Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today is September 16th, 2024. The time now is 9.02 a.m. We are calling to order the 34th session of the Communications Reports and Council Oversight Committee. We are meeting here in the Civic Center in Kailua Kona with a number of members of this committee also in Chambers in Hilo. Joining me in Kona today is Council Member Holika Inaba, Council Members in the Evans, and joining us from Hilo. I see Council Members Jennifer Coguata, Heather Kimball, Michelle Galymba, and Suly Loy with council member Matt Conelli-Eclinfelder, excused. I myself and Rebecca Villegas, chair of this committee. We're calling this meeting to order. Mr. Hendrix. Madam Clerk, we don't have any public testimony for your committee at this time. All right, thank you. May I have a motion? I'll just read in the communication very quickly. Okay. Communication 1013, 2023, 2024, and report from the Kailua Village Business Improvement District from Executive Director Ross Wilson dated August 8, 2024. I'm sure to close by on communication 1013. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved by Council Member Inava and seconded by Council Member Liloi. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. It's been moved by Council Member Inava and seconded by Council Member Liloi. And with that, we'll move on to Mr. Ross Wilson. Thank you for being here today for our annual update. Happy to be here. Good morning everybody. I'm the executive director for the Kylo village business improvement district. The KVBID transformed historic Kylo village with its clean and safe initiatives, marketing branding and special events into the vibrant place that it is today. And some of you may not remember, but over 15 years ago, travel agents were directing visitors to turn left at the airport and not turn right, because a village was not up to par, not where it should be. And what happened was members of the Conoco Hall of Chamber of Commerce, specifically Eric Fomplatt and Luder, Debbie Baker, Maria Aguilar, and others got together and started to talk about how they could change things. They worked with the businesses and the landowners and the lessseas in historic Kylo village and put together the Kylo village business improvement district. KVBID developed interpretive signs in the village, highlighting the areas cultural heritage, designed year-round branding, they branded the village, created event banners to promote iconic events in the village, including Kamehmeadeh, Hawaiian International Bialfist Tournament, Queen Liliwa, O'Kalani, long-distance canoe race, Kona Coffee, Cultural Festival, and of course Iron Man. The bid promotes and funds Kokoa Kakailua, a monthly outdoor pedestrian friendly marketplace on the lead drive that attracts a crowd of about 5,000 once a month. The event was yesterday. The event was created to attract Kamaeina and visitors into historic Kailua village to buy local. We put together local, local byway committee, research and funded royals, footsteps along the corner coast, the state's second Hawaii scenic byway. In addition to printed materials, and I left a bunch of printed materials on the dius and so for the folks that are tuning in from Hilo, it's sitting here when you come in. But in addition to the printing materials, we created a free smart phone app so that everyone would have easy access into the culture and history of historic Kailoi Village and a lead drive. We sponsored parking, lighting, and landscape studies, and we even did a Hollywood-Visioning project. All of this work resulted in accolades from US news and world reports, best winter vacation spots, best American foodie towns in the Pacific West, named to the top 20 small towns to visit in America by Smithsonian and Ranked by TripAdvisor as the number 10 US destination on the rise. The Kylo village business improvement district would not be in existence without the strong support of the county of Hawaii. The Kandu spirit of the county's finance department at the time headed up by Bill Takaba helped the Kona volunteers move toward to set up the only the second business improvement district in the state. Today there's three. Waikiki has a business improvement district, so do we, and so there's the Fort Street Mall in Honolulu. We're governed by Clean and Safe Initiatives. That's what we do. We have a 17 member board, two folks, our ex-official Steve Palsy from the finance department, from the public works department, and Hamman of Intura from the finance department. We're represented with the county, with a representative from the mayor, and a representative from the county council member, Rebecca Villegas. We have two zones, zone one and zone two. Zone one is basically a lead drive and the gateways coming into the village and zone two is basically the old industrial area in those areas and they're assessed at different different rates. Zone one is assessed at a $1.75 per thousand and zone two at 58 cents per thousand and the two at 58 cents per thousand. And the majority of the services are in zone one lead drive where a lot of the visitors are. We do block by block. We hired block by block a few years ago. There are national firm that manages business improvement districts. And we did it because of the national expertise. They manage about 100 different, or service about 100 different business improvement districts in the nation. So we put together the landscaping, janitorio, and security into one contract. It's important for everybody to remember that the services that the bid. We have a business watch group that centered around the Colour Commons area. We have a business watch group that centered around the Lonnie-Hau area and another one that centered on the O'Rown-Ely Drive. So we meet once a month with the community police officers and members of