Good morning and welcome to the Policy Committee on Infrastructure and Asset. Before we get started, we have some very special guests visiting us from Hatsukaiichi in Japan. They're in our Kona Chambers, and if I could hand it over to our Vice Chair, Holaka Inaba, who's in our Kona Chambers hosting them for us this morning. Mr. Inaba. Thank you, Councilmember Lee Loy, Aloha Kakariaka, good morning from Kona. From Kona, jambour's today we were able to host our delegation from Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima, Japan, and they've been on a visit here touring different parts of our island. Councilmember Lee Loy, Councilmember Kimbo and I had the opportunity to visit Hatsukaichi earlier this year in April. And it's our honor to be hosting our sister city here. So just wanted to give the opportunity for Analuha from Kona with our sister city folks, and they're about to head out to Fukuoka and make their way home. So Mahalo for this opportunity to share if you folks don't want to wave. Thank you, Council Member Liloie. Thank you, Mr. Inaba. And hello, how to our sister cities. In addition to a world win tour that they had here on the islands. We also had an opportunity to host them Saturday night. And really the cornerstone of this sister city really is an economic spark plug for us to have a lot of small business exchange. And you know a lot of our sister cities have been founded on different options and different opportunities. So we look forward to just more partnerships with our friends over at Hatsukaichi. Thank you so much. With that, the policy committee on infrastructure and assets. Today is October 1st. The time now is 6.906. And this is our 18th session. Here in Hilo, we have Council Member Evans, Kagiwada, Villegas, Chair Kimbo, Kirkowitz, Council Member Gilemba over in Kona. We have Council Member Inaba. Mr. Cunyeli, Kleinfeld, there has just stepped back in and I am Julie Lloyd Chair and Presiding Officer of this committee. Mr. Clerk, any statements from the public? No statements from the public at this time. Great seeing none I think we'll just stick to the agenda. Mr. Clerk Top of the agenda we have bill 2.04 please bill 2.04 men's chapter 24 article 10 division one of the White County Code 1983 2016 edition as amended relating to speed limits. Stab to just counting speed limits of either 25 or 35 miles per hour for certain portions of the Coney Pooley highway between highway 250 and the Polo Loo Valley lookout introduced my misly way by request. Thank you Mr. Clerk. A motion please to forward bill 204 to council with a favorable recommendation. So moved. Thank you. Have a motion by Ms Evans. A second by Ms. Caguada to forward bill 204 to counsel with a favorable recommendation. Ms Evans, I know this is in your district. Please lead our discussion. Yeah, thank you. Mr. We have director Pasey. Would you please come forward? Thank you. So just the background is the state of Hawaii worked with our public works department and they swapped roads in the Kohala region and we accepted this road from the state. And then that meant that we really had to pass this legislation so that we could put in code what the speed limits are on this new section of the highway that we took. And I wanted to turn it over to Steve because we did hold a town meeting on this and I'd like to just input what the process was to. Thank you. Steve Pazzy, Director of Public Works. Yes, we did hold a town meeting or got with the community to talk about this. There was some concern about the existing speed limits and we had our traffic folks go out and take another look at it. I think ultimately what really came out of this was to do some speed reduction in the vicinity of the middle school. So we're in the process of updoing that both with some lights as well as I think we're going to put in an elevated crosswalk in front of the middle school and that work is pending because right now we have repaving scheduled for a large portion of the road that heads towards Polo Loup. So that work I think I corresponded with Councilmember Evans scheduled for sometime here in October or November right after we finish down in Pueco, which is another area in your district. So yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's just a matter of clarifying that we did take another look at the speeds and then codifying this because this is a section of road that was part of that road swap from 2022. Okay, thank you. And the bigger question for me is I believe where the school is at, the speed limit didn't change, but it will change in the sense that you're going to put that it's a school zone and during school hours, the speed is reduced, is that correct? That's correct. They'll be improved markings to identify that during school hours, the reduction to 20. And like I said said the elevated crosswalk and the flashing beacons. