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Home My WebLink AboutP-0107.01-16 Council Minutes 02-2009- V \ . ~ ~ COUNCIL MEETING February 11, 2009 The Council Meeting of the Council of the County of Kauai was called to order by the Council Chair at the Council Chambers, Historic County Building, 4396 Rice Street, Room 201, Lihu`e, Kauai, on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 9:11 a.m., after which the following members answered the call of the roll: Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Dickie Chang Honorable Jay Furfaro Honorable .Daryl W. Kaneshiro Honorable Lani T. Kawahara Honorable Derek S.K. Kawakami Honorable Bill "Kaipo" Asing, Council Chair APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Mr. Bynum moved for approval of the agenda as circulated, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously carried. MINUTES of the following meetings of the Council: Special Council Meeting of January 27, 2009 (Interviews) Council Meeting of January 28, 2009 Mr. Kaneshiro moved for approval of the minutes as circulated, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? ERNIE PASION, DEPUTY COUNTY CLERK: Let's go to page 3 and take Resolution No. 2009-27. " Resolution No. 2009-27, RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL APPOINTMENT TO THE POLICE COMMISSION (Charles Iona, First Term): Mr. Bynum moved to adopt Resolution No. 2009-27, seconded by Mr. Kaneshiro. Chair Asing: We have Mr. Iona here. Congratulations and do you want to say anything or I will leave it up to you. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. 0 COUNCIL MEETING - 2 - • February 11, 2009 . CHARLES IONA: Thank you Councilmembers. Good morning. On behalf of myself and my family, I'd like to say thank you very much for your vote of confidence. As I said the last time, my whole goal is to serve our community and I believe that there needs to be a balance both with the community as well as the Police Department and that is my goal to serve both to the best that I can. Thank you very much. Chair Asing: Thank you. I appreciate it. Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, I just want to thank Charles. During the interview process for your candidness and openness through that process and I will be supporting you today when we take the roll call vote. But it is appropriate to say thank you for your candidness and because of that spirit of aloha and openness, I am sure that you will make an excellent Commissioner. Mr. Iona: Thank you very much Sir. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, I'd like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Is there any discussion? If not, roll call please. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2009-27 was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR ADOPTION: Bynum, Chang, Furfaro, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Kawakami, Asing TOTAL - 7, AGAINST ADOPTION: None - TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL - 0. Chair Asing: Again, congratulations. With that, can we go back to the first page? Mr. Passion: Communications for receipt, communication C 2009-76. C 2009-76 Communication (01/16/2009) from Jay Furfaro, Council Vice Chair, requesting that the Administration be present to give an update on the status of retaining an Interior Space Programming Consultant for vacant interior areas within the Pi`ikoi Building for the potential relocation of the Kauai Historic Society into the Pi`ikoi Building: Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, since this is my communication and after meeting with the Administration yesterday on specifics about some of the scope for the historic building, I have concurred with Mr. Heu that they need an additional ~ • COUNCIL MEETING - 3 - February 11, 2009 two (2) weeks to come, but no more than two (2) weeks to give us an update considering the new items and the scope that was brought to their attention, so I am asking if we can defer. Chair Asing: With that, can I have a motion to defer? Mr. Bynum moved to defer C 2009-76, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: I believe we have... Mr. Pasion: Let's go to page 4, bills for second reading. BILLS FOR SECOND READING: Bill No. 2295 - A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CHAPTER 8, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, RELATING TO ZONING DESIGNATION IN PO`IPU, KAUAI (Richard E. Fuller, Jr., et al., Applicant): Mr. Kaneshiro: I do have an amendment and it is basically an amendment for clarification and I will explain that after we make the motion to approve the bill as is. Mr. Kaneshiro moved to approve Bill No. 2295 on second and final reading, and that it be transmitted to the Mayor for his approval, seconded by Mr. Kawakami. Mr. Kaneshiro: As circulated, all members have in front of them as circulated. Basically, it is real simple and we are just taking out gutters. Technically, we met with Public Works and found out that actually there are no... on Lawa`i Road for drainage as such where gutters would drain out and so forth. So it is just a technical error and I just wanted to point that out. Other than that, we clarified with Public Works and the amendment... I would like to have this amended. Mr. Kaneshiro moved to amend Bill No. 2295 as circulated, seconded by Mr. Furfaro. Chair Asing: Any discussion? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: First of all, I want to thank Councilman Kaneshiro for, you know, this item 4 is somewhat of a template of the particular pieces, and no way does it deal with the actual construction of curbs and sidewalks in that particular area. I would like to also make note that the fact of the matter that this is still subject to... after the zoning changes, it is still subject to reviews and permitting when it is actually built. So we have additional time and this work has to be done and regulated according to the American Disabilities Act. I want to COUNCIL MEETING. - 4 - ~ February 11, 2009 thank Councilmember Kaneshiro who is a member of my committee that caught that and since I cannot introduce it, I have to go to a Committee member. Thank you Mr. Kaneshiro. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion on the amendment? If not, all those in favor say aye? The motion to amend Bill No. 2295 was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: We are back to the main motion as amended. Is there any further discussion? If not, roll call please. The motion to approve Bill No. 2295 as amended was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR ADOPTION: Bynum, Chang, Furfaro, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Kawakami, Asing TOTAL - 7, AGAINST ADOPTION: None TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL - 0. Mr. Pasion: Let's go back to page 1 which is communication C 2009-77. C 2009-'77 Communication (01/16/2009) from Jay Furfaro, Council Vice Chair, requesting that the Administration be present to provide an update on the efforts to address the flooding situation at Po`ipu Beach Park which should include, but not be limited to, short-term and long-term recommendations to mitigate future flooding in the lifeguard area, parking lot, and on County roads in the surrounding area, as well as funding requirements to address this problem: Chair Asing: With that, I would like to suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: We have Kylan from the Parks Department. With that, Kylan? KYLAN DELA CRUZ, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PARKS & RECREATION: I have a slide show to present. Okay, just to update you on the situation that we have here at Po`ipu Beach Park area. If you look... this is Hoowili Road... this road that comes from Po`ipu Road up here, it comes down towards the beach park, Hoowili Road, and this is Hoone Road that parallels the beach front. The area in question that we are talking about is... as you enter off of Hoowili Road, there is a ponding area here that actually is meant to take in excess water in an event of a rain. But, often, this area there floods, and then results in the flooding of this parking lot here. We will have more photos just to show you where the flood area is COUNCIL MEETING ~ - 5 - • Febru 11 2009 ~`Y , at. Now there is the other question on the communication as it pertains to the lifeguard tower... it is around this area. There is no known area that I... known record that I am aware of any flooding in that area. The other area of concern is at the Brennecke... where the Brennecke Restaurant is at here. There is a swale on the eastside of the restaurant that we are still trying to find out... we are doing an assessment... there was a... in the past, a culvert, but there is no written... there is no plan as far as a design plan of a culvert of any existing culvert that was placed there. So we are still looking to that issue, so now the area of concern is this area here, the flooding, and then this area here, this parking lot flooding. This is just from the December flood from the high rain and winds. This is the... were taken off of Hoowili Road looking towards