Simplifying Permitting for Enhanced Economic Development (SPEED) Task Force

Welcome, everybody, to Simplifying Permitting for Enhanced Economic Development Speed Task Force. My name is Representative Gregory Illagon. I'm your Chair. Today is Wednesday, 05/27/2026, at 10:05 AM, and we are here in Conference Room 325 at the State Capitol.

We are gonna first say hello to all our members in Zoom, and let's kick it off to any, any state agency. If you could please state your name, your title, and organization, and we will go down the line. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Jerry. This is Andrew Okabe from the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. I'm an engineer here at the commission. Also joining me is Anand Samtani, our Interim Chief, Chief of Research and—Policy and Research. Sorry.

He is on the call as well.

Perfect. Thank you.

Good morning, Martin Ansellini at HCDA. Ryan Tam, Director of Planning and Development, may be joining later.

Thank you. Go ahead.

Lindsay Apperson from Gov's Office, filling in for Cameron Deptula.

Alright. Go ahead.

This is Brian Lee, Chair of the State Land Use Commission.

Thank you. Go ahead. Let's just go on to anyone else who is a member of the task force.

Brian Boney. No title. No agency.

You're Brian, you're the new homeowner? Thank you for being here.

Go ahead.

No. Yes. That's, that's it.

Hello. Hi, everyone. This is Jessica Puff, Administrator of the State Historic Preservation Division.

Thank you. Next.

Morning, everyone. This is Liolen Escalona. I'm from the County of Kauai Building Division.

Thank you. Next.

I'll go. Lance Nakamura with—I'm the Assistant Administrator for DSA Public Work to the County of Maui, sitting in on behalf of Jordan Molina, Director of Public Works.

Thank you. Next.

Neil Tanaka, County of Hawaii, sitting in for Aaron Spielman.

Thank you. Next.

[Unintelligible]

Heather Kimball, County of Hawaii, council member.

Thank you, Heather. Next.

Anant Sipani, Public Utilities Commission.

Thank you. Next.

Morgan Gerdel with AI in Hawaii, representing ArcGix.

Thank you. Next.

I believe HGA is here. Sheryl? Also, I—go ahead, Sheryl.

Hi. Hi. It's Sheryl Abellanoso with HGA, Union Agent.

And then, Anna is representing Senator Hashimoto.

Hi. This is Anna. Senator should also be joining today.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in Zoom? Alright. Thank you, everyone. Because we follow Sunshine, we have to make sure all the members are introduced in Zoom and and making sure that everybody has been accounted for.

And before we get into the members here and the good part is that we all signed in, and we don't have to introduce ourselves. And we can skip that process. But before we go into our agenda items, I just wanna read out, for those on Zoom, please keep yourself muted and your video off while waiting to testify. And after your—and after your testimony is complete, the Zoom chat function will allow you to chat with the technical staff only.

Please use the chat only for technical issues.

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Alright. Well, thank you, everyone, for being here. We are gonna go down to our agenda item. And before we do that, I want to open up testimony from the public for our first item, which is the previous meeting minutes. Is there anyone in the public wishing to testify?

Alright. With no public testimony, the testimony is now closed. We are gonna take up the previous meeting minutes. Is there any members here wishing to speak on the minutes? Right.

With no further discussion, we're gonna file the previous meeting minutes. We're gonna move on to our next item. It's the chair's report on the Speed Task Force. We're gonna first take up public testimony. Is there any members from the public wishing to testify on this agenda item?

Seeing that there are no public testimony, public testimony is now closed. Members, I would like to report that I have been not busy on doing any of the outreach during the legislative session. We reserved that time and effort to pursue the legislation that we will we will be talking on the next agenda item. But in this interim, we are going to start doing some outreach again. And in the next meeting, I will share with you who I talked to.

If you have any suggestions of who you want me to speak to, please reach out to our Speed Coordinator or myself. And our—the email you can reach out to is [email protected]. And I'll be more than happy to reach out to that group or organization and talk about the Speed Task Force. With that said, I just wanna say, thank you for taking the time this interim to work on this important issue.

I know we took a break during the legislative session, and we are going to talk about some of those bills that came before the legislature.

And, and I just wanna say, I know you wanted to take a rest at this interim, and I'm very, very grateful that you are spending your time with us. This is a very important issue and we really wanna make a significant difference in these areas we're tackling. So, thank you for your time again and I look forward to working with all of you. Let's move on to our next item. So, we'll just take a moment because we have some new members on the table.

And at, at this moment, let's just introduce ourselves starting from my right and go all around. And Reggie, if you could first state your name, your title, and organization.

Reginald King. I'm the Speed Task Force Coordinator, and I am from OPSD.

Scott Derickson, State Land Use Commission, Chief Planner.

Ciara Kahahane, Deputy Director, Commission on Water Resource Management, DLNR.

Ryan Imata. I'm the Program Manager for the Groundwater Branch at... Commission.

Dean Minakami, Executive Director of Hawaii Housing, Finance, and Development Corporation.

Joanna Seto, Department of Health, Environmental Management Division Administrator.

I'm Perry, Perry Erasmith. I'm the Director of Policy at Housing Hawaii's Future.

Howard Hue, Hawaii State Energy Office, Standards and Codes Program Manager.

Robbie Kelly with Avalon Group, filling in for Christine Camp today.

Sam Kim, from—a Government Relations Representative from the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters. I'm the designee for Marco Nettay.

Jordan Odo, here is—in my individual capacity.

Jennifer Salisbury representing Small Business Regulatory Review Board for Maui General Contractor.

Glenn Wakai. I'm the token Senator on this task force. Sorry, everyone. I'm the newest member apparently on this, the speeding task force. Sorry.

I asked Gregor if he could ask everyone to introduce themselves.

I think it's appropriate. We haven't been back in a while, and there are some new faces here. So, it's good to say hello. We're just trying to save some time. That's the reason why we skipped the introductions.

And it is allowable in Sunshine, as long as we have all signed in and the members present here are listed in our minutes. So, moving on to our next agenda item, we have our 2026 legislative session review. We are going to open it up now for a testimony from the public. Is there any members from the public wishing to testify? With no members from the public wishing to testify, the testimony session is now closed.

Alright. Well, we have—in our board packet, you should have the 2026 legislative session results. There are six bills listed on the handout, and I think it would be great to get a quick readout from our Speed Coordinator who have been testifying on behalf of the Speed Task Force on all these bills and just share with us his experience.

And instead of going through all of them one by one, let's just start off with—after Reggie kinda gives his review and, brief, to just whatever is on your mind, let's start off with that bill and go from there.

Go ahead, Reggie.

Okay. Alright. So, at the beginning of the legislative session, we started with over 21 bills that were related to speed and permitting efforts. And as we came to a close, there are now seven different bills. So, as we go down the list, we have we have HB 1710, 1721, SB 2543, SB 2671, and SB 2673, which are all most directly related to permanent reform.

They either clarify review requirements, improve staffing capacity, establish dedicated review structures, or more consist—or requiring more consistent permit data and collection. And as we go down, we have HB 1618, which supports the broader permitting framework for individual wastewater systems by creating financing tools to help homeowners comply with wastewater requirements. This may help reduce the risk of a surge in individual wastewater system permit applications before we have to come in compliance with the 2015 mandate. Moving along, we have HB 2104.

This slide—this is less directly focused, focused on permitting, but it helps support broader historic and cultural review systems by strengthening the Island Burial Council operations, which can affect project review timelines and coordination.

The strongest recommendations that we have passed—SB 2673 allows with tracking and data print transportation. SB 2671 allows with staffing and retention. We have HB 1710, which aligns with historic preservation and shift E review reform. We have HB 1721, which aligns with expedited housing permits. We have SB 2543 that aligns with state construction, permit coordination.

We have HB 1618, which aligns with individual wastewater systems and cesspool implementation, and HB 2104, which aligns with cultural review capacity.

And thank you. Go ahead.

For the members in the room, if you don't have a packet, raise your hand and I can get you one so you can follow-up.

Thank you, Reggie. And, Senator, could you just please introduce yourself? I know you just came in.

Hi. I'm Sharon Moriwaki from the Senate.

Thank you. So, thank you, Reggie, for giving us an overview of the seven bills that we have successfully helped push. And just keep in mind, members, that the whole goal for our task force was provide—to provide—recommendations and provide a report to the legislature. These actions that we did during the legislative process, we felt that we didn't wanna just wait until a report was ready. But instead, with the results from our PIGS, we wanted to pursue some action because that's what we believed in.

And these are some of those results. Is there any burning questions, any burning comments that you wanna speak on, on any of these measures?

Chair, I'd like to weigh in for a sec. I am mostly concerned. These are all fantastic, and we spoke about this one, but the SHIPD one, which I know Jessica Puff put forward, and I'm super happy that she did put forward. I'm just concerned that they're already strapped for staffing, and the first bit of this for this bill involves staffing, establishing heat maps, which then supports the time frames.

I'm just concerned that this is a good direction—all of these bills are a good direction—but I wanna make sure that there's money behind it to support some of the problems that we've talked about in the first bit of this task force is that staffing is part of the problem. So, just because we pass these bills—I appreciate that—that doesn't actually solve anything yet.

Thank you. I appreciate that statement. And I, I wanna make sure that we're freely able to discuss the issues and figure out if we are moving in the right direction. And I think this is a good segue to talk about HB 1710.

Jessica, I think you could lead on this bill. Could you please give us a summary of what the bill is and what has happened and how we can implement it and?

Sure. So, in terms of 1710, the, the bill does a couple different things. So, I'm gonna try to, like, put them in different pockets.

The first pocket is it clarifies language that already existed within HR 60 and our administrative rules found at, like, eight, HAR 13, 275, and 284, which inform the 68 process, which are projects that have some sort of government affiliation, and 642, which are projects that require permits that are private—essentially, well, it could be private or public projects.

Anyway, it, it strictly enforces or creates a strict enforcement of SHPD's timeline for review, say—essentially saying that if SHPD doesn't complete the review within the prescribed amount of time, which I believe is in total, I think it's 95 days if I'm if I'm remembering the timeline correctly in the final draft, then the project proponent or the county may assume concurrence and issue the permit or implement the project.

That's different than what existed before. It also identifies what a complete submittal is because one of the things that we presented on last year was that almost 50% of the projects we received, the submittals are incomplete or don't have enough information for SHPD actually complete the review. And some of our timelines are bogged down by waiting for more information.

And then, the third component is, is brought breaching into this other area of identifying that if you're in an area with nominal—what's, what's being defined as nominally sensitive—meaning that there isn't a likelihood for accounting subsurface historic properties or EV that the, the—or, or any above ground historic properties for that matter—we can start to weed out those geographical locations from requiring CTSE review at all, regardless of whether it's 68 or 6042.

So, that's the next component that we're building on in 50 would be using the data that we already have to, to establish heat maps.

We're already working with city and county on doing this a little bit. So, it does require utilizing staff that we have right now in an, in a, in a—an expanded way, but it will require us continuing to invest in this work. So, we'll need to make sure that the staff in those positions are there. And if, at some point, we need to, to get more staff to support them, we can—we can have that conversation. But right now, all of our DIS positions are full.

So, that's the most critical thing is making sure that those positions are filled and kept. So, yeah.

Thank you, Jessica. And I, I really wanna commend Representative Miyake for pushing this bill and pushing it to the finish line, working with Administrator Puff, Puff, as well as everybody who got involved in pushing this through. I, I think Jennifer's point of not having enough staff, like, we have identified in our big report that that is a common problem throughout all the departments, not only a state, a county.