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I yield. Thank you councilmember Evans. Anyone else? Hearing for now. Mr. Inaba. Thank you councilmember Lilo. Director Pousie I'm, we keep getting these changes. And I want to make sure that we're taking a uniform approach to the mapping just so that we're able to understand clearly how are the numbers on the map designated in comparison to the resolution or the bill, sorry. The numbers on the map should align with the text that's in the bill. The text that's in the bill was drafted, I if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right I'm not sure if that's the right with because the bill sections aren't numbered, they're just bulleted and we have a 25 hour section and a 35 hour section. So just I just want to make sure that we always have a uniform approach and not just us but the public is able to tell what's happening in the bill versus the map? So can we maybe just get this reviewed and if we can maybe clarify or make it more clear for the council hearing, that'd be helpful. Yes, council member, we can do that. I'll double check that here in a report back. But thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, Chair Eoke. Thank you, Mr. Eurena, but Ms. much. Thank you, Chair Eoke. Thank you, Mr. Inaba. Ms. Evans, did you have a follow-up? Okay. All right, seeing none, we have a motion on the floor to forward bill two or four to the council with a favorable recommendation. All those in favor, please say aye. Contra you mind it. Mr. Clerk, we have nine aye's. Next, bill 205, please. Is there any testimony for bill 205? Hearing none, bill 205 amendments, chapter 24 article 10, Division five, section 24-279. Scheduled 27 to the White County Code 1983, 2016 edition as amended relating to parking up payment privated at all times. In Chapter 24 article 10, Division 5 Section 24-280, Schedule 28 to the White County Code 1983, 2016 edition as amended relating to no parking at any time. Subjected parking restrictions for certain portions of O'Pello Road and Kohala introduced Miss Lee Light by request. Thank you Mr. Clerk. Emotion please to forward bill 205 to the council with a favorable recommendation. So moved. Of emotion by Miss Evans and a second by Miss Calimba. Again Miss Evans your district please lead our discussion. Thank you very much. This is a really interesting situation. The traffic going into Waimea from Kauaihai Harbor that keeps increasing, and we also have kind of a major increase in farmer market traffic and usage of our ball field. And so what happens is because of this intensity of use, people are using a side street to kind of go around. And so it's kind of like a local knowledge bypass. And what happens is people are going up and down Opello Road going pretty fast and that road had not, the road had not had stripes on it. You know for with reasons they didn't have the white stripes on it. So that was one of the issues of people speeding and using that more and more and more. So what got highlighted and why it came to our attention is that Mary Muz is in a building in this shopping center, retail center type facility. And Mary Muz has been there for years. Well there's another building that's also in the retail shopping center. And the owner of it has rented that space to other food vendors. So now instead of Mary-Mez just being there, we have two other food vendors that are serving food at night during the day and having events. And all of a sudden sudden we're having these issues with parking. And so what was happening is instead of parallel parking down the road, first of all there was no stripes on the road, but they were to gain space, they were doing angle parking and what was happening is their back of their cars and their trucks were actually out in the road and they were on the pavement of the road. And so we were getting complaints that it was an unsafe situation. So that brought attention for the traffic safety to go out and review it. The other thing is board of water supply who, who is right across from Mariemann's people when they were doing the angled parking, they actually pushed the fence. That was a chain-link fence. They actually pushed the fence in the land into the Board of Water Supply land so that they could try to get their trucks off of the pavement. So now we had a bent fence. So it's kind of like, you know, the situation doesn't work. There's not enough land to do angle parking. And so we sent out traffic safety out there to analyze it, and they came up with this solution, which I think is working for the safety of the road. But we haven't been able to resolve the problem of the parking situation blowing up, which is what I've brought up a couple times in council. My concern is we approve these retail centers, but we don't know in the end how it might get used. Now we have three restaurants and it's not working and so parking is everywhere on the highway, on the side streets. There's no lights, people crossing roads at night and the dark. It's you know, I really am hoping that we can bring together all the parties and have a bigger discussion and unfortunately this used to be County Road. It's now stayed highway. This was the swap. The road that's in front of Maryman So it's this situation really needs to be looked at but this is the side road Opello Road that everybody's using that's created this kind of very unsafe Again the the angled parking they were parking out into the street. So I hope I explained it, Steve. Maybe you can add. No, you did great. I think hopefully the map shows, and I have a blown up version of it if you want to circulate it. But as you captured, the issue fundamentally is cars parking on pavement. And that's that's very clear in