the Marriott. The Marriott is in the background here. This is Hoowili Road and we are looking directly into the pond and in the background here is the parking lot. This is another view, pond, parking lot. This is another angle. This is the... as soon as you enter the parking lot from Hoowili Road is basically about 40 feet in from the entryway where we establish this flood signs. Now this is Hoone Road and it parallels the beach park. This is the entryway into the parking lot. As you can see, if you... inward from the entryway is the flood. That is another picture. This is the Marriott here. This is the parking lot. Again, the area of concern is to these two (2) areas. This is basically just to give you a... you know, this issue is not an issue that just recently occurred. It has been a problem over some years now. The parking lot was constructed on or about the mid 80's. In this case here, the flood period was between December 11 and the 16th. Now up to the 31St, there was still intermittent rain that still exacerbated the flooding situation. December 19, the declaration for emergency by the Mayor and so forth. So this area was identified as a disaster area. Okay, December 24, we had meetings previously and we started... we began doing an emergency procurement to... we don't have any funding that was set aside for this, so we had to find some funding, so we could move it to do this work here. Basically, Aqua Engineers, from the period of December 24 to 31 assisted in pumping out the water and they had apre- designated area where they discharged the water on Mokuleia where it was already approved by the Department of Health. Okay, this is just an example of the water pump truck by Aqua Engineers over here pumping the water. Okay, the cost of that contract work was roughly $12,833. Funding sources... we did an emergency procurement, so we just basically moved some funds to do this work. In FEMA, we provided the Civil Defense Agency with the list of potential FEMA projects... actually, where we could potentially have funding through FEMA and the Community Development Block Grant basically under the urgent need category, we applied for this CDBG moneys to see if we can get any type of funding from that. Okay, some of the issues with the flooding problem and this is based off the meetings that we had in the past discussing the issues was in adequate drainage. This area here is the lowest end point of the... this lowest area, so obviously, how the water flows into this area in the parking lot area. So this is a COUNCIL MEETING. - 6 - ~ February 11, 2009 continuous problem whenever there is heavy rains. Re-establishing drainage canal culvert... basically, I was talking about the swale in between Brennecke Beach and Po`ipu Beach Park. We don't know what the extent of that... underneath whether the culvert goes all the way to the high watermark or if it discontinues midway through the beach park. We don't know what the status on that is because there is no plans that we are aware of up to this point as far as determining that. Construction of seepage drainage pits... basically, some of the consultants that we discussed this with recommended that we do some sort of seepage pits or drainage seepage pits, but the problem with this is that adjacent to the parking lot, Marriott has individual seepage pits already established, but the capacity for the amount of rain that goes there is not adequate. So for us to consider drainage seepage pits for the parking lot may increase water capacity, but most likely may not resolve the flooding issue. Of course, water pump to other areas... what I mean by this is that we had discussed about pumping the water across Hoowili Road into the area behind the parking lot, but then there is obvious issues dealing with heiau being back there as well as if we was to pump the water in there, there is some drainage that goes... that eventually leads right back to that pond, so there is no reason to pump it across the road because of those reasons. Of course, improving the existing pond... there are rocks and there is a little ledge around the pond, but it is not consistent around the pond... we were discussing about providing some sort of barrier, having some consultant work to design a plan to make sure that, you know, to see if we could improve the pond to increase water capacity. But, you know, this is a wetland area that we are aware of, so we have to see how we can do a win/win situation if we do choose to go this route and improve the pond to increase water capacity, because there are some times that there may be times when this is not a flood warning (it is less than a flood warning) and there is enough rain to flood the pond as well as the parking lot. By increasing the capacity in the pond, we can hopefully alleviate situations less than a flood warning and pump the water into the pond. And establish an additional parking lot... we also have been discussing about maybe establishing a parking lot above the pond, north of the pond, but we know that there is a outdoor stage there that may pose some community concerns, but we are looking into that issue also as well. So the courses of action, short term... in the event of a flood warning or greater, that is determined by the Civil Defense Administrator and also clearing it through a verbal clearing from Army Corp of Engineers as well as Department of Health, we are allowed to pump the water, and this is, again, flood water or drainage water from the area of the flood to the high watermark towards the beach. Okay, and we are still pending a written confirmation on that issue. But in the event of a flood warning or greater, we will notify the lifeguards of the actions. The lifeguards... it is important to notify the lifeguards in that anytime there is any type of discharge in the water, the lifeguards there notifies the Department of Health, so they can test the quality of the water to make sure that it is safe for the users of the beach. Again, in the event of the flood, we place caution signs, road closure signs as needed. Currently, we have worked out the issue with the • COUNCIL MEETING - 7 - February 11, 2009 Department of Public Works to utilize three (3)... two (2), three (3) inch water pipes as three (3) inch is basically the diameter of the waterlines to pump it to the discharge point at the high watermark in Po`ipu Beach. And then also the short term actions is also to try to improve the existing pond. Long term discussions are still ongoing. We still have to find out as to the culvert issue, the parking lot issue, and other potential issues. We also discuss issues with a potential injection well over there, but, again, this does come with a cost, so we still have to develop this specific feasible courses of action at a later time. This year is an example of... this is a photo of the March. l7, the 40 day rain, so you can... and this is the same parking lot. It was much worse than the situation we had in December, but this is an ongoing problem here, and we are well aware of the situation. It is just a matter of how we are going to address this situation. That concludes the slideshow. Chair Asing: With that, Councilmembers, any comments or questions for Kylan? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, Kylan, first of all, thank you very much for the presentation and the archive of photographs that you presented. I also want to thank the people at Aqua Engineers for their assistance in using their pump trucks and so forth, and I know that Councilmember Kawahara was very close to this situation with Public Works and Parks & Recreation. So, first and foremost, let's just say thank you for your response. My history with this project goes back to when I was the manager of Sheraton Kauai. We kept on seeing the long term issues coming up where, in fact, we saw in several portions of your presentation that one of the long term solutions that everybody agreed on that perhaps the existing parking lot could be used as a retention basin. Long term, we should plan to have a elevated public parking lot about three (3) foot off the ground, four (4) foot off the ground where people can... even after the rain, people can come and enjoy the park and the retention basin would, in fact, hold water until such time that either these lift pumps can be connected to a tanker like Aqua Engineer or we can redirect it. But as you even saw in your presentation, that consistently comes up improving the pond, the loss of parking, and I think that solution was addressed back in... I was the manager in '82 to '85, so I think it was addressed in the early `80's when they expanded the park. That was one of the features and I was hoping that is still on the radar screen, this possibility of constructing a retention pond with an elevated parking level. Mr. Dela Cruz: That has been in discussion. Mr. Furfaro: And I think that has been the discussion as an option with FEMA. I can also say to you that it is an ongoing issue that we need to pay some urgent attention to and perhaps we can work out a contract with Aqua or someone with pump trucks. So maybe the