And even though a single legislation here in this package does not fix everything that's a problem in our system, it is a good couple steps forward in what we're trying to do. So, that—I think what we have done here is wonderful and we think we need to continue doing this work.

I also wanna move on to Jessica, since you're, you were sharing what was happening with HB 1710, could you also share your input on HB 2104 relating to island burial councils?

Yeah. Sure. So, 2104 is a bill that we worked on with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to resolve the, the quorum issues that we've had for each of the island burial councils. And these issues are due to, one, maybe not having enough members appointed and then two, also attendance issues from members that are appointed.

And so, this bill, one, sets up the ability—and, and sometimes those attendance issues are because of members not having access to childcare or having to take a day off of work, or something like that.

So, one, it gives OHA the ability to set up a reimbursement stipend for things like childcare and other costs incurred by being on the board to kind of help alleviate those issues so that members can attend these meetings. And then two, it, it, it reestablishes a quorum threshold to just the majority, a majority of members appointed so long as there's no fewer than three members on each council. Currently, the, the threshold is, I believe, it's five members of each IBC needs to be present for quorum.

So, this would allow for a situation where if there were four members appointed but only three could attend the meeting, that they'd still have quorum.

Thank you. Really appreciate that. Your work, Jessica, I, I really—I'm really, really thankful for you because you have been very active in our task force. And without your involvement, I don't think any of this progress would have been possible. You have been a true anchor in making sure that we are headed in the right direction.

And I'm, I'm very, very grateful that you're, you're with us in in this. One last thing is I know we were talking about you wanted to initiate a working group within, within these issues. Are, are you still planning to try to organize that? And if so, could you give us some update and details?

Yeah. So, I think the schedule is—yes. SHPD doesn't wanna to build on these issues. I think the idea is that because this working group is working on some of these other issues this year, that over the course of the next year, we might have quarterly meetings with stakeholders and reach out to folks who wanna continue this conversation, related to historic preservation review dues and the burial site program and, and all of these things, at a quarterly basis across this year.

And then, maybe next year, we can have more frequent meetings to build on additional program amendments or, or potential legislation for the following year, things like that.

So, I will be reaching out to all of you now that this ledge session is over to see who wants to participate in those quarterly meetings and what topics to discuss further, to kinda set us up for some preplanning for a more aggressive meeting schedule the following year.

Thank you, Jessica. I wanna encourage everybody here. If you wanna get more involved with the efforts that SHPD is working on, please join that working group that Jessica is organizing in a quarterly basis. And, hopefully, there's more results coming from that. I want to open it up again to the members before we move on to other legislation that's in this packet.

Is there any questions, comments regarding what we just talked about? Alright. I'm gonna move on to one of the other legislation that was mentioned and that is HB—SB 2671—and since the topic of staffing was brought up, I, I wanna thank, Senator Glenn Wakai for his effort in pushing this legislation forward, which is helping with some differential payments on salaries for the different counties for permitting staff.

And what this pilot project does is that it helps, it helps authorize this pilot project and increase the pay for certain permitting positions in all counties.

And the hardest part is trying to figure out where we're gonna get the money to increase the pay. And we—after feedback from Oahu City and County of Honolulu, they didn't wanna use the half percent, so, we took them out of this bill, and the neighbor islands are able to use the half percent to, to have those differential payments and increase the salary for those permitting positions. And I—we plan to follow-up with the different counties to see how they will be implementing this position.

And Senator Hashimoto was the one who introduced this bill and championed it all the way from the beginning to the end.

So, I wanna thank their efforts for making this happen. Is there any, any of the county permitting departments wishing to speak on this pilot project?

Hi. Good morning.

Morning, Jordan.

This is Jordan with the County of Maui. Yeah. I just wanna comment on we're excited to try and implement this. Our staff at DSA has been tracking closely, and we do plan to bring forward our proposal to try and implement this. I guess just a comment that we're—wait to see how this unfolds, but I did notice, during the testimony, pushback from our HR partners.

And so, I'm curious to see how we're gonna be interacting with them when we try to roll this out, as far as concerns with collective bargaining and civil service rules. But, yeah, I'm looking forward to try and giving this a shot. Appreciate everyone's support on the legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Jordan. If you need permitting personnel, I can fly to Maui and take advantage of that. I'm just joking. We have HGA here, and I just—the reason why they were part of this task force is because if there is any union issues or problems that they hear it right off the bat, and it's not a surprise. So, if there's any, any comments or any, anything you would like to share, feel free to share, Sheryl.

Your input's very appreciated.

Hi, guys. So, you know, what we hear mostly is really it's difficult to fill positions simply because of the rate of pay, which is rather low. And, and then, retention has been very difficult. We have—we have had some supplemental agreements that have come to light or had come to fruition to retain certain positions across city and county and some with state. That was a big win for the engineers.

You know? And that—the repricing that happens that, you know, we, we have several that are still on the table that we're still looking at, but it really comes down to and, and I'm speaking really with DPP. That's the largest group that I hear the rumblings about staffing would be really trying to bring in new employees with a better rate of pay and really just retaining what they have.

So, I wish new—Nui is in a meeting right now, so, he, he could speak more freely about this, but that's the consensus because I work with DPP pretty closely, and that's, that's usually what I, I hear when I'm speaking with them.

Thank you. Appreciate that feedback.

Thank you.

We, we would like to also encourage, as each department is going through their HR and figuring out what to do with this pilot project, if you have any solutions or challenges that should be shared to the other counties, and we might be able to avoid those problems since you already figured out a way to overcome them. So, please, I wanna encourage you to share the information that you do discover, so we can pass it out to all the other counties.

Now, the other counties may just have different processes, and it might not be the same. But you never know where that information could be provided useful.

Is there any other planning departments wishing to make any comments regarding this pilot project? Neil?

Yeah. Thank you, chair. I think County of Hawaii is just reviewing the documentation to see how we can implement it, as well as having conversations with the HR.

Perfect. Anyone else?

Chair, this is Jordan again. I was just wondering if any participants from the DHRD was gonna be invited to engage on this matter.

We don't have DHRD under this task force, so we did not invite them. But we could, we could talk about it at another time.

Okay. I mean, just based on my comments, I think they're gonna be a critical partner to the success of this pilot program, as well as their counterparts at the county levels.

Thank you. Definitely.

Alright. With no other comments regarding this measure—oh, go ahead.

So, so, when I look at the, the, the partners, it's OPSD, county permitting agencies, and the Chief Data Officer, as well as HRDIS. And is there...

Senator, I think you're talking about SB 2673. Look at SB 2671.

Sorry. Oh.

Yeah.

Likewise, in terms of having HRD involved, I don't know if there's one organization or somebody in charge that at least can get all the counties together so that there could be.

This guy. You got it. Yeah. Reggie is going to be doing all that work.

You could pull them together so you could see across the board, because if you're dealing with HGA, you're dealing with HRD, and then the county HR departments, it might be helpful to have that kind of input in terms of how you develop a standard across the board. So, I would—with this and 2673, I think there needs to be a coordinating person that can pull all the different agencies together so you're not just segmenting it.

Alright, Reggie. You've been tasked. The other thing I also wanna add in is this pilot project sunsets in 2030. So, as we discover some of the things that needs improving, we can also introduce legislation to fix that and strengthen the pilot project. What we hope is that this pilot project become such a stable program that it becomes permanent, and we are able to simplify permitting throughout the state.

Alright. Is there any other questions, comments, with any of the other bills? Okay. I'm gonna introduce one last measure. And some of the other bills we did not discuss, but because discussion is not warranted at this time, I wanna leave off with—Senator mentioned SB 2673.

This measure establishes statewide permitting data standard. And to us as a task force, this is very important because when we were going through our picks, we realized that the data from the different departments are not collected equally and they're not labeled the same, and we don't really know how we're gonna collect all that data and how to be able to leverage that data.

And we're gonna need that data to give us a benchmark of where we are, as a state and counties, and use those benchmark to set goals and try our best to accomplish those goals.

And this bill will help establish this universal data that we require each county to publish monthly, and we hope to use that standard as our benchmark for this task force and have these goals in our final report so we're able to know if we are achieving those goals in the next five, ten, twenty years as we do our best to do the work that we have laid out for ourselves.

So, is there any other comments or questions regarding SB 2673?

Yes. Again, for, coordination purposes, is OPSD willing to take on this coordinated role and be able to work with the county permitting agency, because I think coming up with a data standard is very complex. They have all kinds of different parameters coming through. So, how can you identify what are the big buckets and what kinds of things are holding up building and, and just identify those to begin versus everything that they do?

And maybe OPSD, or I know some other building agency, I don't know.

Well, Leo, would you like to share your thoughts or comments? Would you please come up? Leo is representing OPSD.

Good morning, everyone. Leo Asuncion, Administrator at the Office of Planning and Sustainable Development. We've been talking about the bill. We're still waiting for Governor to give his indication of signing it, but we are planning on convening the groups that are mentioned, including and especially the State Data Officer, right, at ETS. I mean, they have knowledge that—but the key is gonna be also the counties because each of them have different systems and how they collect the data.

Right? And it's not that it's been done before. I remember when I used to be the CGM Manager way back, fifteen years ago. Right? We had reporting requirements with Noah.

And one way that we found was to basically try to understand the county's data and then put it into the spreadsheet that we use to go to cut. And that is painstaking, but at the same time, that was the only way we could probably do it in, in, in quick fashion and to cut. So, there's ways to determine. But then, as far as standardization, we wanna work with the counties as well. Right?

We don't want to, you know, suddenly tell them you need to do it a different way, and then they have to invest more money into the systems that they're already developing. Right? So, so, there's gonna be that balance. But, yes, I think we're we're gonna play that convenient role, Senator.

From CZM, do you have some some actual datasets across counties? I know the counties meet a lot and, you know, have kind of that kind of relationship. Is there anything that's already on the books that they have set up?

CZM has a a different reporting requirement, especially to Noah, to the Federal Government. So, but we do know, right, that that's the way we try to work with your system. So, that's one way that we can explore here, but then, right, to understand the data and then, then, figure out how you can standardize it. So, that's kinda like the game plan that we wanna cut. Right?

I mean, fifteen years, right, the, the data has changed and the different collections have—methods—have changed. So, that is something that we need to kinda get a rest of at this point. And we have some knowledge now because we do work with the counties already, but then by getting down to the data itself, it's gonna be key.

And, Senator, DBEDT has the data book and the data book has a lot of permitting information as well. The, the, there's—what we understand is that everybody all across the state and different agencies has been working in silos. And what we're trying to do is break those silos so we are working together as a state and working together with the counties so we have this data collection that can be universal. And this is the beginning.

We were gonna find some challenges, but let's at least work on it.

And then, when we find and discover those challenges, see if it requires legislation or policy change or funding and we could figure that out. But just so everybody understands, this legislation is extra credit. This was not what we are supposed to do for our task force. This is—we just believe that during the time we did last year from September to December, we didn't wanna just sit around, let—during the legislative process—and hope our issues get resolved.

I really wanna commend the members of this task force for taking on this extra work and producing these results because this is seriously above and beyond.

So, thank you, everyone. Is there any other comments and questions?

I guess, I think it's key, even if it's extra credit, I think it's key because if you get all of the counties together and with OPSD, then, then you start looking at what needs to be permitted for building. I mean, so what is the end game? And then, if you look at that and you work back from that, then the data sets that you collect would should be related to expediting permitting or more efficient permitting. Right?

So, so, I think that getting the group together is number one key...

To just identify what is it that we need to get expedited to build, you know. So, so, I think that having the counties together to say, what is that? And maybe the developers, what is it that's holding up what we wanna do—building housing?

Correct.