their security folks and their management and we talk through the issues in their specific areas. We share information, we share photographs, we're trying to stop the crime in the areas, including lots of shoplifting. The business improvement districts, business watches are successful and it's limiting the amount of nonsense that happens in the village. We're lighting the village. We lit up the banyan tree at the pier. We lit up the monkey pod tree in the middle of town at Demo Square, and we're working with Wulee Hay Palace to light up the big bayonetry in the middle of town. And bringing light into the middle of town really stopped some of the criminal nonsense that happens after dark. We started this year on cruise ship days, a free historic Kailou village walking tour. So at 9 o'clock in the morning, they gather at the pier and Palena Keeling, one of the Kumu Hulas, will guide them through the town and talk about Ahawana, Kamako Hono, Moko Aikawa, Hulihei, A and some of the other historic sites in the village. It's free. You know, some days there's a few people and some there's a lot of people. We have a new website. We're focusing on the history and culture of the area. Historic Kailou Village is different from a lot of places because we don't have to manufacture the history. The history's there. For the folks that don't live in Kona, three historic things happened here. King Kameha, Meha Road, the capital of Hawaii, from K from Kailu, Kona, from 1812 to 1819. He died here in 1819. The Kapu system was broken here in 1819 and in 1820 the missionaries got permission to come ashore. So the Hawaii, you know, today everything changed from what's happened right around Kainua Kona. Mokwai Kawa is the first Christian church in all of Hawaii and say, Michael is the first Catholic church in all of Hawaii. After COVID, a lot of the visitor publications went away. There's only a couple of visitor publications today. And so what we did to, we have publication wrecks that are branded throughout the town so that we don't have individual brochure wrecks everywhere. So earlier this year we started a magazine, historic kind of village. It's on the dius where you look at a lot of stuff about history and culture. We'll publish that twice a year and in December January 1 we'll put out the second edition of it. We draw the street banners, although the pole banners everywhere, and we also worked with groups to do the murals in the town. Well, the other thing that we've done recently, as it relates to the homeless, we've done a concerted effort working with all of the retailers and all of the grocery stores to take back the shopping carts. So we're returning them on a daily, on a weekly basis, back to the stores, and the stores are picking them up. In 2023, I think the reports in front of you, I think we returned over 500 shopping carts back to the various merchants. What we're trying to do is, well, the shopping carts are expensive. They run from $200 to $1,000 a piece. But the other thing that happens with the shopping carts, they become permanent homes for a lot of the homeless population. And if we don't manage the homeless population, and we're not going to cure it or fix it, but if we don't manage it, you know, hit a tipping point and it can't be fixed. We've been collaborating, and I thank you to all of the council members, the funding that you all gave to the housing department for social services is helpful. One of the challenges that we have in in Kona in West Hawaii is we don't have a lot of the nonprofit infrastructure to help and that's what we need to work on on this side. But it's helpful. We have street medicine. We have hope services doing work in kind of village and you know, you know, the homeless population, they're human beings. I met with one yesterday, Jason. And I told Jason, that being straight, it's a Jason, if you don't get off the street, you're gonna die. I said, we gotta help you. And he's in his 60s or 70s, and he lives in alcohol. So we're trying to help him. And we've had unfortunately, in the last month or so, at least five or six deaths, whether passing away. We need to do more to combat poverty, but the homeless that we're dealing with is not because of economic issues or poverty issues. The homeless that we're dealing with is not because of economic issues or poverty issues. The homeless that we're dealing with are the chronic homeless and we have about a hundred that congregate in and around the village, in the bushes, in the doorways and such. And these are the folks that have mental health issues, drug issues, alcohol issues, all the other above. We're doing our part. We've increased our security patrols. We've redesigned our security uniforms to make them more visible. We put together an ad hoc small committee's treat people solutions to come up with some of the short-term solutions to fix some of the problems that we were facing. We looked at two distinct areas, a lead drive in Povai Place. A lead drive, especially in Emma Square and the small little beach area, Nio Malu next to Hulihei, tend to be areas where homeless congregate. We clean those areas constantly, we power wash, and we do it especially on ship days to discourage 10 or 20 homeless from sitting there panhandling. We've worked on relanxcaping areas to make it less hospitable so that people aren't camping their full time. And we also met with the State Department of Health, trying to get them to agree to do a drug and alcohol treatment facility with stabilization beds at the old corner hospital, which was the old corner courthouse in Kellekekoa. We haven't been successful in that regard, but we're trying. We changed the built environment in many areas, trimmed up the trees, added rocks and boaters to the areas where people congregate. The real hero, heroes in all of this is the