Grant, we awarded phase one and that took about two and a half three months of work. And when we were working on phase two, that was about six months of work for several positions. And I often personally worked 60 hours a week during that time. And we were not successful in receiving that award. So I think that we have to look at the capacity that some of these things pull from staff when we go after these opportunities. And we did go for that because the community community asked us to and agon food systems with different opportunities. We don't also don't want to compete with our partners. We often collaborate with our partners and support them in their grant writing for them to go after grants and opportunities. So we often play that role as a support and for us we often don't take things on unless really requested or it makes sense for us in that Opportunity and if it's within our capacity. Yeah, thank you, sir And I will just say that I know that was a really heavy lift and didn't end up getting funding for it But I do think it was successful in other ways and that you Build a lot of partnerships that are really key going forward. So thank you for that effort. I did notice in your grant writing budget line here, going from 175,000 this year to 100,000 next year. Yes. So you are anticipating not needing those contract services? Right now, our focus as the department is really building structure. But we're trying to make sure that everybody's working together. Oh, it's not that we don't want to write grants. It's just I need everybody to focus in on their areas and making sure that we're doing the work in those areas that is truly needed. It will be great if we can help the community write grants, but it's right now in this past fiscal year, we didn't utilize that at all for writing grants. It's not that we don't want to. It's just the capacity of what we want. We want everybody to be doing doesn't include managing a grant writing service. Okay. Okay. I hear that and probably maybe right now isn't the best time because everybody's kind of scrambling for money. But I guess I would like to say let's keep it on the table for future. Maybe when things settle down is a possibility because I think, you know, managing the money is one thing, but we've got to get the money too. Absolutely. So thank you on that. And then you asked for support potentially for the impact grants. Yeah, I'm happy to support, you know, I would like to talk about that a little bit more, but I do understand why that might be a need. I mean, we really could be facing our communities, could are and maybe even worse, facing worse times ahead in the near future. And so happy to look at that as well of increasing that. Thank you. A couple of other things I just want to touch base on. Ag. Mr. Sako. Really, I do, I've been following the Malama Okuna, if I could finish this one, a big pilot project with you know Bated Breath, hopefully hoping that you know Hilo could do something similar, a lot of issues, people have about pigs. And so, are we, when do you think will be in a place to replicate or expand that initial pilot project? Lensako, economic development specialist, excuse me. So, that initial project was a community driven and they had the nonprofit organization, Malamo Puno, very involved in bringing together the community members and agencies that would be, could support their efforts to reduce the ferro pig, ferro hog population in their area. And so it was, they all got together and there was a lot of participation. So in order to have something like that in other districts, you would have to have a mover, shaker, nonprofit, some lead to bring the people together and the participating agencies. And part of it, coming out of that initial project was the ferro pig management plan, which is now going to be island-wide and hopefully will increase the consumption, education, about how to use the products and reduce the, well, start to make an impact on the ferro pig. Yeah, absolutely. And with this Hilo Bay watershed plan that we're working on, and we have the Pua Foundation, which is managing one of the punk projects. They reached out to Malama, Okuna, they met. They really want to be this for the Hilo area and are, I think, very interested. So what would their next step be they've met with Milamo Akuna they have land they are going to be involved in the watershed project and so what what should they do? Well so understand that the whole idea is to impact the community and you know not just protect your the lands that you're response move forward. So somehow, if there, whichever community they're working in, or would like to support, part of it is trapping the fur pigs. And so what happened was with that initial plan, one of the traps that they brought in is called the pig break, which is to trap as much of the sound of population as possible, because you need to remove 70% to 80% of that population in order to impact, to reduce the growth of that particular group. So setting up traps like that, and it is kind of expensive to bring it in, but it has to also be set up properly and baited properly. So, Malamo Puna has some experience with that. So, they could serve as like a technical advisor and help them to write up a proposal. How are you going to, you know, how are you, and understand, for all pigs as much as they are a problem they're also culturally important to Hawaii. So you cannot just trap shoot the pigs and give it a little bit of the carcasses. You need to use that for a protein in a productive way. That's what they did. I guess what I'm getting at is the county, what is, if anybody around the island, if any of the districts have people that really want to work, like try to replicate this, do they contact you? Or is the county kind of done with that now? And we did, we supported in Malama, Opuna with this project, but we're done. I guess that's what I'm trying to find out there. Are we still gonna be providing some technical assistance? I would say, Dennis Linda, pretty director. I would say that our goal as a department, especially within agriculture, is invasive species control. I mean, if we do not control the invasive species, no matter whether it be ferrule pigs, or they'll fire ants, CRB, it is gonna affect our food system. So I would say that our department will continue to support these type of efforts. What, if we have the funding to do so. Okay, is there? What's the line other than the current project happening with Milama open that is there any funding in here? None. No, not for fair or pigs. We only have it for big on invasive species. Okay, and that is more of a To help fund their Management outreach education that that kind of aspect for their programs, working in conjunction with HDOA and the county. Okay, are you still able to provide? I wanna come back to you. I'm gonna recamble. Thank you. I wanted to follow up on the survey that was mentioned as one of the objectives. Can you describe a little bit about what the Wig plan to put out? It's more process-wise than content. I'm going to actually ask if Marsha, Marsha here? Marsha. Marsha. Okay. Okay. I will do it myself. Okay. Dennis and Deputy Director. So the survey is going to come in in two forms. One is a Unite Choning version that would be a link to a survey monkey survey. And then the other one is through a QR code that would be mailed out to residents. And it should only take about five minutes or so to fill out. And the staff here has done a pilot, they tested it out and see how long it took them. It includes multiple choice as well as rating scale, you know, one through five and then open-ended feedback questions that they had a specific concern they can type it in. And then once we get all that, that would be, all that data would be then be sorted and then presented to Cardi Council, the mayor for their use. They asked because I think that this is an enormous potential to provide us with some really important information, both for what you guys do in our economic development. Whatever you're going to name yourself, if you want to change your name, it's charter amendment, so it's going to be a little while. But the concern I have is from a data science accuracy standpoint. And I just the other day looked at the surveys that are out around our short term vacation rental policy. And I'm curious if you know, do they have any mechanism in that survey to identify the actual location that somebody is submitting that survey from? The reason being there's two links to the surveys surveys. If you submit a fewer residents, submit if you are a transient accommodation rental owner. I would not put it past the folks that have been anti our short-term vacation regulations say, everybody go fill out the resident one and say, you love short-term vacation rentals. Because that's what they did when we tried to do that kind of self link to give us some feedback is that they made sure that it was a skewed study. So I'm not particularly sure but in our survey we do have have everybody zip code and as your carman you put in your zip code before you proceed to any other question. But I'm not but you put it you put it in. This is why it's important because one of the things that I is just a feature of Squarespace, right, which is where we put the link to our survey, is it identifies where people are connecting? Not the specific address. But what I can tell you is that 73% of the respondents from our survey were not from Hawaii. Okay, so this is the danger and I only say it because a quality survey for us could be so instrumental in determining where we go, where we go with development, where we go with housing, where we go with infrastructure, where we go trans, I, it could be huge. And since we're talking about budget, let's spend the money on a data science driven survey that would be accurate in capturing a true representation of our community. Because the other thing, if it's just a scan the QR code, if I'm a mom, I've got to go, you know, go to soccer practice, go to work, pick up the groceries, plan dinner, blah, blah, I'm not feeling out of survey. I'm sorry, I don't have time. Right? And so in order to really address the breadth of the diversity of our community, I would way rather spend a half a million dollars on a high quality survey that I think we could use for the next 10 years. So. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that feedback. I have Marsha here. She's been part of the group that's been creating the survey. So Marsha, some of the questions is regarding the data science side. So how are we collecting the data? How do we verify integrity? How do we make sure that people aren't submitting the survey from a different country or state or whatever? Yeah, so if you know mine. Hi, good afternoon, councilmembers. Marsha, your shiyama, Development Technician with Research and Development. So I can't bet that actually is the one that did some research on the actual survey questions. I believe she also searched other municipal that also provided similar to come up with the questions. We are not asking for detailed information. We want to make this as confidential and comfortable for the community members as possible, but we are asking for zip code. That way, when we do the analysis of it, we can kind of plot what the community feedbacks are based on the zip code. So traditionally in social science? Trad traditionally in social science, did I, as mechanisms for studying consumer feedback, right? You take a subset based on your total population that's going to give you a margin of error on the responses. You don't send it all out and then average and, you know, the data that you receive. You target a population when you think about the polls that they do during elections. They are calling specific people to get the information that allows them to interpret it. And I will take this discussion offline, but let me just say I would much rather spend the money now to do a high quality, defensible survey. And we had talked about doing this from the Council side. So, you know, if it's going to be a near budget or a hard budget, whatever, let's do it right. Because this is something I think we could probably use for a decade. And I think any information, the danger of doing a survey that is not following data science, traditional mechanisms like that, is that it sets up an position to make promises to our community based on the results of a survey that we can't really determine their reliability and how accurately we've captured the sentiment of the whole community. So, perfect. Let's talk. Director Director, if we're gonna do this, let's spend money on it. It's my name's Nathan. Thank you. Thank you, customer glenba. Thank you, and I would second that. Like, I think this is a really important effort and really want to make sure that the data is defensible and really good. So, I definitely second that. Yeah, I just wanted to talk a bit about workforce innovation and opportunity. So, I was like, Clinton, Ricardo a follow-up. He is our executive director for a county of Hawaii, we're first development board and he also is the the specialist in charge for the WIOA program. Thanks and I just want to update and just sort of information for us and for the public about what the opportunities are there. And perhaps if you could tell me to about the funding for it and if you have any other if you have needs for that. Hello Council members, Quentin Mercado, we're first development. Thank you for the question. So of course there's a lot of uncertainties with the hope federal government and our money. So right now, we supposed to have, well, excuse me, back it up a little bit. Last year, we were supposed to have a reauthorization for the Weall program, but it didn't happen. It was continued, stopgap. That was during Biden. And now it's in the Trump administration's court. We, on March 14, there was supposed to be a reauthorization for extend us for another 10 years. Unfortunately, it didn't happen then. They did a continuation, or they called it a stopgap to September 30th. So we have until September 30th, when they're going to do a shutdown or a continuation for 10 years. These are authorizations that happens every 10 years. So of course, he can do anything right now that he wants, but as a right now, our guidance is continuing moving forward with our programs. As far as funding, we are just about the end of our PY-23 funding. It's one year back, the program year number. So, I was going to program year, program year 23. Oh, yeah. So, PY-23 will be done on June 30, 25. We already allocated our PY-24 monies. And so, that's going to take us to 26 June 30th, 2026 and that's the PY24 funds. We just recently received our bulletin for PY25 and so we working on our budgets right now at RapidPace just to make sure we get it in so we can then do a B52 appropriate those funds and get it into our system and so that's where we are right now so funding-wise we were solid until 25 26 excuse me, but again there was a threat I think about a month ago, where they said we're going to just stop everything. So he has the power to do that. And if that's the case, then he's going to do it pretty much globally across the map. So if we don't get the reauthorization on September 30th, then the whole wheel of program across the nation is done. So and our funding, our program, yes, our staff is pretty much, well, it's all funding with, funded by this federal monies. And so if that does happen then. And just to add, then that's the impetus of why the director wanted to create a county workforce program or, you know, an initiative to get all the different workforce providers together in case this funding disappears because it's a state program or state federal funds come to the state. The state has its own, we owe administration of the programs and then where to execute those programs. So if that runs out then the county has no funded workforce development program. And we look at that, you know, this last one we got was 1.4 million. So that covers adult dislocated worker youth in and out of school as well as the American Job Center wants to operate in the future hopefully we land shortly. Thanks for that. I know it's going on. I just had your program and becoming more popular. Yes it has been. We've been really, our new team have really been hitting our ground and trying to spread the word more. Um, reaching out to schools, one of our biggest push right now is to educate all the schools across our island on the amazing opportunity that we have in our, with our youth program. In and out of school, for example, in school, while the youth gets about over $400,000 with, you know, that they can spend in that program year. One of the cool things that we're going to start is reaching out to schools and let them know that these kids in school can start making money while doing stats at a basketball game or doing ag, you know, just met with some of the co-teachers and they're really excited about doing farm to table. And so they're looking at like, how can we help them. So collaboration, I was the first round table meeting we're doing. But these programs are amazing. We're trying to do more outreach in communities, working with our broadband team now. Because currently we service our people. Well, we have our office in Hilo, the American Job Center, which I pro to announce that we just recently changed the name to Hawaii Island Workforce Connections, partners of American Job Center. And so yeah, we only have one in Hilo, so we're looking at eventually getting one set up in Kona, or in a process of that. But in the meantime, we're going to hopefully take advantage of the broadband initiative that our department started, where we can set up park visits of digital literacy education as well as educating people on what our program and what our services we provide. So definitely trying to spread the word. It's been good. The number has been stable. We've been increasing our accounts. So. That just makes me think that you said that kids can get funded for doing stats at games. I wonder where the stats go. But more I'm wondering, you know, well, as you know, being from generally from a district, we lost Julianneal and therefore our community newspaper and one of the big things that she would do is go to all the games and all the community events and write them up and it was an amazing thing to have. with that also be another, I mean, I've been thinking perhaps we could, student newspapers was once a huge thing and obviously super educational. Would that be another thing that kids could get paid for? Absolutely, they can get as creative as they want. So the big thing for youth is having a person to identify as their supervisor, as their manager, right, because they're minors. And then it'll be them working with their supervisors as far as what type of plan or what type of, you know, program they want to put together, and then we support it. So I mean, that's a good thing about this we were programmed. Yes, it's a headache. It's a lot of red tape. It's a lot of requirements, but the money's there for programs, the money's there for training, for education. So yeah. Thank you very much for putting up. Doing all the headache. I'm glad you did. That's all I did. Yeah, thank you very much for putting up doing all the headache and I yield thank you councilmember v. A. G. S. checking in. Any novel sorry, I can't tell to you. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to follow up, you know, there was discussion with community members in the previous administration regarding the creation of a volunteer center, if you will, within the department, similar to what Molly County has. And that would be to facilitate not just the nonprofits or partners in the community, but also those in community who want to volunteer and to find some of those opportunities that exist across the different communities of the island. that I believe I mentioned it to you folks before but is that something that this administration and your department specifically would be willing to look into? Thank you for your question, Cheri Nabaad. I actually don't have much information about that particular program in an or initiative but I'm happy to discuss it with you based off of what you know or I can reach out to the staff at R&D to see what discussions were made about that volunteer program or volunteer coordination. Great. All right. And then the only other comment I guess I have is with regards to some of those areas that may be a little bit outside. We had some discussion about invasive species. And I think we tread a fine line there of supporting some of these initiatives, but I want to caution the department on statements that, you know, we're in the business of or we feel that it is our kuleana to do some of that because we know that there's that impact in that connection to agriculture, but I don't want us to start taking on some of the stuff that it's really is the state's kuleana, even though sometimes they might not have or are not taking care of it. I just want to make sure we're careful there. But besides that, looking forward to Mayor folks work and I'm hoping that you folks can also work closely with the mayor's office and establishing a good connection with our sister cities, helping to explore different options and expand in that area as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Vigas. No, thank you. Okay, thank you. Council member Bonici. Thank you, Chair. You've been watching how this hearings have been going on, right? So I don't know why I guess departments have having hard time getting employees from the West side, right? And could be for a number of reasons, right? And so yesterday I got to meet with Captain Sam from Salvation Army and they're going to be I guess creating or they in the works of having a preschool operated on the west side so can I get that's China hood? Yeah, thanks Angela Angela yeah Okay on the west side. So can I get that's childhood? Accenture. Yeah. Okay, so you can introduce yourself. Angela Thomas, early childhood resource coordinator, aren't you? Thanks. So you mentioned about you have funding where it could help pay for salaries for instructors in like preschools. In the apprenticeship program. So they would have to agree to also go to school at the same time. Yeah. OK. And then also there is funding to help workers to pay for the, what is that, the fees for the state, right, preschool open doors. OK. but do you have in your So-called grant money helping where this can go directly to them to help parents? No, okay Do you have funding to help them the Salvation Army to set up this preschool? I have money to help family childcare providers set up home businesses. When we did the RFP originally, I was asking if people wanted to expand their preschools, and that would have been an opportunity for them to have submitted a proposal at that point, but that money's gone now. It's all been allocated. Okay. So basically, you have only for the salaries for a apprenticeship. Right. And that's it. Yes. OK. OK. Thank you. But I have lots of advice I can give them to. Yeah. But thank you. OK. So OK. So I mean, so I just want to make that aware that that could be a possibility of helping the West Hawaii to get more employees with help. And then I also someone mentioned before it in Hilo, for the workers here. And I was trying to see if I could do something like a pilot project with maybe five, having one instructor with five workers' children's to be at an nursery or something like that. But there's roadblocks within like we need to find one safe facility, has to be all fan stop and so forth. So, well, that would qualify as a family child care. So if you can find someone who wants to use their home, ideally they own their home, to do a family child care, that's exactly what we can help. No, yeah, no, I understand that. I understand, but I'm just looking at how we could do it, in how some place here, so it would be convenient for the employee to drop off in a certain office space here. And then they could. I wanted to be building at the corner campus, but they're not giving it to me. Yeah, yeah. OK, but thank you on that. Thank you. The other thing is the film industry. I've been hearing that there is, I guess, you know, this film, film people, like trying to get into Hawaii and stuff like that right. And then there's this one guy that came to meet with me and he wanted to kind of start up like the studio. So he needed like this warehouse, he had like, I guess how big, but he wanted this warehouse where he could have this studio where he could do certain filmene and so forth. So how can I like work with him to see if he can qualify for anything that R&D is offering? Okay, I'll ask Sherry to come up, but in the meantime, you know, the creative industries across the state has been difficult. Because the incentive that the state provides for these large productions, small productions, is not as attractive as other states like Georgia. So if you watch a lot of, you know, mainstream movies nowadays, when you go to the credits, you'll see Georgia a big peach at the end. It's because Georgia is providing up to 30, almost 40% cashback for your production. We do have those inquiries come in regarding spaces. So either filming spaces, what we call makers' spaces for people to make their props and their those things. Different discussions over the years has talked about Kmart being a production space, Sears here in Hilo being a production space. But I'll let Cheri expand on some of the more detailed requests that we might have had, but there needs to be more space for production. And the thing is, for like you said, what we can give back, right? So for me, I'm looking at for the county side, maybe exemptions on property tax for so many years, right, and so forth. So I mean, on the states side, the taxes that we cannot touch, right, basically, but property tax we could or I don't know what else in scent as we can give them but go ahead introduce yourself. Hi Sherry Nakagawa film and creative industries. So we just had the creative media summit and part of that summit was to have we had a live survey to kind of see what the infrastructure needs are for in the community for this industry. And we're still, you know, trying to go through the results of that we didn't. We just had the submit a couple weeks ago, so we're waiting for other information for that. And then from that we wanted to see how we could take that information and build something that the community needs. Because we talk to D-Bed and they can help fund some things, but we need to first see what the community needs, because they don't want to fund something that nobody's going to use. So we're kind of gathered at data so we can show them proof of what they can help. this come? Because this film industry or your dissection been involved with R&D. Good question. I'm not sure, actually. 10 years, maybe 15 years. Who is the longest here? Who's the longest know? Since 2005, she said... It's almost 10 years then. Okay, 20 years. Oh, 20, I'm sorry, 20 years. Yeah, 20 years. So, I mean, it's like, you know, for me, like I was involved with domestic violence, right? And so, they used to have these summits every year and nothing would happen. Like they're saying people would come, same discussions and so forth. So when I started to see that, I said, you know, we got to start doing something because it, to me, it gets tired where you do the same old thing, right? And nothing happens. So we started to move forward and every summit would have year after year would be increasing into how we're going to get into legislation because when you're funding was it and we couldn't get funding so basically getting laws done or change it or amended or so forth but so I look at this it's been 20 years and we still I know you're you're you're you at this position yeah like how long September oh. Oh, OK. You're really huge. OK. So I can't really say anything, you know, or putting burden upon you. But you know, I just cannot see that there's nothing that has been kind of like in the records for you to look at, see OK, how we can improve as they went on, right? And that's one thing about county we don't have. Is that all that data from before time and how we can move forward. So like when I told Director Homo back then when we were on the Kinoys administration was at E and I was a council, I said we got to make the department better than what it was and not bandied. So that way the next administration can come in, they can even make it better and keep on improving. But maybe we can sit down, we can find out what's going on. And then maybe we can talk to Debette and see what history is and how maybe we can improve our county of white. So we can bring in more revenue. Because to me, I believe R&D, you folks are the ones that can help with getting more revenue into our county, working with all the different sections that you folks have. So yeah, so thank you for giving the information. I yield. Thank you. Councillor Mellicoca, you want to? Oh, Thank you, chair. Just last thing I wanted to touch on, and I saw, I think it was Ms. Day, Tulpe Day, has had popped in, but then she probably had to go again. I bet she's very, very busy. But I wasn't super aware. I've been meaning to pop down and talk to her of what are, I guess, immigration specialists, does that letter of the catalyst can provide for the county? And can you explain to me, is she the only one? And do we not have anybody on the cone of sight? Yeah, Dennis Lynn, the pre-director. So yeah, Topey is our only immigration, immigration specialists. So she handles all the immigration inquiries for the entire island. She basically is a resource for the immigrant population that are looking to do different changes in their status, whether it be bringing in relatives, a marriage, and fiancee Visa passport renewals. She gets a lot of those but we don't do passport renewals but she refers into where they're supposed to go. But she has been in deep communication with the Latino community recently regarding the ICE intervention. They are very worried and And she has been, you know, helping to bring the groups together so that they can provide testimony. We actually have the Mexican consulate coming soon at the end of this month, along with the Philippine consulate to talk about the different issues that these communities are facing, with the FSM communities. Have you discussed or thought about given what the times were in right now and the fact that there's so much action with ice going on over in the corner side, especially with the Latino community. The ability to have another person who speaks Spanish who could be over on that side. I mean that that would definitely help. What we do is we refer them to the language line if we need interpretation. Here in East Hawaii we have a lot of Filipino community that needs help with their immigration issues. You know we don't have a Filipino speaking person anymore. I used to be Rose Valtista and she could help with the population, but we no longer have that service as well. We just refer them to the language line. So no discussion of adding a person or anything? We thought about adding support for her, but it would still be her going over back and forth as having somebody in office here so that she can do more visits on the cone of sight. What about having somebody over there that actually speaks Spanish? That could be a possibility. Yeah, I would love to discuss where in the budget we could support budget we could support you on that even if it's Contract, you know contract person because hopefully we don't this won't be kind of a crisis for for too long But if we could look at that I'd really support that yeah, and it is a larger discussion because Topey is not an immigration attorney She's's a resource, right? She kind of provide any legal advice for anybody who is facing deportation or anything like that, but she can provide them the resources of who to reach out to such as the consulate or certain groups. Okay. Well, maybe we can get together, probably bring in corporation counsel and talk about what that support could look like. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I yield. Thank you. Councilmember Husses, I think. To the department, thank you Mr. Lin and Lou of Mr. Medina for being here. And then for some of your folks over to do Clinton, Sarah, Michelle, Frisha, Glenn, Angela, not Angie or Clay Angie Angela. You've been a pleasure to work with over the last six years. Thank you for what you do. If I let anybody out, I don't know you. You look new to me. I've seen you around, but I don't know you. You still, hey, you talked to the beginning, Mr. Leno about outcomes and solutions. He touched on some summits that you had. The last one that I remember that participated in was the Ag Policy Summit. What are some of the outcomes that we can see coming out of that? Yeah, I actually have Sarah in the policies, specialists for Ag is Anna. So they can talk about what has been some of the outcomes from that summit and how they're implementing it now. That'd be beautiful. And then as a final piece of that, how this budget reflects the outcomes. Or maybe how the outcomes are reflected in your budget as a better question. And real briefly, you don't need to have any other thing, but interesting. Sarah Freeman, Food Systems Economic Development Specialist for R&D. I do want to note as far as the Ag Policy Summit that was spearheaded by Councilmember Ashley Kirkowitz and the R&D team supported the development of that agenda and bringing speakers. And so that initiative was really- Was it paid for by Councilor Kirkowitz? I'm not sure about that. I think a lot of was donated. So the R&D really served as support in that process. And there was, I wish I had it in front of me, but there is a report on the summary of that process and the next steps. In our department, we really worked and supported related to food rescue and cleaning efforts as well as ag theft and biosecurity. There was also conversations about farm to school efforts and increasing potentially having that more of the farm's cafeteria work done in the charter schools versus in the DOE. So there was different elements of really looking at what was council policy, you know that could be moved forward and state policy to work on in the long term. So I can't speak directly into that more longer term strategy related to that summit in particular. I think that that is helping inform some of those pieces. For us as a department, we spent a long time last year working really closely with the Department of Agriculture, not only in our county but statewide looking at what were the top economic barriers to producers being viable in our county. And so a lot of our information, even in that summit was was driven by a lot of that research that we did in community outreach. And so that led to, so as far as I can talk about like next steps leading into that, into policy this year, is that we supported the Department of Agriculture to write several other bills that went through the governor's package this year that included supporting, increased agricultural statistics. And unfortunately that did not move forward. Continuing their work on invasive species management, improving their ag loan division and improving that system and structure and developing a grant program that was similar to resilient food system structure that would focus on climate smart equipment and technologies to improve the capacity and resilience of our producer statewide and those are moving forward. Other pieces, and Glenn can talk a little bit more. He's been falling more closely with the biosecurity pieces that are going through the legislature. On the more food access side, bills that we have supported that also were showed up in that summit is universal free school meals. There is a bill that is still currently alive that has more of a tiered approach of fully covering those that are on free and reduced to being fully covered and then the next year being Alice families and covering those students and we are advocating for still having 100% preschool meals for our students moving forward. And then also there's still going for farm to families that would provide state level funding for emergency food in the county. Okay, so I'm hearing policy coming out of this summit, but as far as it floods it. So how I've mentioned so, it falls within the impact grants because the impact grants specifically fall into what the agriculture and food special food systems objectives are. So in terms of like Sarah said at the last egg policy summit they talk about gleaning. So we fund the food basket in their Cocoa Harvest Program. We just funded them for 25,000. And that's for more outreach events so that they can go out and stay to, you know, families or a household that has, you know, maybe four orange trees that have too much orange that they can distribute or eat. And they'll bring those oranges back the food basket or a food hub and distribute that to the community. Other, you know, so like the farm to school or teaching kids in schools, we have Mala Ai, Hawaii's Island School Garden Workdays, so establishing school gardens so that kids learn how to grow their own food. So that is directly from our impact grants applying it to the initiatives that the food systems has from the Ag Policy. Okay, just a note from the Ag Policybalsi something, because I attended. What was interesting is when we had the breakout sessions, I remember this random guy I've never seen before, walking around, posing questions to each and every group. And that bugged me because I don't know who he was, but he inputted into every single group that was a listening session that were recorded by someone to bring back what we plan on doing as a county. I didn't see anybody else walk to every group and apply a pre-written list of questions to each and every group except that man and that bugged me. I'm just putting that out there because as we do this in excessions to inform the way we move forward in our intention as a county to do certain things, but they're being guided by certain questions that are posed by people that we do or do not maybe understand their purpose of. Good for us to be cognizant because all we see is a record of this of questions, and then we build from that, right? It just was interesting. I watched it with a great interest. I can say within a lot of our other events that we put on, we have pretty detailed list of who's invited, the work that they do, the role that they play in the community, and that is very well documented as far as input as we do processes. As we are currently in two processes to do two five-year plans for the county, one for community food security, and one for the agro-food system as well, that is going to be a very rigorous process, but also takes in a lot of input. But really identifying where that input is coming from and how it is based in both research and based on which community associations or producers associations that is coming from. Thank you. ARPA. What caught my attention was Jen's question. And where I believe we started out with ARPA for childhood. Early childhood care was like 13 or 14 million. 