And I think the approach here is there's so many different permitting agencies and permits out there. And it's very hard to tackle all of them. And what we had decided, as this task force, is we were gonna tackle nine of those areas. The first three was the IWS, the SHIPD, and the...

Building codes.

Building codes. Actually, building permits. And that's what we did from September to December. This, this meeting, we are gonna be tackling three more. And thank you, Senator, for being involved, and your leadership is needed because I'm gonna ask you to lead one of the PIGS for this meeting.

And so, your help and your leadership is definitely needed to address that—those areas. And we are going to try to take a bite in this permitting process, but we understand that we can't solve all of it. But at least we're gonna make some sort of dent at the end of it all. So, I, I agree with you. We, we need to figure it out.

Is there any other comments? Any other questions?

Chair...just quick comments. You know, we did oppose this bill in large part because it kinda cart before the horse where it prescribed all these data standards without that conversation first. So, I appreciate the comments being made about having the conversation first to determine what is important data to be tracking across the counties. Thank you.

And I hear your opposition, Jordan, and we are now going to have those discussions. And if we need to revise the legislation next year because we had the discussions, that's great. But we are moving forward. Any other, any other comments, questions? Alright.

Let's move on to our next agenda item, which is the SPEED Draft Report. At this time, we're gonna take public testimony. We're gonna take public testimony. Is there any members from the public wishing to testify? With no testimony from the public, testimony is closed.

Before we get into the SPEED Draft Report, we're gonna take a, a recess. Recess.

Welcome, everybody. We are back from recess. We are currently on the speed draft report.

At this time, we're gonna table this item and move on to our speed summit update. We are going to open it up for public testimony. Is there anyone from the public wishing to testify? Since there are no testimony from the public, testimony session is now closed. Thank you for working on this, Jordan.

Jordan is our Speed Summit coordinator. We assigned him this role last year and he has been busy setting up the speed summit. He has made a lot of progress. If you could give us an update and if you can let us know how we can get involved and what we need to do to make this successful.

Sure. Thank you, chair. So it's already in the agenda, but I just wanna reiterate on the speed summit is gonna be on 01/15/2027. It's gonna be an all day event. It's gonna be located at the Sheraton, Waikiki.

So we're gonna have some reports done by the pig Chairs or their designees. And then we're gonna have some time in the afternoon to discuss some more thematic opportunities. So 1 of the things for instance is workforce. So all these conversations that we're just having now, we really wanna bring together stakeholders that are relevant to a workforce topic. In the same room and really hashing out solutions at that time. Another topic is technology with which Senator Wakai is gonna be leading that breakout panel.

Oh, yeah? You are. Cool.

We're grateful for you, Senator. But that's just an opportunity to see what types of things we can do to leverage technology to make our permanent processes better. There's gonna be 2 other thematic discussions as well. Right now, I'm starting to plan out the program, so thank you so much to all the task force members who have volunteered.

We have around 25, which is amazing, which makes it also difficult for me as a coordinator to manage all that, but it's a good problem to have.

And so we're gonna probably start intent more intense planning probably in July, I would assume. Right now, I'm in the process of fundraising so we can offset the price of admission for the folks that do wanna attend the summit. We would like, and our target would be around 750 people to attend.

So this would be leaders in the community, folks in the building permit offices or the various permitting offices, building professionals building industry professionals, which includes architects, contractors, engineers, etcetera, and then some of our government breeders, of course. So that's kind of where I'm at right now.

The venue's contract is signed, and I just wanna give a big shout out to Housing Advice Future. Which has been helping us sign all the contracts and receive donations for this event. If you have any questions, feel free to reach me after.

Any questions for Jordan? K. Jordan, thank you for your work. I know this is gonna be an outstanding summit. And what the plan is to have the governor, the lieutenant governor, all the mayors, the Senate president, the speaker, all united in the initiatives that we have laid out in our speed task force report.

And these are initiatives that we can all agree on, and we really believe in moving that forward. And they also believe in moving it forward. And we plan to use this speed summit to kick off everybody. And I think, Jordan what's your goal of how many attendees? We would like 750.

We're aiming for 750.

So tell your friends.

So tell your friends to attend. And all the departments save some money to make sure that you are participating in this summit because we're gonna need everybody to fill those seats. Alright? Thank you everyone. We're gonna move on to our presentations. And at this time, we are gonna start off with our presentation on water and wells.

And what we'll do before I go into public testimony, I just wanna give everybody an overview of our schedule. We will finish this presentation, and it'll be around 11:30 or 11:45. And we're gonna recess. And is lunch gonna come at that time? Yes.

I got some paid for.

Alright. House our lunch will be here and we're gonna distribute the lunches, and we will do a working lunch. So we will start our presentation on the district boundary amendment around maybe 11:45 and carry on with the rest of the agenda. So at this time I'm gonna open it up for public testimony. Is there any members from the public wishing to testify?

Looks like none at this time. So public testimony is now closed. We are going to start off with our presentation on water and wells. Thank you.

Aloha, everyone. Kira Kahohane again, deputy director Commission on Water Resource Management. With me in the room today is Ryan Imata. He's the branch chief of our groundwater branch that does our well processing statewide. So I'm gonna start off and then I'll hand it over to Ryan to get deeper into the well purping process.

But I wanna start with a little bit about our agency, if you go to the next slide. I'm gonna start off with a little bit about our agency, our mission and our jurisdiction, our current organization and staffing, and our budget just so you get an understanding of what the current outlook is for us and what are some of our current constraints might be.

And then we'll get specifically into the types of permit that are most relevant to the work that this task force is doing, and the processes attached to those permits. So next slide. Okay.

So I always talk about this when I give presentations. I think of think of water resources within our state like a cup of iced coffee. Right? So up there at the top you see the Board of Water Supply or Department of Water Supply. They might also be a private purveyor.

Anyone who wants to put in a well and take water out, they're the straw. The Department of Health also has jurisdiction over water specifically water quality. So if they say how strong the coffee is, and Sea Worm our jurisdiction is over the quantity of water, making sure that enough is in the aquifer, making sure that we don't over withdraw from what our resources can support. So we say how much has to stay in the cup? And together we all work to manage our water resources statewide.

Our agency was established by Article 11 section 7 of the Hawaii state constitution. So we're actually constitutionally mandated. And we are the primary guardian of Hawaii's water resources under the public trust doctrine, which I'll get more into later. Our mission as an agency is to protect and manage the waters of Hawaii for present and future generations. So these are our origins.

In 1978 the Hawaii state constitution was adopted. In 1987 the State Water Code was passed and in 2000 a decision was published by the Hawaii Supreme Court called Waiahole 1 which is really the framework for how we process all of our permits including water use permits statewide. So this is the specific part of the constitution that established us. I won't read through the entire thing.

What's important to remember is that the state has an obligation to protect, control, and regulate the use of Hawaii's water resources for the benefit of its people.

The water resources agency that is mentioned in the second sentence there, that's us. Okay. So in 1987 the water code was passed. It established us as the trustee of Hawaii's water resources. The water code itself incorporates public trust principles and really delves further into the regulation of surface and groundwater.

It created our permitting system for water use as well as the system of having designated water management areas for aquifers and watersheds. And those water management areas have more stringent rules. We have greater jurisdiction and authority within designated water management areas than we do outside of them. The entire idea of the state water code is balancing competing needs. So we're balancing for streams, in stream versus off stream uses.

We're balancing the protection of traditional customary rights with development, and this formed the basis for Wai'am Holy 1 and subsequent public trust rulings. So this is a little bit about Wai'am Holy 1. It's a 2,000 Hawaii Supreme Court case. It's the Landmark Public Trust case, and these are some of the the holdings of the case.

I won't get too far into them, but essentially, it shows you that our mission as an agency is to really prioritize protection. To make a presumption in favor of public trust uses which include the protection of our natural resources and to always look very closely at private commercial uses and and other uses of those resources.

So this is basically what we do as an agency. We're always in the middle balancing all of these different competing often competing, but important interests. Okay. Next slide. A little bit more about water management areas.

So outside of designated water management areas, water rights are generally governed by the common law. Within designated water management areas, the commission allocates water consistent with public trust principles and the state water code. Water use within a designated water management area generally requires a water use permit. So that's another type of permit that is then overlaid over our permitting scheme that we have statewide, and we'll get into how those 2 different kinds of permit interact with each other. Excellent.

This is just a map of our water management areas statewide. So the blue are groundwater management areas, and the sort of shaded portions are surface water management areas. At present, the entire Island Of Molokai is a groundwater management area, some parts of Maui, as well as almost the entire Island Of Oahu. So you know, it may not be something that folks think about here in Honolulu, but when you're in urban Honolulu, you are in the center of 1 of Hawaii's oldest water management areas.

Yeah.

Okay. So as far as our agency goes we have 3 branches, our planning branch stream protection and management branch, and our groundwater branch. I think the names are pretty self explanatory. Ryan here is the branch chief of of the groundwater branch. This is our oh, We were disconnected.

Well, I'm just gonna take a recess at this time. Recess.

Well, I'm just gonna take a recess at this time. Recess.

We are back from recess, and we are continuing our presentation. Please go ahead.

Okay. We're back on. This is just our organizational chart currently as an agency. The positions that are outlined in red are those that we're currently working on filling. So those are all of our vacancies as an agency. You can see our three different branches. And because we're talking about groundwater branch today, I'll just get a little bit deeper into it.

Our regulation section is really the primary section that works on processing permits, well construction, pump installation permits, as well as water use permits. So as you can see, right now, we have one person in our regulation section. Brian does, as the branch chief, help and fill in with some of our permits that need to get processed.

And like I said, we are currently in recruitment for those positions within the regulation section, but at present, it's a little bit tight in terms of our staffing. Okay. Next slide. So just to put things in context, there's 376 perennial streams statewide, 1,300 stream diversions, 110 aquifer system areas, and 5,500 groundwater wells. So for each groundwater staff, and I did this calculation before back when we had six. Now we have five.

So now there are about 1,100 wells for each member of our groundwater staff. It will get better. It will get better hopefully soon, but that's the picture that we're looking at right now. Okay. And then just very briefly, this is our our operating budget.

The vast majority of our operating budget is staff. And then about $1.5 million of our budget funds an annual agreement with the US Geological Survey for statewide stream, well, and rainfall monitoring. And this these stream gauges, I think, got a little bit of attention during the Kona Low storms that we had recently.

So that $1.5 million of our agency's budget does provide a very important public benefit as far as not only tracking the long term health of our water resources, but in providing that data to the public. We monitor the health of our aquifer through the construction of deep monitor wells. I'm not gonna get into exactly what a deep monitor well is and does. It just lets us see how much water there is down there, essentially.

We get about $2 million every fiscal year for the construction of one deep monitor well. And currently, we have quite a, quite a lot of deep monitor wells to go. We have about 90 to go before we get one in every single aquifer in the state. And the goal is to have three in each aquifer, ideally. Okay. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Ryan to get deeper into our different permit types and processes.

Thank you. So I'm gonna talk about the different types of permits that we have at the commission. For groundwater, we have both well construction and pump installation permits. Typically, they're applied for together. Oh, okay. Oh, do you do you not wanna talk about surface waters then?

For surface water, which we're not gonna go into today. But just for context, we have stream diversion permits and stream channel alteration permits. And then for both ground and surface water, we have water use permits. And I'll go into a little bit more about that in subsequent slides. So well construction and pump installation permits.

What are they? Well, basically, they are permits that are kinda like building permits. We issue them to licensed contractors, and once the well is built, pump is installed, permit is basically expired. For well construction permits, what we're looking at is can the well be drilled in a way that is safe for the environment.

