Senate Standing Committee on Ways and Means

Of the House Committee on Finance Senate.

We're here Monday, January 26th, Capitol Auditorium, for the surfaces briefings from our Hawaii county mayors. We're going to open up with the county of Hawaii. Well, welcome and thank you for joining.

I'm getting. I'm getting better. Every year I get better. All right, so, yeah, so I just want to take about five minutes to share with you. You know, you got the letter. I share with you guys. Kind of like where we at. But first, you know, thank you so much for the.

Just a real quick example of the allocation that you guys supported us with. I saw chair Inaba out there, and, you know, he echoes my sentiment. The $1.7 million for our Makale fire station, you know, the paramedics.

I asked for that last year, and you guys came through, and it's going to make our, especially on the west side, much more safer. So mahalo. Plenty for that this time around. I did a survey. We put it out to 28,000. 28,000 surveys went out to island residents.

4,000 came back, and we were checking to see what were their priorities so that I can kind of help shape my priorities and their priorities. The top three. One was the cost of living, the other was traffic congestion, and the last was healthcare. So when I look at how you folks can help and.

And kind of, you know, what. What we can do and kind of like what the county's already doing, we thought of several things. Just first, right off the bat, I'll just show you some thoughts that I have. And then what we included as part of the mayor's package, and this is. This is one of them.

To help reduce the cost of living, we'd like to propose that we reinstate the state tax credit to support cesspu to septic conversion. We found that very helpful when it was in action. And, you know, you're talking 30,000 right off the bat for septic conversion.

You know, we're working with the feds on our facility upgrades, so we have like, about 12 of them. That's going to be close to a billion dollars. But I'm worried about our residents of which they got to respond to that mandate. And so, you know, something to offset the cost.

And that state tax credit would be huge for our island residents. Another thought on the cost of living, since that was the number one priority that our residents identified, is to reduce the cost of electricity. And so this is where geothermal was a big deal for us. Geothermal exploration is something that our island has already been experiencing.

And so we Just want to continue that exploration to make sure that, you know, we do have spots on the island for a second facility and of course not in Puna, but the island's big and there are spots that I think could benefit our island.

Geothermal is the most, what you call, you know, I think it's the strongest renewable source that we have. So addressing the healthcare, since that was another issue, was basically just supporting our hospital in Kona.

And you know, whatever proposals come through, just know that the Hawaii county residents would be thrilled, especially on that side, if they have better access to healthcare. That in particular our Kona hospital, as far as traffic relief, you know, we got the Puna alternate route.

But I want to thank you guys again for, for helping us with the study. So we have that study that's ongoing, but soon, by the end of the year we're gonna know what is the best route. And so just kind of giving you guys a heads up, we're gonna need your support to alleviate that congestion in Puna.

It's been an issue for far too long. There's some non, what you call non fiscal asks and that's just the Banyan Drive, you know, crossover. The Bill was proposed last time around. It didn't get to the floor. But you know, we think the move over to Hawaii Community Development Authority would be better.

And you know, Banyan Drive is an iconic spot for us. You know, and Council Representative Matias could tell you that we put a lot of effort as well as Ms. Liloy can tell you that, you know, this is, this is big for us.

And so if we can get that moved, we can work, I feel like we can work better and make that place thriving again. And it's going to be perfect because you know, the state's going to. But I'm here in a potential hotel at the airport. You know, with that kind of revitalization, the future looks real bright.

And then, you know, with the wastewater again, this is a non funding ask and that is just to push back the dates because there's no way mathematically we could make that conversion. 50,000, you know, cesspool's got to convert. That's like eight cesspools a day in conversion. It's just mathematically impossible.

So what we asking for is, I think it's reasonable. You know, we know that the shoreline areas, we gotta, you know, we gotta move to a system as soon as possible. So that's priority one. But as you go up to mid Mauka, you know, to me that's priority too. And so we kind of prioritize it.

Our wastewater task force that pretty much mapped up the island. And so if we can move back 10 years, you know, for priority one, we think we can make it in 2050, but for priority two, we're thinking 2060, and priority 32070. So. So that's what I share with you in my letter, and I yield for questions.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. I think I got the microphone on now. Members of the House, any questions for Hawaii County's mayor? Ah, you came out of this way, though. Yeah. I have a question, actually.

You know, I think one of the things we've been struggling with is, you know, what is our responsibility as a state for things like cesspool conversions versus the county's responsibility.

But there are definitely areas where that may overlap, you know, particularly with, like, Department of Hawaiian Homelands, where you have a lot of cesspools along the shoreline that may be priority one or two.

Are you open to some sort of collaboration where, you know, maybe the state's providing, you know, funding for infrastructure, but there is that concern with homesteaders now being switched onto the sewer fee and taking on some expense and some sort of structure where the county takes on some of that subsidy?

Mm, absolutely. I mean, Connie Watson and I were talking about the area of Keaukaha, for example, you know, the area that you cover. Chair Todd. And, yeah, there is. I mean, we're collaborating already, and I think there is opportunity for partnerships, you know, whether it's connected to our sewer line.

We work together on the infrastructure, perhaps, and we're also collaborating with the private sector, too. So PUA Coal, for example, you know, the PUA Coal Wastewater Committee, the. You know, they came in, they wanted to talk with us, and so they have ideas.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's going to have to be a public, private partnership to make this happen. So we're definitely open to that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Members, additional questions for the mayor. Anyone on the Senate side? All right, well, thank you very much. We're going to recess briefly to allow the county of Maui time to set up a presentation.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you very much. You bet. Reconvening our budget briefings or just presentations from the various counties and their mayors. We're here with the county of Maui. We're joined by Mayor Bissen. Thank you very much for making the trip and being here. And whenever you're ready, you may proceed.

Mahalo. Good afternoon. Chair Dela Cruz, Vice Chair Moriwaki, Finance Chair Todd and Vice Chair Takenouchi and Members Mahalo for the opportunity to be here today. Before I begin, I just want to acknowledge Members of my team who are here with me in the event we have questions for you to answer today.

Special Mahalo for your collaboration in advancing our recovery, our strengthening our resilience and improving affordability for all of our residents. There are many things to be thankful for, but for the sake of time I'll highlight just a few from this past session.

First, thank you to the State Administration and the Legislature for your ongoing support of Maui's recovery efforts, including the hard work of multiple state agencies and funding support for our residents.

Mahalo for your $5 million allocation to support the $80 million Waiale Road extension project, a critical investment in Central Maui's long term growth, connectivity and emergency access, including support for the new Central Maui School.

Mahalo to Senator Hashimoto, Representative Sayama and UPW for your support of House Bill 159 and Kalima Omaui, and for your collaboration and partnership in developing solutions that preserve jobs and ensure the continued maintenance and the upkeep of our County Parks. 2025 marked Maui's shift from recovery to readiness for housing delivery, public safety and resilient infrastructure.

As many of you know, we secured a one year extension for temporary housing impacting 946 of the approximately 1,400 survivor families. My sincere mahalo to Governor Green, our congressional delegation, FEMA, DHS and the many leaders who advocated for Maui. This extension ensures survivors have the time needed to secure stable long term housing.

The CDBG Dr. Action Plan was approved in late June 2025. $1.6 billion in disaster recovery funds was awarded to support long term recovery. The use of these funds is guided by a community led Action Plan developed through extensive public input to ensure investments align with HUD national objectives and local priorities including permanent housing and infrastructure restoration.

These funds are administered under HUD approved guidelines and compliance oversight and are allocated to programs based on extensive community outreach and feedback while meeting HUD's national objectives.

In the largest debris operation in the county's history, over 400,000 tons of wildfire debris, equivalent to two years of municipal solid waste collection for the entire county were safely removed from Lahaina, allowing residents to move quickly toward rebuilding.

This unprecedented effort, led by a county task force required the rapid development and construction of a temporary debris site in Olowalu, the identification, acquisition and construction of a permanent disposal site in Central Maui, and the transfer of all debris to that permanent facility.

All of this work was completed ahead of schedule and true to our commitment to our Olowalu community, the temporary site has been fully cleared and restored. By the way, that is state owned property that was OED to us for this and has since been returned to the state.

In partnership, the State and County reopened Lahaina Small boat harbor on December 152025 marking a significant milestone and a clear pivot towards supporting commercial recovery. The before and after images you see here captured just how meaningful that step has been, showing both the damage left behind and the steady return of Lahaina Harbor.

The restoration of limited commercial operations and daytime public access reflects the County's commitment to helping harbor based businesses and tour operators safely resume service while repairs continue. To support this transition, the county provided security, fencing, parking, ambassadors and enforcement, wayfinding and targeted community outreach.

The county has significantly accelerated rebuilding through our Expedited Recovery Permitting Program, achieving an average permit approval time of approximately 60 days for wildfire survivors. To date, 122 permits have been completed, meaning the structure has been fully constructed and may be occupied.

With 559 additional permits approved, another 334 in the pipeline today, there are roughly 300 sites that are actively under construction in Lahaina. This map provides a visual snapshot of permitting progress around Lahaina Town. Blue parcels represent completed structures, green indicates permits that have been issued for rebuilding, and yellow shows applications that are in process.

To date, 427 homes have been fully constructed in Lahaina Town. With housing recovery on track, the county is shifting additional resources to commercial permitting, including infrastructure restoration waivers, fast tracking and the development of plans and design guidelines. A picture says a thousand words. Here you can see the incredible progress of our recovery.

The area pictured is Kahua Camp near the historic Pioneer Mill Smokestack, and seeing this level of progress not only offers hope, it fuels our community's momentum. This next slide shows Lahaina Town facing Mauka. The before photo shows lots cleared before debris removal operations.

In the after photo, new construction is rising throughout the town with both temporary and permanent housing as prominent features. You can see that towards the top, the one to the right is the FEMA project.

To the left is the state shifting to how we are helping survivors rebuild the whole the Hoookumaho Housing Program, launched in August of last year, is Maui County's Community Driven Housing Recovery Program, funded through Disaster Recovery Resources. This work is delivered through six coordinated housing programs with one primary objective to keep our people home.

The Homo Buyers Opportunity Program, also known as HOP, that provides up to $600,000 in assistance to help eligible households purchase and live in a home in Maui County. The program received strong interest with 2,946 applications submitted. The program has begun awarding funds with the first families already moving into homes as first time home buyers.

This program will reconstruct the second program that is will reconstruct owner occupied residents for eligible households. This slide highlights a few of the 12 Lahaina specific firewise home designs now available on the Hookumuho website. Goodfellow Brothers Inc. Was recently selected by the county as the builder for this project.

This Program this next program provides up to 400,000 in reimbursement to eligible homeowners who lived on the property as their primary residence at the time of the Maui wildfires and that is designed to help them offset rebuilding costs. In other words, they already started their rebuilding process.

We're advancing strategic land acquisitions and roadway improvements to strengthen emergency evacuation routes. One example is the Lewa Kini Street Extension which is a key part of this effort. These connections will improve traffic flow, emergency access and long term connectivity.

Through a county wide data driven assessment of 8001 county managed parcels, 35 high risk areas were identified for wildfire mitigation.

The Ukumehame project shown here is one of those priority areas where approximately 42 acres were treated and an estimated 4.7 million pounds of hazardous fuels were reduced to improve firefighting access along a critical west and central Maui corridor.