our code in section 24 that cars cannot park on pavement. And a bunch of local folks took some initiative and put signs on fences and such to encourage angled parking. And that actually made the situation worse. And I've got some pictures I can share with you as well. So the short of it is we needed to do something and we did receive a number of complaints. We needed to do something to get the vehicles off the pavement. There are shoulders there. And by marking, by putting stripes we are able to keep two lanes of traffic open and pushing the vehicles off the pavement so they're not parking on the pavement. They can park on the grass. We have this in numerous other locations. The angle parking, I think, which is not allowed by code, actually probably exacerbated the problem. If you take an F-150, even with that space that you have on the side, it's still gonna nose or the boot will stick out into the lanes of traffic. So again, traffic did take a good look at this. They came up with a striping and a signage and the good news is the road is safer and it's they also cleared some areas where there were line of sight issues for people coming out of driveways. The road itself is safer but as councilmember Evans mentions this doesn't address what might be a greater issue, which is just the overall lack of parking for the businesses that are there. Thank you. Are you okay? Any other Council members? Miss Kaki-Rata. Thank you. I just, I read the testimony provided by the manager, I think it's the manager of Marymans that said that they are concerned about this exacerbating their parking situation even more. Was there ever any consideration of saying like only compact cars can park here and know I'm going into the roadway so that we could maximize the parking without having trucks in the roadway was that ever part of the discussion? I don't believe traffic ever specifically looked at that issue. If you were to take a look at the vehicles that are parked, there's a mix of compact cars, mid-size cars, and small trucks, and large trucks. I don't believe they ever made an attempt to differentiate between what types of vehicles could or could not park. Okay, are the compact cars? I can't say the picture. Are yeah, the truck is seriously the biggest problem in this picture. Okay. Yeah, I just, you know, I do see that there is concern about this really exacerbating the problem and is there a solution to the parking issue? The only solutions that the county can really work on are ones that are within their control, right? County streets, county right of ways. As council member Evans mentions, quiet high road is a state road. What is allowed or not allowed is really the call of the DOT. And then there are issues with just private landowners and workers and again we Councilmember Evans and I had a number of discussions about workers at Mary-Mens and the other restaurants and things that are there but ultimately I think the community needs to get together to maybe solve some of the issues around parking I think what I think what we've done here is the best way we can do to accommodate parking and concert with safe travel lanes on Opello Road. Okay, so your team is saying that no matter how people park there, if they're off the pavement even, it's still not something they want to see happen. Is that? No, I think getting them off the pavement to keep the two lanes of traffic safe, creating a space where line of sight for people coming out of driveways. I think that that we really was a driving force. I mean there's nothing in our code that allows angle parking here. You could clearly adjust that but again when I challenged our traffic folks would angle parking work better their answer was no at least from a safe standpoint and with the amount of real estate we have on the shoulders that they felt it was an of that interest to have parallel parking along the sides. Okay and some of these pictures that looks like the parallel parking is still problematic. That's correct. Okay but again with the signage proper signage telling people hey you can't park on the pavement as you look at those pictures there appears to be enough room they just need to pull further off. Right yeah definitely. I'm just wondering if reducing the number of parking spaces to go parallel is really the issue or could I mean there was never you never tried signage that tried to just get people to not park on the pavement, even allowing them to consider the, angle parking there and the best judgment of the traffic people from a safety standpoint. They felt that what was what's being proposed here is the best way to go. Okay. Well, I'm going to listen to the parking and the traffic experts here, but based on these pictures, I feel like maybe there was a way to get a little more parking out of the area and try to relieve the concerns of the you know sounds like a Saturday field trip for councilmember Evans and I to go up there that's right okay have a great time maybe you'll get some really delicious food while you're up there because it's good restaurants there all right thank thank you thank you miss Miss Kagiwata. Mr. Kaniyally, can I quote? Yeah, thank you, Chair. Mr. Fauzi, thank you for being here today. Thinking about what is being said. How does the county gauge how many parking spots are necessary for businesses as they walk in the door. I'm thinking about our parking, Island-wide, because Jen's taking a few more. Sure, I'm not an expert, but I think that would fall into the purview of planning. That's what I was thinking of. It's relative to issuing permits and such for businesses. Okay, I'll follow up with that. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be honest. Yeah, thank you for asking that question. Council Member Cunney Lee, Klein Felder, parking being a top of mind concern in Kona as well. But there is a line of responsibility for the business owners and for the landlords of these properties and shopping centers as they're renting them to tenants with having adequate provisions of parking for customers of said businesses that rent from them. And so it's a challenging dance that we're doing as an island and community because it's private property and the responsibility falls to them. And the overflow falls to the public, which can have unintended dangerous cause, unintended dangerous circumstances with some of this the parking. I like the creativity about only for compact cars, but in Waimea, compact cars aren't very popular. So you're going to have more of the big trucks than not. So I just recognize I want to thank traffic division for navigating this challenging path to ensuring health and safety and protection on our public roads. And I also want to put a call out there for the property managers and the landlords as they're making decisions on renting commercial spaces to restaurants and whatnot to take into consideration the burden of providing enough parking spots and how that really does fall to them. So just kind of a dance we all get to do but thank you to traffic for trying to navigate best outcome on this one. Appreciate it. Thank you, Miss Evan. Yeah. Um, so I had the planning department go out and evaluate the site. Um, they looked at the square footage. They looked at the number of parking stalls that and they said that it's always based on, I think it's like per 300 square feet or whatever you have to provide, X amount of parking, so they met the required, so it was built, the parking lot meets the requirements, the planning department had. I know this came up when we were looking here in Hilo potentially doing a rezone, someone was here and there was concerns by the neighbors. Well, yeah, you're going to have one restaurant, but what happens if you bring in a second? We never did get an answer that day, but this is a situation of what really happens is if you have a popular restaurant, they have two restaurants at night doing evening meals, you could potentially really impact the neighborhood. And that's really what has happened here. I think everybody wants to be good neighbors, but the reality is that overflow now is on the state highway. It's running down on both sides of the state highway. People are talking to the neighbors now and are parking cars now in the front yards of people's houses. And so I talked to Mary Monson and asked their manager if they would be willing to host a meeting where we could talk to the owners down the road because between Mary-Mens and Parker's school, you have Redwater Cafe, you have Moa Kitchen, you have a wine-style cafe, you have all these restaurants at night. And if everybody shows up and it's a popular night, the whole place is chaos. I mean, the whole thing is chaos. And so I think State Department Transportation really needs. Unfortunately, unfortunately, they're going to be a big player on helping us try to find a solution because my community through a traffic safety improvement study wants to have complete streets. They want to have a bicycle lane and they want to have complete streets. They want to have a bicycle lane and they want to have sidewalks. That particular part of the highway, there is no, there's just two shoulders. So if you take away a shoulder to give bike lane and sidewalk, they're taking away parking. So it's only going to get more exaggerated. So this is a problem that is festering that's gonna need a lot of work. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Evans. Anyone else? Already we'll see. And well, first of all, director, I just wanna take a moment to thank the department for advancing the bills. When I started, we didn't even have maps. So there was no way to orient members of the council. So I really do appreciate your traffic division and how they really grown into this position. I'll definitely have staff coordinate with you. So as Mr. Inaba mentioned on the previous bill to make sure that there's clarity between the language in the bill and the exhibits that are provided. about now. There's a number of other tools of traffic calming devices that I know traffic division has with vertical to lineators, you know, alternative striping, just visual prompts to help slow people down. that are available and maybe we could also throw that into the tool belt when you're looking for solutions as far as parking but with that in support of this bill and look forward to working having my staff work with you as we move this up to council bill 205 to counsel with a favorable recommendation. All those in favor please say aye. Right. Contrary, minded, Mr. Clerk, we have nine eyes on bill 205. All right, seeing no further