14 million. But then I heard 5 million. That's a big gap. Was that something that happened post contract or post discussion for ARPA with previous director or that's just what got a lot in this fiscal year. I would have to defer to director of finance because I was not part of those negotiations or those discussions. Thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. If you could just, I caught my attention, that's about an eight million dollar discrepancy, but is it still sitting or? Good afternoon, Diana Cagalla, Finance Department. As we discussed previously, all of the ARPA funds have been encumbered. We brought to council a program in early 24 on how the ARPA funds would be spent. We also talked about a contingency if we were not able to execute the contracts where these funds would go. And unfortunately in that particular area, some of those contracts we're not able to execute the contracts where these funds would go and Unfortunately in that particular area some of those contracts were not able to get executed and those funds were then transferred to other eligible projects That's it. Let me show you we allocate all those funds have been in comfort. Thank you very much director In your budget review, thank you, Dan. Dennis, I looked over, some of the intention going forward was budgeting for the purchase of 30 EVs. And this fiscal year and then 60 in the next, do you have any thoughts I'm going somewhere with this? Yeah, so that is no longer the case. We are no longer doing EV leases for vehicles. And it's partially due to the astronomical increase in prices, based off of when they was originally negotiated and what the prices look now. So the budgeted line item that we have currently, I think it was a hundred thousand, which I would note says hybrid vehicles. Hybrid vehicles. Yeah. So we are no longer doing that. We are doing. Yeah, doing EVs or not doing the LyE item. We're not doing that specific LyE item. Oh, I just want to say. Yeah, we're the plan now and we have to talk with finance about it. It's just replace our current R&D fleet because right now we have a car which we affectionately call Goldie that has been there for 20 plus years and it is a hazard to all of my staff and the other Honda that we have is pretty old as well. The goal is to replace those. Initially that was an energy program initiative to do a pilot program for the county to test out electric and hybrid vehicles on whether or not we could replace the county's sufficity for energy efficiency and sustainability efforts. But just that price was not not looking so good. Okay, so that's that'll be probably changed then in the next iteration. Correct. That would be a change. Okay. Who's doing EV charging infrastructure? Is that if Riley's no longer there is someone else in your department doing it? Are we shifting responsibility to it? So right now the responsibility for the the contract and the installation is under R&D. Through sustainability partners is is who are getting those chargers from that would replace the existing chargers here at Opuny Center as well as a county building and installing and replacing the chargers at West Hawaii Civic Center. Those are actually really old and they actually don't charge up to the max capacity. So when you plug in your car, it doesn't provide the wattage that is actually needed to charge a car quickly. So you have cars who are sitting there for half the day not getting charged. That's the goal. Is it? I thought that was a line item in this budget, but then, no, I'm reviewing it. No. And I'm not sure after the install is done where the actual expenses will be sitting in, in which department. Yeah. I'm basically here for coordination. That's what works. There was public works. That's why it's in my, we just had them. Um, um, I'm basically here for coordination for that project. There was public works. That's why it's in my, we just had them. Okay. I want to mahalier department because when you walked in, you took over from the Roth Administration and new directors and everything across the board, but something that was started and I want to highlight two, well for now, two members, I love you all, but two members of your staff, Michelle and Frisha, who took on two projects. The Native Hawaiian Women's Development Initiative, and Michelle, if you want to come up with Frisha. If you want to, whoever wants to speak to it, they're beautiful programs that you're doing. They tie into economic development. My, there's a lot of funding available through indigenous data science that's coming down that I understand is in place, and we can draw on that to tie everything from workforce development to a number of things in grants. But Michelle got us going on the Native Lions Development Initiative. Can you speak to that real quick, Michelle? I don't know, free support you on the spot, yeah. Hello, my name is Nisha. I began the Economic Development Specialist within the business and industry development program. So I think you guys speak up and right. It's actually started a while ago when a whole group of us from R&D was actually focused on equity. So we are looking at what are the opportunities we have within our community. And one of the things when we're going through reports, like the OHA report, the Alice report, and looking at DB data, you know, the question of like, oh, vulnerable communities and underrepresented communities. And like, we're all wondering like, who are they though? And so when we ask people who they are, like, we, like, you know, we could never either not get a response or it would always just go back to income. But because a lot of us in the county was focusing on this actually through the effort of Pei Ha Kaina, we looked at like the capacity of our programs and lifted up on Native Hawaiian women. So out of the 4200 businesses we have on Hawaii Island, less than half are owned by native Hawaiians, and even less than that, like way less than that are owned by native Hawaiian women. And then when you look at all of the generational and historical trauma that they've also faced, you know, when you look at sustainability and business from a holistic point of view, it paints a very clear picture. And one of the things that was brought up during the time that our team was kind of thinking about this was you actually went to outter all and they're doing that too. So they have a Maori women's development. Yeah. Yes. So it's basically it's bringing access and opportunities to their most vulnerable population. And that's a huge need here, obviously. One of the things, or you know, it's been said over and over. Like we don't want another plan, we don't want another plan, we want action. So our team decided to just do it. Let's do it. Let's do it as a pilot. Let's see where what happens from that. So back then we did have a big team, but some shifts happened in R&D. And so it kind of came down to a smaller team. We decided to do Ohanah dialogues, but we didn't quite have the capacity to reach, like to go far reaching. So we kind of did it like a hybrid. We had a huge, not huge, but you know, we had meetings in Hilo side and Cona side where we actually like talked deeply with our community members about what are the needs and what are the challenges. So kind of going through a SWAT analysis but in a much more deeper way. And so back then we had a little bit of funding so we were able to do it like not necessarily in the typical government style where we have a community meeting, but we had food from one of our local vendors come out, provide food for our attendees both on Hilo and KonaSide. We were able to contract with HackBid, who was really huge in helping us to facilitate the conversations on both sides and actually gather this data. So from with partnering with HAPBID, they created a needs assessment. And part of that needs assessment identified like the high level need, like what are the topics in priority order or the areas that they, people really needed help on. And they just want to kind of step back real quick. Although the initiative was called the Native Hawaiian Women's Development Initiative, it wasn't specific to Native Hawaiian women. We welcomed everyone, but we did see a need to focus in that direction and make sure that we were actually providing access to that demographic. So part of the beauty of that too is what we saw in Altera, or to Zealand, this is for you Dennis. When you build up the native culture, specifically in women, business owners, what they do and what they've shown through their data collection is they grow business directly in community, and there's a solid generational impact going forward. And so for the economic development piece that I see you focusing in on with Ben-Cin Medina, Michelle has kind of created this group. If you choose to draw on it, I'm not sure as it going to be going forward. Well, we've been asked to broaden the program. And so what we've been doing though from last year and we're continuing is doing monthly meetups with our community, like our entrepreneurs. But yeah, since then we've had to shift. Yeah we're shifting to be more broad so got it okay so let's leave that one. I love it. If you choose to take this on and roll with it you can but I think you have something valuable there and I appreciate what you did with that program, Michelle. You also took on the Japan Export Mission, which took seven local companies, Iland-wide, to Japan, to the Food Ex Show, which is a humongous show, and you landed seven businesses there. And in parallel with Maui County, you did the exact same thing. So in your first three months of being in office, you folks have taken on some serious, in my eyes, some serious steps towards economic development. I'm liking that direction so far. Do you want to touch on that? Thank you, Chair. Yeah, for both Benson and I, we come from private industry, from the business side of things. And that's kind of where we see the department going is, how do we drive economic stability growth on in Hawaii Island? And so we will continue that effort in driving economic development. We worry about the Trump initiatives and how it's cutting down on equity, inclusion, diversity, all that stuff because it does affect how we do things, how we get funding, how people perceive the work that government does. But yes, we are continuing to focus on economic development. Okay, yeah, I agree with you that your department really is economic development. Research and development, and And Ben tonight said this and we laughed about it. It's like you guys all wear white coats in some laboratory somewhere and you guys research like foam in bottles. It's not really what you do. Every part of what you do to me is economic development. No matter what aspect they look at, I can tie it back to economic development, argue with Doug about that in the past. And eventually he came around I think and even I think Miss Nakhagal can speak to if she's so chosen. She actually has a background in that too. She's amazing. And if I look at your staffing they're called economic development specialists. Correct. Okay. I reached out a while back. I'll wrap it up. I reached out a while back for his renaming the department. Do you want to proceed in doing that? Or should I leave that on? We have discussed it with various council members here, as well as the mayor. And I think everybody has expressed the same sentiment is that the current name, research and development is is misleading in a sense. Other counties have office of economic development, or who has office of economic revitalization. So we are open to a name change. In the research side, you know, we've talked about it pretty in depth about research. We are not statisticians. We do not have an economist on staff. We do have one staff member who is willing to present data. So when this gathered, she can help present it in a way that's on you know understand everybody can understand but We are not a research Department Understood thank you, but I don't hear back for me. I'll leave it alone. You can do it. Everyone First grads grads It just I want to be cognizant as we look to help That we also remain very accountable to the taxpayers. I see a lot of money going out the door in every direction for grants to nonprofits. And my want is not to just keep funding and funding because we're just trying money in. We got to see an output and we do in some cases and I think there could be more done in other places. As you look to that end, as you start to fund yourself to be more of a grant or less of a grant option or to create business grants, whatever you're doing, just make sure that you're looking at every other grant that we put out as a county and the total amount and what you're trying to focus in on what you're trying to grow as part of that process. Please. Okay. Anything else? No I really appreciate the time that the council members have provided us today. You know, we are trying to move in a different direction from the past. So I appreciate the support. And thank you for your time. Thank you. I'm going to actually go to councilman right here, Sisya. Oh, I figured it's your late and good. Thank you, Chair. Appreciate it. Thank you, Deputy. I appreciate you stepping forward today, given the circumstances. So thank you for leading the ship here. And speaking about grants, and may I apologize if I missed this in part of their earlier conversation, some of your positions are grant funded. Are you concerned for those disappearing? Yeah, so we talked about the workforce program that is at potential risk in September if the federal government does not reauthorize the workforce innovation opportunity program. So that is what we're worried about. On the SNAP side that funds Sarah's position, they currently have it funded in three-year cycles, but the state is, you know, guarded in the sense they don't know what happens in the future. So that is something that we're watching as well. Do you expect any changes in your supplemental regarding any of these positions given one positions unfunded potential to changes in future grant? Yeah, there might be some changes in supplemental going forward after this discussion today. And we'll work with finance on those changes. Okay. Thank you. And then maybe there was some conversation. And I've heard some different thoughts on the, or ideas and presentations about the Vista program. What is, what is our timeline there? Or? I see it is budgeted here, but. Yeah. So the AmeriCorps VISTA program is a program that's funded through the federal government that brings in graduates that are supposed to serve low income communities for a certain initiative, right? So some of our VISTAs are working to mass transit, some of them are working in the food systems arena. The hard part with that program is the administration side. Existing R&D staff is administering the program from developing the what they call VAD, which is the job descriptions, administering the funds through our cost sharing program. We have ongoing compliance and it has been more since the Trump administration came in. We had to completely change one of the VISTA's job descriptions and title because it included language like equity. And based off of what the regional staff said to us is that they expect more of these changes to come. For our department, it's hard to administer it and administer it because we have to drop everything. To make those changes, if not, these VISTAs don't get paid. And at the time of March 14th, when the federal budget was looking to get extended or stopgap. They were planning to cut AmeriCorps. So we were worried about the four VISTAs that we had. And whether or not they were going to have funds to pay for their rent. Whether or not they were to show up to work the next day, because they were going to be furloughed if not. Thank you, Deputy. The last question is on the invasive species management and the contract grant there. That's all, it's pretty much for the support efforts by in partnership with BISC. Correct. What are the limitations on that contract? I don't have the contract with me. In terms of, you know, and I appreciate you and your staff members being on the CRB called other night, let by Senator Richards. So thank you for taking the time to, you know, invest in, you know, time and energy in that. And I think there are some conversations about other federal pigs and those sort of things. But we have other challenges. with LFA, CRB, those sort of things in our agricultural sector for sure. I'm just curious how much more we can do as a county, given the limitations in our partnership and relationship with HDOA and kind of that top down enforcement and work that they're doing. And it seems that BISC is really just there for that community engagement side, prevention, mitigation, kind of the early stages, which is a paramount to kind of stop some of these, at the early stages of these invasive species. But I'm not sure of what more we can do to, you know pushing back again to HDOA really and kind of in their in their wheelhouse. Sure. And helping up Glenn for any additional information, but we had a discussion about you know the role that BISC HDOA as well as university plays within the role of invasive species. And it's a fine line, you know, because it gets blurred at various areas. So a good example is when we went out to Kona on Wednesday and the call was, okay, we found larvae, adult beetle, who comes to respond? Who is the leading agency? And that it's not very clear right now who the leading agency is. HDOA does a lot in terms of coming out and doing the treatment. They'll help with, in type of control. This has some of that aspect. It's helped set up traps. They help educate the community. The UH comes in with their technical expertise, the technical assistance with the research side, you know, talking about pheromones and what is the best track to use. The county's job, as we see it currently, is to help with the resources. So if HDOA needs a boom truck or they need to utilize a DEM grabber truck to help move around greenways or take out treat the palm trees or coconut trees. That's been our goal, our services right now. It's a larger discussion that we're trying to have with all the players at the mall in the room and say, how can we work together? And clearly, we find the roles and responsibilities of each group because we don't want to step on each DOA's toes, but each DOA has a limited staff here on island. CRB team is on a walk, this is on island and we're on island. So we just got to figure out a way to work together. Thank you and I appreciate that. You know the they each do away, community members don't necessarily know who these state partners that are coming in. So if they have that connection of a familial relationship with, you know, BISC or with county agencies, like we might need to step a little bit further into this, you know, we understand the impacts. They're a little bit more removed, I see it. Sometimes their lead agents should be looking at the entire island chain and yet they're actually here on the ground doing some of the field work. So I think they have some other things that they need to kind of work out there within HDOA where we're here on the ground. We necessarily should probably stepping forward into some of this area. Yeah, and I take what Chair Inav was comments, you know, we don or step on of course the state's responsibilities, but it's not about who's responsibility, but how do we work together within your role, right? So if they can give us a clear role, this is what we want from the county as the support then we can help support them. And Glenn, you have anything to add? Glenn Sako, Economic Development Specialist. I just wanted to add, getting back to the risk, you had asked about the contract and the limitations. That contract, they had submitted a proposal for that contract. And it was before all of this CRB, I mean CRB had been located in that initial location, but it wasn't as widespread as it was now. So there was some CRB work in there, but then they also have actually a very large responsibility in dealing with other conservation areas. So there was a little bit of CRB work in there, but they can also have some flexibility to move funds. And right now there is a little more movement towards dealing with the CRB situation in West Hawaii. Thank you, Mr. Sako. They appreciate that. I just have this you know the fear is new invasive forget Thank you, Mr. Sako. They appreciate that. I just have this, you know, the fear is, new invasive, forget about the old invasive, right? I mean, we keep shifting and looking at the new threat, the new threat, and we're not really tackling or solving some of the past challenges, or really pushing on the state to really support the work that we're doing here in the community and kind of really support on the forefell or in the tail end, whatever it may be. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councillor Wigimbo. Yeah, be real quick. I wanted to highlight since you brought it up, Councillor McKinney, Lee, Klein, Fother, and then Fresh has been mentioning it a number of times. There was one project that Riley had worked on for years that was, I think, really important, which was the fleet conversion. And within that process, the ability to consolidate across departments, the vehicles, and integrate like a program for sharing those vehicles. So we don't have tons of them just sitting in the parking lot over there. Since he's left and since our Oscar administrators here, I just wanted to bring that to your attention as something that perhaps shifts because it is a coordination effort which is part of Oscar's Kuliana. But wherever that documentation, wherever that plan is, if you can pass it on to Oscar, I think that's something that we don't want to lose because a significant amount of time is invested in developing that plan. And then just finally with respect to the conversation of spending on invasive species, when we talk about economic development, it's not only about building new things, but it's protecting existing things. And when we talk about invasive species from an economic development standpoint, particularly in our ag sector sector we have seen significant economic losses due to basis species here at ground zero which we are big island is ground zero and so I feel completely justified in the county's investment in protecting against that because we know that even if if DOA put a bunch more money in it tomorrow it's not not enough because just the pace at which these things are coming in, continuing to come in and the impact that they have on key economic sectors, I think, justifies easily the spending we put towards this. Just put that there. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much, Director. Appreciate your time today. Thank you. Thank you. Teams time as well, and then pass our appreciation to Director Mendina as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're at a brief recess, thank you. you you you you you you you Okay, we're out of recess. Our next department joining us is the office of sustainability, climate, equity and resilience. Thank you for putting that on the screen. So we're forgotten. Our director is here today, our administrator, director. Please introduce yourself, administrator, and then go to your power point, and then we'll go to questions from the body. Sounds good. Aloha, council, chair, Inaba, finance chair, Kanye Lee, Kleinfelder. My name is Laura Akasio, administrator for Office of Sustainability, Climate Equity and Resilience. It's an incredible opportunity to be before you and as well as all the other council members. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share both our budget and our vision. Oscar, as you know, was created to connect, coordinate, and build capacity across county departments and with community partners to sustain the health of our INA and people. Think of Oscar like a Mycelium network beneath a forest floor, quiet and powerful, essential but often unseen. Just like fungi help trees share resources, Oscar supports the branches of county government and divisions and departments by delivering nutrients such as knowledge, funding, coordination, collaboration, and resources. We also extend our network to community partners helping trees grow, flowers, bloom, and ecosystems thrive. This work models a regenerative care-based economy rooted in mutual aid and equitable resource sharing. It's really a matter of helping to streamline and coordinate so many of the things, even in the last few hours sitting in this meeting today, but of course throughout the week, there are so many opportunities that as I listen, even when Oscar wasn't specifically named, I recognize that that's part of an opportunity that we have even just today. It's talking about the the restore and the recycle centers at the the transfer stations, you know, Oscar in resource management and coordinating with DEM that has a big role. The topic of roadside spraying, traffic fatalities, and the design streets that folks brought up. The list goes on. Of course the EVs and the specifics that were brought up around that as well. Our focus is on grant writing, data tracking, project coordination, outreach and education, all grounded in equity, sustainability and resilience. Our initial projects fall under four priority areas, and that is environmental and cultural resources, community resilience, clean energy and transportation, and elevating our place-based knowledge. So we come to program measures in 2024-25. Our Mycelium, the soil was inoculated and our Mycelium began to grow and strengthen. We hired key staff, grants coordinator, data analyst, and accountant one. We developed dashboards to monitor county Icap implementation, energy usage throughout our county facilities. Our team helped coordinate and apply for multiple grants both at the county and in collaboration with community partners. We connected with over 30 community engagements to share knowledge and build relationships because so much about this work is actually about relationship building and understanding what's happening in community and being able to share the resources and connect folks. This slide show shows how we're beginning to translate from this big picture goals into very tangible and measurable outcomes. We'll start with personnel. We created five new positions, position descriptions, we hired three, as I mentioned. We have begun recruitment for two more, and then we also engaged in re-hiring position that became vacant, that we had previously hired. That's the accountant and HR position. Our outreach and engagement we launched our website. We have an active and viable social media that started. We created a monthly newsletter that goes out highlighting our community partners and things that we're working on within our department and cross departments. It has over 650 new subscribers and we are now launching plans for how to engage more subscribers and coordinate with different lists that we have throughout the county. We attended 18 community events and 12 work days. Under for collaboration and coordination, I want to mention that we completed a CIP analysis for both 2024 and we also have one that hasn't been presented but it's for 2025. And so that is available. As you know, just looking at our CIP and offering suggestions as to where we can increase, I anticipate that we will develop into that more. Created a beta grants management tool as well. I think that is a big um and ask that I hear throughout multiple departments around grants management and helping to develop the certain bells and whistles that allow that kind of uh management to be more streamlined for our county. Not ready to necessarily share the details at this second, but it is in beta development, and we're moving forward with that. And a huge highlight is that we moved into our office space in late December. Just to give perspective, we also secured functional internet by the end of February. I do want to shout out IT because once the issue was... once IT was alerted to the issue, IT director moved very, very swiftly and as you know my ceilium need to communicate quickly so this is a major accomplishment for us in terms of that communication. Oh okay and grants. We wrote five grants totaling nearly 3.5 million. Three a grant of awarded so far, totaling 1.2 million. And we collaborated on 6 additional grants with county and community partners totaling over 25 million. A deeper dive into our staffing. I think this is, well, it terms of where we're at. We have a total of seven positions and we've filled three at our working to fill four more. We have interviews scheduled for next week and then subsequently in interviews after that. In the meantime, we've relied on three contract positions and one AmeriCorps VISTA member who have contributed greatly to the work that you see in front of you. Major challenge is that we do not currently have dedicated administrative support for hiring, so our HR and our accountant, and that is one of the postings that was just put out. It has been out for higher three times. Huge mojalo to DHR for their help and assistance navigating this process, the hiring process. Some of the challenges that we face within this hiring is salary, seems to be salary limitations, position, creation, timelines, as well as a limited application pool. Despite these barriers, though, we're moving forward, like I said, making progress and committed to putting the entire team together so that we can continue on our actual projects. Okay, now our budget overview, our total proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 is 896,536. Our salaries and wages are flat. And we're just requesting a modest increase for operational costs. Our equipment needs have decreased and that's predominantly because we've acquired most of the tools in our move in to our office and such as desks and all of the logistics of setting up a brand new office. I would like to mention upfront that we are working very closely with finance for our travel budget and moving in, you know, looking forward that we've refined our travel budget to under 10,000 more specifically 8,500 or so. there while there are a lot of pertinent training and networking opportunities that are very important for the work we do, especially cross-county things as well as making sure to stay on top of best practices in this field as it changes drastically and especially now in terms of what we're looking at federally around shifts in how we engage in some of these very rapidly changing moments. We are focused on becoming fully staffed, executing our current and pending contracts, and deeply grounding our work here in Hawaii before moving beyond that. I feel like it's really important to set that foundation solid, which is why I'm just highlighting that our budget for travel is closer to $8,500 moving forward. dollar in this budget is aimed at continuing our foundational work and then growing our capacity to serve from there. Okay, priorities and new initiatives for 2026 seeking funding to support inter-departmental collaborations. With the federal circumstances, we're definitely exploring all the opportunities for private funding, partnering, mutual aid efforts, building our capacity out for volunteer opportunities, especially here on our island and doing a lot of the collaboration and coordination that has been brought up over this past week in specific initiatives will continue to build out our grants program and technical support around data visualization, ensuring that our dashboards and reports are both accessible and actionable. And as grants are awarded, we're going to continue to enter into those contracts. We're currently negotiating two contracts right now. Well, we've actually finished the negotiations on one and just putting together the logistics of signing into that. So that's a huge accomplishment coming very shortly for us within this week is anticipated and then negotiating a larger contract, inter-departmental contract moving forward as we speak. We aim to contribute to policy. I think that's where a lot of this is going is that our work is going to play in active role in informing policy, which of course means deepening our relationships. One-on-one in understanding what the needs and anticipation of those policies, chefs, and many of you have had individual conversations about specifics. And it's just a matter of, again, setting that foundation and moving into those opportunities and how we can coordinate, how we can coordinate with community and advocacy groups as well. Let's see, let's see. One of the biggest things that we're working on too is really bringing to the forefront place-based knowledge in this work. And as was mentioned earlier with R&D around equity and really tying in a lot of those components of equity. So that's a place where we partner a lot with R&D. Filling in gaps identified by our community. And this could be local level as well as state level. So that's the anticipation is a multiple. Most importantly, I just would like to say that our staff is very hardworking and I've appreciated getting to know them over the last seven weeks. And we want to make sure that we are fully staffed so that we can continue to grow and do the work. Mahalo folks for having this opportunity and of course I'm here for questions. Thank you administrator for sharing your my cellular beginnings and where we are now. Councilmembers, Mr. Hussis, can I start us off? Sure, thanks chair. Just one question ahead. Thank you administrator on the grants. What were those specific grants awarded for? The three totally 1.2 million I think I see note of one for energy efficiency block grant Yeah, so that is the facilities assessment that I know DPW alluded to or mentioned earlier in their presentation So we're really excited about that because that's very interdepartmental and we're working with Parks and Rec and DPW as well as fire and police department as well. Urban Sustainability Directors Network that's a participatory storytelling which is deepening our understanding and narratives around what sustainability means in our community and what it looks like and how we roll it out based on very place-specific knowledge around those concepts. You know, oftentimes there's an agenda that maybe comes from other places and sometimes it works together and sometimes it doesn't so really just deepening into those concepts. And the other was Clean Heavy Duty Vehicles, which is there's some more things to be explored about that one. That is 1.2, I'm sorry, that's actually $1 million. That's $1 million. That was the biggest. That was the majority of all that. Yes. Okay. And then the status of those other two grants that were written by the office. Yes. So one is awarded. And it's actually in partnership with our community partner, Viber and Hawaii. And then they are doing a heat monitoring campaign with that Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring. And then we also have a NOAA grant coastal zone management, which is still pending. Still pending on that one. And then any successor process, investigating other grants, federal grants that you're looking at, looking forward to pursuing at the time. Okay. Yeah. So, you just recently saw Ulliponos contribution that came through the council not too long ago, and then absolutely we're going to continue to keep doing that. of the challenge at the moment too is with, fortunately we do have assistance with our accounting. But again, this is a big challenge and a big lift prior to having an account dedicated accountant. Aloha folks, my name is Kendra Overmeyer, Sustainability Strategist with the Office. And just also to build on Laura's answer to that question, we actually just explored a different grant, our exploring a different grant source this week for the same project for which we applied for the NOAA Coastal Zone Management Funds. And we put together like a project plan around looking for new sources of funding now that there have been so many changes with the federal landscape and then also navigating what existing funding streams are still going to be there. But we're really in the impetus of that because we're focused on getting our contracts out for existing funds so that we don't lose those. Okay. Thank you. Is there any, you know, going down that direction, any, you know, language sort of change or things that would kind of to navigate those waters that we have to kind of undertake to pursue really the same end goal but going through different lengths and I think ultimately that's the challenge that we are all facing so yes okay absolutely okay that or and also other funding sources You did mention kind of the private sector for sure yeah okay which we do have quite a few leads and conversations happening as we speak around that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, minister. No. Thank you, chair. I don't know. Yeah, I don't have a lot of budget questions for you because it's the next one pager. Oh, yeah. But it just is just speaking to what council member he used to send some of the conversations. I'm very worried about what position the office is going to be in with the title that it has. Fortunately, it's on the code, so it's just a code amendment and just a build, change the name to something else. But having had some conversations with some of the federal funders at this point, it's like this administration is doing control F, you know, equity, inclusion, control D, right? And as much as Councilmember Connie Lee, Kleinfelder likes to call the office of keywords. You know, I do think listening to the conversation with R&D about how they're shifting their focus does provide the opportunity for some things that were within the R&D's purview that can actually be brought into Oscar and might actually provide the narrative that maybe fits more in alignment with what the current federal initiatives are. Which, that's a hopeful thing, oddly enough. So I'm kind of glad that you and R&D were together today and kind of at the end because the opportunities for expansion and synergy with what needs to happen, I think, was presented inadvertently today. So I wanted to just make sure the staffing... Did we lose somebody? Oh you left. Oh okay. Which is why she's sitting here with us. She said that she can help. Did you guys had a vista too? We did. And so Vista ended but also that's the one that had to have a name change. Got it. Okay, so what he was he was already at the end of his contract. Okay, all right, so. What if I. Sorry, what is your position? You're the special projects coordinator? Yeah, I don't understand these types. Yeah. Thank you. I'm the sustainability strategist, but I'm on contract. Yeah, that explains it. Yeah, because I'm like looking. So we actually have two on contract. Okay. Currently, so that is our traditional knowledge specialist as well as sustainability strategist. Oh and sorry we actually have three. One more is our information and education specialist but we are also hiring for that position currently. Okay so that will that will shift. Got it. Although so just just to say that that diagram is a little bit is misleading and we went back and forth whether we put in those contracts or not So it's good you ask right right okay I also just want to clarify that the the person on contract doing communications work is actually funded through the climate Pollution reduction grant through R&D right and They're their communications work just aligns with what we're doing. So there's a lot of so that that's how that works. And I think I forwarded you guys that the feedback that we had gotten from your website and newsletter. It's really coming together nicely. So kudos on that. Yeah, that was really the only questions I had was a little confused about the positions, but that explains it. And look forward to seeing you. Yeah, flourish. So, well, thank you. I just wanted to just mention though, that we are in communication with R&D specifically around the things you just mentioned. And then some. Thank you. Councilor Calguillaura. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here being here administrator. So one thing we've talked about several times is the need for Hopefully for us for to take a leading role and supporting our county in making sure that all our meetings all our Board and commission meetings all our internal meetings our council meetings everything that that we are low or zero waste events as well as all those events that happen in our parks and our facilities and everything to encourage that. Is there anything in your budget that supports that work? That's a great question. The work and the resources, it's a lot of it is coordinating and a lot of it will be coordinating around creating policy. So as far as our positions, that is something there. But in terms of funding, if we're going to prioritize that, it's absolutely necessary. We do actually have equipment that we purchased, that we are setting up a program so that we can resource share it out for especially our county in-house events and such. And so that is something that we've already purchased. And being that our budget budget is status quo I would imagine that there's maybe another round of that as well but we would like to put we have to do the work to put the project together so that it's actually functional and that is on the agenda. Okay well if it turns out that you don't have a lot of money for that, I mean, I would suggest if when you get staffed up and everything, if we could just maybe get, you know, real good guidance for all the folks like, you know, and maybe it's very specific. Like, here are some products. Right. And source them, let them people know. So that could be really helpful. then guidance for events for Parks and R, to work with parks and rats, to just say if you are working with organizations, be they nonprofits or for profits that, you know, here's some guidance on, you know, how to set things up ahead of time. And then eventually, maybe we can, you know, require that people do that, but even just starting off with support and resources that that could be great. So we are working on that already. We've had multiple meetings with different community partners to set that up and what that looks like, streamline it, but that's what I mean by setting up the logistics around launching that. And we've also had coordinated with KiloA Recovery, for example, on some of their community events that they're working on down in Puna, with Halahalavai, for example, and just setting that in place, but it will continue to grow and be more streamlined so that we can have it as an educational opportunity to share out not only to our county staff. And this is part of that larger narrative shift, which then it makes it easier for folks when and if there is policy set forth for that, because there's already been a lot of preceding of these kind of ideas and habits. And even to where, if you're gonna have an event, for example, that the vendors that you're asking are also aware of this and in compliance or that they have a very clear because not everyone knows. And we do know that that's a huge part of it is educating all of us. And then also the resources. Like if they don't know, here are some suggestions. Exactly. Exactly what you can do. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Definitely one of the low hanging fruits. Yeah. But again, administratively, we're really need to focus on making sure we don't lose our grants. We sign them by the deadlines and stay on those timelines and then get the hiring in position. And it's been a larger project than one might think. But like I said, we do have internet and we also have some support as well that's been extremely helpful. Okay well if you need support on this and if you know there's something happening in district 2 I'm willing to try to put some funds towards it too if need be so let you know. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely a passion. Thank you. Check it in, Kona. No, no real question. Administrator, just look forward to your work. Go get them and let us know if we can be of any help. And then just, you know, putting it out there to the members, again, working late into the day. And hopefully, if there's any programmatic specific questions that really could be asked at other times, please do so. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember, anything? I'll turn it over. Casting regular limbo. Okay, Councilmember, is anything? Councilmember Glemba. Thank you. No. It's the same. I mean, just really, I know you're starting out. And so just, you know, despite the hostility, far away, like, yeah, don't listen to that. I mean maybe we need to change some words and maybe not but either way you know I think we're I think I speak for all of us here that were committed to your your program and there's just so much good things that we can all do around the areas that you're focused on and the relationships and the education that can happen. Yeah, yeah, that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Dr. Donald, have any questions on your budget? It's pretty straightforward. It's pretty straightforward. One thing it had pushed forward in the past was doing your best to be grant funded as a department. How you can or cannot do that remains to be seen, you're new to the position, but the department is new as well. And I interested in how you tie in everything else for grants. I just from listening to you, I'd say be wary about becoming the grant department. Was what I've heard in the past is all the departments do their own grants for the most part, from department to R&D to everybody but the one the one driving piece of information I get is it's not so much they need help writing grants if someone were to jump into that position and try help everyone it's coordinating where the grants are at if they're overlapping and it gets really complex when you start looking at a government applying for grants receiving being distributed to a department or multiple departments, how is track, how the information is reported and who becomes responsible for that. So if that's a direction you're looking to go or being put in the spot to go with R&D or any of the department be wary There's a direction you're looking to go or being put in the spot to go with R&D or any of the department be wary There's a lot involved in taking that on. Yeah, thank you. My understanding is up until now at this point we have coordinated and helped with aspects of the grants for other departments or with, I should say with other departments because again they have folks who are working on specific grants, but we've been able to give them language or data or resource, otherwise resourcing it. And then it gets administered through those departments at this point, but thank you, definitely noted, and I'm happy to dive into it more. Cool. Yeah. In the air, what was the study you're looking at? Like a space or is that the right acronym for what you're doing? The needs assessment? Oh, the facilities's assessment. Are you talking about the energy efficiency? Yes, ECBG, energy efficiency block grant. So the PV system on this building is off. And you were in the room when we spoke about that earlier. Yeah. We have a number of PV systems on county assets. I don't think they're tracked. We have a department that pays for the bills as they come in. I don't know that they're tracking if rates go up or down or if payments go up or down or how that tracks in different departments worth looking into. There's substantial cost to the taxpayer for a PV system that was supposed to perform at a certain rate, but is off. Very apparent. Sorry, Kendra. No, I just, I have some info just about the assessment and it might be good to talk about this longer at another time. But part of the exciting thing to me about the facilities conditions assessment is that when the work on the I-CAP was happening it became apparent that not all county departments have an asset management software and that there also isn't a centralized place where the billing data is I mean finance tracks the billing data in general but it's not easily accessible and it's hard even to look at like Did you know did billing rates go down with PV use or have they fluctuated and so we actually just finished It's it's internal. It's not ready for public yet. Just due to some privacy and since data sensitivity issues But we have a dashboard that we'd be happy to look at with you folks On the energy use of all the counties accounts. And we're currently working with HECO to get that live data. And so part of the Facilities Conditions Assessment would be collecting the data on about, it's about eight different components of infrastructure for the identified priority county facilities. And one of those includes not just the solar panels, but also the roofs and how this ability of the roofs and whether or not they would need to be replaced too. So I think what you're saying, it just ties really well into the intention of that assessment because the long-term goal is for that to result in a data set that DPW can then use once they acquire their new asset management software rather than having to then go through a whole few year process for them to collect that data and enter it themselves. Beautiful. One thing that stood out to me this morning was building a apartment ready to do the fixes. We'll pay for it but there was this concerning phrase at the end of that sentence, which was, then HFD will decide if they want to inhabit the building. That's concerning, because that means we're going to pay to fix it, but it was unknown whether it will choose to enter the building again from HFD. And maybe I misheard that, but that's what got from that sentence. If you can incorporate that into your facility assessment that might save the money, save the county some potential funding and some issues as we look towards rehabilitating existing structures. I will note though it's specifically about energy efficiency. Okay well again, again, but with, again, like Kendra said, you have to assess the roof, you have to assess the entire components for it. But yeah, hurt. Okay, that's it. Thank you. Look forward to seeing what you do. I supported you as director. I think you're going to do a good job. Yeah, thank you. And you're just getting into it with a brand new fiscal year. So have fun. Yeah. Anything else you want to add? That's all. Thank you. If we have to come back, I feel like I do want to just share that if we come back for supplemental, it'll be because we're ready for that. As opposed to things that we don't need. And of course, I know that that's expected, but just knowing that, especially as we have larger conversations about shifting things, perhaps, from R&D, that if that is the case, then we'll have a clear idea of what that actually looks like in terms of financing it and creating that support around that. So thank you folks for your time. And again, as we get forward forward to we'll be meeting more on an individual basis so that we can understand more in detail some of these things and then see you. Thank you so much. Thank you director Acasio. Council members. We're in a brief recess. Thank you. Oh my, nope, no pressure. No pressure. you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm sorry. you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm sorry. you Okay, Councilmembers, we are back from recess. We are having our last department of the budget review. The planning department joining us today. Councilmembers, if you could. If we could start and you can ask whatever questions you would like of the department at that time. Director, when you're ready, please introduce your team. Yourself. If anyone speaks today, please introduce yourself for the record before you begin. Run through your PowerPoint presentation. We'll go to questions from the body and then we will wrap today up. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Cunnelly, Klein Felder and Vice Chair Hustis and members of the Hawaii County Council. My name is Jeff Darrell, Planning Director for the County of Hawaii Planning Department. Great to be with you today. Believe it or not, this is my first time doing budget, so please go easy on us. Yeah, they're going to know a lot more than I do, but with me today is Deputy Planning Director Michelle On. And we have our Planning Program Managers, Don Johnson, Maya Jackson, and Bethany Morrison. Don is with the Administrative Services Division. Maya is with the Planning Division, and Bethany is with the Long Range Division. Okay, okay, if we get started, Chair, here we go. This is the planning department. What do we do? Well, we plan. People always ask that. What do you plan? It's always a setup for me. I'm like, well, if you ever need like parties or weddings, just... It's... So... Yes. We have been pretty active over the past several years. I'm sure you're aware of that. We've been working on our general plan for a number of years. We're finally through the planning commissions and my understanding is that it has been sent up to the Council for your turn. And so we're looking forward to the opportunity of working with you and being able to pass our general plan 2045. We're also working on amendments to our zoning and subdivision codes. We are currently going through our subdivision code, being that this is in a new administration. We are going to be taking a fresh look back at the zoning code, making sure that it's consistent with what we want to see and continue through and try to bring that through to fruition either this year or next year. We are working through our Kona Open Space Network program. The draft plan has been completed and also our roadway classification project which has been completed. review and objectives for fiscal year 2026, we're going to continue going through the general plan 2045 as mentioned and also our comprehensive code updates. We are in charge of managing the Coastal Zone Management program and grant and move forward through our and move forward through our Kona Open Space Network Program and lastly we are about to initiate our Island-wide trail plan. This is our fiscal year 25, 2025 highlights as I'm pretty much reiterating what it said before the general plan are code updates, the Kona Open Space Network program and our roadway classification project. Overall, the planning department has six divisions. Seven, if you include our lava recovery division as well. We have the administration, which is both Michelle and myself. We have our long-range division. They deal mainly with our long-range plans. They've been quite active doing the general plan, working to assist with the community development action committees. They have been working on a shoreline setback in riparian project. And again, they're almost completed with the Coda Open Space Program, as well as about to initiate the trail program. We have our planning division. Many of you may be familiar with them, as you'll see change of zone applications and state land use boundary amendments come your way through that division. They also take care of permits that come before the planning commissions such as special management area use permits, special permits use permits and plan unit developments. We have our administrative services division who takes care of all of our finances and accounting and our intake all that type of activity our administrative permits division takes care of all of our in-house permits such as plant approvals, variances, subdivisions and other types of permits. O OHANA permits were under them. Now we're looking at accessory dwelling units, as well as additional farm dwelling agreements. Lastly, we have our West Hawaii Planning Division. They are made up of the entire office in West Hawaii at the Civic Center. They take care of almost all aspects of planning. They do not do subdivisions there. Currently, they do not do work with the planning division, but our goal is to eventually shift some work over there so that they can assist when we have applications on the west side. Our planning department staffing consists of 59 county positions, six are CZM positions, 7 are STVR or short term vacation rental positions, seven are currently unfunded. We have a total of 79 with seven vacancies at this time. I've been listening to the discussions this morning and a lot of questions on the uncertainty of federal funding. We are also in this position in regards to our coastal zone management positions. We have six of them currently. This is an overview of our financials. Basically, we've been, this is what we call a status quo budget. We're looking at minor changes in salary and wages in the increase. Increases are due to positions being filled and negotiated wage increases are changes in OCE. The main increase is the added SDPR and enforcement software which was added at 300,000. Our change in equipment has decreased because computer equipment is being budgeted now through the Department of Information Technology and minor increase in office equipment of 13,200. We do have federal and or state grants and those are identified at the bottom of the slide. These are our priorities and new initiatives for fiscal year 2026. And again, we've been talking about this. The General Plan 2045, it's been an incredibly heavy lift, but we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our zoning code and subdivision code amendments, it's nice to see the collaboration with members in the department of getting together and sharing ideas of their experiences and what they think will be good changes to our current codes to be able to make it better in the future. As part of once the general plan 2045 adoption has occurred, we will be beginning our to initiate community development plan updates. And again, we're looking at initiating the Islandwide Trial Plan Program. And that concludes our presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Director. To the council. How's everyone be here, sis? Thanks, Chair. Hello, Director of Deputy I appreciate your time here this afternoon and your patience with us. Just one thing in the line items that I just had a question about regarding one of our commissions. And this is the Cultural Resource Commission. So we budgeted some money for them for meals and for mileage and auto allowance. But if I'm not mistaken, they meet strictly virtually at the time. Are you attempting to change their meeting strategy? It's a small line item, but just curious about that. I'm going to defer to our planning program manager for that question. Thank you So hot Bethany Morrison planning program manager for long range division. Thank you councilmember uses for that question we have been meeting virtually That's not always necessary depending on what the needs are of that commission. And they also have permitted interaction groups that do site visits. And most recently they went to Waima actually to look at the bridge work, Waaka Bridge. The state project. Yeah, to provide some feedback on that. Okay. So in those cases, we want to reimburse them for their mileage and make sure that they get to eat for that day. Good to know. Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate the Bethany. Thank you. And then director, if you could, you spoke, you mentioned it a few times on the islandwide trail plan. This is completely, has funded or I bet that you can probably speak to this one. Thanks Bethany. But funding is locked in for this? Yes. Again Bethany and Morrison planning program manager for long range division are funding for the trails plan is coming from the state transportation planning program and that has been funded at 500,000. Okay. There is a typo on transportation just for a scribe note. But yeah, okay. So it's completely funded. And then what is that looking like in terms of the timeline here? She said in. So for that project, we are working on finalizing the scope. We will be going through an RFP process for procurement and hope to get the consultant on board October timeframe. And then we have to complete it by September of 2026. So it's going to be a pretty fast timeline. So we're hoping that we can get through that RV a little bit quicker and get to contracting. Okay, and I'd love to explore this more with you at some point, but I'm just curious, this also in collaboration with all the state trails out there. Absolutely. And existing things with other departments apartments. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilmember McGill. Chair. Oh, sorry. Councilmember Viegas. Yes. Thank you. Hello, Director Dero. Thanks for being here today. Bring in us home. the grand finale. I just have a quick question. In fact, recently I just got an email from a constituent. And as we've navigated the potential, like really expansion of the short term vacation rental programs and management and such, this particular constituent and I happen to share the opinion. Is, you know, they're saying the enforcement of the current legislation of Bill 108. And I believe that this would fall in your jurisdiction. And I wondered what kind of numbers or. Is it possible to include something like that in this budget because from what I hear from people what they want is enforcement of the current law and in previous I'm just wondering is there opportunity to take that up? Aloha. is there opportunity to take that up? Aloha, Council of the Agues, Council member Vigues. The we actively do conduct enforcement in regards to bill 108 or our section 25, 416 in our zoning code. I know personally I sign a number of notice of violations to people that are conducting short-term vacation rentals that are not registered or permitted. Sometimes, it's resolved pretty quickly in the sense that they are in an area that they can just come in and register and that results. For the most part, they're in areas that such as agricultural zones that they may have had an opportunity at one point to register but they't. Or they're in an area in the agricultural or residential zoning that they just don't have options. And so they are required to cease and desist. If they do not, the daily fines begin to accrue. One of them right now that I'm familiar with has gotten to a point when it reaches a certain level of daily fines and they're not responding or being responsive, we will then defer the actual enforcement to our Corporation Council and they will pursue it legally through civil action. And what they'll do for us is normally they will send out a demand letter first to let them know that they are going to be pursuing this matter civilly. But as far as money is to do enforcement, that's part of the actual program itself. All the registrations, all the renewals, everything goes into the fund to be able to fund the positions as well as any enforcement monies that are brought in through enforcement goes into the STBR program. I hope that answered your question. Was that the way you were looking for? That was very thorough. Thank you. I suppose my question is more related to when people would reach out to me or my office and say, you know, my neighbor is claiming to have a hosted vacation rental and they don't really live there or there's not somebody really there operating as the host. They were having a hard time finding somebody to report that to. But from what you're saying, it sounds like that has been resolved. And you do have somebody to follow up on all that enforcement? If they are actually, I mean, as we, I think we all understand at this point that hosted rentals aren't regulated at this point. And that's the direction that we're trying to go to be able to regulate in the near future. That was Bill 121, which currently is on hold or shelter. So my understanding is there's going to be actions coming up shortly that we're going to start up that process. If somebody is saying they're hosted and they're not, then death most definitely. We have on our website our fillable complaint form that they can submit. We would recommend that they submit it directly to the planning email, planning at HawaiiCounty.gov.com and.gov. And we will definitely follow up. OK, thanks. We'll follow up at another time. I just wanted to kind of throw that out there, because it was top of mind from something A. Thank you so much. I yield. Thank you. I'll work in. Yeah, thank you. You know, just to follow up on Councilmember V.A. Guest is questioning without going too far into the future. The the short term vacation rental program as it stands now is money loser in the sense that the revenue that we bring in does not cover the costs of actually doing the program because our registration process to date has been only for unhosted rentals and it's a one-in-done process and so the revenue continues to deplete and yet the costs remain the same and so with respect respect to your questions around enforcement, one of the things that we need to look at going forward is increasing the revenue that is available for the department to actually engage in enforcement. But the director has mentioned some additional funding for some software around what we would be able to use to create the data set that we need to do enforcement legally. So stay tuned, but I wanted to use this opportunity to share that and there will be a press really shortly. There is a webinar next week that will introduce the next iteration of legislation around STBRs that will perhaps answer some of the questions that you're asking. Come some of your V.A.G.S. in terms of how we can help your neighbors that are concerned about those situations where it's salier-hosted and it's not because I think we have some plans with that. But my question, sorry, Bethany, it's up down, up down. I did actually want to revisit the trails planning fund. And I think you, James, were asking, Councilmember Husses, for asking about the funding, because I was concerned whether or not that was a federal program that was potentially on the chopping book. But my simple question is, is there follow-up monies available once the planning part is done to do actual implementation from the same program from the state? Thank you, Councilmember Kimball, Bethany Morrison, Long Range Planning. They do have an implementation grant program as well. This planning grant is really sort of to do planning pre-design if you think of an engineer's brain and actually putting things on the ground like DOT is thinking. It's sort of the planning pre-design and then maybe a little bit of engineering and then the implementation grant is really then finishing that engineering design and putting something on the ground. So, we do have a couple of projects that we have thought about implementation funding with that requires for the most part collaboration with our Department of Public Works to be sure that we have the capacity as a county to do the on the groundwork. But that is a possibility. Okay, good to know. I think there's some really low hanging fruit and probably in council member Houston's is in my district in particular as in terms of potential trail development Which given that we don't have much of the state trail big sense if I may say but I'd love to be involved with the conversations once the consultant is hired and talk about some of the opportunities that we've already sort of discussed with some of our absolutely we're looking forward to engaging. You know we have a lot of trail users on island that are going to be really excited to get involved with this project And so that's actually where we're working through the budget is what is that community engagement piece and making sure that it's timely so that we can still complete the project Yeah, so that's the that's where I'm spending my time right now is Sort of dialing that in yeah, yeah, great. I think there's opportunity not only from implementation to side from the state, but also thinking about the emergency access piece. And where there's opportunity for intersection between a nice trail and an alternate method of egress for some of our communities and economic development and all the things. Yeah, just to add on because of the funding source, I mean this is state Department of Transportation so it does have a heavy multi-modal transportation network, um, scientific to it to make sure that they're fun, you know, we're supporting that funder. Yeah. So that is absolutely a connection to, yeah. Great, great, awesome. Very excited about that program. Don't move unless you want to do more exercise today. Because I presume the zoning update and is that going to be under you folks? The zoning code update and this. We're sharing it at this point because it's been ongoing. And it really touches everything in our departments and so it's a collective effort. So my question on that was we had hired a consultant to do, are we still engaged with them? What's the status of that agreement? Do we need to do something about that? Yeah, we have them on contract. Let's say, end date, Jeff. June of 2026 is their current contract term. So yeah, we are engaging with them and sort of they're supporting our review across the department. Okay. Okay. So. What is the. Do you see, either of you, like any sort of relationship about what we need to do in terms of the general plan and that timeline to set you up for success with that going into 2026? Like, I don't know how to ask that question well, but you're not in your head, so you think I think you know what I'm asking. Yeah, I think we've throughout the general plan process, we've been presenting the same message that our main goal is to get through the general plan before we launch the code updates so that we can incorporate those changes. We're trying to implement whatever is in there now, but we want to make sure this gets finished because things can always change. But we've been actively working on this even now for the past two years and two years, three years. We started back in June of 2022, yeah. So we've been actively working on it in-house as well as meeting with the consultants. But it's a heavy lift. It's, you know, we're spending a lot of in-house time as well as time with the consultants. But again, we want to make sure that general plan then code updates. Yeah. And it is 25 and 23, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Is there a plan to include amendments around fair share? Because that came up from Council Member Onishi about how we do fair share with rezoning earlier. Is that being looked at with the Zonicode update? I don't believe it has and the reason why is because it actually isn't in the zoning code it comes out of chapter 2 it's like a community benefits assessment. It really I mean this is a tough area to talk about but the ultimate solution is a type of impact fee that that needs to be looked at and it's it's been approached to the council several times But each time it doesn't seem to make it pass the finish line Those third real type things That's why it was kind of curious if it was being considered as part of the whole reasoning package. Okay, that's all for now. I yield you. Thank you. Also, I'm very good. I just wanted to say congratulations on getting the General Plan to Council. It's, yeah. Thank you, yes, you're a. A rodeo here, too. Relieved. Yeah. One step, anyway. I wanted to ask about a little more detail about your new STVR enforcement software that you're planning to get. Like, what is it that you're planning to do with that STBR enforcement? Thank you, Council Member Kalimba. This might be a good question to share the answer with Council Member Kimbo. She's actually been taking the lead on that. We have been receiving some demonstrations from several different companies on how they do S.T.V.R. enforcement as well as registrations. I don't think there's been a decision made. I think we're still working through that but a lot of it is going to just see overall is this particular program going to fit our needs. And we're also, we're taking this very seriously. So we're reaching out to other counties and jurisdictions that use this software and trying to get a read from them if they're happy with it, if they feel it works, if the company is responsive on customer service. And so that's been playing a big part as well. Council member Kimmuth, did you want to add anything to that? I would like to say I'm presently surprised how much detail they can provide us that we can use in enforcement. I'm also pleasantly pleased on the process of registrations that it can be pretty simple and that's always nice to have a simple process to do an application. So we'll see who's the winner. Thank you. So yeah, that helps me just understand. It'll be like a registration enforcement, maybe even connecting to the platforms, all in one so that it's... Yeah, thanks. Go ahead if you want to. Yeah, so it is, we're looking at tools that scrub all of the listing programs out there using artificial intelligence to identify TARs that are active in our county and we'll be able to use that, match that up with what we have registered for the enforcement side. And it can give us details like whether or the whole house Whether or not there's a host things like that. It's actually pretty amazing, but you put it all out there, so Yeah, I will find it. Thank you. Councilmember on the sea. Thank you, chair Good afternoon Good afternoon. So first we position so like you have planners three four and five right and so and six and six but no but I'm not heard of it 10 she don't have a 14- and a half yeah but it's expected to start you have like one three 4GF 3 of of them and then five you have one. I'm expected. I'm sorry, well, Councillor Neill. I'm expected. I'm starting. You have the planners. In planner three, you have one position. Planter four, you have three and thenter 5, you have 1. So we have quite a number of planter 5. So we're talking open or SDR? We're going to be starting. You folks have a plan to start dates. So I guess you guys are going to a process right now. Maybe on our positions. Yeah, positions. It's all the same positions. We've actually started. Yeah, positions. So I see positions. Remember to introduce yourself, guys. Turn on your mic. Yeah. Thank you, Councilmember O'Neill, Don Johnston, administrative services. Okay. Or the position report in annual phase? Yeah. Oh, now you off again. Okay, right there. Perfect. Okay, there we go. Thanks. The position report, we have filled some positions since the position report was produced. We filled our planner three position. Okay. And would you know in what section or what division? That is in the planning division. So that would have been filled. We have the planner five in subdivisions, which is administrative permits, and we filled that position as well. We have a planter 4, also subdivision administrative permits that we're currently, we have interviews scheduled already to be scheduled. And then we have two planter for CZM positions which currently are we're holding at the moment just pending Determination on the federal funding on those positions. Okay, would you have a list of how many Planner 3 you have Employed how many planner 4s and 5s? We do have a list I don't have going on. Well, no, but you can give it to us later on. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that we and then also in what section? In section? Yeah, so sure can. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, well. So, next question is how many vehicles does planning have that is parked instead of a puni center. Oh boy. I only use one so let's see. We have the vehicles that are parked along the Hawaii. Let's see, we have. No, just Hilo. Four, four in Hilo. Two in Kona. I believe we have four in Hilo and two in Kona. Okay. And out the four, they always being used. Pretty much. Two of them are used by the inspectors. There's, we have constant meetings with staff. We have the director, the deputy director constantly moving around the island. It's pretty regular that those cars are being utilized. That's good to hear. Yeah. It must be the rest of the majority of all public work, then. One minute. Sit you. Okay. Thank you. Okay, well, it's, so today I had mentioned to public works about flooding, where water flows downhill. And so, like in my district, there's multiple streams that go along, like, can only, can only, you know, can only, Huah. With the development that's happening upside, there's more water coming down. And like those flood controls that were built back in maybe 1960s, 70s, you know, it wasn't built for the amount of water now it's coming down. So I, you know, and then plus they got to take care of all the stream banks, you know, inside like, you know, they cut in the grass and so forth, maintaining the, the bushes and stuff like that. But they don't have funding. So in the past, when I first was on the council, I went to the planning director and public works to see if we could add another, I guess, category in the fair share for like flood control. Right. And the money that see, you know, subdivision would come up, they would pay into that because that's kind of like the cause to of having the subdivision upper, you know, in the areas. So that was that's what I was what I was mentioning to them today. So then they talked about, we got to talk to planning. So I told acting director, as you know, that our schedule meeting between him and with you. And so that's what, that's about what we are talking about. Okay, so I mean, how would you, or if you have any comments or you don't wanna say nothing right now? No, I mean, I can real quickly briefly touch upon it, but I think it's definitely gonna need an off-line conversation. Fair share is applied in rezoning. Yes. So it's not in subdivisions. But even in, it can be applied, you know, like the creation of lots, right, for dwellings, right? That's usually when the fair share kicks in. You create so many housing units or lots, then it triggers fair share. We would have to look at chapter two to see if there's any limitation on what the community benefit assessment is geared towards. The concern would be obviously that maybe a little while later someone says, well, I think we should add public access maintenance to the fair share. And then I think we should add, you know what I mean? Well, I'm looking at more health and safety, because when the water comes on into little channels, it overflows. Then it overflows like those houses. Completely at this time. Yeah, and so that's what I'm looking at, where public access or whatever. We just had a huge discussion on this issue, this morning in-house, on doing our subdivision code. So we completely understand where you're coming from. And then for example, on Coalani, we have that the bridge right above life care. That was done because houses had flooded before. So councilmember Jimi Arkaki got funding to widen that channel right so now it doesn't flood anymore right so that's the good stuff that's what I'm looking at okay and like I said water flows down here unless water can flow back up they're not too bad then I'll be okay with it right or sideways but yeah I think maybe we can discuss more offline I think okay and that's what I took Yeah, yeah, I think maybe we can discuss more offline. Yeah, okay, and definitely too. Yeah, yeah, maybe with public works that would be great. Yeah, yeah. And that would be because we were actually again just talking about this morning and saying how we needed to meet with DPW to kind of hash out some of this issues on dreamy. Right, because the other option is we get money from the sky to widen all these channels, which I don't think that's going to happen. But yeah, so that's great. Okay. I'll get in contact with you guys. Thank you. Be front trails. Are you focusing charge of that? I don't know if we're actually, well, definitely. We definitely were a big