This work reflects coordinated investment and implementation by county and state partners and with this phase complete, the area will be restored as a wetland reserve across Maui County. We are building momentum with housing projects and investments focused again on keeping our people home.

In 2025, more than 500 affordable and workforce homes were fully constructed with over 600 additional homes estimated to be completed in 2026. Combined with recovery related housing, approximately 3,000 affordable and workforce homes are projected to be completed by 2030. Countywide, more than 700 homes are under construction today.

During my Administration thus far we've allocated over a quarter of a billion dollars towards affordable housing supporting the development of 2,883 affordable units. The county is also advancing permanent affordable housing on county owned land. On Lanai, we're building affordable rental owned housing in Lanai City.

In Napili, the county is moving forward with Kaiaulu o Napili which will deliver 120 affordable rental units for low and moderate income residents. While we are making significant investments in housing, our work through Houzz Maui makes clear that housing does not happen without infrastructure.

In the near term, more than $1 billion in infrastructure investment is anticipated to support housing development, including over 500 million and disaster recovery funds committed to water source and system improvements, expanded wastewater capacity, and critical transportation and drainage projects. Together, these investments are building the backbone needed to support new homes for Maui County's families.

Moving into this 2026 legislative session, we look forward to continued collaboration with the state. We're requesting $10.5 million for the central Maui Wastewater Reclamation Facility. The county is proposing $125 million in county funds and FY27 for this project. This investment remains essential to supporting Central Maui's growth, housing development and long term wastewater capacity.

As one example from the HCOM package, the package put forth by the Mayor the Mayors this measure would support workforce stability by allowing the temporary rehiring of retired public employees in critical positions. Measures such as this help stabilize operations, retain institutional knowledge and maintain continuity as we address ongoing workforce challenges.

My fellow Mayors will also be speaking to additional measures included in our package. Lastly, we're pleased to continue strengthening shared progress through ongoing state and county collaboration. In recognition of its importance to recovery, the State has requested a $100 million contribution from the county as part of a broader county and state recovery partnership.

The State's Lahaina Bypass Project advances multiple objectives at once, including improving emergency evacuation, reducing daily traffic congestion, protecting Lahaina's historic core and strengthening resilience for future generations. Front Street Apartments is moving forward and represents a major step in restoring housing in Lahaina.

The State has requested approximately $96 million from the county in calendar year 2026 and the county has confirmed with the development team that the project's application has been reviewed and is eligible for up to the amount requested.

The State has also requested an additional $20 million from the county's General funds in FY 2028, which my Administration supports and that is subject to Council review and approval. Haleola I is a key workforce housing project that has provided essential temporary housing for survivors.

The State is requested and the county is proposing $2.5 million in county funds in FY 2027 to assist the state in covering operating expenditures for this facility through February 2027. This funding would help ensure continuity of the State's program during transition during the transition period as permanent workforce housing will be advanced.

As we look ahead to 2026, we're focused on continued partnership with the state to accelerate housing delivery, to strengthen emergency readiness and wildfire mitigation, and to advance infrastructure resilience. Mahalo for your continued support of our residents and we remain committed to delivering measurable results. Together with you. Mahalo.

Great. Thank you very much for that thorough presentation. Members of the house, do we have any questions for the mayor and his team? There you go.

Thank you. Mayor Mahalo, nice to see you and the team. Thank you guys for coming. Given the 10 million, $10.5 million for the central Maui wastewater facility, can you help us understand how this investment unlocks additional housing capacity in Central Maui? Sure. And what the time frame looks like when it to come online?

Yeah. I should have also mentioned the county has already expended 10.8 million for this project. So what we're asking for is for additional funds to help us with the design feature.

As I mentioned to you, this is a key area because our, our current wastewater system, as you know, is at full capacity in the Kahului and we have much housing that's going to come online in Waikapu, the school and several other things that are designed to be built and it will require that we have more capacity for our wastewater facility.

I have some of our folks here if you want more details in that. But that's the General purpose behind that.

Do you have the timeline, like when it would take. I'm online.

Shane, do you know the timeline? I have our Director for Environmental management.

Committee. Thank you for the question. My name is Shane Agawa. I'm the Director of Environmental Management for The county Representative Miyake. So to answer your question, we are. On track to meet the bid opening roughly in mid of 2027.

We anticipate about two years of construction and hopefully having the treatment plant operational sometime in calendar year 2029, early 2030.

Perfect. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you Members of the House. Any additional questions? Okay, directly, go ahead.

Thank you. Mayor. How long does the county anticipate maintaining the expedited recovery permitting until returning to a more normal schedule and timeline?

Well, what we're hoping to do is to continue that through as part of our regular. We're working with a vendor who we hired a group called Four Leaf to do it. Now we have more housing to come online for our survivors, both in Kula and Lahaina. So as long as it takes for us.

They're under contract, so as long as it takes for us to get them their permits and get them home. But we're finding is utilizing this company is helping us to perhaps take a closer look and a better look at the way we handle our permitting throughout the county. So including non survivor requests.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks Mayor for being here. You know a follow up question to that one graphic you had was completed permits along with issued but under construction.

Yes.

Curious about your supply chain for the construction of those homes and if it will continue to fit within the permit life cycle of that code in which it was approved under.

So what I would say to that is that folks are working with contractors, architects and developers that are helping them with their projects. I can't speak to each individual one, but certainly that's one of the factors that's taken into account is how long is it going to take?

You know, we have people that sought permits but have not yet started building. We have people under construction, we have people that haven't even started to get a permit. And there are a lot of reasons for that.

Most of it is financial people's ability either to, for those that didn't have insurance at all, those who are underinsured, those who are waiting for the settlement that is still in. Well, it's just ongoing and there's a case I think coming up before the Supreme Court later this month.

And so I think some of that will obviously affect folks who want to accelerate their building permits. But as far as a supply chain question you ask, I can't speak to any individual project except to say that there are lots of homes being built right now. That doesn't seem to be the issue.

It's mostly financial, not the supply.

Great. And then I had one other follow up question on your road, the Lahaina bypass road. Curious if Maui County has adopted the HIROC program when it comes to collection of your taxes and then where you are on your fuel tax collection.

Okay, maybe I gotta ask my finance Director to answer at least the second part of that. But are you saying you're talking about the extension of the bypass? Right. Correct. So yeah. Come on.

Thank you, Committee. My name is Marcy Martin and I am the Director of Finance. And the county has implemented the HIROC for electrical vehicles. This past year. We participated in the study from the state on moving that program to all. Residential or light use vehicles. And that was my fellow directors were. Also in that Committee.

Great, thank you. Thanks Chair.

Thank you. Senator Hashimoto, do you have a question?

Thanks Mayor, for being here. I think what I wanted to follow up on, I think Representative Liloy started the question about the 100,000,000 for the bypass. And I think that's great that the county is willing to contribute that. I guess maybe we really need to understand what is that going towards.

What is your understanding of the regional plan?

I don't know if you or your staff watched our last WAM briefing, but I think we're trying to get a handle of what is the regional rebuild, how the regional rebuild is going to look like in West Maui, especially because the other big thing that we need to figure out is if we're going to fund the rebuild of the.

When do we fund the rebuild of the West Maui Elementary School, King Kamehameha Third site. And so I don't know what you're thinking that 100 mil is going towards. Is it an extension generally of the bypass? Is it specifically for that regional area, or what is your understanding?

Sure. So for those of you who have been to Lahaina, have traveled on what's currently the bypass, and you've had to turn left down Keawe street to go into, towards, I guess the Cannery Mall, you understand how congested that highway is, and that's long been an issue.

The original bypass, as I understood it, which precedes my time as mayor, was for it to go all the way out to North Lahaina, that stopped at Kawe. And a big reason for that was the funding.

What the county did is with the disaster relief funds that were given to us, some of that is being set aside, the $100 million to allow for that highway to be completed because we learned a lot of things about evacuation and people being able to get in and out of Lahaina.

And so this is a critical piece of that. That's the reason that's being put in. But ironically, the second thing that highlighted this was the tsunami warning.

I know traffic was busy on all of our islands and throughout the state, but a big thing that was found is that Honoapi Lani highway, which is the only road that travels from Keawe out to Napili, Kahana, Kapalua, that would not have been able to be traveled on and our citizens would have been trapped.

And so that's what made this more urgent for us to build the extension. Again, the community has been asking for this for years. There's a reason it's going to be put in. We have more part of our evacuation plan will include that extension being put in there. It's for the health and safety of the community.

And again, the funds we redirected, it was all part of the HUD Dr. Funds that came in that we were able to dedicate towards that. We've been talking to the state highways folks as well as the Governor to discuss this possibility. It needed to be approved by HUD.

And we're waiting for a final signature on that in order for us to use it.

So just to be clear, this is to go north, and this is for the north extension. And that's what the money is supposed.

To be used for as the color. The chart showed there was a color line that extends what's currently there. It'll go above Leali, go above those temporary houses.

No, I think as long as the committee's clear what that's supposed to be used for. Because I think it. It is unclear of where some of our highway monies are going in West Maui. And I think we need to understand what the priority is and what the county is willing to match.

And so I think as long as you're clear with us, then we'll kind of know what direction we need to go. Yeah, I apologize if I was unclear. Thank you.

It's extending the state highway. Thank you. Is what it's. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. Yeah.

Senators, any additional questions, Members of the House? Okay. If not, I think Kanye Koai, you don't have, like, a PowerPoint. You're good? Yeah. Okay. Come on up then. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Chairs, Vice Chairs, Committee Members, and to the support staff of this Legislature. You know, this is. This is my final. I guess my final appearance in front of FIN and WAM. So my top two priorities are, one, to really say thank you for making this.

Making this a good run, but two, to show you folks our fiscal responsibility and ways that we've been able to collaborate. And I really want to take this time to thank our Kauai delegation for their hard work.

I know it's hard, you know, having to come up here for the week and go home on weekends and get bombarded by constituents. But my time as mayor and our team, we wouldn't have been successful without our hard work and without the general from this wonderful Committee I 'm in front of today.

And so I want to start by just going over our fiscal responsibility here on Kaui. You know, for the past eight years, the county of Kauai has operated without issuing any new general obligation bonds. So, in fact, we spend our time trying to pay down our debt.

The fiscal discipline has not come at the expense of public services or infrastructure. We've continued to meet critical infrastructure needs while maintaining stability in county operations. So sound fiscal management and infrastructure investment can and should go hand in hand during that same time.

Over the last eight years, the county of Coia has made substantial progress in addressing its other post employment benefits obligation. We reduced our unfunded OPEB liability from approximately 147 million to $28 million in the last eight years. This improvement reflects consistent funding discipline, prudent financial strategies, and of course, favorable market conditions.

Together, these efforts have placed the Colony on a far more sustainable footing for employees, retirees and taxpayers.

In alignment with our goal of reducing debt, we dedicated nearly 13 million to pay off the state Dirf loan ahead of schedule and that loan was associated with our Limaola housing project, a project that I think all of you folks have been able to visit on one of your site visits.