And then for pump installation permits, we analyze can the well or can the pump and the operating appurtenances be installed properly, and then what impacts are anticipated to the resource from pumping this well and to other wells. These, as I said earlier, these permits are frequently applied for and reviewed concurrently. Next slide.

So this is a little bit of diagram of a typical process. So basically, we get an application that comes in first. We review it for completeness. We route it for agency review comments. Staff evaluates the comments and the well parameters. We make a decision, and sometimes they go to the commission and, again, I'll expand on that in subsequent slides. And then the well is complete and then we close out the process.

So what do we review and evaluate when we look at a well construction permit and pump installation permit application? First of all, we look at the location of the well. So what aquifer system is it in? What's a sustainable yield in that aquifer system? What's the current reported withdrawals from that aquifer?

We look at the construction design parameters, so the depth, the casing, the routing, the flow meter, etcetera. We look at what the pump capacity is and what the intent to use the well for. Try to predict potential impacts, which include impacts to traditional customary practices or the potential for aquifer contamination or even things like salinity increases or water level deviations.

Well, we do check that the application is consistent with the Hawaii water plan. And then again, we take the agency comments and we see if there are other permits required or if we have any concerns about the well parameters or the well location. Next slide. So this is the diagram that kinda shows you, basically, we're looking at the hydrologic cycle.

You know, you you see rainfall at the top. You see on that side, you have basically high confined structures that keep water up high. You see recharge goes into the ground. Sometimes recharge goes into the like aquifer. Sometimes it goes into what we call the basal vents.

There's a freshwater zone and then a transition zone down to salt water. And when Ciara mentioned the monitor wells, we use our deep monitor wells to kind of look at what the profile is along here. And so as we permit wells, we understand we have a well as the relationship to the transition zone for fresh and salt water. That's basically what a well is. And then water discharges back into the oceans.

Next slide. So many well construction pump installation permits are delegated to the chairperson for approval. But as of July 23, 2024, certain permits have to be taken back to the commission for a vote for approval or disapproval. So well construction permits, what the commission wants to see are basically wells that penetrate two discrete water bodies. So if it penetrates a basal lens and it goes down to a deep deeper confined lens, the commission wants to approve those.

Additionally, if you have an artesian source, so what that means is you have a confining layer. Water rises to the surface without being pumped, and it has a potential to flow over land. The commission wants to see that too. Regarding pump installation permits, what we take to the commission are pump intakes that may affect stream flow, where in an aquifer where a sustainable yield has been reached.

Or if we get objections to an application, that can apply to both the well and the pump permits. And then there's a 27 gallons per minute threshold for when we take below that, we're delegated. 27 and above the commission sees. And then if the pump is under 27 gallons per minute, but a water use permit is also required, we take it to the commission. So what about ground water use permits?

So these permits are a little bit more involved, not construction related. They're required only in designated water management areas, which Ciara showed you where the ground water management areas were in that previous map. So where is a groundwater use permit required? It's required for new uses. It's required for existing uses and primarily after areas designated as a management area.

Or permits are required for modifications to an existing water use permit that resulted in increase or a change in the type of use. With the two exemptions being individual domestic consumption and water caching systems. So when we get a groundwater use permit application and staff evaluates the application, we publish two... Oops.

We publish two public notices, two consecutive week public notices in the newspaper, where if we receive objections, that might trigger a further process or a or a hearing. And then after we review it, we take it to the commission for approval. So this kinda shows you the the stream of how we how we get applications and act on them.

First of all, we get the application in. Again, we issue two public notices. If we get objections, like I said, it triggers different processes. So the first is if objections are received, a contested case hearing is triggered. If we don't receive objections, then staff completes the review. And what are the criteria for getting a ground water use permit?

Well, the applicant has the burden to show that the use can be accommodated by a source. It's reasonable and beneficial. Will not interfere with existing legal uses, consistent with the public interest, consistent with state and county plans, and will not interfere with the rights of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. That's it. I can answer any questions.

Thank you for your presentation. We will now open up for questions in for ten minutes. Is there any questions from our Members? Go ahead.

Just out of curiosity, how does CWRM's authority differ between areas that are designated water management areas and areas that are not designated water management areas?

Yeah. So within... I'll start with outside designated water management area. So outside of a designated water management area, we have the construction and pump permit, right, for groundwater. And for surface water, we have a stream channel alteration permit and a stream diversion works permit. Essentially, consistent with common law, if we're talking about groundwater, people can develop groundwater under their existing correlative rights.

So basically, first come first serve in a way for groundwater. Within a designated water management area, all of those water allocation issues are being handled centrally by the commission. The commission is acting like a trustee and telling every single user within the water management area exactly how much water they can use and for what.

So that's where you get the additional water use permit that comes in. And that water use permit will tell every single person, you know, for example, home and supportive water supply or a private well owner, exactly how much water they can use after going through the analysis that we just talked about.

So my past experience has been that it can be very challenging to figure out, you know, when you have a water issue, to figure out who has jurisdiction over that. You know, whether it's do I contact CWRM? Do I contact BWS, Army Corps of Engineers? Is there anywhere that the public can go to kind of, you know, simplify to to see, you know, who has jurisdiction, who should I contact in various areas or issues?

That is a very good question and a very good point. I think a lot, maybe even the majority of calls that we get are people who think that we're the Board of Water Supply. So so the short answer is no. There is not. I think that you raise a very good point, and there probably is a need for some kind of simple guide for the public to understand who to call when they have different issues.

Yeah. I bring this up. Okay. Tell you what. I've in the wake of the big Kona Low storm, I am actually in a dispute with one of my neighbors on the North Shore over the location of a stream, dry wash stream bed. And a month and a half later, no one can tell us who has jurisdiction.

We've reached out to CWRM, we've reached out to, you know, other people, and we're still trying to figure out who can make a determination. So any assistance, you know, in that regard, I think would be very beneficial to the public.

And just a reminder to the Members, as we start out these things, we do have a form for recommendations. And that form lists out the SWOT, which is strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats, and the recommendation. And that is a great recommendation to put in that form and then submit it into the PIG for review. Just just to remind everyone as you think of your ideas. Any other questions?

Two questions. So the first question is, is there a back and forth between the office and the user or the owner? And if there is back and forth, how many times on average would you say that happens? And then the second question is, what is the typical time frame for permanent approval on the standard regular, yeah, typical permit case?

Okay. Thank you. I'll let Ryan handle that.

Yeah. So regarding the back and forth with the, you asked specifically on the well owner or landowner. For well construction pump installation permits, we're required to issue those permits and basically interact with a licensed contractor. There's very little interaction with the actual well owner.

For water use permits, they're typically applied for by the land owner, and there's a lot of interaction with them because, well, I guess, the primary reason is that most, unless they're big land owners, most private land owners never applied for a water use permit before. It's a kind of complicated application. So there's quite a, I would say there's quite a bit of interaction with landowners for water use permits.

And the time frame?

Time frame, wells, again, it depends on what the threshold is because, as I mentioned, we do have delegated wells and pumps that we can knock out in week. Certain agencies require about a 45 day review timeline. And so, generally, we'll get it out for review and try to process it within about 90 days.

Water use permits are a little different, and it depends, like, as you saw in the slide, different processes are triggered if there are objections. But I would say, typically, for water use permits, it's it goes beyond maybe 90 days. Could be could be 180 days. But, again, it all depends on if there's objections or if there are issues.

Any other questions? Go ahead.

I'm a little bit confused on where your department and, like, Department of Health Clean Water Branch comes in. Like, this, all of this in my mind is in the same area of water. And so and I'm a developer, so I'm a little bit confused on how that all dovetails together. Do you guys interact with DOH concurrently with... You guys are all laughing.

Was it was it DOH quantity like, quality? And then you as amount?

So we're we're how much water is in the cup. DOH is how strong the coffee is.

That's what I remember.

That's why I always use that analogy. The one thing that we do get into is how salty the water is, which goes to quantity. You know, that's one of your first signs that the aquifer is getting overtaxed is that you're getting saltier and saltier water. That means that you probably have an issue where you're withdrawing too much.

DOH is one of the agencies that we're actually required under the water code to send, to get review of each permit. So we will send out all of our permits to DOH for review, and I'll let Ryan speak a little bit more if you want to to the coordination with Department of Health.

Yeah. We coordinate, as Ciara said, we're required by the code to send our applications for wells to the Department of Health. So now we've coordinated working with Joanna on their safe drinking water branch, their wastewater branch, their clean water branch. And I don't think we sent it to hazard evaluation anymore, but we do send it to the appropriate agencies that have comments for us regarding water quality issues.

Okay. Thank you for that.

Any other questions? Go ahead.

I just have one more clarifying question. This is all so fascinating. So my understanding is regardless of whether an area is a designated water management area, you still have to apply to CWRM for either a well construction or pump installation permit. It doesn't matter.

That's correct.

So how does that, how does that application process differ if you are in a management area or you're not in a management area?

Good question. Yes. So, typically, when folks are within a water management area and they're applying for construction of a new well, they will often pair the water use permit application with the well construction and pump installation permit application so that it's all being reviewed as a single package. And I'll let Ryan speak more to that if you would like to.

Yeah. We typically, we can we can permit well construction permits prior to the water use permit. But a lot of either land owners or agencies don't wanna get a well construction permit and build it and not have a water use permit that would sort of guarantee that they'd be able to use it.

Our preference would be if you got a well construction permit, build the well first. And that way you can analyze by running a pump test what are gonna be the impacts to adjacent resources so that we can more comfortably recommend approval.

And it never rarely ever works that way. And that's for the Board of Water Supply here, but most agencies don't want it. We won't issue pump installation permits where a water use permit is required because you can stick a pump in and just start pumping it, pumping the pump. That makes sense?

How do you coordinate all of that so that, you know, when you're applying for the construction, that you tell them you need to also have a water use permit because why do construction you can't use? Right?

So right. That's in our response letter back to the applicant to let them know that, well, you have a permit here. You need to get a water use permit prior to starting to use it.

So does somebody guide them through this so that they do all of this at the same time or at least know that they have to do this if they want to not spend money without having a use at the end?

Yes. So again, you know, with the well and the pump permits, those are we, those are applied for and issued to the licensed well contractors. And all of the licensed well contractors know that, in management areas, you gotta get a water's permit, and so they work in conjunction with the land owner to apply for the water use permit. Some some licensed contractors know how to fill out the water use permit. Some don't. So it, but they're all kept informed along the process.

It's a pretty small number of licensed contractors that we work with. We have a few very frequent flyers. So the people who we're working with as staff are usually pretty pretty good with the process.

So when when it has to go from staff to board, what is the timeline for that, the board decisions?

It can take a while. It depends on the specific permitting question. So if we have some... Dean's sitting here. If we have some that have a lot of objections as far as the impact on traditional customary rights or on other wells in the area, those might take a while.

As well as those that might be located in an area where, I mean, we have some places here where we have, like, legacy pesticide contamination, issues like that that really deserve a lot more staff review. And those can take, you know, multiple months to get to commission. For something that is more routine, you know, we can we can get it out in maybe a month or two if if everything is under normal working conditions, barring any kind of emergency.

So is there any situation in which you say, hey, there's too much going on here, contamination, whatever, then you stop the process or you let them go all the way through the process?

So typically, we will take stuff to commission, but I'm not aware of very many where we've recommended denial.

No. You know, I think that when there are issues like that, we try to go back and forth with the applicant to try to iron out those issues or iron out the questions that we have about the potential for spread, contamination. So but we won't go to the commission unless we have the best possible information to present to them because if I present to them something and I say, I don't know, they're gonna come back to me and say, well, go find out. Right? So we try to do as complete a job as possible before we take it to them, and sometimes that does take time.