short term response is a little quicker, so we don't have sitting water for a long period of time. I am not going to attempt to COUNCIL MEETING - 8 - • Februa 11, 2009 f . ry be an engineer here, but consistently, building permanent lift pumps, expanding a retention basin, elevating a parking lot three (3) to four (4) feet, all seem to keep coming up on the radar screen after the last 20 years. Short term, I think it was about six (6) days that the water really sat before we were able to get it all disbursed. But I think we need to have a quicker plan for public safety and public access to the beach. Ultimately, retaining water is far better than letting it go in the ocean. Quite frankly, it is probably illegal anyway. Mr. Dela Cruz: Well, Public Works did contact DOH about that issue and in the event of a flood warning or greater, we were allowed to discharge water above the high watermark. Mr. Furfaro: Well, that is nice to hear that exist. Now on the funding side of it, we do, for emergencies, have a small reserve o£ the Finance Director, Mr. Rezentes, could access for these types of things, but I would suggest that maybe we talk to another pumping company or Aqua and see if we can work out a particular response contract, so the response is quicker. I really don't have anymore to say other than the fact that we should lean to the Federal government on maybe a long term solution for public access and I wanted to thank you again for your quick response. I do acknowledge that I talked to Councilwoman Kawahara from the Big Island that she was involved with talking to your groups, and thank you very much for receiving queries, and responding. That is all that I have. Thank you Mr. Chair. Chair Asing: Thank you. Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I believe this parking lot was established with the construction of the Wai`ohai... the reconstruction of the Wai`ohai, is that correct? Mr. Dela Cruz: I am not aware of that. Mr. Bynum: So you didn't look back at... I mean, generally, it is kind of like an known flood area and I believe that parking lot was constructed when the Wai`ohai was reconstructed. That was part of the conditions, so wouldn't there be someone at engineering that, you know, that... when you create a parking lot, you have to get it reviewed for flood issues and did you look at those kinds of documents about historically what was... Mr. Dela Cruz: We discussed that with Planning and, you know, but I don't know what was decided then... I am just more concerned about what is the issue now and I concur about moving forward, but I would be interested in knowing when the parking lot was constructed, was it reviewed, was there recommendations, because we have seen other areas in this area where a parking lot had to be constructed... elevated to allow... to retain water underneath and, so maybe I will send a communication over, but I would like to know when the parking lot was constructed and if that was reviewed, it was signed off, if there was any ' • • COUNCIL MEETING - 9 - February 11, 2009 recommendations about dealing with the flooding. Because whenever you hard (inaudible) you have to look at that issue. I believe previously that there may have been parking there, but it wasn't paved over. So when you mentioned releasing... pumping water makai towards the beach and I don't know if we... in Po`ipu Beach Park... off to one side, a large pile of boulders. Mr. Dela Cruz: And that is the point of discharge. Mr. Bynum: And one of the issues there is about why those boulders are in our park and how did they get there and will they ever be removed. So I know I was there yesterday and lifeguards were concerned about that idea and have discussed that with them several times over the years about why... because that could be usable park space, but there is a big pile of boulders there, so it is something that I wanted to pursue,. and they were saying that the plan was to pump the water in there and discharge it into that pile of boulders. Is that correct? And that might be a reasonable short term solution, but hopefully we look at the longer term solution because pumping on a regular basis... we saw the cost go up $1,000, right, so I would be interested in... Mr. Dela Cruz: When we are talking about the short term solution, we are trying to... we have the hoses, we have the water pumps, it is just a matter of... once we had the okay from the Department of Health, then we tried looking into an option where we could do this internally rather than contract that thing out because it saves us, you know, $1,800 versus $13,000. Mr. Bynum: Right, and I guess I am just suggesting that... is it \ our plan to leave a big pile of boulders in our beach park and is... because you are mentioning other potential longer term solutions that don't involve pumping like improving the pond. Mr. Dela Cruz: Right, I mean, the boulders in question is between our County park and that adjacent property. Okay, I mean, but I don't know the situation about those boulders, but I can find out... Mr. Bynum: I can follow up on that separately, but I believe those boulders are on our property, yea? Mr. Dela Cruz: It is along that property line. Mr. Bynum: So the pond... the drainage pond that is behind this parking lot, mauka, is actually lower than... I mean if that pond were empty, the parking lot would drain into that pond, is that correct? Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct. • COUNCIL MEETING. - 10 - • February 11, 2009 Mr. Bynum: So it is when that reaches capacity and it goes beyond that, the parking lot floods? Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct and the discussions about increasing capacity was to improve the... around the pond and then maybe put a type of sluice gate or something, so once the pond fills up and it starts doing the reverse effect where the water from the pond goes into the parking lot, a gate or something can be closed and a sump is created on the outside, so that water can be pumped from the sump into the pond in the event of non-flood warning issues. Mr. Bynum: I appreciate you looking at all these issues, but I would like to find out if that... the impact of flooding was discussed when the parking lot was approved in the first place and whether there were any recommendations about mitigating at that time. The other one, again, I am not an engineer either, but the... and about whether the permeable paving... has that ever been discussed? Once water gets on asphalt, it stays there until it evaporates because it has no way to percolate, right? So I appreciate the report and the thoroughness as usual of your reports, but I would like to find out about the boulders and also what the original review of the... putting that parking lot in the first place was. Thank you. Chair Asing: Councilmember Kaneshiro? Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Mr. Chair. I think just for some clarification, in the `80's when Tony Kunimura was Mayor, they graded that area. We used it as a graded parking lot and previously when the recent approval came for the Wai`ohai to do the Wai`ohai, and so forth, one of the recommendations was to go ahead and pave it. Have the Wai`ohai pave the parking lot and I think since then, we have seen some of these problems occur... you know, the flooding problems. But previously, this was always a drainage area as long as I remember my days down at Po`ipu Beach, this was a drainage area for heavy rains. I know the intent of the Mayor, at that time, was to grade more parking lots and unfortunately, now we are facing this situation. But as Kylan has indicated, I think if we can temporarily get this water pumped out of the parking lot and if we have Department of Health approval, that would be the ideal way to go. So far, you stated that we did have (inaudible) approval to... Mr. Dela Cruz: Correct, there was a verbal understanding by the Department of Health as well as the Army Corp of Engineers, but we kind of want a written confirmation on that. We are still pending confirmation. Mr. Kaneshiro: So you may get written confirmation from that and in the future, we take care of this more rapidly being that we will be using our own pumps and so forth. I see the situation now because Aqua had to take the water away to someplace else to dispose of, rather than going the route that we thought s ~ ~ COUNCIL MEETING - 11 - February 11, 2009 might be the way we can mitigate the efforts. So in the meantime, you know, I just want to thank you guys for following up on this. I know we have had some problems when we paved the road recently. There was some flooding going onto Brennecke (inaudible)... where water was even going into the snack shop area, but I did run out a couple of minutes ago and I had a conversation with Donald Fujimoto, and they are taking care of that situation, so I think we are moving in the right direction. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. Councilmember Kawahara? Ms. Kawahara: Thank you Chair. I just wanted to thank you for your guys response to that and I know it was right in the middle of the holidays. So I had gotten a call from a constituent and after that call, you guys responded pretty quickly, but you had already known the issue, so I think it was just a reminder. When you guys are working with Department of Public Works because I know you don't have the expertise and the engineers in Parks. Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, and then the thing about the high watermark, so you would go over the road and onto the ocean to the high watermark... I mean into the park to the high watermark over here. Mr. Dela Cruz: That is correct. I guess the feedback from Department of Health to Public Works was that as long as the discharged ended above the high watermark, it would be okay in the event of a flood warning or greater. Ms. Kawahara: The quality of the water that was there in this flood, does the Department of Health say what timeframe it is okay to pump it over to this side or when the water gets smelly and stinky and not good, can you still... Mr. Dela Cruz: It is during or immediately after the flood event. Ms. Kawahara: Because I know there was an issue with the water not being... you had to put it somewhere else. Mr. Dela Cruz: You know, I know there are couple of reports about odoriferous smells that came from this event here. You know, I was there just about everyday during the time when Aqua... prior to Aqua pumping and during the period of pumping, and after. There was really no... any type of smells that came out of that. Ms. Kawahara: Okay. COUNCIL' MEETING. - 12 - • Februa 11 2009 r'Y Mr. Dela Cruz: The water didn't have time to stagnate to a point where the... have that kind of odor. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Chair Asing: Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Councilmember Kaneshiro prompted one more question. Right across from the beach park entrance in the Brennecke's parking lot, there is a drain and are you familiar with that? Mr. Dela Cruz: Brennecke's parking lot? Mr. Bynum: In Brennecke's parking lot, there is a drain and is that drain connected with the Swale? Is that an operational drain? Do you know about that? Mr. Dela Cruz: I know that the restaurant had... pumps water out on a daily basis. I am not sure what exact specific area to that is. Mr. Bynum: If you come down the road and turn left like you are going to go to Brenneckes right in the entrance of the parking lot, there is a big drain. I was talking with the lifeguards out there and they said that there is often ponding water there right over the top of that drain. Is that drain not operational? It doesn't go anywhere? Mr. Dela Cruz: It is to my understanding that water may go down to, you know, that open... the depressed area behind the parking lot or north of the parking lot, and that eventually drains into the pond. Mr. Bynum: Okay, thank you. Chair Asing: Any other questions? Councilmember Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: Thank you Kylan. You know, I understand as far as a short term course of action that the Department of Health may allow us to pump water into that high watermark, but I guess when you guys are going through possible solutions to this problem, I do have reservations about pumping that kind of standing water into the high watermark, and it just comes with being a parent that brings his kids to the beach and seeing that they play in that high watermark area. I know that the Department of Health will do their due diligence in making these kinds of recommendations and approvals, but I would try to say if we can find an alternative method of getting that water out versus pumping it to the high watermark. I would be much more tuned to that recommendation. Mr. Dela Cruz: We discussed that issue. That issue did come up in our discussions, but, you know, the other alternative to that is to do what we did on COUNCIL MEETING - 13 - February 11, 2009 this past event where we had a designated area where it was approved by the Department of Health to discharge that Aqua Engineers had already established, but it comes with a cost. That is one of the more costly ways of doing it, but that is the alternative to not discharging it towards the ocean. That other alternative to that is to, over time, it will eventually evaporate, percolate through the ground. And in this case here, you know, we are aware about the New Years... there was a New Year's event that was taking place down there, and we were trying to meet that timeline as well as address the health concerns there. You know, there are people waiting in the parking lot looking for fish and stuff like that. So that is a health concern that we needed to address, but this is a recurring problem. Who knows, we may, have this same problem four (4) or five (5) times out of the year. So that is a concern because of the issues with the cost of dealing with this over and over again. Mr. Kawakami: With that being said, I guess I am happy that you guys are working towards the long term action because that is where we are going to find better alternatives and pumping it and moving it to a different place or pumping into the high watermarks, so thank you. Chair Asing: Any other questions? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: So I just kind of following up on Councilmember Kawakami's comment. So I hope you are encouraging the Administration in this budget cycle to at least look at the potential of at least budgeting some money for perhaps a design fee for an elevated parking lot as well as something that retains... used as a retainage basin, so that we don't have this seepage. You know, it is one of our finest. parks and I am not talking about budgeting the work, I am talking about conceptually budgeting for a design, so that we can have something more specific as to understanding the cost of a retention pond and semi-elevated parking lot for the purpose keeping water from going out and having... so if you could convey that to the Administration about a design fee, I would be much appreciated... it would be much appreciative. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion Councilmembers? Mr. Bynum: I don't have questions. Chair Asing: For Kylan first. Anything for Kylan? I guess, Kylan, my question is then, what are you going to be doing now? As of today, has everything stopped? Mr. Dela Cruz: Right now, there... the parking lot is clear o£ it is dry, so we don't have a problem there right now. Chair Asing: So what happens now? Now the problem is gone. We have no problem today, but is there a plan for the future? COUNCIL MEETING. - 14 - • February 11, 2009 Mr. Dela Cruz: We are still awaiting for the feedback from FEMA as far as funding. We also... in the process of applying for the CDBG... it is a Community Development Block Grant moneys to see if we can procure some water pumps for our department to address this specific issue. So we are trying to look into alternatives as far as what funding we can to address this on a short term as well as trying to address it on a long term, but we need to come up with a plan. We may be able to get funding through a designs, but, again, up to this point, I am not sure as to what specific funding we are allowed to have or not, but we are... for the short term, in the event of a rain, and there is, you know, from a flood warning or greater will... we have worked the issue out with Public Works to acquire water pumps to pump it to the high watermark. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, I would like to open it up to the public for public comments. With that, Bruce please? Thank you Kylan. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Kylan. Thank the whole team for the response. BRUCE PLEAS: Bruce Pleas for the record and also for the rest of the meeting. For the record, Kauai resident, and I am here testifying for myself. I do not belong to any lobbying organization indirectly or directly or any organization. So just a little background. This is something that I have... before the Kauai Historical Preservation Review Commission, the Planning Commission... eight (8) years ago when the Wai`ohai came through. I was totally against this on two (2) aspects. One, this area is directly associated with the heiau and I presented this... this was a fish pond before. This was a fish pond that you could take a canoe into. I was against this from the beginning. I have the papers here if you want to get copies of them. This is what I found out. This never should have been built there. The whole area should have been restored and it would have been a prime beach area and historical walk for Po`ipu, a wonderful five (5) star area for our tourist and for our kanakamaole to go to. But besides that, you need to move the parking area to higher ground. That is one way to look at it. Restore the fish pond and the historical sites. This whole area is just unreal. This has always been a pond since I have been here in 1972. It has always been a pond whether it was dirt and back in the `80's when it was first graded out, they destroyed a whole lot of the fish pond that was there... the existing walls and made it smaller into what you see now. For