This action saved the county approximately 6.4 million in interest over the life of the loan. But more importantly, it freed up the Housing Development Fund so it can be used for its intended purpose in developing affordable housing across the state of Hawaii. Turning to revenues, real property tax of course accounts for 80% of our General Fund revenue.

But our tax policy has really put the burden of taxation and revenue enhancement on non residents. So non residents pay a bulk of our General Fund through property taxes.

In fact, recently our increase in real property taxes, namely in vacation rentals, which I can stand here in high confidence, say that the county of Kauai is managing our transit vacation rental market quite fine. But our increase in real property taxes has equated to our housing fund in about $35 million in the last two years.

So we went from a housing development fund that had zero dollars and we put the property tax increase on the vacation rental market and in the last two fiscal years that has generated about $35 million that is going all towards affordable housing.

So we can confidently say that on Kaua' I, when people tell the vacation rental operators and owners that you do nothing to enhance anything on Kauai, that you folks do not contribute anything to affordable housing, our vacation rental owners on Kauai can say that may be a misconception.

We actually contribute quite a bit to to funding affordable housing on Kauai and they would be telling the God honest truth that. Since 2018 the get funding that we've been able to utilize thanks to the Legislature has gone to resurface 294 county roads which equates to about 276 lane miles.

And when you factor in the power of that General excise tax and job creation for the building trades and for our building industry, we put good use to the GE Fund and I think by the time we leave we're going to have resurfaced, I think almost all of the roads on the county of Kaua' I and we're not just talking mill and fill or patching potholes.

This is a complete strip down and rebuild from the base up that we should be able to get a lot of years of service once we're done with our time. Moving forward.

Speaking of collaboration, I think the county of Kauai is unique in the sense that we may be the only county that provides, I think a majority of our playing fields for our kif. And I really want to thank you folks for investing in both Hanapepe Stadium, Waimea, but also Vidina Stadium.

Vidina Stadium the next time you folks come. And we'll send you folks an invite when we cut that ribbon. But Vidina Stadium is really, really going to show you folks where that collaborative spirit can really resonate taxpayer dollars. And I'm excited to invite you guys over for that ribbon cutting.

But that's another area where we fell short previously. We're never able to host state track meets because our track was, I think, out of compliance. It's going to be in full compliance. The artificial turf that we've built for our kids on Kauai is going to be safer.

It's going to be more environmentally friendly because it doesn't require as much water to maintain. But I think it's something that is going to make each and every one of you folks proud that you guys funded that project. I'm going to wrap it up by just saying thank you very, very much.

You know, we're not always the Kaneoko'. I tries hard. We try really, really hard to make sure that the money that you folks invest gets spent down quickly, efficiently. But more so, we know you folks are in a between a rock and a hard place as far as revenue.

And so we wanted to make sure that we did our part by raising taxes where we could raising fees across the board, whether it was wastewater, water fees are going to be increased, DMV fees, even our golf fees, we've all increased them just to reflect the trying times that you folks are in.

So I just want to say thank you very much for making my seven plus years and going on to my eighth and final year memorable. I'm open to questions.

Thank you very much and thank you for your time. Members of the Senate, any questions? House Members, questions for the Mayor. Go ahead, Rep. Morikawa.

Thank you. Mayor. I can't go without asking you a question. Sure. However, before I do that, I want to first of all, thank you.

Oh, thank you.

District. Wait, what is it? 151615. The transfer of Hyanna beach is absolutely intelligent.

Yeah.

I know because when I worked in parks, it was under the county. Well, it was a state, and the county took it over. It was kind of bad. But this is the beginning of community stewardship, and you have become the example of how these stewardships should be. Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

Secondly, Medina Stadium. Yes. Our first Astroturf field. That is very, very precious for Kauai. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

And how fast it went up. Thank you. Now, District 17 Cook Field, also utilized heavily by the school, Waimea High School campus. Yes, thank you for that. The improvement is going to be safer for a lot of people. Tennis courts, baseball, football, what have you. Thank you for that.

Now, my question is the Lima Ola project, which is, I think, your only CIP ask.

Is that going to be matched?

Yeah.

Yes. So we, We. We do have an ask, and it. We wanted to find a state nexus that ties into a public benefit. So our. Our ask comes with a 50/50 match. So we want to make sure that we meet the state halfway.

And I mean, of course, if you want to meet us all the way and fully funded, we'll take that, too. But like I said, we're fully cognizant of how much directions the Legislature gets pulled. And so our ask comes with a 5050 county state match.

Okay, just the second question now. When will that be absolutely necessary? You know about the tight budget and such, but Limaola is expanding slowly. When is that going to be critical? When does that have to be done?

You know, I wish I brought Adam here, our housing Director, and then of course, somebody from public works.

So I cannot answer definitively, and I don't want to give you the wrong answer, but we'll send something to all the Committee Members and the Chairs on whether or not it's critical to receive funding in this go round or if it can afford to be put off and funded later. But I. Before I leave. Right.

Which is less than a year, I wanted to wrap up loose ends. But I'll get you that answer.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for being here.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any additional questions from the House. And. If not, checking in with the Senate again, anything else? Okay. Thank you very much for your time. I believe the city and county has a presentation, so we'll recess briefly to allow that to get transitioned. Recess.

Thank you.

Aloha. Just want to express our thanks. Thank you, Mayor Blangiardi, for joining us today. And whenever you're ready, you may begin.

Okay, good. Well, thank you. Good afternoon, chairs, vice chairs, and Committee Members. Really pleased to be here.

I must admit, I was getting a bit of an adrenaline build as I was waiting for my turn, and now I'm completely saddened over Mayor Kawakami's comments and the fact that the reality that, Derek, you'll be stepping down at the end of the year. It's been great working with you, man. I sincerely mean that.

I thought I would take a little bit of a different approach, if you don't mind.

Because I think that from what was stated last week at the opening of the session, with respect to the focus on cost of living in this session, that would give you some perspective on what we're doing with the city, because I believe we're completely aligned.

But in order to do that, we've got to talk about the city's operational capability and specifically on some stuff.

So I would just tell you now, going into our sixth year as mayor, I've never been more confident in not only our plan, but especially in the men and women who comprise our leadership and our cabinet, some of whom are here today, some of whom, I may ask to come up here.

But it's clear that we have good vision and we have an ability, and I think we have our priorities in place, and we have a capability of delivering on that vision.

And that's quite honestly what our days are all about, is to ensure that our vision becomes a reality because of how it will impact the people of Oahu. So I can tell you that starting last year, when we finished our first term, I said publicly that we were going to shift from planning to execution.

It took us a lot of time to try to figure out the problems that were plaguing our city. I'm going to get into that in detail, but I can tell you that six years ago, when I was running for mayor, no one ever discussed the concept of modernizing the city.

No one ever talked about the city's hiring practices or the investment, or lack thereof, in IT, and for that matter, procurement. In fact, I came out of an industry spent four decades, more than four decades in, that was driven by technology. And it was amazing to me.

The fact that the city lacked the capability that it had, which only manifests itself in a lot of frustration for the General public. And procurement is the bane of our existence internally. And I'm going to get into that a little bit.

But that lack of investment in people, processes and technology, when you start to look at the systemic operations of the city, is more than crippling. And it carries over with it a cost, a burden, if you will, to our taxpayers and the people living here. Because time is money. The frustrations were great.

There was a lot of opportunity lost. So our goal here is to, you know, drive the economy, given the resources and the capability, the size of our city, at the same time, you know, focus on lowering the cost of living. So I want to start off with our Department of Planning and Permitting.

I'm really pleased that Director Apuna is sitting right next to me. There was probably no greater barrier to entry towards an economic recovery, or for that matter, getting things done, than the challenge we faced in trying to fix the Department of Planning and Permitting, which had been long talked about, of having been broken.

In fact, I was told as a candidate that it's impossible to fix. It was the holy grail, if you will, of what needed to happen in city operations. I'll tell you right now, today, I'm extremely proud of where we are and what we've been able to do.

Our overarching goal, which I believe we'll get to sooner rather than later. We stated publicly we're going to go from a situation that had three and four years of delays for permits. I just had dinner the other night with some contractors telling me that. To where we want to get to, which I believe we'll achieve this year.

The ability to get permits, both residential and commercial, as fast as anywhere in the country. And that's a huge leap. And that came through an investment in technology, people, standard operating procedures, and having leadership that had the strength and the courage to direct that there.

So I would tell you that DPP, for us, even though we have a lot of priorities, along with housing, because they go hand in glove, are top priorities. And I'm very, very proud of what we're going to be able to do.

In fact, you know, we've embraced AI, we've embraced technology, we've eliminated the queues, if you will, the waiting periods for what it took for screening processes, what it takes now for residential permits, what we've been able to do. And I think all of this is going to lend itself to a real lowering of costs for people.

The efficiency of that is not to be lost on anybody. I could expound on that, but I have a lot to cover. So the other thing that's really high touch for us is our Department of Motor Vehicles, our Customer services Department DMV is high touch. And as you all know, we do it for the entire state.

And the ability now for people to go and get, we're still not there. We've got some major investments to make in IT for our workforce. But the customer experience has been greatly enhanced.

You know, it used to be when I was in the broadcast business, if we had a slow news day, I just would send the camera crew down to DMV and talk to all the disgruntled people who were around the building. Always made for great storytelling. It's no longer the case. We get complaints every now and then.

We're not perfect, but we've come a long way in what is something to really, you know, really benefits the public. And so at our satellite city halls, I think we've done a really good job on that to become user friendly. There's a lot going on with that. And again, ease of operation.

I hear all the time people go there and they expect it to take a long time to get the results. And they were blown away that they were out of there in 10 minutes. Procurement, you know, I wasn't really sure what that meant in the city. I knew what it meant in the private sector.

And you come in, you find out that a lot of our operations just couldn't happen on what it took for procurement. So we have really focused, we've made it. And I've got a lot of respect for Paula Youngling, who's in charge of this, but we've made it a major effort for us that we're going to.

This is probably one of the biggest goals we've had. And we're actually working with Harvard on this because we were able to win a grant before we leave. Just as I'm saying what we're doing at DPP, that we're going to fix procurement for the city.

And I can't tell you the amount of money that's going to save in operations. And that's something that's been broken for a long time. Really layered with so much bureaucracy and just really cumbersome ways of doing things, archaic, if you will. And nobody really wanted to take that on.

In fact, I'll say this now, I'm not here to denigrate anybody, because when I talk in terms of the things we're trying to fix, it goes over decades. It doesn't go over to prior Administration. For me, as an outsider coming in, the thing I found most surprising was the fact that all this stuff was deferred.

It just wasn't taken on for a long time. When I get into housing, which is a good place to go right now, and I want to go back to homelessness, I'll skip over that for a second. The city hadn't been involved in the housing business since 1998. We've had a crisis in housing, as you all know.

The Governor talked about it this morning for a very long time. Yet the city stepped away in 1998. The city hadn't even been involved in private activity bonds for 23 years. We got back into the private activity bond business, and to date we've amassed almost $971 million in what becomes low-interest financing for our developers.

If I looked at projections over the next three years, a 3% increase, it's about 450. That's over a billion dollars that the city now, in spending money in partnership with developers, can help users facilitate. We've already been able to do something.