I just wanted to know the timeline, especially if you're wanting to have the water for use and for building, what what kind of timeline can you project and at least work on the front end for someone wanting to find a well that they can use?

So I will say that our, as you saw in our staffing, our vacancy situation, I think if we're fully staffed up, we'll be able to process stuff really quickly, like 90 days. I think we can get stuff out in 90 days.

Thank you, Senator. I'm gonna ask if there's any questions in Zoom. Go ahead, Neal.

Thanks for the presentation. Neal Tanaka, County of Hawaii. This is more just some personal inquiry or question. Are there published guidelines for which the decisions are made so that they're objective rather than subjective? Because I feel like when they go to commission, the approvals and denials become more subjective based on community input.

Good question. At present I mean, so we have very clear well construction standards that govern the staff review on the technical side. As far as when we're assessing things like impacts to traditional and customary practices, it it becomes a lot more difficult to arrive at a clear and objective criterion.

We do have guidelines that we provide people for how to do the analysis to traditional and customary rights, but that in and of itself is subject to commission approval. So I guess the short answer to your question is on the technical side, we have those clear documented objective processes. On things that do require more subjective analysis or are less certain, like impacts to other wells, we don't really have a documented guideline.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to discount the customary uses and such. It's just I was curious about capacity and or location. I mean, clearly, though I'm assuming those are things that you're looking for when you guys are approving those construction permits.

So the question, if I understand it, is about what we're looking at when we assess construction and pump installation permits as far as capacity and location.

Correct.

Okay. I'll let Ryan talk about that a little bit more and how how you will go about assessing a pump installation application and what criteria you're looking at.

Yeah. So with, so we have the Hawaii well construction and pump installation standards, and that tells us that at a certain pump capacity, which we think is significant enough to have potential impacts, we will require an applicant to or the license trigger to do a pump test.

We take that pump test and we analyze it to determine if there are excessive draw out issues or if there are solidity issues. And also, this gets a little complicated and technical, but we look at what we call a recharge boundary. So if you start pumping, then all of a sudden the drawdown, like, slows down.

We think that there's a potential to be impacting other resources because water is suddenly feeding this well and it's slowing down the draw down to a certain point. So that's the kind of way that we assess the potential capacity of the well and what the impacts are on the environment in general.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Any others in Zoom? Okay. We'll go back here. Anyone else? Go ahead.

Ryan. When was the last time your your division was fully staffed?

Thinking it back to when people retire and left and... I wanna say, like, 2012. We've always had three, well, since I started in 96, we had three regulators. We went out to two in about 2012, and right about 2019, I think we went out to one regulator.

But do you do you have a sense of why why that is?

Retirement. I mean, retirement was a big one. Yeah. Since people retired and it was hard to fill positions. Yeah. We're actively recruiting.

So what, why is it that it's taken so long to recruit the positions?

Well, first of all, the positions that it that that Ciara showed on the on the organizational chart were recently created. So so we had to get the rework done. We had to write the position descriptions. We had to advertise. We had to fill. And I just conducted, I think, about 50 interviews.

And then by the time I got back to them, a lot of them found jobs already or... So we're, so we're just constantly actively interviewing and vetting and trying to figure this out. So, I mean, it but it is our bottleneck. Right? Not having enough staff. And so Ciara has directed me to just focus all of our efforts on making sure these positions get filled.

So it's not that you don't have anybody interested in the jobs, so now you can fill it because you had 50 applicants.

Well, I mean, that was for the planner and the engineer position. I also have one bottleneck because my administrative assistant retired in December, and she was with us for 30 years. And she was part of the institutional knowledge that helped us get things flowing. That's why I think at this point, we really gotta fill these positions to get stuff at least moving again.

Yeah. Administrative support is one of the most important things for an agency, and it's one of the hardest things to come by if you're recruiting.

We've been having good conversation. It's past ten minutes, but we'll end in 11:50. Is there any others in Zoom who wants to ask a question? Okay. Anyone here? Go ahead.

I'll ask a question. It's about the Lahaina area. I mean, a lot has been in the newspaper about the difficulties of trying to go cast backwards in the area that's now designated for water management for people that had were doing water uses now to apply. All new users people have to apply for. So how are you guys managing that?

Gosh. Yeah. So for Lahaina, we received 140, 146, 142... Anyway, 140 something, applications, water use permit applications, and that's combined surface and ground. One of the hardest things about Lahaina is it is the first time that the commission has ever designated a ground and a surface water management area overlapping each other at the same time.

So in that way, in that sense, we're trying to figure out how to do something that has never been done before for a pretty large geographic area after a significant disaster. So there's no blueprint for it. There's no playbook. I looked. As far as how we're handling it, so one of the things that has is helpful, I would say, about our framework is that for the majority of Lahaina, we already have in stream flow standards set.

So on the surface water side, that in stream flow standard says how much water has to stay in the stream, how much is available to be taken off stream. So that's one of the things that we can use to process applications that are in stream first. So that's kind of the approach that we've taken. As far as the remainder of the applications, something that we're still figuring out, and it's going to depend in large part when we go to public notice for those applications.

If we get a lot of objections to them, it will probably end up in us being in a contested case hearing in kind of a quasi judicial battle for the next several years at minimum. And that has been the case for many, if not most, of the water management area designations that have come out statewide is that when the area is initially designated. This happened in Molokai, Waiāhole is a prime example as well.

And, you know, even in on Maui, there is usually quite a a large amount of litigation that goes on for years before permits finally get issued. So, you know, I always hope that that won't be the case for Lahaina, but it is something that we're anticipating.

In terms of staff review, as Ryan said, the current priority is on actually getting staff into his branch, and then our very next priority is Lahaina and reviewing the permit applications to at least make sure that they're consistent with the statutory criteria.

Thank you. Well, Ciara... Is it Ryan? Ryan, thank you for your presentation. We are gonna move on to our next presentation, which is gonna be on the district boundary amendment. At this time, we will actually... Because we could jump on... Actually, you know what?

Trey can wait. Let's start our presentation on the district boundary amendment. We will ask for public testimony from the public. Is there any testimony from the public? With no testimony from the public, we will move on to the presentation on the district boundary amendment.

Aloha kākou. To all these different birds, different feathers here. I'm Scott Derrickson, Chief Planner of the State Land Use Commission. I'm gonna try and educate you a bit about the district boundary amendment process and what it is.

I'll start off by trying to explain that, in Hawaii, we have essentially two levels of zoning. One at the state level and one at the county level. This is unlike pretty much every other state in the in the union. Now that's not to say that other states don't have layers of land use regulation. Here, we have very distinct two levels.

Let's just take a moment and fix the Zoom so that way you could see the presentation to those who are on Zoom. And now that should be available. Thank you, Scott, for accommodating us.

Sure. Okay. So as I was saying, at the state level, we call our zoning state land use districts. There are four. There's the urban district. There's the agricultural district. There's the rural district, and there's the conservation district. Counties zone within those four distinct districts.

And those are the things that most people are more familiar with. Zoning designations like residential, industrial, commercial, mixed use. But for us at the state level, we have four districts that we deal with. And a district boundary amendment, I'm gonna I'm gonna be using a lot of acronyms.

Things like instead of saying district boundary amendment, every time I'll say DBA, Land Use Commission, LUC. I'll throw out a few others as we go. A district boundary amendment is usually done by a petitioner, usually a landowner or developer, and the intent is to change the land use classification of a property to change the use.

Most of the time, what we see are changes from conservation and agricultural districts to the urban district. The process we use is what's termed quasi judicial in nature. It is not like the legislative process used at the county level to change zoning through the county councils. It is a contested case process.

There are automatic parties, of course the applicant, the petitioner. For the state, the state Office of Planning and Sustainable Development, OPSD, is a required party under the statute, as well as the each county, and that's usually represented by the county planning departments.

District boundary amendments can also be initiated by state or county agencies. We frequently have HHFDC. We have Department of Land and Natural Resources, Department of Education, Department of Transportation, among others. At the county level, it's often the county housing agencies as well as the departments of environmental management. Sometimes they're departments of transportation services.

Once we accept a petition as complete for processing, the commission has to then hold a hearing. We have to wait at least 60 days, and I'll get into why we wait and what happens during that period. But we have to hold a hearing between 60 and 180 days.

After we do go through our reclassification process, the counties then will have to change the zoning as well down at the county level. Many of the projects we deal with do require and do trigger Chapter 343, Hawaii Revised Statutes, the environmental review process. As I indicated, the quasi judicial proceeding that we conduct has a maximum of 365 days to make a decision.

After which, if it's not, if we don't make a decision, it's automatically approved. And that's under statute, HRS Chapter 91-13.5. Our approvals require at least six commissioners out of our nine to approve. So a little bit about our process, quasi judicial, contested case.

That means that there are procedural due process requirements that we have to follow, that we have to meet. And those are, those due process requirements come out of our federal constitution. They're also enshrined in our constitution. One of which we have to notice the public, and we have to notice potential affected landowners. And they have to have an opportunity to be heard in a hearing.

So personal interests that will be impacted when property rights are adjudicated require contested case. The government's interest, primarily with public trust resources, has to be addressed and the burden of implementing additional procedural safeguards. We do that through conditions on approval. So however by statutes, HRS two zero five and our administrative rules, Chapter 15 dash 15, govern how the Land Use Commission carries out its process.

One thing I wanna indicate is that process can be a streamline and as quick and as efficient as you can plan for.

But if the evidence is not there on the record and established in a decision and order, open up to appeals. If you don't attend to the procedural requirements, you open yourself up to appeals. In which case, getting a getting a development approval that gets appealed to court isn't fast at all. Now you might get hung up for years in court and move and not move forward.

We do our best to ensure that our process is sound, meet all the procedural requirements, and all the subsequent ones as well.

The Supreme Court on occasion has established interpretive laws for both contested case hearings, not just for the land use commission, for anybody that does constitute judicial contested case. Due process requires that a petitioner present both good cause and substantial evidence for approval. Our commissioners act as a bank, a panel of judges. The parties have to show, as I said, good cause to grab the petition. And the burden's on the petitioner to make their case.

It's not on the land use commission. It's not on the city office of planning and sustainable development. It's not on the counties. It's not on the public. It's on the petitioner to present sufficient evidence and show good cause for any land use change.

What about the automatic parties in a petition? Office of Planning and Sustainable Development, their role is to make sure that all, necessary state interests are addressed, and that means they are the ones that are coordinating across state agencies. Similarly, each county, usually through the county planning department, is doing the same same job at the county level. And part of the reason that's necessary is because petitioners come in, they're advocates for their project. They present evidence based on what they're trying to prove.

And

we at

the Land Use Commission need both the expertise from the individual state agencies as well as the county agencies to provide a balanced look at whether or not they agree with it, whether it is taking into account public trust resources and adequate mitigation measures are put in place.

So the public some of our public trust responsibilities and duties come out of the state constitution, particularly Article 11, section one, for the benefit of present and future generations, state, and its political subdivisions, which would include the counties, shall conserve and protect Hawaii's natural beauty and all natural resources and promote the development and utilization of those resources in a manner consistent with conservation and furtherance of self sufficiency of the state. All public natural resources are held in trust by the state. K.

A little bit about starting to get into the timing of the district boundary as I know.

Again, as I said, we have three hundred sixty five days to render a decision maximum. There is a possibility under the statute of up to a ninety day extension. In the last thirty five years that I've been involved in the land use commission processes, there's only been one instance in my memory where we've had a request for an extension. And that was by the petitioner themselves because they wanted additional time to present their case.