Hawaii County Police Department. I've got to tell you that they're absolutely awesome. They deal with the homeless population, especially the community police, on a daily basis, and it's tough work. Tough dealing with somebody as mentally impaired or somebody that's on drugs or drunk all the time, and especially if they don't want help at all. But the community police are responsive, they're present and there's a reason why the village is the village's issue with homelessness is manageable. I applaud Council Member Villegas for trying to help with enacting new ordinances to deal with panhandling and loitering. I think we all need to work together to make sure that we can keep our streets clean and safe, but we also need to make sure that we can get people help. I'm not, I know, I see them, I talk to them. And it's difficult when they don't want help. And then we get stuck. We have one young lady, Mahina, that's handicap, that's in the village. And she doesn't want any help. She's not mobile. And she's using the bathroom in the ocean help. She's not mobile and she's using the bathroom in the ocean and it's not clean and we're stuck on what to do with people like that. I implore you to continue to add funding to Hawaii County Police Department, Islandwide. They need our help. They're awesome and I thank you for all the resources that you guys provide so that we can manage some of these situations. The annual report was circulated to everybody. I'm happy to answer any questions on anything in it. I just came back from yesterday from the Internet international association and there was 1,300 people from around the nation to talk about these issues that we all face with downtown areas. Some of it was promotions and marketing. Some of it was dealing with the homeless population, but very interesting conversations with people nationwide. Nancy Sakamoto and I were there. We both talked about after the conference was over on Friday afternoon that we're doing a lot of things right on the big island. We really are. And I applaud you guys for being innovative. And I think if we all work together, we can really solve some of these problems. But they're tough issues. And they're not gonna go away. Our homeless issue grows every day because they're flying in. They're coming in with suitcases and overcoats and so you know they're not from here. So that's the issue that we deal with. I'm happy to answer any questions or any comments anybody has. Thank you, Ross. At this time I'll open it up to any questions or comments from anyone else on the committee. When we start in Hilo, I can't see your lights if you'd like to raise your hand or give an indication if you have any questions or... Oh. Hey, we're back here. It's Michelle. Hi Michelle. Oh and quickly let the record show that Council member Kergoit says joined us. Council member Galimba, go ahead. Thanks and thanks very much for this presentation, Mr. Wilson. I think the first one that I've seen. And I saw I was just looking at your funding and the assessments. And so I was just wondering if you could I see that it was at a you know, pretty at 800 to 700,000 dollar level for a very long time and then dipped in the last few years into the 600,000. And I was just wondering if you could tell me why that is. Council Member, it's deceptive. It hasn't gone down. We present an annual report in March of every year to the members in the district and our two funding cycles, our assessments are due in February and in August. And usually what happens as soon as the meeting is over or a few weeks after meeting is over, we get a large influx of the assessment. So the assessment totals are pretty much all the same. And 21, 22, 22, 23, 23, 24, what I'll do for the next meeting, next time we present, I'll adjust it. But they're all about the same. We haven't had, in fact, they've gone up, our budget runs about a million dollars. But at the time we present this in mid-March, this is what it is. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I saw that on the budget that the- Yeah, we're on the fiscal year. So the fiscal year ends June 30th. Okay, okay. I was just wondering if there was some kind of event that happened or loss of business. Is it, how does the assessment work? Is it based on a property or income or how does the assessment work? It's based on the assessed value of the property that the finance department assesses and it's $1.75 per thousand in zone one and fifty eight cents in zone two. For the residential in the village if your permanent resident in the village and your assessment is no more than $100. Okay, thanks very much. It sounds like you're doing a really great work there. And so congratulate you and I yield. Thank you, Council Member Glimba. Anyone else in the halo? Thank you, Chair. Council Member. Thank you so much member Thank you so much Thank you mr. Ross for presenting this information and for sharing all you're doing over there in the village very Happy to see and here you speaking put compassionately about the homeless and and seeing you trying to grapple with some very Challenging issues obviously. I'm just wondering do you have any concerted effort from your group to support low-income, affordable, or permanent supportive housing for people over in Kailua Kona? Is that something that you've spent any time doing as a group? No, it's not part of our mission, but it needs to happen. Okay, I just seems like an obvious part of this whole puzzle, and I know as a coordinated group that you're weighing in on things might be helpful when trying to struggle to get some of these things done that are challenging in and of themselves. So just want to put that little thought in the air and think about that because I can see that you're doing quite a lot to try to deal with issues around the houseless population. So anyway, thank you for your report. I appreciate it. If you look in the report, there's an area there that shows replanting. So replanting of Emma Square and Alie Drive and it looks beautiful with Lower E and Nalpaka. Within a couple of days of us replanting that, the homeless went in and pulled it all out and killed it all. So right now, we're back to going back to replanted again. So those are the kind of issues you deal with. Okay, thank you. Anyone else in Hilo? With that, I'll bring it back to Kona, Councilmember Eddens. Thank you. Good morning. I have a couple of questions. There's a big expense here for what the category is ambassadors. Can you? Pardon me? Ambassadors. Ambassadors. 