We did 135 million at Mauna Kea Towers to ensure that that would be affordable for the next 60 years, and so on and so forth. But the fact is, we had no capability, so we had to create a Department that took a lot of work to do. And today Kevin Auger is here as our Director.

As I said earlier about my confidence and the plans that we have, more than anything, the ability to do that, especially right now as we begin to emerge in the reality of TOD and the plans that we have, which are not insignificant, they are transformative. I have every confidence in our ability to do that.

So Private Activity Bonds, Bill 7 projects are up there. You know, I think that's just such an ingenious piece of legislation that started before with the prior Administration, but we had to go through several iterations.

And I think we're on the cusp now of seeing these projects with a lot of private developers in which the city incentivizes them financially to take advantage of so many of these small lots of the city county of Honolulu alone.

There's 5,000 square foot lots, some of which have recently been developed by a developer named Paul Lamb. And it's amazing what that can do because these are all located in the heart of our city, which is great because it's all tied to the infrastructure that's already in place.

Sewer, water, electricity, along bus lines, walking distance, if you will, to whatever amenities, supermarket, schools, et cetera. That gives us a chance to reconstruct. Reconstruct to help gentrify the city and create much nicer housing. More than half of those 5,000 are probably in ghetto like conditions. I lived in one in graduate school in 1972 at UH.

It's still there today. You know what I'm talking about. Cinder block construction, three story walk ups, bad shape, not pleasant to look at, not good to live in. Want to address all of that. I think the potential of Bill 7 now that we've got things worked out within DPP could really take off.

I'm excited about that because that would just really help energize and rejuvenate our city. We're doing a lot on infrastructure. This is city's forte. We want to reduce the burden of development. We're investing monies for the first time. We recognize that responsibility.

And I wasn't going to mention the stadium but I'll talk about that because just briefly in partnership with the state, doing everything that we possibly can. Roger Babcock, he said we just moved the project up by three years to help facilitate what Stanford wants to get done and moving some pipes and stuff.

We understand that responsibility and come back to that if you have any questions on that.

But I could tell you that housing, affordable housing and what we're doing along with fixing DPP, I don't think there are two greater priorities and in fact with our success there, it's going to make a tremendous difference in the cost of living for people here. I want to talk about our homelessness.

The Governor talked this morning about the situation and how many Kalhali that he's invested in, what that looks like and what that means. We've had an incredible partnership going on. We meet weekly, I'm in attendance every one of those weeks. We have great collaboration with the Department of Health. Dr. Finkel is in there with Dr. Matsu.

Mike Lambert's in there representing law enforcement, a number of other people from the state every week. Mike Champion psychiatrist, our team working on what we're going to do. You heard the statistics this morning. At one time, not that many years ago, we were plagued with the worst homeless situation on a per capita basis.

I find it fascinating when you do a point in time count on Oahu for example, at least historically there's a new one coming up. When you look at the population of 4,500 which has been the constant, even coming out of COVID we held it in check because what we were able to do with the rent, utility money.

So in other cities homelessness spiked. During COVID we were able to distribute almost 325 million to 24,000 needy families. When Governor Ige lifted the eviction moratorium. While we were prepared to mediate, very few cases came up. And that's a really big score.

The fact that we were able to contain that, but now we're working on decreasing that number.

And that partnership has really helped us, because what the city can do and what we have done, develop a mobile crisis unit, which we call core, which consists of a group of ambulances, SUVs, we even have a bus armed with about 40 people, all of whom have been medically trained to be able to get out there in the streets to mitigate all the 911 calls that would come in when EMS would have to go out, because we already have a shortage of ambulances and to pick these people up that we needed a place to take them, which, again, was on the city.

So in the last year, we've created almost 950 beds, in fact, 265 emergency shelter beds, 310 transitional housing beds, 128 specialty treatment beds, 234 affordable housing beds where we have people taking. So we now have corps out in the street, establishing trust, being able to pick up people to mitigate demand.

That was on HPD and EMS, having places to take them in addition to the Kalhali with the state.

But where the state and our partnership really comes in, I'm so grateful for, is because the Department of Health resides in the state, the access to those monies for wraparound services, because you could do all of that, but if you're not providing appropriate care, you're not really going to treat.

So our goal is to really gain functional control over the situation. And we've come a long way.

And what's happening of late, you should be aware of this, is that because of the rulings now in the Supreme Court and some of the things that favor us, we're in the business now of being able to pick up people on an involuntary basis if we deem them to be a danger to themselves or an imminent danger to others, especially for an assessment.

Because I can promise you, when you deal with your chronic homeless, which was more than half of the homeless population, knowing full well that we get about 500 people a year flying in here.

But when you deal with your chronic homeless, all of that population, some close to 3,000 people out there, been on the streets for a long time, average years, about 10 years out on the streets, they all suffer from some form of addiction, mental illness, which we see a lot of PTSD, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, things that can be treated, but they're out there.

And then on top of that, now that we've been bringing them to our respites and giving them medical treatment, many of them are really, really sick. In fact, about 60% of them are probably what doctors would diagnose as terminal. Somewhere within two years, they're going to die.

We lose somewhere between 150 and 200 people out in the street dying. I can't tell you how many times our people have gone out to pick up somebody and they're out on the sidewalk dead. It's not easy business. But when you add it all up, though, I go back to the 4,500 people.

If you don't think about that just for a second as it relates to Oahu, and even if you double down that number, even if you said, I don't believe on one night, because I don't, you can count everybody and do the projection.

I don't know what algorithms they use, and not being cynical, but even if you doubled it to 9,000, that still represents less than 1% of the population of Oahu. Yet it's in everybody's face, and yet it's very much a top priority for us. But it's not easy.

And it takes the collaboration with the state for which we are most grateful. Because the state cannot do it itself and the city cannot do it itself. Combined, we're having unprecedented success. And for that, I'm deeply grateful. You'll begin to see the results. We've already treated last year, over a thousand people.

There's a certain amount of recidivism there, but we're getting very, very good at that. And I really believe the numbers are going to get greatly reduced. The governor's more enthusiastic and optimistic than I am about eliminating it. I've listened to his math. I want to believe that.

But as I said earlier, we're into functional control where we feel like we're on top of it and it's not on top of us. This is a perspective. Next. Public safety is without question, if there was a number one priority that transcends everything, I don't have to tell you that I'm really, really proud of our first responders.

You know, when I was in the business in television, we used to cover all these stories. And when you come to work as mayor and you begin working with these people, you begin to really feel it and see what they do and what they're willing to put on the line. So I'm feeling really good.

Search is well on the way for our new chief of police. I can't say enough about Kalani Howe, our fire chief. I cannot say enough about Jim Ireland and EMS or for that matter, our newly appointed Kurt Lager, Director of Ocean Safety Services. These people are as good as they come. They are fully committed.

And from that standpoint, we're doing everything we possibly can to make people feel safe. We're also really very much focused on recruiting, retention, operational excellence. I put a lot of that on leadership. I talk to these men all the time about that. People want to work for people that they have pride in.

When you read the exit interviews, people will tell you they don't leave their work, they leave people. So leadership is of a premium in this situation. I feel really good about where we're at right now, and I'm going to be very anxious to see who gets named the new chief of police.

The landfill, you know, this should have been done 20 something years ago compared to where we are now. So we came in. We came in knowing that the clock was ticking and nothing had been done about it. And we went through the proper due diligence, if you will.

Now keep in mind five years ago, when we began an office in January 21st, in the middle of the pandemic. But we put together a landfill Advisory Committee. We asked them to examine six sites. They came back realizing that all six sites were over aquifers. They wouldn't recommend any. And in the meantime, Red Hill happened.

And the sensitivity on water and the conversation about water and our survival about water and all of that has never been greater. And I've lived here for 60 years, so that threw a real curve because nobody wanted to listen to a landfill being built over an aquifer.

And that immediately allowed us to segue into working with the military because we really felt that they were looking for a make good based on what happened with Red Hill, especially the Navy.

We spent two years, and Mike Formby, Managing Director here, and I had the privilege of going up to Indopacom, meeting with the top guys at the time, Admiral Aguilino, now Admiral Poparo, exhausting everything that was possible. There was no options. We actually thought we might go to Waipio.

And we were already beginning and had plans on the way to rebuild Osaka Complex, another part of the island that would have probably been bigger and better.

Anyway, we struck out there and then along the way, we decided to pick a place of Wahiawa that was 800ft over an aquifer sufficiently far away from any population within all the boundaries based on the laws that were passed. And then the laws got changed on us. Goalposts got moved and they said, no, you can't do that.

Because we don't believe, despite the science of today's technology, that you could build something 800ft over an aquifer. Keep in mind Red Hill was built with 1940s technology. 100ft over an aquifer. So we got forced into.

And I hate to say this because I don't feel like I'm really reneging into a situation where we're now looking at Makahiwe Hills. We're in discussions with Campbell. That's really an extension, extension, if you will, because of the IUC line, the extension of Waimanalo Gulch, but it'll stay out in the west side.

We're in serious discussions with them. It may not be friendly. They're not really happy about that. But we need a landfill. If anybody has any questions about that, we'll talk about it. But we need a landfill. We deliver about 800,000 tons a year. It's amazing how much stuff that is.

As a matter of fact, it's amazing to me in this business of things that people don't talk about very often, but the sophistication of it is mind numbing. 800,000 tons of trash a year, 100 million gallons a day in wastewater. 100 million gallons a day in wastewater.

If you look at our sand island treatment plant that we're building out there, what that means, or for that matter, if you haven't taken a tour of Honouliuli, you should all go out and see it. Because, you know, I talked earlier about the lack of investment and where we were from, a timeline.

If we were really in now, the seventh year of the third decade of the 21st century, I can promise you that what we're doing in wastewater is definitely there, along with several other things. So it's pretty amazing what goes on, and I don't know what people would do if we weren't doing that.

The budget, look, we're really aware of. We're fiscally conservative. I want to reckon. I'll say it again. We're not going to raise property taxes. We're up against some real challenges. The collective bargaining agreement alone, increase of 55 million.

Year one, it doubles to 110, then year three goes to 160 and so on, just on the collective bargaining agreement alone. So we're going to live within our means. Andy Kawano is here, Director of Budget and Fiscal Services. I don't think the city's financial stewardship has ever been better than it is now.

We got a double A plus bond rating. We probably would have gotten a AAA, but we inherited a situation with Skyline, quite honestly, and some of the other consent decrees that probably prevented that from happening. But I can promise you that our team is fiscally conservative.

So in the midst of say we're going to get a lot of stuff done, I think you can look for our budget to remain flat, if not down this year.

Now that we've given ourselves the necessary resources to work with Skyline five years ago, if I were able to come up here and tell you, in five years we will have negotiated successfully with the FTA, who was a really turned-off partner, had not given the city any money since 2017.

In fact, I was told by the outgoing and the incoming FTA administrators, this is the worst project in America. You better get your act together. And can I see the water for a second? And everyone told us, you can't negotiate with the FTA. Not only are they upset, but they don't negotiate.

And so our methodology was really simple. How much money has already been spent? What do we have in the pipeline? Let's fix those dollars, and what can we build for that? That added up to 9.8 million billion, rather, $6 billion had already been spent, which for me was an incoming mayor I found fascinating.