We have nothing to do with anybody, the land use commission or anywhere else tracking their feet by a request from a petitioner.

If we don't render a decision in three hundred sixty five days under state law, that petition gets automatically approved. And under state law, there are generic set of conditions that will automatically attach to any automatic approval. The contents of petitions, the form and contents are set in our administrative rules, Chapter 15 dash 15, Section 15. It's very clearly set out. We have that on our website.

The staff's responsibility and role aside from all the logistical requirements of putting on hearings is to review and put together a report for the commissions review prior to hearings, prior to decision making. We're we're tasked with coordinating both with state agencies, particularly the office of planning, sustainable development, the counties, as well as the the petitioner itself. So we repair we we prepare a report before the start of each of our dockets.

The commissioners are responsible for reviewing all the filings, and they attest to that at our hearings. However, a lot of these filings are very technical.

They're also voluminous, sometimes thousands of pages. And what the staff does in our staff report, we provide them a synopsis and a summary as well as recommendations on how to proceed. And we also we bind them of a specific procedural requirements they have to keep in mind as we move forward. The staff, we don't make decisions. We provide recommendations, expert recommendations because we are experts in our field.

Whereas the commissioners almost always are not experts in the planning, engineering field. Final decision is with the commission. Okay. Here's our flow diagram here. And you probably aren't close enough to be able to read it in detail.

That's why I wanted a laser pointer. But there's several steps in our process. The first step is what we call the pre application process. That's where a draft petition gets filed with our office, and the staff will use that. We have thirty days under law to review that submittal to see if it's complete and get back to the petitioner.

If we go through it and deem it complete, that starts our three hundred sixty five day process unlocked. If we deem it incomplete, we have to indicate to the petitioner specifically which sections of our rules they still need to adhere to, what information they need to put into the refiled application. Also during that pre application time, when when a petition is filed with us, that petitioner has to notify the public that they filed something.

That gives the opportunity for any parties who might want to intervene, the opportunity to notify both us and the petitioner if they're on their own. That doesn't require anything formal at that point other than a notification of an intent to intervene.

Once we deem a petition complete, we we enter into that sixty sixty day window leading up to potentially our hearing. That's the earliest we can have a hearing, sixty days after being complete. But during that time period, each of the parties has to develop and file position statements with our office. They also have to have an opportunity to rebut, to put in witness lists, exhibit lists, witness testimony. Because again, this is not a legislative process.

This is a judicial process, and it rules on evidence. Petitioners have an opportunity to amend their filings based on information they get from the position statements of the county, you know, of some planning, sustainable development, as well as from the commission or other comments that come yet. They also hold what's called a pre hearing conference. And this is to specifically make sure that we're gonna run an efficient hearing process. We sit all the parties down, and usually it's the petition that drives that process.

We're trying to find out how many witnesses do are you planning to put on? How long do you think your presentation is gonna take? How many days does commission have to put aside for hearing? So we're trying to be as efficient as possible. We also have to deal with potential interveners.

Some some petitions, there's no intervention. Other petitions, we do have intervention. So those interveners have to provide why they should be considered to be interveners, what their position is on the petition, and the commission holds a hearing to identify whether or not to accept those interveners, as well as whether to limit the extent to which they participate in a given petition. Once we get into our hearing process, as again, we have up to three hundred sixty five days, but that barely happens.

I did an analysis a few years ago to look at how long it generally takes us to process a petition all the way through emptying it into a proof.

So I look back at least thirty years over several 100 petitions. Our average time to process and approve is four to six months from the deemed complete date to the end date. It's not ten years. It's not five years. It's not three years.

So why is it that sometimes we hear, oh, it took ten years for the land use commission to approve our permits. Well, in a few instances, that's because the land use commission's decision was challenged in court. Sometimes people are including the environmental review process as part of the land use commission process.

But actually, before we can accept the petition for being to being complete, they have to either have gone through the Chapter three forty three environmental review process or they have to show us that they're exempt from going through the process. So that precedes our three hundred sixty five day clock to process it.

So an environmental review process takes three years. That's not part of the land use commissions process. That's prior to the land use commission. So I make that distinction because we get beat up a

lot. We hear it all the time. Oh, land use commission takes so long. That's why it takes so long to process permits. Statutorily, we have three hundred sixty five days.

We've never missed that deadline. So people are take people are saying that their permits took ten years, You're gonna have to look at a different part of the process.

I know you're gonna go over more detail with your remaining presentation. I wanna give an opportunity for Brian, to chime in into the presentation. I think Brian is the chair for the Stateline News Commission.

Yes. Thank you, rep Galaga. I really appreciate what you've been holding here and this whole effort with the speed task force. Scott did a terrific job with his presentation, and I just wanted to add a little bit of color to the the slides. We really rely on staff for their expertise, their their professional planners, and attorneys on the staff.

And many times, there are thousands and thousands of pages that have to be reviewed, and they do the brunt of it. But I think for the purpose of this task force, the main issue is if we're building homes or economic development, the 4,000,000 acres that the state has in land has to be zoned urban before you can build a home there. And, you know, you can build solar farms on agricultural land as a special permit.

But for homes and businesses, the state has to zone the land urban. And currently, just for overview, Kauai has only four to 5% of their land zone urban.

Maui is about five to 6%. Big Island, 2%. Oahu is much more urbanized as you can tell for yourself. About 26% of the land is zoned urban. And overall, statewide, only 5% of the state's 4,100,000 acres, is zoned urban.

So you can see there's there's not a lot of easy stuff to do. All the easy stuff was done fifty years ago if you wanna build things. And, also, one other wrinkle is, in 1985, the law the state law was changed so that counties can zone land to be urban if it's under 15 acres. If it's over 15 acres, the county does their process first, and then the state will also make a decision based on the record of the county.

And so that was changed because some people felt that this dual process was a little bit cumbersome.

Now as far as the amount of time that it takes, it is correct that there is a time limit, and usually, it is done within three hundred sixty days. The separate environmental impact statement process and and other things like that is is outside of the LUC, but it's it's something that's required if, you want a zone land urban. And the other last point I want to make is that, many times, it's not the amount of time it's that it takes.

It's the uncertainty when you have to go to another level of approval. So you've already done it with the counties, and then now and the counties will the the county planning commissions will make a decision.

They could require certain conditions and requirements for you to get your zoning change, and then their county councils have to approve it as well. And the county council could add certain conditions. Then if it's over 15 acres, it goes to the state land use commission, and then the state land use commission can also add conditions. And you as a builder or developer will not know necessarily what that would be. It might be that you have to build a sewer, a road, schools, water, many things.

You might have to have a lot of environmental protections. You have the public trust doctrine. You have cultural and environmental issues that you have to also address. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of extra detail and, you know, give give a little broader view as far as it applies to this task force or colleague guide. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Scott, it looks like you have many more slides, but I'm gonna ask you to summarize, and then we're gonna go into questions.

Sure. Let me let me talk to something that your task force is probably more interested in. How how the OUC has been improving the efficiency of the process. First of all, we encourage early and frequent communication between the petitioner and our staff and the office of planning. We often we often tell the petitioner who calls us, please make sure you meet with the office of planning because they'll help you coordinate with other state agencies as well as the county.

We have offered up and done kind of pre reviews when the petitioner and or their consultants have requested or asked us. We've taken a look at their review review their drafts before they're submitted to make sure that they're doing everything that they need to So that we can process it quickly. We have a website, and we've had that website up for almost twenty years, but it's really extensive.

It tracks the status of all pending actions that we're involved in, both district boundary amendments, special permits, regulatory rulings. We provided on our website easy access to statutes and administrative rules that are implicated in our process.

It's just not just for us. It's also the EIS process. It's also the two zero one h process. That's another part of our boundary amendment proceedings. The two zero one h process, the HHFDC, and the county housing agencies are involved in.

That's a forty five day maximum turnaround in a decision. We hold pre hearing conferences, which I touched on. And that OPSD has a statutory responsibility to coordinate state agencies responses as well as the county planning departments to the same at the county level. We are very often in contact with petitioners and their consultants to ensure that they're on track, that they know what's expected, and they get it done.

So that's the only way we're able to make decisions within three hundred sixty five days because we do a lot of handling.

We do a lot of assisting.

Thank you, Scott and Brian, for your presentation. Let's open it up for questions. Who wants to kick us off? Go ahead.

Thank you for that presentation. About two years ago, I saw a story in environment Hawaii regarding plans that had been converted from agricultural use to urban use. The figure of 40 to 65,000 housing units that were promised as part of those amendments was thrown out. Is the land use commission still reviewing what happened to those promised units? I mean, I I also know I read a story somewhere.

There might not be a

lot of truth to it.

Is is it true that those units were promised when those amendments were made and then they were never built?

So what you're referring to is again, land use commission has been operating since 1960. Right. We've been approving projects for many decades. What we did look back on several years ago was an attempt to take a look at how many of the projects that we have approved at the state level and how many units how many housing units were part of those approvals. They're still out there, and we did not have any information about their having been built.

So we came up with a figure around 40,000 units across the state, and we identified how many in each county. Because we do have the data. We do have on our state level, we have the data saying how many housing units per of those projects we approved. We know quite a few of them specifically, Adam.

Is is mister Arnold Wong still reviewing the staff? Yes.

So we do have do you have a staff member who is taking a look at trying to identify. Now that we have identified specific projects that we have questions about, he's been contacting the petitioners or in many cases, the successor owners to the petitioners to try to identify what is holding things up. Is it financing? Is it infrastructure? Is it county level approvals?

Is it something else? And wherever we can, we are trying to identify what we can step into to help move things forward.

Brian, would you like to make a comment on that question?

Yes. Thanks, rep. That was a very good question. And then and many times projects are approved, but financial conditions will change, or the developer, you know, will run into problems. Or sometimes they may be land banking and wanna flip that property.

But one thing that sort of mitigates that is that when there's an environment when there's an environmental impact statement, if it's older than ten years, generally, it's not really considered valid anymore. And other times, developers may agree to conditions that are maybe not practical. So I'm glad that there is a staff member that is reaching out to some of the projects and find trying to find out what the problem is.

And if certain if it's certain conditions that may be onerous, then that's something that may have to be reconsidered. But many times, there are projects that are 30 old or so, and it's just not feasible anymore.

And, they they they really can't do anything about it, as far as moving it forward. And so maybe they're thinking of selling it to someone else, or they may have to come back for an amended amended petition.

Any other questions? Anyone in Zoom? I have a question. Scott, I know you said that three hundred sixty five days allows the commission to have the evidence and have a strong approval. But have you ever tried lowering that amount?

Like, I guess what I wanna ask is, what is the number of applicants that comes in? And do you have do you pass it all out within I mean, you you said you actually don't use all that time. So have you ever tried to set that time lower and try to use that as the the new benchmark? Just curious.

So

for one, the commission doesn't set the time frame. That's that's establishing statute. So that would representative be the legislator

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Legislature. Okay? Right. So as I pointed out before, generally, we take four to six months. When I say we take four to six months, our process takes four to six months.

That's often the amount of time that's necessary for the petitioner to put on an adequate Application. Application and evidence to put on the record for the decision making to occur. Sometimes they need longer. And only in one case did they need more than three hundred sixty five days.

Yeah. How how long does the decision making process take? So your the staff takes four to six months to complete the application. Then now the decision making, how long does that normally take?

Well, that's that includes everything. That's to that's to a final decision that then the petitioner can walk away. They've got their entitlement. They can start doing whatever other necessary permitting date that's required.