140. It's quite a big amount of money. Can you tell me about your ambassador program? The Block-by-Block group are all ambassadors. So we have cleaning ambassadors, which are the genitorial, we have the landscape ambassadors, and the security ambassadors. So the total budget off the top of my head to block by block is somewhere in the neighborhood of $666,000 or something. You just, they have a name, you call them ambassadors. When they're out working, do they have a t-shirt that says they're perfectly uniformed, fully uniformed with caps so they're identifiable. We haven't chosen to put in a Loha ambassadors. And I was just in Seattle for that conference. And I didn't find that they were useful. So at some point in time, we might do the Loha ambassadors, maybe it's ship days, on the peer to help when you have an influx of 1,000 people. But on a day-to-day basis, we might do the illohan ambassadors, maybe it's shift days, on the peer to help, when you have an influx of 1,000 people. But on a day-to-day basis, we haven't found that that was helpful. I found it helpful in San Antonio, but they just had senior citizens volunteering. And they were ambassadors. And you could tell what they were because not only did they have a t-shirt, they gave them a special hat. Yeah, we have this in there. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, thank you. The other question I had is on fireworks. What do you see is the future of fireworks for Kylocona, given that it continues to be an issue should we support it, not support it, not enough. Used to be 20 minutes. It's now going down to 10. We're having a harder time raising money for it. Can you give us some insights into fireworks? Yeah, Barbara Cassal and the Rotary Club for the last 20 years have organized businesses and others to000 in the budget to that committee and the various businesses and the county, I think Fire Department provides a rest of the funding. We'll continue to support it. It brings a ton of visitors and locals into the village, both for the parades and the fireworks. And if people congregate, they spend money. So from an economic standpoint, and I'm not talking about personal fireworks, I'm talking about the fireworks, please. Right, right. Yeah. I just know it's getting expensive and I understood it was much harder to get raised money for it. There's a new committee since Barbara and Renee Kraft have retired after 20 years. So I think they're going to look at drones and some other things. So I don't know what they're coming up with. Right. But I'm happy that somebody's taking it over because I think you're gonna celebrate some of these things. Right, right. Okay, and then my last question has to do with, I love the street car, but I'm wondering the relationship you have with our new mass transit director and moving people in and out of these zones using our mass transit plus the other thing I noticed being in that area recently is you're just running out of parking because you're more, I mean the more the more residents that we have that enjoy coming into that area because of the restaurants and the view and just enjoying the ocean. The more we build our residential community as well as tourists, you know, we got these issues. So are we going to do park and ride? Are we going to create a place for people to park and ride into the downtown core? Because it just seems like this whole moving traffic around is starting to, I see it as one of your growing issues. I've been meeting with transit director Victor Candle so often, they think we're related. We instituted a park and ride with the Konatrali picking up every 30 minutes from the area on low Locke Street, the street directly in the back of Target. It was not successful. We haven't found that local folks want to park somewhere and ride a trolley or bus into the town. Everybody wants to park close. So that didn't work. The helion bus is free and there's a lot of ridership, island-wide, people coming from everywhere to come in. The Konatrolley is no longer in existence. Last year, I think we had 130,000 riders, but the Cornert trolley was under Robert's Hawaii, and Roberts was contracting with the county. The county took the buses over now, and he's using Roberts employees, and using a county transit schedule instead of a trolley schedule. We, meaning the bid and other businesses sponsored the trolley. And we're hopeful that trolley will run again because it's a useful service. Okay. Does your group, it just reminded me, does your group ever weigh in on the density? When we talk about density and we have ADU bills, but we talk about height and, you know, fill in in so that we don't do urban sprawl. Does your group at all take a look at kind of where we're zoning and what we're doing the general plan? Did you weigh in at all in this? We haven't there. Personally, our members, including myself, worked on the Connick Community Development Plan, which basically said, you know, the area for growth is going to be between Kailua and the airport, and it's going to be denser and taller. Unfortunately, those that have moved in recently and those that did not attend the meetings are not