How could you spend $6 billion and managed to upset just about every man, woman and child on this island? The frustration was incredible. I tell you that on the heels of having gone through eight months of zoom calls and listening to one person after another and how they felt. So Lori Kayaki has done a magnificent job.

We negotiated successfully with the FTA. They agreed to truncate the line down 18.75 miles with no financial penalty, even though that was unprecedented with the Federal Government. And at the same time, they came back to the table as a financial partner and they didn't require an eis, which everybody told us would stall us for years.

So I feel really good about that. We're now operating 83% of that line. We're now traveling from East Kapolei to Middle Street through two of the biggest employment centers. Our ridership is up at about 12,000 a day right now. I'm on record saying by the end of this year, I believe we can get to 25,000.

It's very user friendly. The experiences people have in using it is working really well. It's going to lend itself again to an efficiency and a cost of living.

The money people can save, not even having a park at the airport for employees or people just traveling, or being able to get to work, what that does,, maybe perhaps in having younger families out on the west side only resort to one car, all of that stuff. So anyway, that's just.

I could say a lot more, but they told me get like five minutes. I went over that already. I want you to have that feel because all of this is designed and aligned with cost of living. You know, the Governor talked this morning about people leaving here and giving up.

We've been very aware of that, very aware of that. I don't know the first time I used or heard the word out migration. I'm sure it was before I became mayor, but that term is almost in my daily vocabulary and all the concerns we have.

So our efforts right now is to give the city a capacity and capability she never had before to take on all this stuff in a very operationally efficient way. So in that regard, on our ask, we really need your help. We've got three bills out here. You know, we've asked before for the money.

Apparently we've not gotten it, but there's been a request to have the transfer of school lands. We really like to be able to do that, but we need some money for the lawyers, the surveyors. It's very complicated. I believe there's some hundred schools or so infected. There's a lot of land there.

We're certainly willing to work with the state. We're asking for a small amount of money to help us get that done. I mentioned IT earlier. Look, we need to get off the mainframe and onto the cloud. That's about $10 million.

There's some anecdotal there, but the sophistication of transferring in DMV, along with all the personal data as we ran into with DPP, part of the reason why we're not exactly where we want to be is the integration of all this historic data.

It's voluminous, takes time and effort, but we really think we have the capability, that we need some help. We really want to upgrade the DMV system, you know, and as I said earlier, we do it for the whole state. And so this would enable us greatly. That's an ask for 10 million.

And then on the Greenfeed proposal, you know, one of the great frustrations coming in, as I said earlier, about being involved in covering news stories and certainly was here for the various floods, was what happened to us on the Alawai flood mitigation program. And that went from a non starter five days before I was even sworn In.

In a meeting with Mayor Caldwell and the Army Corps of Engineers, telling us they were going to back out on a $350 million proposal that had gone to 650, and they said, too pricey to then getting another bite at the apple a year later.

Eighteen months later, having them come in with a price tag of 1.1 billion, we said, how can that happen? The whole thing was said 650 was too expensive. And then that quickly escalated to 11.1 billion, which took it out of the league. We decided that we can't do that.

But in all the consultations we've had with all the experts we've talked, we want to be able to do something and we can do some smaller things. And how that manifests itself remains to be seen. But we need to do something in the short term, we need to do something in the midterm.

We just can't sit here, given how much is at stake, especially with Waikiki, and not do anything. So we're asking for your help on that or an assignment. So with that, I'll answer any questions you have. I want to say it again. I've never been more confident in my time as mayor as I am right now.

We told our team we had a good year last year when we shifted into the execution mode. We have an amazing year this year. I don't care what the national narrative is. We're poised to have that here. So with that, I'll answer any questions you have.

Thank you very much, Members of the Senate, Senator Elefante, and then Senator Lee.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your leadership and to you and your team for all the work and accomplishments that you have done in your time as mayor. So really appreciate that. Two part question I have for you that's interconnected.

The first is on your PowerPoint presentation on page three, you mentioned about infrastructure and reducing the burden. Has the city explored looking at ways to offset some of those costs by providing for funding for infrastructure costs and using city resources to build that first so it's easier for developers as you do affordable or TOD housing?

I'm going to have Mike come up with us. Something we've talked about. We're investing money right up into where the stadium grounds are, but I'll let Mike talk about this because it's also critical for development.

So, Senator Elefante, thank you for that question. So we're. We're exploring the full range right now. We're looking at community facilities, district for affordable housing in larger housing projects. We also have upcoming conversations with the Stadium Authority and Stanford Car on tax increment financing, and we're looking at basically any way we can.

And then Kevin and Kat Tashner in the Department of Housing and Land Management is definitely looking at the city taking on the regulatory burden for the city's affordable housing projects. So to the extent that we can help reduce the regulatory burden by cost shifting some of that to the.

To the people that invest in those properties over the long term, or we can put in those facilities, we're doing all of the above. And if you have any other suggestions, we're happy to listen.

We left out a page here on the Villages of Kapolei Roads, and I apologize for that. I was one. I felt I'd been up here a long time. Where are you, Mike? Okay, So this is where we're really grateful in our partnership with the state.

So we're into a final MOA with the HFDC on the Villages of Kapolei. You know, we had a back and forth on what that money would be if we took over the streets and what we needed to have it so we could fix it and take care of them, because. And so it went back and forth.

And I think we're back now to where it's a $60 million agreement. And that's. I think we're going to be fine. I think the MOA is being finalized. Want to thank you for that. We were willing to do it before the number got dropped to 40 million. We couldn't handle that. Originally it was at 100 million.

I think 60 million is a good negotiated amount. The remnant parcels of Kakaako, we're working with HCDA on that, on the surveys, and, you know, we've got to figure out those remnant parcels. They're all over Kakaako. We're intending to do that. It adds to the quality of the city. And then Iwelei Properties, Ali'I Place.

You know, we're really excited about what's going to happen there. And both with the Skyline Station there, what we bought there, the potential development, I mean, I think looking ahead, the transformation of Eva Lay and what's intended will be tremendous for our urban core and for that, for living. So we appreciate that.

We know that you guys, the state would like to have Ali Place. We're really open to making a deal. We really are. It just has to be a good quid pro quo. That's all we ask. So we know the state wants Ali'I Place. Quite honestly, I'd be happy to swap it.

We just want something that makes sense for us. So I just leave you with that request, that challenge, if you will, and let's make that happen. Okay

We're gonna circle back to Senator Elefante.

Thank you, Chair Todd. And thank you, Chair Dela Cruz. The second part to the question that I have specifically deals with your permitting process.

And I know there's a speed task force, but does the city and county have a metrics or goals on how you want to reduce some of those wait times that you're processing permits as you go forward?

Yeah, well, you know, I wanted it done already by the end of this year. And Don sitting here and so did she. I can promise you that if you put it up on a matrix center, if you look at.

And I've been involved in a lot of technological integrations and stuff, you look at technology on one, what's your timeline? And you look at cultural on the other. Okay, so we're much further ahead on the technology than we are right now on the culture, which is your workforce.

I'm not saying to denigrate anybody, but, you know, when we changed our policy system, that was from 1998, you know and upgrade it, there was a lot of learning that has to take place and organizational change is very difficult.

So I think right now, you know, our timelines are, I think, for want of a better way to say it, we get better by the day. I said earlier as fast as anywhere in the country. I think we've made a lot of progress. I think if you were to talk to guys in the solar industry.

People in the Solar industry represent 60% of all of our applications. They would tell you what we've done is miraculous. We're doing much better right now on anything incoming. We can process that very quickly through clarity. And a new software thing called SIV Check. We're using AI extensively. It's cut down on the background.

So the goal is to get it down to what would you say? Non residential within two weeks. Two weeks or less. Residential, commercial, six months or less. Two months or less. How's that? That's even better.

Now, you know, honestly, I'm telling you, the delays, the cost of that, the barrier to entry on our own economic recovery post Covid of which we're still dealing with, and the cost savings on that, knowing that money, time is money is amazing. So that's pretty good. That's really good compared to where we were.

Thank you. Thank you,

Senator Lee.

Thanks, Chair. And thank you, Mr. Mayor, for all the work you guys are doing. I just want to move back just for a moment to the green fee proposal for the 2.5 million for the Alawai watershed. We haven't seen this yet.

That's 2.5 million, right?

Yeah. We haven't seen the details of any of the green fee proposals yet that the governor's including. That's yet to come. So I don't have too much detail on this. But as I understand it, this is a study that the city would be conducting, looking at sort of the full universe of potential options. For what?

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of possibilities even we've been talking with Patrick Sullivan for motion it on micro tunnels. We need to do some things and we need expert advice here on how to address this because honestly, it's five valleys with the water coming down.

There's a lot at stake and quite honestly went into this thing realizing the only way you could do this was with the Army Corps of Engineers. And now we've abandoned that because Supreme Court legislation, the Idika case, is what jacked up the price over 11 billion.

But honest, I would feel, and I do, and I speak for our team, if we were doing nothing on this, that's just waiting for something bad to happen. So we're just asking if we could do an intelligence study so we could start doing some short term and maybe midterm things.

But it's a big challenge that needs to be addressed.

Are you imagining that any of the recommendations that might come out of this in the long run would include recommendations for state to fund pieces of infrastructure or need to provide parcels or anything like that?

I think anything is possible. That's why I think we want to do the study. I don't want to go before you unless I have specifics and I don't have it. But I'm just telling you right now, we decided not to walk away on that ruling and say, well, we're not going to do anything.

Let's just hope nothing happens and we'll get out of office. That's not how we think. So we look at this maybe as a potential here to help us do a say we need expertise in order to do it. This is a very sophisticated challenge. It really is.

Absolutely. Would you guys be open to partnering with the state? Doing something like this?

Absolutely. I would hope that you feel that way. I tell you, I take a lot of pride in the fact and I speak for our entire team. I talked earlier about cross sector collaboration, that we want to be a willing Partner, you know, there's no egos here. We're just trying to get the job done.

Everything that I just talked about throughout is all about being very pragmatic on getting the city to work better and when we can collaborate with the state to make that happen, even better. Absolutely want to do that. And I would hope that anybody, everybody on our team, because I get compliments all the time, would acknowledge that.

Thanks. No, I just want to avoid a situation like we have on some of our stateside task forces where the recommendations are all the easy way out. In this case, you know, maybe the state funding the whole thing, which obviously would be difficult. So having that partnership from the beginning, I think would be really helpful.

Look, given the consequence if we, if we don't, we're willing to whatever we can within our fiscal means from the standpoint of what we're willing to invest in and collaboration to be a part. Absolutely.

Because I, you know, I don't want to sound like the harbinger of doom, but I spent enough time looking at this situation and already have seen, I mean, the Governor talked today about climate change as island dwellers. It's not even, it's not even a subject. It's a philosophy. It's an awareness. It's real for us.

And the threat of those floods. I mean, I can still remember watching the video of cars coming down Manoa Boulevard, you know, Manoa Road. I'm sorry, you know, that was and that was a 50 year stone. So.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

I know we have a couple of Senators queued up, but Members of the House, any questions before I turn it back over? Representative Oda and then Rep. Alcos and then we'll come back.