Because what I'm thinking in my mind is what if it's 03/1965 minus 90 and then ninety is the extension? But regardless, I think the data comes from your department proving that the number of applications take four to six months, and we're actually finishing these applications 95% of the time in under four to six months. I think that needs to be out there because, like you said, there's rumors that it takes ten years, but it's actually taking into account the court proceedings.

So I I think maybe your problem might be just marketing.

Well, I'll

Perhaps, but unfortunately, that's not in our statute for us to do marketing. Got it.

put it on the recommendation form. Is there any other questions?

Yes. You're

welcome. Go

ahead, Heather.

Yes. Hi. Thank you. Wonderful presentation. Very helpful. One of the pieces of legislation I've been working with, the legislators on the last couple of years was House Bill 2424, which would have allowed the counties a period of time to redesignate agricultural lots of three acres or less, 10 contiguous lots or more, from agricultural to rural. And it's particular a particular interest to Hawaii County because we have so much land that is subdivided into these smaller lots where agriculture isn't really being done.

And if they were designated as rural, then those people would have the opportunity to build an ADU, creating more housing that we in the county don't actually have to develop but can be developed by the private sector. Additionally, because we have so many nonconforming lots in agriculture, all our agricultural lots, we can't enforce some of our agricultural regulations as strictly as we might, ensuring that there's productive agriculture because we have all of these nonconforming uses on ag state land use ag.

So the proposal in the House bill 2424 was, like I said, to give the counties a small amount of time to petition the LUC for a deck ruling for a major, you know, boundary amendment from from ag to rural.

Made it through the house, didn't make it through the Senate. Wanted to get some suggestions from the, state planning office on how we might proceed next year or if there's something that you could initiate from your side, that could help solve this problem for Hawaii County.

So are you asking for the opinion of a state planning office, that would be OPSD, or from the land use commission?

Actually, I would be interested in both. I think regardless of the situation moving forward, we're going to need the support of both entities.

Okay. I'll tell you some observations from the staff of the Land Use Commission. I'm saying that because our chair of the Land Use Commission is on, and he speaks for the Land Use Commission, and I can speak for the Land Use Commission staff. That legislation was trying to utilize a procedure called the declaratory order that we don't feel is appropriate for what you're what you wanna do.

In fact, statute already allows the county to bring to the land use commission a petition as you guys are as you guys envision.

And so, you know, that's the process that you can use. It's there to be used already. I know you want a more streamlined process. We think that declaratory order will be a better vehicle or faster or not be quasi judicial. But I think that in trying to put it into a declaratory order process, it would become a quasi judicial process anyway.

So use the use the vehicle that already exists there under statute, under two zero five today.

Brian, do you have any comments?

So Perry Harris Smith had a very wonderful article about how the land study bureau came to designate the four state land use districts and pretty much lumped a lot of stuff into ag when they probably should have been rural to begin with. But there's different opinions on on how that should be handled. I would note that a lot of developers will try to limit their district boundary amendments to 14.99999 acres or less just to avoid going to the state land use process.

So there is a lot of debate on that issue. I I can't say that I speak for everybody because there are different views.

And a lot of the times when it's a big project like whole Peely or Coral Ridge, when it's hundreds or even thousands of acres, You're gonna have a lot of interveners, lot of lawsuits, and lot of protracted litigations. So that kind of stuff and a lot of it is on process where there was the process was followed, where the cultural protections were followed. Those things are just unavoidable.

That's not, you know, the standard process that the land use commission would follow that that we could plan for.

Heather, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to say your following questions. But just before you do that, I know we said we're gonna break at 03:30, but there's some good conversation. Maybe we'll break at three I mean, 12:30 forty or forty five just to continue the conversation. Heather, go ahead.

Yeah. Just just a quick follow-up. You know, aware that the counties already have this authority per the HRS, The main thing for us is is what you mentioned. Some trying to do something like this for multiple properties from the county standpoint. You have multiple levels of political influence, the likelihood of a contested case, several contested cases high.

I mean, it's just not gonna be effective in my mind under the structure that we have now. Now I'm an environmentalist, so, like, all four protections and making sure we check all the boxes there. Also, you know, fully supportive of due process. I guess I'm just asking this body to potentially think about this is one of the challenges that we face with regard to housing on the Big Island.

And is there a process that could work for everyone with the considerations raised that would help us re rename some of these I reidentify some of these errors as a rule instead of agriculture, which as you said, might be in a more appropriate designation.

But thank you for your responses. Appreciate it.

Is there any other questions from any other members?

Hey. This is Monica. Can you hear me? Yep.

Go ahead, Monica.

Hi. Sorry. I I came in this meeting very late, so I missed a good portion of it, and I'm probably the least knowledgeable about, land use. But kinda similar to DPP is oftentimes every application gets lumped up, lumped into the same category, but I heard there's a 15 acre threshold. Is that too blunt of a threshold?

For example, if somebody's gonna do a, housing project that's, like, 16 acres or wants to do a housing project for 16 acres. Is that essentially the same thing as a conversion for a 100 acre agricultural conversion? Or could there be multiple layers in how we we we look at these various projects, or is that already in place? Thank you.

Thanks, Monica. What do you think, Scott?

So the legislature established the 15 acre and under guideline. And it wasn't a sliding scale. Well, sometimes it's 16, sometimes it's 12, sometimes it's a 100. You know, they have to set it at a certain point. And I think they were looking at how what what would what's the average density of single family dwellings that might be developed on a 15 acre piece of property.

And if you're looking at 10,000 square foot, which is pretty large, home sites, you get at least four per acre. So now you're talking about, what, 60 units. That's single family. Even if you pull out some acreage for roadways and things like that, maybe 50. 50 houses on a 15 acre piece of property.

There's a lot of potential impact there. I think that's what they were looking at. What what is kind of threshold that they might consider? K. Beyond that, there's a lot of impact that really needs more more studying.

So we're just now of course, that's single family dwellings. But if you take 15 acres and you do multifamily or you do high rise, you can get a lot of units in a small small area.

Brian?

Yeah. Those are really good points. I used to think that there well, there's there's an argument that if the county general plan and the the community plans have already zoned what the growth area is to be urban, then it shouldn't have to go to the state for a second round of review.

But since I've been on the land use commission, I've I've found that a lot of times the counties, I hate to say it, but they don't do a complete job in their review, and they miss a lot of things. So I I think having that state review is useful.

And it's again, it's the decision has to be made based on the evidence at the county level. It's not de novo as the lawyers like to say. It has to be based on the record of the county. And, yes, Scott is right. If if you do multifamily, you might get, you know, many more homes on one on each acre.

Yeah. If you built a high rise, you can get maybe 300 homes on one acre. So there's a lot of impacts. But I think that there have been proposals in the past at the legislature to increase the acreage to 25 acres, a 150 acres. And each time it has failed to pass a legislature, even if there was a limited time period to sunset after x amount of years, it's never passed the legislature.

So I think the balance is what everyone is wrestling with.

Do you have any is there any other questions on the members? Any in Zoom? Alright. It looks like we asked all the questions we need to ask. Scott, I just wanna leave with I think you guys have a lot of data.

And if during the big meetings, I think having that data out and statistics would be very helpful. And I I I think that would help blur some of the confusion that's out there in the public. We are going to break out for lunch. We will be back at 01:00, and we will we will continue with our last presentation with building codes, and then we're gonna establish the pigs.

We really need everybody to be here for establishing the pigs, and we hope to start that around 01:30 or 01:45.

Thank you, everyone. We're gonna take a recess. Recess.

We are back from recess, and we are going to start our next presentation, presentation on building codes. At this time, we will take testimony from the public. Is there any testimony from the public? Looks like there are none. We are gonna close testimony.

Now we can start with the presentation. Howard, would you like to take a call?

I would love to. Thanks, Rep. Ilagan. And thank you for putting this entire presentation together.

If you had a dollar for every hour you got put into this process, you could pay off your mortgage. So, Rep. Ilagan sent me three pages of questions. A little bit wordy, so I have condensed it down to 11 slides, and I've grouped them together. And I'm very glad that we have three county building officials online with us, because a lot of the questions may actually involve for counties. And you know who you are.

Just gotta call with on you to, and answer those. So first, State Building Code Council. Why do we need such a thing? We got to get oh, let's see. I should introduce myself.

Howard Wiig, State Energy Office. Been with the Energy Office since about the time when Noah left the animals out of the ark. And with the Building Code Council right since its inception, before its inception, and one good reason why we decided we needed a cohesive state building code is we examined the individual county codes. And this was in 2006, and we found that one county had an electrical code dating back to 1982, 26 years earlier.

Don't have to tell you that electronics has been improving by leaps and bounds and fire safety.

Electrical codes, they go right together. You will do those codes, lessen the chance of fires, and you improve efficiency. We really needed to consolidate. That was the impetus behind it. And you will hear me refer to HRS 107 part 2 over and over again.

So it's not just the voting members of the council, but there are a whole bunch of investigative committees, and they go into the specialty areas. So that adds a little bit of complexity to it. And a very oh, one of the really important components of HRS 107 is the fact that there is a subcommittee which is comprised of the built state building officials of each county. They have a subcommittee before each SPCC meeting.

They meet and they do a go or no go on the amendments that we will be considering.

If there's one dissension out. We we don't consider that until the the counties agree on that. Oh, should be advancing my slides. Yes. So HRS 107, 12 voting members, and we will be considering 2 more when the SBCC reconvenes.

We'll be considering two more. The General Contractors Association and the Building Industry Association have said, instead of splitting the membership, we both want individual members. And something that happened in the constituency of the SBCC early was that we had the Department of Health on there, but they said this doesn't really affect us much. But I represented the energy portion, EBDT, and we were right in there very active. So we deleted health and substituted EBDT.

Since then, we have added the HIEMA. I'll go into that later. There are some disasters coming down the pike, and we definitely need HIEMA on that. So designed for code adoption, here's the process. The national building codes are in a three year cycle, fire, plumbing, structural, whatever.

And it's up to us, committee members, to track when those national codes appear. Very often, we're involved at the national level. Anyway and then there's a step by step process. And when there's a glitch in the composition of the SBCC, we just go to we have amended. For instance, I mentioned DOH moving away and HIEMA coming in.

GSA and BIA both want to come in and so forth. So this is that the national codes come out, investigative committees decide on whether or not Hawaii wants to make an amendment, and the investigative committees are very, very specialized. There's structural investigators, structural strengths of building and so forth, and fire and so forth. And then it goes to the full council for consideration. Should we amend this or should we adopt the national quota as is?

And that's where the fireworks happen. Sometimes very lively discussions at that level. And some of you know what I mean by that. But the core problem here, and this is all about problem solving, how do we expedite the building code processing, is the fact that the HRS 107 part 2 says that there shall be appointed an executive director and an executive assistant, and I should have put in here who will serve at the pleasure of the council. And here's a key insight here.

What we're lacking in holding the process up is very often a lack of training. And I will propose that when these two people are appointed, no ifs, ands, or buts. I hope there's no dispute about this anymore, that those people one of their responsibilities will be to train the affected constituencies in the new provisions.

And that is not all that hard because in the case of, say, US Department of Energy, as soon as a new code is updated, they will say they will ask the question, what are the key provisions of this new code? They will publish that nationally, and then it's up to these new hires too. Do that training on the new codes.

Not all that difficult. And another question, how do we oh, have somebody gotta tell me who events my slides here. So just discuss that. How do we track the progress of the new codes? Right here, you'll see the word minutes, minutes, minutes.

And this is a key problem because I chaired the SBCC for quite a while, and I would have to convene the meeting and say, can somebody volunteer to take minutes? Because we don't have any staff to take minutes. Oh, incidentally, every one of us is fully employed, and now comes the responsibilities of the SBCC. Rep. Ilagan used the phrase extra credit. We were doing this for extra credit.