pumping the water right now, that's probably... it has been pumped before and that is our best short term outlook. It would be nice to have the pumps, County have them, so we can just run down there during the event and do them. As for an above ground parking area, I have very grave reservations on that because the water will pond underneath. We can get mosquitoes and it will also smell. If you are going to do... spend money on redoing that parking area, it needs to be filled to above the height of where the picture was of the people in there on their bicycles, fill it to that height, and then repave it, so it doesn't flood, so it is always above the COUNCIL MEETING ~ - 15 - ~ ~ Febru 11 2009 ~`Y , flood, and have the entrance come in from the top side, so the people don't go down into the bottom... they come into there and they have parking there. Also, that is archaeologically acceptable to cover an area with fill if there are archaeological remains underneath. That is a way to protect them. The problem is the amount of water that comes into that area from adjacent areas all the way from across the street, from Wai`ohai, from the whole area, it all comes down into there. Before, when the fish pond was there, it would come down and then it would go out in the ocean because there was a channel there. Let's see. Also, you have to revisit... if I could just have a minute and I will close up. We need to revisit the warning status to be able to pump. That floods without a warning and a warning is when your highest national weather service alerts. It will flood on a watch, it will flood on a local thunder storm where there is no warning. It can flood without a warning, so we have to look at that, so that we are able to pump. Another place to pump to is to look at Wai`ohai and see if they have any holding ponds or if they have a use for that water right away for their irrigation and whether they have water... not facilities, but water forms in there that they could use that water for at the same time. And, also too, when we do pump, it has to be pumped immediately and during the event. As soon as it starts going, the lifeguards have to call in, so Public Works can get down there and start pumping as soon as it starts to flood and during the event until it is over because then the water is the cleanest. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. Is there anyone else? Tessie? TESSIE KINNAMAN: Good morning. For the record Tessie Kinnaman. Mr. Furfaro: Good morning. Chair Asing: Good morning. Ms. Kinnaman: Born and raised here, life long, with the exception of four (4) years and eight (8) months that I have lived off the island. I may take more than three (3) minutes. The flooding concerns, the worst that I have ever seen was in 2006 rains where the parking lot, the water was flooded up to the Po`ipu Beach rockwall... halfway up the wall. That was pretty major and over on Kuai Road where Spingwater Kaulili's house is across from Brennecke's Beach, that area was also flooded. I think contributors to the flooding since then aside from the `80's... when the Marriott rebuilt the Wai`ohai, the grade of the property was higher, and they also... the County parking lot next to the Wai`ohai, that was already... sorry, they raised the parking lot area there also aside from paving it, whereas, before it just used to be just the graded parking lot, lower than the existing parking lot off of Hoowili Road and they refilled that area there. They made it a little higher and then where the water used to drain towards the Wai`ohai, that was where a lot of the water went. So the water in the main parking lot dissipated pretty fast aside from evaporation. COUNCIL MEETING - 16 - ~ February 11, 2009 And then another contributor, I think is the major drainage installations that was done along side the mauka side of Po`ipu Road when the... from Waikomo Stream to I~ipuka that was on the mauka side where all these developments were starting to come in... the Kiahuna Mauka Partners and then just recently which was approved was Village of Po`ipu Development which is formerly Po`ipu Lani. The culverts and the drainage systems that they did put in really affects now, worst than it used to because I need to show... in fact, let me read from the final environmental impact statement from Village at Po`ipu regarding this one area directly across from Hoowili Road... storm drainage... the projects site can be divided into four (4) drainage areas. Drainage area number 1 covers 50 acres located between an abandoned railroad berm on Po`ipu Road... runoff flows south with a series of 566 corrugated metal culverts that cross Po`ipu Road east of the intersection with Hapa Road. Downstream of Po`ipu Road, the runoff flows through a gully on the Kiahuna Plantation property before flowing to the Wai`ohai property to the ocean. Drainage area number 2 is about 73.7 acres and is located east of drainage area number 1 which is towards Weliweli Track. Runoff flows south toward the intersection of Po`ipu Road and Kipuka Street. A single 48 inch culvert crosses Po`ipu Road in this area. The runoff will flow through the Po`ipu Beach Park before it reaches the ocean. There is also drainage 3, 4, and 5. Chair Asing: Tessie, you want to finish up please? Ms. Kinnaman: I would like to. And what happened is that the drainage area between Hoowili Road and Kipuka Street on Po`ipu Road... when they did the major drainage there along Po`ipu Road. There is one culvert that is across the... it is the cultural theatre and that is what Village of Po`ipu is going to use in the future for their retention basin. It is higher than the heiau site... Kanehoolouma (unknown Hawaiian name) heiau site. This picture here is the site. Here is the ocean... oops, upside down, I am sorry. The ocean is here, the County owns this... this is the Kanehoolouma heiau site and their retention basin, Village of Po`ipu retention basin is going to be up here. On top of that, the culvert is right across from here and it will come under Po`ipu Road. And all this drainage as you well know, water runs from up... from higher ground to lower ground. So the long term, I think, what should be done and I am not an engineer, but somewhere along here, they should cut off the drainage, so the water does not go flow toward Po`ipu Beach Park. This is the heiau site. We had claimed it in 2006 before the rains and it was beautiful. We had it all taken care of in this heiau area and we were expanding cleaning up towards the... behind Brennecke's restaurant. There is no Swale in there. This is the fish ponds and a loi and we are trying to restore this area back here, so we can make it a cultural... Chair Asing: Thank you Tessie. Ms. Kinnaman: Thank you. Any questions? . • COUNCIL MEETING - 17 - February 11, 2009 Chair Asing: Go ahead. Mr. Bynum: Tessie, thank you for your testimony and thank you for your efforts in that area. I just want to understand your testimony clearer. What you are saying is that in your... from your view and from the EA that you read, does that development mauka of Po`ipu Road. Some of that is draining into this area, so when they create streets and roads and (inaudible) surfaces where the land can't soak up the water... some of that water is draining into Po`ipu Beach Park? Ms. Kinnaman: Definitely, because water will flow downstream and not upstream. So I would think that instead of having more... like the culvert that they put in there across from the heiau, they should retain more further up above the• property because the trust owns a lot of that property back there, so they should retain more there. Mr. Bynum: When the water comes across Po`ipu Road, I mean, as far as I know, there is no natural outlet into the ocean. Ms. Kinnaman: There is no natural outlet. Mr. Bynum: Okay, I want to make sure that I understood your ' testimony. Thank you and it is very interesting. Chair Asing: Thank you. Ms. Kinnaman: Can I say one quick thing? Chair Asing: Can we have the next speaker please? KEN TAYLOR: Chair and members of the Council, my name is Ken Taylor. I always find it interesting that when man builds in a flood plain and then it floods... sit back and scratch your head and wonder what they can do about resolving problem. That is basically what we have here. Probably the only reason there is no buildings in this particular area is that the law won't allow you to build in a flood plain. (Inaudible) for parking lots and so on, but my real concern is, the future because I am afraid with all of the development that is being approved upstream of this area and what I believe inadequate flood drainage activity in those projects, this issue is going to get worse and worse and not better. If some activity is going to take place down here, it certainly needs to consider what is happening upstream of this particular area, but I really believe the answer to resolving this problem is to address the problem further upstream, so that we minimize the issue here, and by doing that, you have little or nothing to do here if you control the problem further up, but it may already be too late because of