part of the implementation. It's ongoing, correct? Or it's finished already. We sit on the, they have a regular committee and we join their committee meetings and try and help wherever planning can support. Okay. you know, because back when I was on the council, we were kind of the first to help initiate that moving forward. And at that time, director Ford Fujikami from the state highways, I think the DOT, had provided some funding for that project. And so I just, you know, I still kind of have heart in that to continue, right? Because it's going to, it connects to Banyan Drive, right? And so I just wanted to find out about that. They've been pursuing grant funds to do that connection to, haven't been successfully yet, but that has been a priority to pursue grant funding to continue. Well, that's good. Well, if there's anything I can help on this, you know, contacting the states side, let me know. Okay. Thank you. I see in the budget of Envision Healow. Do these two have that? Yeah, we don't have, we don't have, we work with the downtown improvement association sort of acting as that body, but that plan was really kind of a sunset time on it. Yeah, it is. Implementation. And so that kind of wrapped up. And then we did the downtown Heva Multimodal Plan, which took a lot of those considerations from envision into that planning effort and the complete streets. Yeah, because when I first got in downtown was my district. And yeah, I had that envision 20, 25 or something, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, but when I see this now like wow okay it's not good yeah because I thought after that what the funding was finished or you went yeah okay thank you and that's it thank you very much are you thank you council member on mission thank you council member Kirkwoods thank you so much thank you director to and your team for being here and for being such great partners over the years and all of the work that we've been doing together. Thank you, Council Member Kimball, for bringing up Zoning and Subdivision Update. This was something that I've been pushing for in all the years that I've been here. Director, you mentioned that the contractor consultant is on board through the end of next year. Are any community engagement sessions planned? Because I would hate for us to, we as a county just be working with the consultant to redraft these two major codes. And I'm just hoping for community feedback to help these codes evolve based on community needs. We, we have a draft work plan and my understanding we've done community outreach already and before it we're going to be doing community outreach again. Yes. So once we get to where we feel like it's time to present for public input on the draft plans, we will be going out for public comments and we'll again in public meetings. So this is all detailed out and the draft work plan provided by the consultant. First things first, we're just trying to get through each of the sections of each code, trying to over the years, you know, we have come across a lot of areas and situations that you'll find are not in the subdivision code or not in the zoning code. And so we've tried to capture those either through memo or through what we call our zoning code fix folder. And we've been able to take a lot of that and provide it to the consultant. But even since then, it's just like, as you keep moving forward, you come across these situations that even when we get to a point that we amend this plan, we're going to have to come up with a process that is fluid where we can just be able to come back to the council and amend the new plan just to keep it up to date. Sorry, weren't zoning and subdivision code? Totally three and twenty five plan. Are you referring to general plan? No, no. Talking about the zoning code and the subdivision code updates. The work plan. The work plan again is the layout for the process of being able to get through this. We've began with community meetings in the beginning. We began doing in-house drafting of the different sections of the zoning code and the subdivision code. And then once we finalize that, we'll go back out for public meetings and then present it to the commissions and ultimately the council. Hi Deputy Director Michelle on Councilmember Kirkowitz. We do have about $600,000 left in our contract with the Code Consultant and baked in there is a certain number of public meetings to be held after we have our draft comprehensive code update ready. So it's already part of the contract with them. We will be going back out to the public for more feedback before we present it to the council. Great. As Chair Planning Committee, I would love to take a look at what the rest of the work plan looks like through the end of next year. I've got extensive community outreach experience and you know do want to make sure that we are setting ourselves up for success with community engagement and then at the right time inviting the departments to present to committee when exactly the community touch points are going to be. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Director we often interface around notice evaluations throughout my district. And I wonder in your collaboration with other county departments, is there a need for a county, like an overall enforcement agency? Is there an appetite for that? Is there a need for that for there to just be this cross collaboration because oftentimes you're going out to enforce zoning code but there could also be building code or other county code violations. I believe we've kind of touched upon this in the past. There have been attempts to create like a central enforcement agency or division or department or whatever they want to call it. The difficulty is it involves usually county and state agencies. So it would have to be a collaboration of all those different agencies. The intention is that when a violation is or complaint is received and it involves multiple types of complaints that either these enforcement officers would be trained in all areas of different enforcement or they would go out with a number of different enforcement personnel to enforce all of the different violations that are occurring. It hasn't been brought up for some time and I'm not sure. I'm just not sure what the direction of this administration is in regards to moving in that field. Okay, Norris, I just kind of wanted to approach the subject. It sounds really, really complicated. And as we struggle to fill county vacancies, right, I don't even know for it will have folks in the community with this kind of expertise, but just wanted to ask your opinion. I do, you know, it's hard because you get somebody that calls in and you get, well, that's not us, you got to call them and then they call them and they go, oh, that's not us, you got to call them, right? And it's like they get to run around, right? It would be better to call one place and everyone's there. Okay, we can take care of that, right? So definitely make sense. It's just gonna take a little bit of effort to see it happen. Okay, I will bring this up with your pod leader, Deputy Managing Director Mishimoto. I saw in your budget $21,600 miscellaneous contracts for CBP. What does that mean? I understand, but what is the project? I noticed that you'd like to initiate updates of the community development plan. These plans are very near and dear to all of our hearts, but I'm curious if we're thinking about maybe doing things a little bit differently rather than a regional approach if we could be looking at things more at a hyper local level because then I'll just take Pune for an example. The needs of Upper and Lower Pune and even the communities within each of those districts so very different. And I think that a lot of times when folks are showing up to the Action Committee meetings, they go beyond what's contained in the CDP. There's community well-being, public safety, economic development issues that they would like to tackle. And so the CDP just seems really limiting. And I wonder if we might wanna expand what the next iteration of these plans look like. I'm excited for that conversation. For that budget item, we provide a little bit of technical support from contracted services for could be facilitating difficult discussions if we need to. So that's a contract just to bring in someone else another trained facilitator for conversations. So that's what that budget is for. But it's not for the initiation yet that will be coming in the next budget cycle. But I look forward to that. Okay, and I mentioned so I went April. Let's start with the county and Mary and Palma having some grant funding available to each of the action committee so they can run with the ideas that are in the plans. So maybe that's something we can look at this fiscal year or next fiscal year. I wanted to just shift really quickly to recovery updates because I see a recovery officer dotlessly here. Hi, officer lay. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate you. We had a lot of great updates from public works and parks about you know infrastructure restoration. Hoping you can give us a high level update on where we are with the voluntary by-up program and just confirming that there's been no clawback from the federal government on this program. Understood. Although chair, Council members Douglas laid with disaster recovery division of our planning department. To the first question, I can speak to our voluntary housing bioprogram. As folks may remember, we began this program in April of 2021. And so we're kind of at a moment of reflection as a team. Many of us are on our fourth year in that respect. But of the kind of nearly 800 applications we received for primary home,, second homes and undeveloped property. I can report as of today that we have closed on 459 properties that total is just under $79 million dollars in terms of the acquisition of this property of the $107 million we received from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the vast majority of the folks who have been acquired, whose property has been acquired, are four primary homes and second homes. I'd say about a dozen second homes remaining, and our team is working really diligently to be able to help the underdeveloped property applicants, what we call Phase Three, to progress to closing. So right now, in addition to the 459 close properties, I shared we have 62 properties in S-GRO. And S-GRO for us, it's just like S-GRO for any one of us as citizens, just waiting for their closing date, processing paperwork. We have 84 applicants who have completed their eligibility review. We are at a point where we are making them an offer or have made them an offer and we're waiting to enter escrow. And we have 156 active applicants and generally represented by our underdeveloped property. We work really closely with HUD, the federal agency that supports this work. We meet every month. They have indicated, you know, given the amount of spending that we have done against our $107 million grant. They have not articulated and we have not received any notice about concerns around the security of this funding, even though like many federal grants, if not most, these are funds that we expend and that we do drawdowns with a federal agency within five business days on. So we watch that very much. We are doing a lot of spending as a program that acquires property and so it's very close partnership with finance to keep a watchful eye on that. Thank you for your incredible work on this. It's not easy to kind of spend down that money in such a complicated process with so many different property owners. Do you anticipate any funding left over? And if so, how can that be programmed? So at this point, we aren't expecting any funding to be left over that essentially has a missing budget towards a a larger bioprogram. We have been working on really diligently over the past year and a half is preparing for the demolition of certain properties that have been acquired. You can imagine they are, they were a lot of inundated, but structures may remain along the edge of the lava field and also in keepoka areas. And there are a number of properties where there was significant debris, where the home that was there, the aqueducture, the water tank was not completely inundated and there's debris that needs to be cleared for health and safety reasons and also to fulfill the federal requirement that these biopropeties are vacant land after we are done with our work. So that's the next journey. So we're doing, we're preparing demolition permit documents, we're doing cost estimations, we're kind of taking the step necessary to prepare that work for construction bidding later this calendar year. Does the federal government require us to submit a plan for how the vacant properties will be used. There is no such requirement for us in the administration of these grant funds. I think recognizing that our bioprogram is incredibly unique compared to other bioprograms that have been done around the country in terms of scale. Just the number of properties beyond just the fact that every other bioprogram was a flood environment situation in ours is a lava inundation So we are kind of approaching it tactically. We don't have a plan for a wholesale right for how to maintain these properties on term And the federal government doesn't necessarily require one either But it is I recognize as a topic of you know, you know, interest and concern within the community. And so that's why I kind of, as we've worked through this demolition process, we've looked ahead to what the future could hold for these properties. Okay, and I think there might have been commitments made to community about how we could utilize these spaces productively without violating any federal laws. I hope we can revisit that at some point. For sure. Another recovery. Another recovery topic, we were meeting with Mayor Alameda about a variety of recovery issues. Left over funding from the state has come up that $20 million that we've spent down that we were holding to support infrastructure projects in the event that we go over budget because sometimes that happens. But as part of the conversation we talked about perhaps another round of grant funding for community. Do you want to speak a little bit about that? Of course. So our two successful grant programs are the Punish Strong Grant Program, which is a partnership with Hawaii Community Foundation where we provide funding and capacity building to nonprofits serving the Pune region. We're proud that we're actually wrapping up our fifth year of this program. And as we look towards May, kind of a whole EGAY accumeration of the work that we've done over the last five years together, the more significant grant in terms of funding through our QAWA Recovery Grant program, which goes to private entities through nonprofit physical sponsors, as well as nonprofits, is wrapping up its second year of funding. So, many of the grantees from the funds that were awarded early in 2024 have completed the projects. A number are going through grant extensions, no cost extensions, but because of dependence on, we were restoring infrastructure, kind of just realities for each project. They're going through extensions on that. When we were together as a community and kind of with council last year, the really big pieces around kind of determining the funds that would be be administered in a feature rounds or how much funding through Killaway Recovery Grant program was really determined by our infrastructure needs. At that time, we weren't quite awarded yet on 137, right? And so that probably does not have a gun, which is very exciting. I know that public works and water supply as a partner are working really diligently to award the contract for Paul Wiki Road, which will mean so much to everyone, but also it's quite a significant project in and of itself. So I think the kind of the short of it is that we're in a very different point now where we are starting to understand what our cost are. Our team is gearing up to do a third round of funding with the remaining state funds that are available to the county for recovery from the 2018 QLWA eruption. And we're looking at kind of what that could look like, right? So with probably a release of an application process later in the late summer, we are looking at how to do workshops, you know, to assist folks in the grant writing process. As nonprofits, but also folks partner with nonprofits to develop applications, to really do some knowledge sharing for the many of the beneficiaries of these grants, who are not profits don't write grants. It might be the first one they work on. How can we really help everyone to be more successful in this process? And even something kind of mini on the administrative side, like 60 days to apply as close to 30 days, are things that we're looking at as we move ahead. As the contracts for this significant infrastructure work between roads and water lines and also the work at parks at the Isaac Halle Beach Park become real. We'll have a clear sense of what's available for the next round of grants. So that's where we are today. Very exciting. Thank you and happy to help in any way. I appreciate you. Final question for director Darrow. The council has yet to receive the general plan, but I'm sure it's delivered, delivery is nearing very soon, and we'll be in conversations about that. Once it's been approved by the council, how do we ensure that this document is now out in the public sphere and interactive beyond just a PDF? So when we think about long range development and what is allowed and where? Will this information somehow be uploaded to like an ArcGIS map so that we can access what has been approved by this body in terms of development? Similarly, to our current general plan, you would be able to either go online and get the written document downloaded on a PDF. But more importantly, you would be able to utilize the general plan land use patterncation Guide maps on the GIS map to give that long range direction in regards the development around the island. So once the council approves that final plan, that will be immediately changed on the GIS maps. Great. thank you, I yield. Thank you. Thank you. Council of Monvers, Aimee, Kona. Thank you. As a follow up to Council Member Kirkwood's this question, I did bring this up before I believe to you, director, and I did bring it up with administrator, a cost deal on how we have the plan live and be relevant and used, I guess, especially in all of our dealings as a county. So I'm wondering, and I guess I'll just reaffirm my monologue that some type of assessment tool needs to be developed that allows us to use any value, whether it be applications or any of our plans as a county against, especially the policies contained within the general plan, because it's one thing to say that it's in line with the loophead maps but it's another thing to take a good hard look at whether they're in line an application or any of our plans are in line with the policies and I don't think thus far we've had that opportunity unless there is an assessment tool that I'm not aware of. Can you speak to that? Sure. Thank you, Chair Inaba. As far as being able to do like a yearly assessment in regards to the overall implementation of policies. I'd have to go back and look at the strict language in the proposed draft. I know that there was an annual report that was being provided to the council previously, but at some point that particular report stopped being implemented. And I think it was because it was just, I think it was very difficult. Do you recall Bethany and the exact reason? Our long-range planning program manager is going to speak to the reason why the annual report was stopped. But and then we can talk more after that. Okay, now and thank you, Ms. Morrison. I don't want to be labor at the point. I know we're