And so I would try to get somebody to volunteer to take the minutes, but they're busy with their own kuleana. There's at least one instance where I was trying to chair the committee and take the minutes. Result was not so thorough minutes. As I see, there is among the responsibilities of these two new people is to be really, really assiduous in the minutes because that's how we track the progress. That's how we bring up the problems.

That's how we solve the problems in with minutes. And the question became how do how do the different counties, track their progress? Each county has a different dataset. And Rep. Ilagan earlier referred to legislation regarding the need for uniform datasets across the state.

Stakeholders informed, Rep. Ilagan referred to the Sunshine Laws. We very, very assiduously follow the sunshine laws, post minutes, everywhere that they are required to post. A lot of you know that process very well. And we have a lot of organizations, for instance, the building organizations, who keep very, very close track of this, either their voting members or their active members. And as we progress, they all have their websites, their newsletters, and so forth, and they publish the results of each SBCC meeting to keep all the membership informed.

For instance, one very active group is the Hawaii chapter of the AIA. They're affected, and they put it on their newsletters. We work closely with them. And the building industry, I believe the building industry is very, very interested in what we're doing. They track it. They put it on their newsletters.

And connecting the very nature of the SBCC causes us to connect because we have state people, we have the four counties, AIA, structural engineers, fire, plumbing. We even have an elevator specialist because elevator safety, I think we can all agree, is rather essential. I don't know how many people have been stuck in an elevator, but we definitely want to track that. And our meetings, of course, Sunshine Law opened to the public.

We post it. The individual organizations post it. We are just as absolutely transparent as we can possibly be and we are the, we, being the SBCC, we're a subset, our agency with the with DAGS. So that gets the state involved right there. Timeline.

We keep track of when the national codes are published. That's part of our job. That's the trigger that's pulled. Actually, we know it's coming down the pike. And we have two years, according to HRS 107 part 2, to either adopt those national codes as is or amend.

And that's the large, large part of the SBCC responsibilities. And we've generally been able to keep on track. It sounds like a lot of time when there's contentious issues, it's not a lot of time. And we publish on our website, the colleges publish on their websites and so forth. And again, all the involvement.

What would help the SBCC to better meet the adoption needs? I've mentioned those two positions. Back in the early days of SBCC, Tim Hugh, anybody who remembers Tim, he was the chair for a while. And then, Socrates Bratakos, fire department, he was chair.

And they would take it upon themselves in the early days to go to the legislature, Say, hey, legislature, there's two positions here. Make sure they're funded. And they always got great reception. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And we never got a dime. That is the real problem, dear. And just among the responsibilities of these two new people, I'm just assuming that these two new people emerge, is they would set the SBCC meetings, get all the details arranged for the investigative committees to meet, and they will provide the online access sites for the meetings, in person, sign up sheets, field the questions, I, and as forward chair, I get a whole lot of questions.

Still, just that's extra credit. Excuse me. Extra credit. Rafaela got here. And then, again provide training.

And where where do we, how do we know we need training? The building industry. It's building industry who is really struggling with this timeline. And every session, there is legislation saying, we shouldn't adopt codes every three years. Let's make it every six years.

And that's part of a large part of my job is to provide testimony. You know, we need three years. With these two new people, we can do it in three years. And again, by helping the building industry, we know that they're understaffed just like anybody. So final recommendations, Staff, staff, staff, and coach assist the counties as the counties need assistance and assist the industries as they need assistance.

Conclusion, Be very oh, no. Actually, this is a different a a much broader conclusion here. We all know that apparently, starting in a month or two, we are gonna have really miserable weather. We all remember was it about nine, ten years ago when we had six hurricanes throwing at us? And one hit, but fortunately it hit on the slopes of Mauna Loa and it dissipated that way.

Otherwise, we dodged the bullet one time after another after another. Apparently, we're gonna be having that beating or that type of weather consistently. Look at what's happening to Europe now. One of the European cities, I think, yesterday hit a 100 degrees. It's so cool they don't have air conditioning there.

So this is what is coming to all of us, and we need to fortify our codes for resilience. I own personal home, this condo loan that we had. I have, rental units in my home. It'll be a $100,000 damage, please. They both totally got flooded out.

They're just gutted right now. Just one example, and that's repeated thousands of times across the state. Just that one storm, and apparently they are coming and coming. And if these two new members are able to handle all the details that I mentioned, the staff or the SBCC voting members can actually concentrate on improving things. As you know, we have a goal of zero net energy by 2045.

It's achievable. I know it's achievable. We have to get down to the details and then combine that with extremely resilient codes and extremely energy efficient codes. We have the best climate in the world. We can take advantage of that.

We can do it. If I think I've made my point now. We have our two new members. Thank you.

Thank you, Howard. Our members, is there any questions for a presenter today?

Are we up to date?

Well, the SBCC hasn't existed for almost three years now. So, yeah, we're back on the 2018 code. We're just about to leapfrog to the 2024, and then the Governor put a stop to SBCC.

So in that sense, we're up to date. Nationally, the 2024 well, I speak strictly for the code. All the other codes are are in sync with this. Me, nationally, it's 2024.

I've been working on the 2027 IDCC. It's about ready for a public connection. So we're getting further and further behind.

So I don't recall really quite when when I was in the field, an energy part, that even if you have the and you've got the counties of the SBCC. Even if you have the state establishing the call, it still has to go to the counties. So what is that process and how is that the two people gonna be, you know

This is part of the genius of the composition of the SBCC. All four county building officials shall be Board Members, and they shall comprise a subcommittee. They don't like something or one of those four doesn't like something, boom. It's out. That's how the counties get involved.

And they're sitting in on every meeting. They are some of the most active participants in the meeting. A lot of what constitutes the new amendment codes is a result of a county participation.

So if SBCC approves the the building code amendments, then it's approved. You don't have to go to the counties to get it approved. It's kind of approved.

It's approved as a state measure. Here's a little contradiction. The state has zero regulatory power. All the regulatory power exists with with the counties. So it's it becomes a state code, but it only becomes really real when the counties adopt that.

And the counties are free to adopt it as is or with amendments.

How does that work?

Pretty well.

The right now, we have Honolulu and Maui Counties with one extra provisions in the 2018. And speaking I'm speaking strictly as the energy code with extra provisions, beyond those provisions. And, Kauai and Big Island are just straight states 2018 IECC.

Adopted. Good.

More questions? Any other questions? Oh, sorry. Aaron? Thank you, chair.

Thank you, Mister Wig, for that presentation. That was great. I did have a question. Has Governor's office or DAGS been able to hire those two new positions? Or are we still waiting to hear?

We are still waiting to hear. And, incidentally this is Aaron Spielman, the Wheatie Island rep. We're still waiting to hear, Aaron.

Thank you. Thank you.

Aaron, I can also chime in from Gov's office. The positions were included in the budget. Those positions are budgeted to DAGS. They're gonna have to go through all of the formal processes to set up those positions. So reorder that.

We do have in the interim an employee within DAGS who has been working part time on this, Max. You know? But it's no. It's in the process, but going through the the formal hiring procedures.

Thank you, Lindsay. And I think my follow-up question is, can you clarify, was Max sitting in that executive assistant role or is he more like general staff reviewing and preparing for those two seats?

The oh.

Now he's back staff. He's reviewing, you know, 2024, 2027 codes in addition to his other DAGS duties, but not in the formal executive director role.

Okay. Thank you.

The language reads that these two additional staff shall serve at the pleasures of the SBCC, which means that the SBCC can assign them tasks.

Thank you. Let's move on to Jordan. Did Jordan freeze up?

Hello? Can you guys hear me?

Yep. We can hear you.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I've raised this issue consistently about the staffing and I would have, you know, the legislators in the room think about how much work you would get done if you didn't have staff supporting your guys' functions. I mean, to me, it's just nonsensical to think a board with this kind of importance is just gonna run on its own. It's even more frustrating when there's by statute support positions for the board that haven't been acted on.

So, you know, from the county level, I just take it as a sign that we're not really serious about this issue at the state level.

So I appreciate the conversation because that's ground zero, in my opinion. No sense talking about other stuff. We can't even get the focus we need to work on these issues.

So I just wanted to offer that. Thank you.

Thank you, Jordan. I think Howard already drove the point of those two staff decision. I want to add in Howard, correct me if I'm wrong. There's eight different codes. Right?

Yep. Yes. That's correct.

The only code that's 2024 is the state fire code?

That's correct. They're independent of us. They're attached to us, but they they do their own thing.

And the rest of them are the state residential code, state building code, the state energy code, the state existing building code, the state plumbing code, the state electrical code, and the state elevator code.

That's correct.

I just wanted to share that information because I didn't see them in the slides. Is there any other questions? Go ahead.

And thank you, by the way, for for this presentation. It's sometimes hard to get this information on the State Building Code Council. I'm just trying to understand the history of the council. Why are we on a three year cycle?

Because there's a national three year cycle. We follow national. And that that's across the board, all all lingual.

When when you say there's a national code cycle, who who who oversees that national cycle?

Right. It was the a lot of the built real building codes started after the Arab oil embargo of 197-74, and then the state energy offices were created. And so that was the evolution of the energy codes, and a lot of the other building codes were kind of vague. And during the 70s, that was a period of consolidation of a lot of other codes also. And sometime in the 1980s, that three year cycle came into the year.

I've tried to follow the debate over whether we should move to a six year cycle. Are you currently familiar with whether any states have moved to six year cycles?

I think perhaps some of the Southern states have. Perhaps. I certainly wouldn't put any money on them. Okay. They're they they've been debating that same issue.

Okay. Thank you.

Jordan, did you have another question?

Oh, no. Sorry. It's my hand still up. But I would comment that one of the things to be aware of when you talk about the code cycles is there's other programs out there that point to the local municipalities and the current status of their codes, and that can be used as eligibility criteria for qualifying for other programs out there.

So that becomes kind of this conflict on these longer durations and the push to be current, when it comes to these other programs that are out there, things like the National Flood Program and other, programs that look at the current state of building codes to grade the counties on their eligibility for other federal programs.

Thank you.

Aaron? Yep.

Hi. Thank you, Chair. To answer the gentleman's question. Yes, at least one state has moved to a six year cycle, that that being North Carolina. And in recent, like, in the last year, there's some very good articles in the National Fire Protection Association Magazine that expressly discussed why a six year cycle is not a good idea.

So just keep that in mind with the disasters that happened in North Carolina in the last year or two, and that's kind of like, where that group of life safety professionals is coming from.

Thank you. Go ahead. Question.

How much of the of all these codes would you say is directly related to life safety type of things versus larger policy types of matters. The example in my mind here is a few years ago, we were building an industrial center in Kapolei, and I was trying to figure out how much what EV, electric vehicle parking we were required to have. And first off, I know that there was inconsistency between energy code, building code, you know, various codes.

You know, but to me, you know, how many EV stalls you're required to have is a policy matter. That's not really directly a life safety type of thing.

As we're looking to expedite permitting and, you know, build housing more quickly, I would think that would be an opportunity to to review our code and say, are there policy things in here that we can remove that it those can be dealt with legislatively, but the code should be focused on safety?

That is an eternal debate. You just summed it up very, very well. And some states are not adopting EV codes. And there's also another provision, PV ready. When you build a new home, it shall be ready for PVs up on the roof.

That's another contentious issue, not directly health and safety. So that becomes a decision of a body like the state building code council. And in this case, two counties don't have that provision. Two counties do have that provision. Depends where their priorities are.

But you're absolutely right in differentiating them.

Thank you