Hi, Mayor. Prior to me coming into office in 2024, I worked in Nanakuli. So I had to drive from Ewa to Nanakuli every day for almost 10 years. And we can talk about technology today regarding landfills, but I want to talk about the past, present and future impact on West Oahu communities. And what's that worth?

Landfills are often put in low income communities of color, which is exactly where it is. And oftentimes they don't have the resources or power to fight back like other communities do. What will the community of West Oahu get in return for the extension of the Waimanalo Sanitary Landfill?

To accept the health and economic impacts, you know, like lower property values.

Okay, that's a great question. And it's absolutely something we're prepared to do. I don't have that mapped out because we're still early on at the table with Campbell and the clock is ticking very fast. But definitely any expansion of Waimanalo Gauch will involve community benefits for the west side.

But honestly, we tried really hard, we tried really hard just to kind of say, no, I don't want to go into a low income community or people. We did everything in our power to avoid that. This was the absolute last request because we definitely need a landfill. So we're not doing it sort of as you suggested.

Maybe on the prior thinking we tried to avoid that. We didn't want that to seem to be the case. So now that we've been backed into it through legislation, we definitely will come up with community benefits. That's the best I could tell you. We don't have that mapped out yet.

We're probably going to have to condemn the land. I can tell you right now, Campbell already told me we're not going to help you on this. Okay. So it's not going to be fun, just so you know. Does that answer your question? I promise you we will.

Rep. Alcos. And then we have Senator Moriwaki and Senator Kim.

Thank you. Mayor. About a year ago you took over from the Navy to the city the 400 acres out at Kailailoa and it's project for develop for sports and recs. What are your plans? How quick can we get that built?

I know. Where's the racetrack, sir? Is that what you're asking me? Where's the race? We were just out there again the other day. Boy, where's Michael? Look, we the first thing was to get the acreage right.

It'd been talked about for over 20 years and we got that and then we walked through it and we carved it up and I'll let Mike talk a little bit about that because he's really up on this. A lot of text going on and we just met last week. Were you in the room?

No, you weren't in the room. We had a lot of guys. Were you in that room? I was in there last week. A lot of guys in there. We really want to start to that's exactly why we got it.

You know, I was surprised as an old coach how short we are in fields in different recreational parks, especially on the west side for all the housing that's gone on and all the population. It's amazing. That was our incentive in wanting to get those lands to turn them into recreational facilities. Mike?

Sure.

Thank you.

Rep. Thank you for the question. So I think all of you know, we did get 400 acres from the Navy, and it has to be used only for recreational purposes. The vast majority of that land basically saved 23 acres across the street, is undergoing a study for toxins and contaminants.

And they haven't even started the actual study yet. They're still doing the planning. So for the larger portion of the lands at Kalailoa, we're not able to even disturb the surface soil.

But for the 23 acres that are across the street, we went back to the Department of Parks, National Park Service, and they gave us the right to make interim use of those 23 acres of for a racetrack. So that was great news.

And what we had the meeting that mayor talked about last week, we met with the community and what we proposed is we're not experts on racetracks and we wanted to find a way to get that land out to a community group that understands how to operate, Fund and make them for the benefit of the community.

As far as whether it's a drag race or whether it's some sort of go karts for the Keiki or whether it's an oval track, what would work on 23 acres, given the size of the land? And let the community tell us what would work and then we'll go forward and work with the community.

And we understand there's some pushback from people that think the city should be driving this versus letting the community help us, but we disagree on that. We actually think the community can help us dictate the best way to get that out to the community as quickly as possible.

Whereas when we take stuff in house, it becomes very bureaucratic, very regulatory, takes forever to get things done. So that's what we're looking at right now. And Rep.

If I can just add, Mayor and I have talked about this on the landfill, part of the process will be having community benefits discussions about how we can also share some of the cost and expense of building the landfill with the community to make sure that they have betterment for the community.

So we're just not there yet, but we've talked about that.

Thank you. Thank you. We have Senator Moriwaki, Senator Kim and Senator DeCoite, Senator.

Yeah, I don't know, Roger. She's asking what collaboration already. The only thing I know about collaboration had to do with Genki Balls getting thrown in the Ala Wai. But you know, the flood mitigation thing was on a different nature versus cleaning up the Ala Wai. Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. Well, Mike says he has an answer, Senator. So.

You know, Senator Moriwaki, thank you for the question. So we're familiar with the legislation that you're proposing that allows us to get access to those, those rivers even when they're not city, city owned. So that we can clear some of the trash and debris out of those rivers because they end up washing down into the.

The Ala Wai Canal. So we're familiar with that.

The "green fee" proposal that we're putting forward starts from the smallest things that we can do like that, to reforestation, to all kinds of work that might happen, to using the Ala Wai Golf Course as a detention basin, all the way up to looking at micro tunneling, which was proposed in the past by Oceanit, all the way up then to working with the Army Corps on a systemic project for the canal.

Just today, Senator Schatz's office called and notified us at the Army Corps because word of deadlines are due on January 30th. They're going to continue their scoping.

And what they're going to try to do now is actually focus on the lower watershed, because it's in the upper watershed up in Manoa, where you have all the takings that drove the cost of the project up. So they're going to be looking at the lower watershed for solutions.

And the purpose of our proposal is to start doing something. The last conversation we had with the Army Corps, they now recognize that the cost of projects have become so large that you never get them off the ground.

And what they asked us to do is start focusing on little things that you can do along the way that help the problem, maybe 10%, 20%, but they help the problem versus waiting until you have $11 billion to do a full project.

And the last thing I'd like to add on that is that after we finished the Ala Wai reengineering study, the storm drain study came in for Waikiki, and I hope all of you had a chance to review that. It was done up at SOEST.

And that study made us realize that you can't just look at the Manoa Makiki side of the Ala Wai Canal problem. You have to look at Waikiki as well, because the storm drains, 95% of them are underwater during a storm and they're not going to drain.

So the "green fee" proposal is to look holistically everything from Waikiki all the way to the watershed.

So it would be a comprehensive plan. So that what. There are small projects with the state, with the Department of Transportation, College of Engineering at UH, that that could be incorporated so that we collaborate on what's going forward and having a good plan before we start any work.

Agree with that and we're hoping the consultant that we hope to get on board, we're hopeful, is a consultant that has worked with SOEST and has worked with the Army Corps and has worked with community groups and can make sure that the plan is holistic and we have the most community participation and buy in.

Is the Army Corps. I think it was $300 million or how much was it way back when? Is that still on the table or?

It is, but as Mayor said, it went from $300 plus to $600 plus to $1.1 billion. And then the Ideker decision came out. When the Ideker decision came out, they said any taking of private property, even if minimal, like 3 inches of water on somebody's land, becomes a taking.

And that's what drove the price up for the takings of all the real estate throughout the entire watershed, upper watershed, lower watershed, to $11 billion. They're now restudying that. But part of it is get out of the upper watershed and focus on the lower watershed.

So. But there's still Federal Funds that are on the table that you could use? No.

That's not a funded project. The only thing that's been funded to date is the engineering study. And they have enough money to continue the scoping, but they don't even have enough money now to do a new re-engineering study once they scope it.

Thank you, Senator Kim.

Thank you. Aloha, Mr. Mayor.

Sarah.

Good afternoon. You know, I. I know we're all focused a lot on affordable housing, affordable units. And the Governor certainly brought that up. And I'm happy that the private developers have been setting aside. So we've been doing a good job in getting these units, especially the condo units.

However, my understanding is many of these affordable units, designated affordable units are just sitting there because the prices are high. I know for a fact they running like for one bedroom, $487,000 and up. And so it's not really that affordable if you're making, you know, $18 an hour.

Which I know some of these people that are trying to get the units. So in addition, they might qualify for the unit. But then they go to get the loan and they can't qualify for the loan. So I hope that we can take another look at that.

The other thing is the 30 year buybacks or 30 year restrictions that is on it and whether or not the assessment value for property taxes will take into consideration some of these restrictions because for a 30 year that somebody's, pretty much their whole life at that age.

So is there something the city can do as we look at these units?

Full disclosure. Excuse me. You know, I already asked my assistant to arrange a meeting for you with you next week. I'm going to bring Andy Kawano over, Director of BFS and Mike with me. I'm not a tax. I want to be clear, I'm not a tax expert. It's not anything that. But we've got some very good people.

I think we want to look at everything. I mean it in all sincerity, whether we're talking about community benefits for people on the west side to what we can do. You know, look, we're using a lot of city land right now, trying to keep the cost of the land down for these projects.

I think Kevin's probably working on some 13 or 14 projects. We've got a lot of people subscribing. We're trying. So by taking out the land out of it, dealing with these guys on construction materials and we're trying to do everything we can so we get to being affordable. And I understand that $457,000 is not affordable for ownership.

The units are available there, but they're not being bought up or not being taken because of that. And then on top of that, you know, once they do get the loan, they got to pay the loan and then the property taxes, so many of the people in that category not going to be able to sustain the payment.

So I just hope we consider because you know, you know, we're doing all that we can to provide the units, but we forget that the day-to-day living and the day-to-day operation of that unit then becomes a burden on these people.

When I think about the ALICE Report and 60% of people live paycheck to paycheck and 35% within that. It wouldn't take very much for them to be out in the street. It's that fragile. Yeah, we're really concerned about that.

The numbers continue to be what they are and we're doing whatever and anything we possibly can to hold those numbers down, including taking advantage of all the affordable housing requirements and anything that can possibly do to make it easier for these guys to build.

With respect to some of the things that we eliminated, with respect to parking stalls needed and other kinds of things. We're not going to build slum housing. You know, we want to have safety, but at the end of the day, I'm always amazed at what the numbers come up to be.

Yeah, these units are nice, but you also got to think if we want people to move up, if they start at a one bedroom and they have a family, now they want to move to a two bedroom, they're stuck for 30 years. So there's no way for them to have to.

Yeah, I don't like that. I. In fact, there was a couple of projects done like that and it turned out they weren't being bought. I think the one in Kapi'olani Boulevard next to the Radisson, what that project is called. Right. They did that. It didn't work. They didn't get one. They didn't sell one of them.

I guess they're going to convert them to rentals. But that doesn't make any sense. The whole idea is getting the housing ladder, you know, and, and, and try to build some equity and, and move up.

So if we can look at that.

Be happy to look at it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Senator DeCorte. And then I'll turn it over to the House and see if we have questions.

Thank you, Chair. I have a. Follow up. Yeah? Am I here? Okay. Aloha, Mayor. In 2020, you were elected, you made a promise to my community. No more landfills in Waiʻanae. In 2024, you continue that promise to my community. No more landfills in Waiʻanae.

I understand due to the establishment of Act 73 and Act 225 that that makes it almost nearly impossible to identify a new landfill spot. However, the Land Use Commission deadline to cease operations of Waimanalo Gulch is March 2, 2028. Will you keep your promise to my community, the residents of Wai'anae to end the landfill in Wai'anae?

I told you and I'll say it again, we wanted to maintain that promise. All the rules got changed on us, not just with 73. And so it makes it. Other than the expansion of Waimanalo Gulch and where we are, there is no other place.

So that's why answer that question earlier about if we're going to do that, then there's going to be community benefits. When I made that promise, we sincerely made it. I just took you through the whole chronology of things.