going to have long discussions when the general plan comes, but I'm going to keep bringing this up. It's not just about the ones that you're annual reporting as to how we're carrying out what's in the general plan, but it's an assessment tool that we can use to evaluate any of our dealings against the policies contained within the general plan. And I think that's significantly different at times than having it just be aligned with what is in the Dupag map. So, my response required at this time, but that's something I'm gonna wanna see. And I feel like that goes to a council member, Kufwits is talking about also that we wanna see the general plan be relevant and used. So, again, I hope, I'd administer to our casio is listening, I really think that some of the overlap in purpose of her office in helping us to have this general plan and all of its great ossurrelated components live. So thank you again, director. Hey, you old chair. Thank you. I'll remember how you wanna. Thank you, chair. Thank you, Director, and all your staff are being here. One very simple question here first. These seven STVR positions. What division do they fall under? They do fall under different divisions mostly under the administrative permits division, but we also have positions in Kona because of the fact that we need them on both sides. Okay, thank you. And then this was alluded to earlier, but the initiate community development plan updates, there's not really much in the budget for that. in your confirmation hearing I asked you about the Hawaii the Hilo community redevelopment plan and you said that that would be following right on the heels of the zoning and subdivision code updates we don't have any money for that though to start that this coming year. We what's going to be happening as mentioned is we need to get through the general plan that's going to take a little bit of time. I believe that's going to take us to at least the end of this year. Hopefully we'll get through it by the end if not into the next year. The zoning code and subdivision code is going to take a period of time as well. We're looking at the implementation of updating plans or revising or creating new plans once that particular area. We can begin to start working on the implementation after the general plan gets approved so we can revisit that. We just have to look at the timing. Right now we were kind of focusing on status quo budget. What we can do is come back. If it looks like this thing is moving quickly, and we have the ability to be able to release staff time from doing the general plan, and we can focus on community development plans, then we can refocus, and then come in and request a supplement. OK. So do you have a list, a priority list, are you gonna do all these community development updates at once, or do you have a list of who you're starting with? It would be a priority list. I don't wanna say right here what that priority list is. We can talk about that offline. I would just say that if you just looked at when the most recent plans were adopted versus the longest plans, we'd be looking obviously to update the plan. 1975. be great to know. That gives you an indication. Well, I guess one thing. Since there's no action committee for Hilo, so there's no group to really even talk about starting this up with, I'm just wondering if possibly we could start working on pulling together some kind of group that represents the entire area that this would cover to start you know just just you know bringing that group together because that's going to take some time and shouldn't take much funding to do that. But it's going to be necessary, I think, before going forward. This is the right. Completely agree. I would, if it's okay with you, I'd love to get together with you out flying. Great. More about that. Okay. And hopefully we can loop in Councilmember Oñishi as well, and actually, you know, Heelow does cover some of Councilmember Kimbles district as well, but obviously it's hard to work with more than two Councilmember Onishi one, so hopefully we can loop us both in. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Finally, my last item has to do something I brought up with DPW which is we have these wonderful Resources that planning really helped to do we put a lot of money into a lot of community time lotting County hours into these these. This one was in finished in 2020. This one is finished in 2017. To my knowledge, they've never been codified. They are just there. If I wanted to bring them forward to be codified and I'm maybe looking to long range planning here, but are these in fairly good shape where we could bring them to be codified since they are a few years old? I will answer what I can right now but also that they can speak to it as well. We are working with the code consultant one of the within the subdivision code. There's been this struggle, I guess I can say over the years between public works and planning over street design, curb gutters, sidewalk, those kind of things. Roadway classifications and what it, we again we were just having this pretty productive meeting this morning on this very issue as well. We need to meet with them because this will be part of the subdivision code. What you're seeing in the street design manual is going to be housed in the subdivision code. There will be, right now, what's being proposed is illustrations, those kind of things. things. But again, we want to make sure that we move forward collaboratively with the Department of Public Works and make sure that we know where our lines are and where our expertise is. We also being part of subdivision, that's a big part, is road design. There's been battles over landscaping, right, in street trees and grasses and right of ways, public multi-modal paths and bikeways. And so again, we want to be able to make sure that we work together to be able to present this the best way in the subdivision code. Thank you. Beth need you want to add anything? Sure. That was That was pretty comprehensive. Yeah. I think the only thing I could add is that we also have completed a roadway classification project, also in coordination with Department of Public Works. And it really mapped out all of our county roadways and identified their classification type so that you can use that street design manual to understand which roadways require certain treatments. And so we look forward to using that tool to help us visualize and have this collaborative approach with the Department of Public Work so that we can be sure that we know which roadways we are talking about and that we can move forward to implement those programs. Okay, thank you. And just, you know, you weren't here when I was talking to DPW, but the reason, one of the main reasons I was bringing this forward is because of the traffic fatalities last year being double from the year before in our county. And so I really feel like we need to pay close attention to this stuff. OK, so thank you for including this in your work as you look at the subdivision and code changes yet. We also have an update to our Vision Zero plan. Oh, good. That will be coming forward as part of a larger grant effort. But that won't get started until I believe next, um, beginning of next year. But we have the funding secured for that update as well to talk about the fatality problem that we're having. Excellent. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. Thank you. That's all I have for right now or that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Chair. Thanks, Director. I appreciate the question about Vision Zero on the update on that. Thank you. Miss Morrison. Just looking at two, I have two questions on the program measures. And if you could just tell me what I'm seeing here. It says that this particular program is being phased out. It says boards, commissions, committee meetings being phased out. I don't know if that's an error in there. Where are we seeing that council member uses? This is page 233 of volume 2 of the operating budget. I'm pretty sure we're not doing that. Okay. Just checking our work. We were trying to slide one in there. It says boards, commissions, committee meetings, and it's zeroed out for next fiscal. And it says below the program is being phased out. OK. I'll turn it up. OK. OK. Councilman Justice. Houston. Okay. It's on. Okay. Councilman Justice. She's just. She's just. We were just updating the format there to break out. Previously we had awards, commissions and meetings, all as an aggregate number. And we was easier to track them and really have a little more transparency with them broken out. Thank you appreciate that. And then the second one is kind of on that same page there. It's with our our CAD maps at the bottom there percent of our our plat maps. How was that? That's digitizing our plat maps. Oh, I'm going to auto-cad. % of maps in CAD. It says 282 out of 2300. I'm just curious when that began, is that a, we're digitizing our series of plat maps over time? We probably have to get back to you on that. Okay. A text mapping section. Yep. And I know we are working on digitizing a lot of our maps. So I think that's probably the percentage or the number that they've been able to digitize, but I would need to get back to you on. So do you think it would be the 282 out of the 2,300 so far we've digitized? I'm just curious when that effort began if we're making progress on that. And also curious who's tasked to do that effort? Does that fall with their GIS specialists? Or? It's within their section. We have mapping people that work as well as specific people that work on the GIS. These people that are doing this are separate from that. It's her position that she, her name is Mary Mary That's who's doing it right? So you've won one individual that's correct. Yeah, that's been digitizing them. Yes. Okay. Yeah, okay Yeah, be just curious to know when when that effort started and yeah, we can I can definitely get back to you Thank you, director. Specifically. Thank you so much. Thank you chair Councilman Brody- Councilmember Odeché. Thank you. Lasting. I forgot to mention to you, Director, that I'll be talking or schedule a meeting with you and Ms. Transit, because I mentioned to them about maybe planning for the future of light rail or some kind system to help with all of our traffic and so forth. And so yeah, because then I think once we kind of plan out where the stations are, then we can make developments around the stations, right, with commercial and housing, right, and in that way they can walk to the stations instead of like how a wall is so late behind of the game. Yeah, so I'll be contacting your office. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Checking my corner over time. Good, thank you. Thank you. Okay, final questions for me, Mr. Darrell. And maybe, maybe, Diane, to it, just put it out there. Short-term vacation metal fund. Forte planning department. Is it a possibility to use TAT funding to supplement the department or move the funds in and around? Because these are vacation metals that put into TAT and it seems that they could be used to help possibly free up general funds. I would like that. If it was to be, it's a fairly big fund coming in from TAT. Just just think it out loud, right? Council Member, yes. The TAT fund is used as part of our overall fund, so it can be programmed. Sorry, what? So the TAT funds are like in our usually, our purpose for general funds, So it could be utilized in that matter if we chose to. Okay. Thank you. And then director for the STVR software, how come that isn't coming out of the short term, vacation rental enforcement fund? We would not have enough money to be able to take care of that as well as salary and wages. Right now as mentioned earlier, it's like at the current rate, it's going when we first started the program. There was an overwhelming amount of registrations which created a significant balance in our STVR fund. As time went on, there isn't like an annual renewal fee or anything. We just depend on new registrations which kind of went way down. We have very minimal throughout the year. It's nothing like in the beginning. And so eventually that money that was built up in the beginning is going to eventually even out and zero out. And so that's why we've got to look at a different means of revenue for that particular program to continue operating. And I think that's what's being looked at ahead so that those changes are about to come forward soon. Okay. Looking at the positions you have for a short-term vacation rental that are listed through the S, they're being funded by the STVR fund and seven, seven of them are vacant and funded. Five. Five currently? Yeah. they vacant but funded. Those were the positions that were there's a total of seven that are currently filled. Those are the ones that are actively working on short-term vacation rentals unhosted. The five I've were projected to be incorporated once the new bill was implemented so those were on hold right, until whatever happens in the future. Okay so my question is if you have five vacant funded positions is that a budget that's currently going to exceed the ability of the fund or is it when the department is fully staffed, then you will exceed funding. So we're actually not in danger of exceeding the fund or we are. So the way I look at it is we're not looking at the five positions, right? That money isn't being used. We're looking at the seven positions that we're actively funding with the funds coming in from STBR. When we calculated looking at the current rate, I think our number came out to about 2030. We'd run out of money. It would overturn at the current rate. Now that could change depending, but that was not looking at what's about to happen. So once things change in the near future, if they change, then everything as far as funding, as far as revenues, as far as process, everything may change with the whole program. Are you seeing a significant decrease in the amount of incoming applications? The only applications that come in now, when we first initiated, if you recall, there was what we called the non-conforming use certificates. And so you had a period of time one year to submit an application. We had thousands coming within that period of time. Now it's, you know, I'm not sure the exact number, but it's nowhere near that. It's just a regular amount that comes in throughout the year. I would say, I mean, I'm just... This doesn't have the amount though. Yeah, it you know it looks like again originally it was I'll just give you an example it was like over 1.7 million that we received in the in the original. Currently, we did the, it's been about 350,000 annually coming in. But our expenditure is about 500,000 a year. So you see that decrease, so that access that we had in the beginning, when we project it out, we see it come to where we're gonna be upside down at some point. Councilmember, just to add to that, if you look at their budget, they're using a significant amount from fund balance. So with fund balance remaining we will need to work with the department on future year expenditures including positions. Okay. How much enforcement, how many enforcement violations are we want to call on? Have you done? I mean, I would need to get back to you on the exact numbers, but it is very regular. I sign quite a number of, in fact, the majority of the violation notices that I sign have to do with short-term vacation rentals. So it is definitely steady. That is, again, it's people that are operating short term vacation rentals unhosted in agricultural residential zones. We get calls from the neighbors. It's those people that say they're hosted and they're actually not. It's, if I mean. If you do get a number, I'm interested in the number. This is like a key. For sure. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Other than that, Jack, I don't. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Jack. I apologize I could. I just want to provide an update. The planning department did recently receive word from the state that their CCM funding, the next contract will be delayed due to federal uncertainty of funding. So it's very new development. And So we are working together with finance and planning NHR on the implications of that. We don't have, there's no certainty on the time. So the notification received was that the funding will be delayed with no timeline. So just recent, I just wanted you to be aware of that as we talk to that today and let you know that you know very recently we are we're working on it and we'll we'll come back with hopefully more answers next time. That was that was next on my list okay thank you. Okay thank you very much Director. Director. Barring anything else from the council? I'll work with you. Not for planning, but I just wanted to extend gratitude to our finance director and her team corporation council and for you, Chair, for leading us through this four-day epic review of the budget. I think it's both thought out. And it really does a great job of having an equitable approach in improving quality of life in all communities around Hawaii, Island. And it really thinks about solving longstanding challenges as well as investing in our future. So good job, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to also say thank you for your engagement, your participation, and for allowing us to be here to present the budget. And we look forward to continuing this discussion and getting to our adopted 26 budget. Thank you. To the Department of Planning, thank you very much. You guys are all set. And then Miss, to Miss Nakago and your team, thank you very much. This was very well done. Effort as far as the whole presentation and then the individual presentations, the whole thing. Miss Ray Wal-Thad, thank you for the extra day. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Council, so we have a motion on the floor. To floor Bill 31, the proposed operating budget to council with a favourable recommendation. So it's already on the floor. So Mr. Clerk, would you please do a roll call as we have members in both Hila and Kona. All right, either. On the motion to forward bill 31 to the council with a table recommendation. Councilmember Galimba. Councilmember Houston. All right. Councilmember Inaba. I couldn't hear you. I'm sorry. Sorry, we can't. Yes or no? Okay, customer carguero. I. Consumer Carcoids. I. Consumer Campbell. I. Consumer Oneshu. I. Consumer Villegas. Chair. I. Chair, you have seven votes in favor. Where Consumer is Galimba and Villeggas absent. The motion carries. Thank you very much, Mr. Clerk. We also have a motion on the floor to floor bill number 32, the proposed capital budget to council with a favourable recommendation. On the motion to floor 32 to the council with a recommendation, Councillor Limba. Council member Heustus. No. Council member Inaba. I'm sorry. That doesn't sound like either yes or no, but I'm going to, I see, I think I see two thumbs. I, I think much. Kagiwata. Aye. Councilmember Kirkowitz. Aye. Councilmember Campbell. Aye. Councilmember O'Neill. Thank you very much. Consumere Coguata. Hi. Consumere Cercowitz. Hi. Consumere Campbell. Hi. Consumere Onishi. Hi. Consumere Viegas. Chair. Hi. Chair, you have six votes in favor with Consumere Houston's voting no and Consumere is Glimba and Viegas absent. The motion carries. Thank you very much, Mr. Cicler. Thank you to all our departments and for all the appropriate staff. That brings us to the end of our agenda, seeing no further business. Yes, absent the motion carries. Thank you very much, Mr. Clerk. Thank you to all our departments and for all the appropriate staff. That brings us to the end of our agenda, seeing no further business. We are adjourned. It is 436 PM. It is Friday, April 11th. And thank you very much. Thank you all. Really appreciate everyone's help and thank you. you you