approvals of projects that didn't, in my opinion, adequately address the issues. It is really sad because at COUNCIL MEETING - 18 - ~ February 11, 2009 some of the hearings, a number of the local people from out in that area raised the issue over and over again at the Planning Department to deal with the flooding problems. Instead of putting the concerns and the requirements of addressing these problems on the backs of the developer, now the public is going to have to address the issues and figure out where the money is going to come from to resolve the problems. I think that is really a sad state of affairs and I hope that as time moves forward that we can get issues in place that address these things when development is taking place and not after the fact. Chair Asing: Thank you. Glenn? GLENN MICKENS: For the record, Glenn Mickens. Thank you Kaipo. You know, it appears that Tessie and Bruce have done a tremendous amount of homework in a solution to this problem, but where has Public Works been over the years. As Daryl pointed out, the grading I guess started back when, in 1980's you said Daryl. It appears to be a grading problem, but why was (inaudible) it graded properly then with the proper catch basins and stuff put in there. So now, you know, as Ken just pointed out, we are sitting here debating this thing tossing $12,000 every time it floods down there in pumping. So, you know, with doing this, are we just tossing money into it instead of getting the proper solution, Jay, as you pointed out. FEMA or somebody is going to have to come up with the appropriate funding, but why don't we address it then? Let's go after the solution with either FEMA or a money bill or go into our $33 million surplus or whatever it takes... I know, it is there, but it is what it says in the audit. It says that a $33 million surplus. Anyway, I just think that we are not addressing this problem properly. Public Works should have been the one over the years and they haven't done it, but I think this is where the problem lies. Thank you Kaipo. Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: You know, they always say that hindsight is 20/20, but if you recall, it was 2002 when this Council passed new standards for grading in 2002. Although there was a lot of other activity in the Po`ipu area, I do want to point out that another reference that the Public Works... in 1996, the State widened Po`ipu Road. The State put additional shoulders and so forth, so we have something to refer to, but that was the purpose of me putting this on the agenda, so that we could, at least, encourage the Administration with this upcoming budget process to come up with some solutions, some design, and something that we can, you know, perhaps pursue FEMA with, so you are right in that assessment. Mr. Mickens: Well, I appreciate your putting it on the agenda to see if we can get it addressed. It is something that goes on as you pointed out since '05 and it is like you said, if it was a State problem... the State did something wrong, let's find out who is responsible for... M ETI • - 19 - ~ Febru 11 2009 COUNCIL E NG ary , Mr. Furfaro: I didn't say it was the State's problem. I said the State has plans because they widened that Po`ipu area in '96, so maybe there is something that we can go back and take a look at. But as you know, this Council cannot direct the Department Heads. We can only put it on for discussion purpose with encouragement for them to budget for. Mr. Mickens: Sure. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Glenn. Mr. Mickens: Thank you Jay. Chair Asing: Thank you. Is there anyone else who wants to speak on this item? If not, I would like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Is there any further discussion? Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I think this was a very interesting discussion and I appreciate Councilmember Furfaro putting it on the agenda. I also appreciate the response from our Parks... our Deputy Director who is a very thoughtful guy and thorough, and he is the Parks. The flooding there is 'part o£ adjacent to our park and his response seems appropriate and reasonable and breaking it into short term and long term, but it is really bigger than a park issue apparently. I also appreciate the people from Po`ipu are very thoughtful about what occurs in their community and kind of the wisdom that comes from being a resident of that place and understanding it. You know, I will certainly want to look further into the EA that Tessie was reading that said that we are going to drain... if I heard that correctly, we are going to drain into this area and out into the ocean, but we know that there is not an outlet to the ocean. So that doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I guess I would be concerned that we were bringing additional water mauka. But I also want to rely on the expertise of our engineers and our Planning Department because, you know, I have been paying attention to this stuff long enough to know that when you harden landscape, it creates additional runoff in water, and fewer places for the nature to soak it up. You know, engineers and planners are supposed to look at all of those issues and come up with mitigation efforts to see that ponding doesn't occur. This parking lot was, you know, used for parking before it was paved, but before it is paved, the ground can soak up some of that water. I also heard Ms. Kinnaman saying that some of the places that were low lying at Wai`ohai in the past that would have soaked up that water or retained it are now elevated and increased that runoff if I understand her testimony correctly. Those are things that we rely on engineers to look at when any new development occurs to make sure that COUNCIL MEETING - 20 - • February 11, 2009 the mitigation occurs, so that is why my earlier questions about, you know, was there that kind of examination when we paved the parking lot to begin with. But overall, this is good that we have it on the public agenda and we can listen to our community and I appreciate Kylan's response, but it looks like we need to understand better because clearly when there is three (3) or four (4) feet of water standing in a place that is intended for public use, something is not right about that. If it reoccurs time and time again, so I really appreciate the short term solutions and the response from the Parks Department, but I hope we continue as the Chair has indicated to look at the longer term issues and the solutions that don't involve us pumping the water all over the (inaudible). Thank you very much. Chair Asing: Councilmember Kaneshiro? Mr. Kaneshiro: Just a short note. I know we had a speaker talk about turning it back to a pond... to a fish pond, but part of the reason this was done to turn it into -a temporary parking lot because as most of us that lived in that area or used to frequent Po`ipu Beach, knows that before we did that, there was a lot of mosquitoes and the place used to smell a lot the way it was. So as part of a proactive action, I think Mayor Kunimura's time was to... because we were devastated by Hurricane Iwa was to move ahead and try to resolve some of those issues. I think at that time, tourism was very important to our island, you know, hindsight, perhaps, we should have thought about all these reasons, but I just wanted to mention that during that time, we were also hard hit and we were trying to resolve some of the situations that were explained by the residents and also those that frequent Po`ipu Beach with the very... it was very smelly. Tessie knows, we all know, and we have all surfed that beach a long time and we had a lot of problems with mosquitoes. Again, we tried to do what we thought was best for the community and, again, as I see how Kylan folks are moving ahead to resolve these issues, I really want to thank them for stepping up to the plate and taking action and hopefully in the future we will resolve this quickly and make it really available for public use. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion? If not, can I have a motion to receive? Mr. Furfaro moved to receive C 2009-77 for the record, seconded by Mr. Chang, and unanimously carried. C 2009-78 Communication (01/21/2009) from the Executive Assistant, Kauai County Housing Agency, transmitting a resolution authorizing limited exemption from Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 514B for Haoa Street Affordable Housing Project (Kaua`i Lagoons LLC) and to designate it as an experimental and demonstration housing project pursuant to Section 46-15, H.R.S.: Chair Asing: I am going to suspend the rules. • • COUNCIL MEETING - 21 - February 11, 2009 There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: Glenn? GLENN MICKENS: Thank you Kaipo. For the record, Glenn Mickens. I have no problem with this communication nor with Resolution No. 2009-29 which this is part of. If my friend Ken Rainforth approves it, I am 100% for it. My only question is and you people have all read the... I don't know if you have or not, but in today's paper, somebody wrote an article about this project being put in this particular place, that is my question mark. Who approves where this affordable housing... I am certainly for affordable housing... all we can get on this island, we need it badly. But who approved putting the project in that particular place. If you read this girl... lady's article, it was so pointed to the point. You have a place jammed up there with two (2) traffic signals in Kapa`a corridor and everything. So we are sticking this thing in a place that is already turmoil, so, you know, who is responsible for doing it? Who gives the permission for Kauai Lagoons to be able to say, hey, this is where we are going to stick the thing without taking a look at the whole picture again, and deciding, hey, that is not the right place to stick this thing. We have a problem now that it is going to take years probably to unsolve if ever. So anyway, this is, again, I have no problem whatsoever with the reso with the affordable housing that we do direly need on this island, but I do have a problem with who pushes the button to say where the housing project is going. Chair Asing: Thank you. Is there anyone else? The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Can I have a motion to receive this item? Mr. Furfaro moved to receive C 2009-78 for the record, seconded by Mr. Kaneshiro. Chair Asing: Any discussion? Yes, go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: In an attempt since we are back in order to summarize some comments from Mr. Mickens. This particular item that we are dealing with is for 31 units. This location which is always baffling for the Council because when we put in the housing condition for the developer, he then either has to acquire or look for land that is zoned appropriate. So that is the first criteria, they have to find something that has the appropriate zoning. I think the article that Mr. Mickens was referencing was the piece that was in Kapa`a. What is on the agenda is the piece that is here that is in Lihu`e. It is at an intersection that does have the appropriate signal lighting. It is in an area that perhaps will actually employ some resort workforce who can take advantage of actually walking to work. I also want to point out that for families in this particular area, it is a very attractive piece because it will be close to walking exercise facilities as well as bus lines. But it was COUNCIL MEETING - 22 - • Febru 11 2009 ~'Y , a reasonable question Glenn and I just want to make sure that the criteria because the dilemma is then, you want to find a place for residential housing and it might be something that is far away, but it is not zoned and all that we are hearing from planners now is to try and keep family sites close to intersections, crosswalks, close to medical facilities, close to centers of employment, and so forth. I don't have all the answers for you Glenn, but I wanted to attempt to answer that. Thank you Mr. Chair. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? If not, go ahead. Ms. Kawahara: I had that same question and my understanding is the same as Councilmember Furfaro's... that was the property that this developer had and that is where they could put it, and that is what they did. In the future, we are hoping or I am hoping that we will be able to enact some kind of more smart growth type of ordinances where we do have a certain distance from the work place that these housing can go to, so that it is walkable and attractive, so it is not far away where they have to go... get out, go over the bridge, and go all the way back to Lihu`e to work. Hopefully, we will be able to do something like that, so thanks. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? If not, one comment. Easy question to answer. This Council did it. We decided that we are going to have affordable housing there and I am proud of it. I think that is the area for it, so there are two (2) things that was done on that particular development. One was the development that is happening in Kapa`a right now. That is one portion of... the second portion is at the Kauai Lagoons, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful... ideal, walking... you can walk to work and that is the reason it is there, so I don't know what the problem is. It is ideal, it is fine, it is great. I am proud that this Council did that, so with that, any further discussion? If not, all those in favor say aye? The motion to receive C 20009-78 for the record was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next item is communication for receipt. Communication C 2009-79. C 2009-79 Communication (01/26/2009) from the Director of Personnel, transmitting for Council information, the second quarter report (October-December 2008) relative to vacancies, established positions, new hires, reallocations, and promotions: Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-79 for the record, seconded by Mr. Chang, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next item is communication C 2009-62. COUNCIL MEETING - 23 - February 11, 2009 C 2009-62 Communication (01/15/2009) from Council Vice Chair Jay Furfaro, requesting that the Administration be present to give an update on the County's efforts to address the hazardous conditions at Queen's Bath and the path easement: Chair Asing: Let's take a five (5) minute break. You want to take the caption break? Okay. We are in caption break, 10 minutes, thank you. There being no objections, the Chair called for a recess at 10:31 a.m. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Can we have the next item please? Mr. Pasion: Communication C 2009-62. C 2009-62 Communication (01/15/2009) from Council Vice Chair Jay Furfaro, requesting that the Administration be present to give an update on the County's efforts to address the hazardous conditions at Queen's Bath and the path easement: Chair Asing: With that, I would like to suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: We have the Administration present. With that, Beth and Chief, good morning. ROBERT WESTERMAN, FIRE CHIEF: Bob Westerman, Fire Chief. BETH TOKIOKA, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE MAYOR: Beth Tokioka, Executive Assistant to the Mayor. Chief Westerman: We are going to kind of do a tag team on this. I am going to go through the first part of the presentation which is pretty much about what we have done staffing wise and a little bit about basics about the program and some statistics. Ms. Tokioka is then going through the educational aspects on what we have done over the last several years in the educational part of our program to try and promote... promote safe tourism, but, you know, promote the safety aspects and the dangers to educate the public about the dangers of the beaches. So if you want, we can go right into the presentation. I think I got this right. Chair Asing: Hang on little while. Chief Westerman: You've probably seen this one several times. It is almost always in my budget presentation, but this is an up to date from 1970 to COUNCIL MEETING. - 24 - ~ Februa 11 2009 ry , present drowning visitors and residents count. As you can, about 36% are Kauai residents and 53% are Hawaii residents in our current drowning statistics since 1970, and that equates to about 230 visitors and 132 residents. This is a quick history basically of the drowning statistics and kind of interesting facts on the increase in staff levels. I only went back to 2001. We do have a good bit of these stats back to 1970 and we don't have all of the rescue statistics back prior to 2003. So just roughly in 2004, we had an increase in our staff thanks to the Administration and Council. We had 8 guard towers with 4 drownings at guarded beaches and 8 drownings at unguarded beaches. We had 286 rescues and, again, without reading the whole slide as we went up in 2005, we increased staff levels again, 2006, we increased staff levels again. In 2007, we increased staff levels again, and in 2008, we increased staff levels. You will see a little discrepancy in that... later on, on other slides, it shows 45, but that includes the 4 guards that we have courtesy of the State now this year at Ke`e. And the guard towers, of course, have increased again thanks to the Administration and to the Council. Statistically, our unguarded... our guarded beaches, the drownings are very low, so that goes to show you that having a guard on the beach makes the difference, but that doesn't mean that people don't drown at our guarded beaches. They still drown at our guarded beaches and in some cases, even if we are not there, their statistic is counted as having drowned at a guarded beach. It is just... I hate to say, but it is ironic that those beaches... it almost seems like that drowning comes at 5:30 to 6:00 when the staff has just left, and was called back to the beaches. It is terrible that we have to look at those kinds of statistics. But then as you can see, this last year in particular, we had a particularly bad year which was one less than our highest in 1970 where we had 15 drownings total. The good news is all the rescues. All those rescues could have equated to drownings and those are actual rescues documented by the Water Safety Officers whether it be on their boards or on jet skis or whatever fashion that we were able to perform the rescue. Again, this is just a big slide that just shows you that is the drowning every year... up and down, up and down, up and down. What this does is kind of show you that same statistic of the drowning trend and then when some things might or might not have happened. It also shows the visitor count, so as you look at the trends, you might think that it trended the more visitors, the drowning which you would expect that to happen. But there for a while we were very successful in the mid 80's there... 