in agreement with some of the density issues that's in the plan. So, and the plan was designed to eliminate sprawl. But we'll see. But we haven't weighed in and it's not our role to weigh in on specific developments. Members of our group, our board or anybody in the district can weigh in on their thoughts, personal thoughts, including myself. But as I'm going to be honest, I don't know the reason I say it is it is a business. I mean there are employers, you know, it is the, you know, it's about business and people being here and I just thought maybe that they would maybe weigh in a little bit on it. I should tell you that there's some innovation going on and some changes, you know, the village is changing for the first time in about 50 years, you know, the good news is the village is very few property owners and the bad news is the village is very few property owners, and the bad news is the village is very few property owners. So the ones that maintain their properties, it's awesome and the ones that don't, you're stuck with them. But Uncle Billy Kimmy passed away and some of his property changed hands. Sandy's shape re-bought the former Uncle Belize Connobet hotel and is renovating it as we speak. But what he did, he's looking at how his employees or management people he bought an apartment building in the area in the back of Mcdon. So, you know, housing is critical for, you know, not only the homeless, but, you know, all of us that live work and play here, right? So. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Evans. It doesn't look like anybody else in here though. So with that, I'll just go ahead and wrap up. Thank you Ross for being here again today for your work and leadership. I am navigating something that is quite unique in Hawaii being one of three business improvement districts. I really also appreciate being that this is my hometown, that you continue to perpetuate in the branding and even just the name of the organization that Kailu O'Connor is a village. And the vision for Kailu O'Connor remains perpetuating that village model. So as we continue to grow and change and things like density have been pointed out and I, it's become very apparent that all of that is reliant on and contingent with infrastructure because we cannot keep adding more burden on two roads and sewer lines that are not up to par. I mean we just had a massive spill off of the pier of sewer from a backed up bathroom on the pier. So- That's why homeless person. Exactly. Yeah. So I also just wanted to point out that permanent supportive housing is not the job of the Kylo village business improvement district. However, they work hand in hand with the organizations and the homeless service providers that are working diligently within Kylo, O'Connor. All you have to do is look at our reports and you will see that the lion's share of funding goes to the east side when it comes to homeless service providers. Unfortunately, Cona doesn't get the same equitable distribution of those funds or services. And you guys have stepped in in the interim, and you work hand in hand with community policing, and with the homeless service providers that are here, one of them 808 homeless task force, which it's my understanding they have been able to send home almost 100 people already this year, who got stuck here after coming here, thinking it would be a lovely place to be unhoused and quickly discover that that's not the case. I'm glad that you mentioned the drone show because that's been something that has been really heightened for me and with a lot of people bringing forth that opportunity to transition from fireworks to drone shows. And we've had lengthy conversations and I have a feeling we'll be having more of them about the parking paid parking transition to paid parking in the village, which is is now causing not only challenges for our local people and comma, Ina, who aren't visiting the villages often, but our small businesses. So I am hopeful that we can continue to work together and maybe sit down with these landlords and property owners who have decided to implement parking fees, which for the public out there listening, it's private property. So government does not have the authority to go in and tell them they can't charge for parking. However, I have hope that potentially we could have conversations. If parking rates were closer to like $3 an hour, that's feasible. But a $12 to $15 an hour rate, that's why key rates. And we want to perpetuate the vision of a village where everyone can come. And people can afford to live and be in a safe and healthy environment. And our unhoused can receive the services and the support that they need and deserve. And when they don't desire it, that there would be other options for them to move to other places where they're not in jeopardy and danger, and they're not negatively impacting the lives of everyone else because as a community we're stronger, right Ross? But when certain people monopolize resources or spaces, it jeopardizes that experience for all of us. So I thank you for your leadership, your continued humble support, and navigating some really interesting times, but I think we're farther along now than we've ever been. So thank you for being here today, and I'll reach out shortly because we've got some more work to do together. Happy to meet with any of you privately individually to talk about some of these issues. My commitment to you guys is let's do great things and let's do great things together because I think we can solve some of the issues. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ross And with that all those in favor Closing file on communication 101.3. Please say aye. We have eight members saying aye. One member excuse Mr. Conelli E. Klein Felder. Seeing no more business. The committee on communications reports and