We, for the Landfill Advisory Committee, aquifers, the impact of Red Hill and how that changed the dynamic. To what we then did and what we selected in Wahiawa with Dole had to say, we did town halls out there and everybody said, no, you can't build one 800ft over.

I have a world expert here with me in Dr. Roger Babcock and we know what the technology, what we were prepared to do. We were actually going to build a hazardous waste site out there. We're going to double the liner. We haven't even had one leak in 35 year old technology at Waimanalo Gulch.

That was then compared to what we could do today and nobody would buy it. So where are we going to go? And the point is we need a landfill. That's why I brought up the 800 tons. 800,000 tons. So it's not about my promise.

I can tell you we're being forced into something. So now we'll try to do as best by the community as we possibly can because we. Believe me, we were so close on Waipahu with the Navy, I thought we had it. And then for national security reasons, they pulled it out.

I don't know what else I can tell you.

Thank you. I believe that you had shared with Representative Reyes Oda that you would be willing to condemn property for the next landfill location. Is that something you would consider pursuing?

We talked about condemnation. I think that's part of the thing we're looking at with respect to Makaiwa Hills. It's the aquifer issue. I don't know where we condemn property that's not over an aquifer.

If you have some sites you'd like to recommend, I'd be most interested in having that conversation because most likely we're facing condemnation even with the plan that we have.

Sure. Last comment, Chair. I'll wrap up by saying thank you very much, Mayor, for your leadership. I do want to pivot and mahalo you for the extra officers that you had put in District 8. We currently have more manpower with boots on the ground.

As far as HPD, you have also helped us to bring school resource officers into our schools. Our schools are safer. Thank you for the safety and sound program and just thank you for all that you're doing on the Wai'anae Coast.

But please know that I do need to continue to put you in the hot seat when it comes to the landfill. So, I appreciate you.

I don't mind being in the hot seat. If we had a solution, I would love it. I've been so frustrated over this. I welcome the ideas because honestly, we exhausted it. And while you're at it.

I am proud of what we've done out there and I am proud that we finally got the police station under development and we're going to. I didn't mention it, but one of the more successful tools that we work with regarding homelessness is HONU. Our HONU project here right now, the tents in Moiliili at the old stadium park.

But everywhere we've gone, it's been great for transitional housing and we're now going to invest in a permanent one. We're going to 2, $5 million investment. Governor and I, we're going to split it 50/50. Permanent one though, to help us out on the west side. It'll be out there the whole time.

It's been great at placing people. Gives us a chance to really work with local families as well. So we've been very sensitive. I would tell you, you would think I was born in Wai'anae, even though I know, you know, I wasn't at the passion we've put into this to try to do right by the people out there.

I can promise you that.

We appreciate you, Mayor. Mahalo. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Rep. Yamashita. You have questions?

Good afternoon, Mayor.

Good afternoon, Senator.

Mine is more a technical question. So you said that you were in support of the tax increment financing. So I would assume that, and correct me if my assumptions are incorrect, but I would assume that it's for projects that may be along the TOD route, specifically maybe the Aloha Stadium project.

I also said yes. I also said-

Okay, so. So my understanding is that it probably will be for infrastructure and infrastructure needs to be paid for up front. Tax increment financing is the city keeps the base of what you're collecting now. In the case of Aloha Stadium, it's state land, so it's zero.

And then the improvements is what you're going to be taxing to fund this tax increment financing. So because infrastructure is on the front end and the development of the project won't happen years out. Mechanically, is the county going to front this, the debt service on this?

Yeah, you know that part I don't know, Andy. I know Mike want to come up, but look what I'm interested in and if that's an option and several developers and Mike's got an answer for that, he'll talk to us about that. Is any and every new idea that we could bring it to being to.

Help this financing issue. Right. Specifically, just how is it, how is it mechanically going to work?

So Rep. I do want to correct something that you said. Respectfully, I did not say that the city is in support of tax increment financing. Not that philosophically we're not. But Corporation Council has advised the city that it is a constitutional issue that that requires some correction before we can do that.

But we are still looking at all kinds of alternatives. And Roger Babcock can update you on what the city is doing on the wastewater infrastructure, because we're currently working on a project to facilitate the wastewater challenges on the Aloha Stadium property.

We're working, but basically it's state property and we can only use our CIP money on city and county lands. So we cannot fund an infrastructure project on state lands without an ownership interest in it for the tax increment financing. I agree with you. Same for the Community Facilities District.

It's how you program the money that you're going to collect over time for the project that you're going to undertake. And I think the infrastructure has to go in first, so I understand that.

Yeah. So I'm just still curious on how that going to work.

I want you to hear from Andy. As I said, sir, you know, I'm not the tax guy, but I am open to any and all ideas. So I was aware of what Corporation Council said, but that doesn't mean, you know, we can't examine something. Andy. Andy Kawano Director of Budget.

Andy Kawano Director of Budget and Fiscal Services. Representative. I don't have anything counter to what you stated, you know, in terms of timing, because you're right.

When you do tax increment financing, you know, you set the base and then the increment in the taxes that can be collected is used to either pay directly for improvements or to do debt service. But typically for us, the use of debt service would have to be on our own property.

So everything that Mike said is also upfront and accurate. I think we will continue to study TIFs, but it has to be used in the right circumstances. Mike mentioned Community Facilities districts. We are looking at that as well, but that's more of an assessment directly on a property owner. So it's different.

So we're looking at everything as the. Mayor stated, but we have to use the financing tool in the right situation.

Yeah, Community One is what you guys did on Lewis Street. So that was also a possibility. But yeah, because I don't know how mechanically that's gonna work. And I appreciate you looking at all the possibilities to move things forward. Can I follow up again? Thank you.

So in General, and this is kind of a statement to all the mayors. And I don't know if they're still here, but in General, I think I appreciate what mayor stated that, you know, they're weighting their property taxes on non residents and I think that should be a strategy that we should be doing.

But at the end of the day, when we're trying to build housing infrastructure, one of the things that is clear to me is that at some point in time, the state and county decided to stop funding infrastructure.

And you know, with all due respect, and I know you guys are building the Honolulu and you're building that out and that's fine, but we started making the developer pay for all these different things and we created impact fees. And today my understanding is impact fees are close to 27% of the housing cost.

And pre 1990s government used to pay for infrastructure and we didn't put it on the developer who passed it on to the cost of housing. Is there a willingness for the counties to start looking into taking on that responsibility and shifted. Right.

Once we, once we made the developer pay for infrastructure, all they did was make the housing more expensive. And then in many cases, especially on the Big island, we ended up with spot zoning and not clustering development.

You know, I'd love to say yes to that, but the fact of the matter is money is finite. And at some point if you say you're going to do that, then you have to raise property taxes on the other side because.

Well, I'm just saying that this is how we used to do it before. Yeah. And we stopped. Right. And so. And I think that was a turning point of when we mandated affordable housing and with mandates, we came up with all these kind of different subsidies.

With different subsidies, we came up with all these requirements that you had to do, and we just made it more and more difficult when in my opinion, the way we did it before was kind of working.

So I'll take that as your editorial comment and I'll tell you another one I didn't really belabor. Is part of our problem is we're so damn overregulated and a lot of our efforts here we're going to make is about deregulation. I talked about the things we're breaking down.

You talked about regulation earlier and I appreciate all of that and I believe that's part of the solution. But I'm talking about building infrastructure.

I understand that, but I would just tell you that there are rules for everything. It seems. That's what I'm trying to tell you. You can't isolate it. Because every time we start to solve a problem, because that's what we do, we try to understand the problem. Our methodology is really simple.

First acknowledge the problem, then understand it and develop the best solution from that understanding and then execute, make the decision. I'm just telling you there are rules on every one of these things. To just say, put stuff in place, that's maddening. That's what we're trying to, we're trying to deregulate.

Do you hear a report alone speaks to that. So maybe you could get there if you didn't have all these other hurdles to get over. And that's what we're trying to take a look at.

I'm not saying that any of these things can be done overnight. I'm just saying there's a willingness to work towards how we used to fund infrastructure.

There's got to be a better, let's put it this way, there's got to be a better way. And I think that's what we're trying to figure out. And as I listen to the Governor this morning, he's trying to say the same thing.

We've got to rethink a lot of stuff and we've got to stay open minded enough to be able to embrace change and new ideas. And I'm open to anything that's going to work.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair Dela Cruz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I know the stadium authority has been working with the city, but on the Senate side we haven't got a clear answer as to what the sewer capacity is or nasaid. And so therefore we don't have a real number of how much housing we can build.

Yeah, I don't know what the status is because we haven't heard back from the stadium authority yet.

I want to ask Dr. Roger Babcock to come up here because he's our expert on sewer capacity. If you don't mind, Senator.

Yeah, thanks, Senator. Roger Babcock, Department of Environmental Services so we've been working closely with, with the state, with NASAD. We have a series of projects to increase the capacity for the sewers that service that area. So as you're probably aware, the stadium is at the far end of our Honouliuli EWA beach collection system, that sewer basin.

So there's a lot of pipe and infrastructure between there and we have a series of 10 projects on the books that are part of our capital program that are all in the, that are all in the CIP program right now. The existing capacity is the same as a 50,000 foot, 50,000 seat stadium.

That is the existing capacity and not really any more than that at the, at the current time. So the series of projects are underway and programmed. The first one is a realignment of a forest main. There's a pump station right at the stadium.

And we've accelerated that to be able to move that sewer off of the stadium grounds, the state property and into Salt Lake Boulevard to facilitate the first stage of the NASAD development project.

So overall, current estimates are that the sewer infrastructure upgrades, which are not just for NASAD, they're for the entire, that entire side of the sewer shed is close to $800 million. That's been programmed for that.

So I guess when all those projects are said and done, you know what the density capacity could be for NASAD.

So from what we've been involved with over the years with the NASAD planning, there'll be capacity for what we've been informed as what's planned. That has changed over time and so we're not sure exactly what, what is being requested at this time.

We're just trying to figure out, is it 10,000 units of homes in addition to the mixed use, is it 7,000 homes, condos? Is it 12,000? We're not. I don't know that.

Yeah, I don't know that number. So we, we generally don't build the build capacity for a certain number. It's based on the, whatever is in a approved plan that for the development, the number of units, then we make sure we have capacity for that.

So I can't give you an exact number of what the capacity is, but the plan is we'd provide capacity for the NASAD project.

So the approved plan right now has how many units?

So yeah, unfortunately, I don't know exactly what the approved plans are right now.

And then I'm not sure who would answer this, but I know on the mayor had on your slide the villages of Kapolei and it seems like the city and the state have been working on that for quite, quite some time. Is it how many years.

Asking how many years have we been working on the villages of Kapolei?

Well, I think prior to the mayor and our time in office, but we have a fully drafted, I believe, final MOA with HHFDC today to be executed. We wanted to actually execute it before session, but it's ready to be executed and then we're going to.

I'm sorry, you know how long we've been the city, not, not in your Administration and the current HFDC, state and city in general. How long have we been trying to figure this out? 30 years.

Long time. But I don't have an exact year. It began before our time in office.

It must be somewhere around 30 years. But the city was charging property taxes to all those residents? That's correct. Even though the state or the residents had to pay for all those improvements?

That's correct. But, Senator, the argument would be made that the state knew from the beginning that it needed to build the infrastructure in accordance with the city standards, and it did not do that. And that's the ongoing challenge that we have with. With developers. And I get that.

So if it was 30 years that it was built, is it the standards from 30 years ago or is it the standards now? And so I'm not sure I appreciate that in the infrastructure. That's why I'm asking all these questions. No, I appreciate that.

Yeah. So, Senator, we watched the meeting with DHHL, and between the time that that hearing happened, we went to every single Department and asked them whether or not we move the goalpost on the standards for the city, accepting dedication, and the answer was zero. We do not do that.

The last MOA that was sent to DHHL was in 2022 from the city, and it was never returned. So Don Takauchi Oppuna can come up here and tell you what DPP does, but we went to DDC, we went to DFM, we went to Border Water Supply, we went to EMV, and we do not do that.

We don't make you comply with 2016. And when 2016 comes and you say, here's our infrastructure, then we say, well, now it's 2020. We don't do that.

Okay, so the villages, the Kapolei standards are going to be from when it was built.

I. I don't know, Senator. That's way before our time. I can't tell you. I just can tell you that from the day the mayor came in, that.

Means you're going to use the standards of when it was built.

Yeah, I'm just. Senator, all I can tell you is from the day the mayor came in, we started discussions to accept that infrastructure. And the MOA basically says we accept it as is, so maybe the DPP Director can try.

So if it was built 30 years ago, which year standards are we using?

I can't speak specifically to villages of Kapolei, but I can tell you the process that the city in general uses, particularly with DHHL. So.

No, I'm just trying to figure out if it's made clear that you don't move the goalposts, then I would just assume that the answer would be yeah, we're using the standards from 30 years ago because that's when it was built. But I haven't gotten that answer.

So it seems to be the case. I agree. I think that what we're saying is that generally when there's an agreement that there will be dedication over to the city that it's the standards at the time of that agreement.

So again, I don't know the specifics of Villages of Kapolei, but that's the General practice between the state and the city if it is agreed upon.

So you're saying there's a difference between when it's built and the time you sign the agreement.

It's when for the city subdivision process. It's at the time that there's an agreement between the state and the city about the project.

So in Villages of Kapole there was never an agreement for the last 30 years until now.

Again, I don't know the specifics about Villages of Kapolei. We'd have to look at that.

But I'm just trying to get a clear understanding as to when, which year standards you use. Because if not, the state has to keep putting in the money to upgrade the standards.

Yeah, thanks, Senator. So I know specifically for wastewater and we've accepted the sewer system there. So our rule is that when the plans are approved. So that has to do with when they get the permits, so whatever was in effect.

So that's you, but DPP saying it has to be a development agreement or some kind of agreement?

Yeah, I can only speak about the sewer portion. That's the way we do it.

So does that mean the city's just going to take in the agreement? The city's going to take Villages of Kapolei as is or are they expecting other improvements to be made?

There's no tell as is and that was just discussed by Dean and our staff last week. No tell. There are sidewalks, there are planning strips that have non conforming trees and uses that are pushing up the asphalt. All of that is being accepted by us as is.

Okay, so the state doesn't have to put any more money for this agreement to happen.

We've agreed on the amount that's going to be paid over time. The money that comes to the city goes into the CIP for Villages of Kapolei.

Okay, so how much are you expecting.

From HH is 60 million over six years.

And that 60 million is to do.

What is to Improve the infrastructure in the villages of Kapolei. And the estimate was 80 to 100 million plus.

Okay, I'm just not clear then. Is that still on which year standards are we using?

Yeah, I think it's. Senator, it's a great question and I don't know that I completely understand it, but what I do believe is this. Once there is an executed memorandum of agreement between the parties whereby the city agrees to accept the infrastructure, it's as of that time, it doesn't continue to move after the memorandum is signed.

There was no memorandum with the villages of Kapolei until this year. And we're not making them go back and make things conforming, we're just accepting them because it's been going on for too long.

Do you know why there was no agreement until this year, even though was built 30 years ago?

I believe there were two agreements. There was an agreement with ENB on wastewater and there was an agreement with Border Water Supply on potable water. The rest of it I can't explain.

Okay, so can you guys outline what those, what those improvements are?

Oh, it's in the agreement. I'll be happy to see if you want to see the draft before it's signed. I'll send it over tomorrow or today. It's in the draft agreement, everything. I don't believe we've left anything out.

Okay. It'd be interesting for us to get some kind of chronology because then that way if we can get a more precise and consistent process, then we can close all of these things where we're waiting for city dedication and if we can get a more universal price of what it's going to cost us. Yes.

And then we can just be done with it and move on.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

May I follow up?

Yeah, go ahead and.

Okay, thank you. My understanding is that villager Kapolei, it was an evolution because it wasn't built all at the same time. And that's why it kept changing.

But you know, at the same time it's very frustrating for the state when that number keeps changing, when there's an agreement at the beginning, but when they add or they do some more, then they change the standards. And I think that was the evolution that was problematic.

You know, it's not a small project as I understand it, and I might be wrong, but as I understand it in linear feet, the villages of Kapolei, the streets equate to 50 miles of streets.

I think it went back from the, you know, as the evolution changed, it changed the first part also. And that's what was frustrating. Ok, Thank you.

Senator Moriwake.

Maybe this is for Director Babcock, but. But this goes back to Senator Dela Cruz's question. On the stadium property, we were told that there is 98 acres of property there and that there could be more housing to be built. But we were told that because of the capacity, where there's a sewer capacity could only build 4,500.

But you're telling us that if we told you we wanted to build 10,000 or 15, you would look at the capacity and be able to tell us that, you know, what it would take to have that capacity. And a timeline.

Yeah, we can evaluate for any capacity number that's given to us, but I don't know the answer until we do that analysis.

So if you were told we'd want to build 15 or 20,000 units on the property, you would be able to calculate out what that capacity would be needed and the cost and you could do it?

That that's correct, yes.

Senator, I. The qu. To me the question is right on point. We proposed a study two years ago that the city wanted to do, working with the state that would be a scaled study of capacity needs and infrastructure capacity.

And we wanted to start, let's say at 2,000 units and then 4,000 units689 all the way up, 20,000, whatever units, so that we could project ahead of time what the capacity would be as the developers were able to produce the units.

And unfortunately the council tied it to matching state funds and there were no matching state funds. So that study has not commenced. But we still believe that's the appropriate study because we don't know today how many units are going to be built on the stadium property, but we should be able to project.

I think if you said 2000 a day, we'd say we have capacity, but at some point we may not and we need to be working towards the increase in capacity. But it takes a study by both the state, who is going to be responsible for developing the units, and the county who's responsible for the infrastructure.

And to the extent that you can help us support that, we would appreciate it. Because we need to know that.

Yes, because there is 98 acres there and if we're not using all of that and we're saying we need affordable housing that would be helpful to have a plat or housing. It would be a plan of what the increment would be.

So Mike, how long does the study take?

I'm sorry, Senator, I didn't hear the question.

The study. How Long does it take?

I don't have an estimate, but I would say a year is a good time frame because I think a lot of the work was done by the TOD task force and Office of Planning and our consultants. I just think somebody has to look at the big picture, sit down with the developers.

Look, looking at, they need a ceiling increase of $50 million. Right.

So I'm uncomfortable with giving them that increase until we have all these, I get issues resolved because if not, we're going to build a stadium and then we're not going to take care of these other issues that we're all talking about that we all saying that we have to address.

So if I want to align the increase of the, of the $50 million to some of these more fundamental issues so that they're all connected, I get that. We support that. How long is the study going to take and what's the estimate on the study?

Yeah, so I think we at the time we put in 2 million to council, we had it funded on our side and then the funds lapsed because there were no state matching. But I think, Senator, I'd like to have some time to talk to EMV and get back to you because to me the request is logical.

We all need to know what infrastructure is relative to the build out. I can get that to you.

Okay, so the cost, the total cost of the study and then the length. Of the study we'll do. And then who, who, when you propose the study, is that something that the city, who does the RFP? Is it you? Is it us?

The city? Was the city proposed to do it the first time. It was just a matter of match. Council put a match from the state on our, on our funds so we never got to use our funds.

Okay, and when you asked for the match, which agency did you go to?

I believe we worked through the Governor's. I can't remember, Senator, but we could not find matching funds at the time. I think we worked through.

DOD counsel.

No, I'm drawing a blank here today. But we tried every way we could to find matching funds. It was the way the proviso was written on our funds that made it very difficult for the state to match.

Okay, I'm not sure. You know, I don't want to hold the rest of TOD up because of the stadium. But what I think we need to probably do is the exact process, process you, you described we should do for all the TOD because if not, we're not going to.

I mean we got to figure out sewer capacity and we have dirf. We have rental housing. So we have pockets of money that we can actually start to build infrastructure. But we don't know how much capacity there is, how much money we have to put in there so we can get to the point of housing.

I don't want to oversimplify anything. These men are far more expert.

But as I look at it, since I'm familiar with that site going back to when we built the stadium, as Dr. Babcock said today, the only infrastructure in there right now on state land is enough for that stadium, which was barely bathrooms and water fountains, you know, and showers.

At the end of the day, 25 acres is being allocated for Stadium 73 for housing development. I would just think, sir, in order to see that someday realize whatever the timetable is, 20, that's going to be massive. And I think we need to be approaching it that way early on if that's ever going to be realized.

Because if there's nothing there, and that's what's envisioned with, which is totally different than Aloha Stadium with showers and bathrooms and drinking fountains, there's going to have to be a significant undertaking beyond probably what a lot of people even will consider in order.

We could try to figure out how to support the original effort. But I'm not sure where we would. Where the funding would go to. That's why I asked, which agency did you talk to?

Okay.

Senator. When the mayor was speaking, it jogged my memory about. About the way we wrote our funding. We asked for the consultant to analyze three specific communities. West Oahu. The stadium. It was West Oahu. It was the stadium and it was Evely.

And the consultant was going to look at each one of those and try to do the plan of capacity versus build out and what it would cost to get there along the way. So we can revisit that again. I'll send you the information you asked for.

Okay. And then if you can just go back to figure out which agency that was that would actually provide the match. I don't. I don't know who you talk to. I don't who you talk to.

Good. Do we have additional questions from the Senate?

Low tech.

Thank you. I was asked by a constituent whether or not rail passes and bus passes were interchangeable. If you buy a bus pass, can you use. They are. Yes.

Hello. Card. Same thing. Get on and off the. Yes. In fact, you can go on Skyline and if you return within two hours, it's that one fare to our courtesy too. You could travel like that.

So there's a time limit for.

Well, I'm saying you could. You time limit in a sense that if you bought your, your whole car, you got on Skyline and then this just went to a place and you came back, it would, it would be, you wouldn't even have to pay that additional $3 to come back.

What about monthly passes where the students who have to get. Catch a bus and then get on the rail?

Well, that's all one. It's one price to go. Let's say I'm taking Skyline from Kapolei. I'm going to go to the university. It's $3. It's one way. But you're not going to come back in two hours. I'm saying.

Okay, but there's no monthly pass.

No, there are, there are monthly passes and I'm not, I don't know the price on that, but there are discounted monthly passes, yes.