90's to a very low or very successful for having the low drowning rates. You know, we really don't have enough statistics to say, why. We absolutely don't have enough statistics to say. Again, you know, one of my budget slides is that we have 113 miles of coastline and of course the island is 550 square miles, but with our population, our visitor's count, we do get a lot of people on the beaches, and that will reflect in a slide in the future. Now we do have the 45 full time... of course, 4 of those are State funded versus 27, 5 years ago. We now have the 10 towers and the 6 rescue jet ski with 7 lifeguard trucks and 5 ATV's and I will talk a little bit about that... about how we are trying to change some trends to try to maybe do something better and better serve the community. COUNCIL MEETING - 25 - February 11, 2009 You know, here is really some of the big statistics right here. That is our (inaudible) counts... that is a lot of people on the beach. 1,442,381 is the previous year and it was a little bit higher even though our tourism rate was up a little bit. I would say that the count is a little subjective, but the count is subjective every single year by the same folks. So if it is an error, it is an error every year, but this statistic is pretty much backed by HTA who did a study about Ke`e Beach and Ha`ena Beach, and our statistics for those particular beaches are pretty close to a survey done by another group. Preventive actions, those are actually having the guard physically at the beach. That is one of the best things that we can do is have a guard at the beach and that is them going up and talking to someone that has a boogie board in their hand and they are headed out, and they don't know that they are getting ready to walk right into the rip. So they walk over to them, talk story with them, and say, you know, maybe this isn't the side of the beach you should be on today. Kealia is a good example of that. Maybe you should go way over on the North end of the beach and play with your boogie board with your family. And even warning surfers, but, you know, surfers will be surfers and they want the bigger waves anyway. But, again, those that have just gotten their surf lesson might think that it is okay for them, and those preventive actions could turn into a drowning, it could turn into a rescue, it could not... but that is how many times we physically stop somebody and talk to them about the dangers out there. Again, how many rescues we actually do through the year and 40% of those were done with a rescue. This was a change last year that we proposed and thanks to the Council and the Administration we got budgeted... breaking the districts into 3, so that we can assign a jet ski and a supervisor to each of the 3 districts, so they could then more readily on any given day based on conditions, reassign people, or jet skis to that district. To be a little bit more responsive on the daily difference in the beaches. Just some highlights of what our Water Safety Officers do, so this is the education that we give our Water Safety Officers to make them better prepared to do their job. The education that we really want to talk about today, Beth is going to discuss that on how we educate the public. We talked about changing the trucks and the ATVs and this is one of the things that we are trying to do to improve that. This is the new RTVs that we are purchasing and in hopes o£ in the future, we will replace the trucks completely with this vehicle. It does 2 things. One, it makes them more readily available to respond anywhere on the beach a lot more quickly. You notice they have their board on top and they have their medical kit, and everything inside this. Also, what it does is we talked about the drownings just before and just after closing earlier. By having this positioned at the beach already and some of them we have storage areas at the beach and some we are proposing to build small storage areas at the parks to store this equipment. The lifeguards can show up at 9:00 o'clock in the morning and have everything they need on the job immediately. In some cases right now, our guard COUNCIL MEETING - 2 - ~ F 6 ebruary 11, 2009 shows up, opens up the tower... he might have his fins and his rescue buoy, but he might not have a board or a jet ski because that is coming from another guard who is reporting to work at 9 o'clock at a Fire station where everything is stored and it is 9:30 before, or 9:45 before they get to the tower with all the extra equipment. So this is what we are doing to get it all there and have it there already. In the inverse, that vehicle equipment must leave early, so we are not paying overtime for them to get that back, get it washed, get it in the station, and then one driver would stay around and hold the tower open until 5 o'clock and then immediately there and go home. So we are trying to make that their duty station. The other side of this is because we are on the beach, you know, they take a lot of abuse and they don't last as long, and even the trucks don't last as long. But if I have to replace this every 2 years at $15,000 versus replacing a truck every 2 years at $45,000, it is a significant savings. And then, again, you know, we go out and we talk story with all our districts and all of our Water Safety Officers and talk about what is happening and ask them for ways to improve service, and that is just an example of what this is. This is just an example of the jet ski and the community helping us to support us again. Mr. Bynum: Is this in Hanalei? Chief Westerman: This is in Hanalei, yes. You know, one of the things that is a good educational component and has proven to be successful on several occasions... not only do we provide a good drug free training environment for the youth in the summer time, several of our junior lifeguards are actually... Water Safety Officers with us now, and several has saved lives right after attending the junior lifeguard program. So this is one of the best things that we think we can do. I mean this just educates more and more of our public about the hazards because they get that kind of training when they attend this. And a couple of hundred a year, it doesn't take long in 5 or 10 years to train another 1,000 local residents about the hazards of the beaches on Kauai and hopefully they interact with public when they see them. If they are out surfing, there is no doubt in my mind that there are plenty of rescues that have happened with local surfers saving people. So that is kind of the basics of our programs and now we have a lot in our educational partnerships and I will let Beth go into that. Ms. Tokioka: Thank you Chief. And this is such an important part of it because at the County level, we have done so much. The program that the Chief is talking about is such an excellent program, but our efforts have really been expanded a thousand fold by the help of our partners out in the community. This is a list of just a few of the major partners that we have been working with in order to educate the public before they get to the beach and hopefully prevent more drownings. I just wanted to point out a few individuals who have been really, really key in this effort. One is Pat Durkin who is with the Kauai Ocean Rescue Council who has helped us tremendously with a large educational piece that I will be talking about a little later. Winston Wellborn with Wasabi Marketing has helped COUNCIL MEETING - 27 - February 11, 2009 us create unbelievable educational resources online and in print. Sue Kanoho from the Kauai Visitors Bureau is there for funding and whatever else is needed and my personal hero is Dr. Monty Downs who I think is here today. Dr. Downs was going to try to be here today, but he is just the little engine that keeps us all going. I think he has such a passion for this and Dr. Downs is an emergency room doctor, feels it first hand when he sees victims and their families come in, but he is out there personally hanging banners and handing out brochures and designing all kinds of pieces and, you know, just really is extraordinarily committed to the effort. So we have a lot of help and we couldn't do this without all of the partners. Okay, first of all, I want to go through some of the educational pieces that we . have tried to use in order to get good information to the hands of visitors and residents. First of all, probably our centerpiece and the longest running pieces are our ocean safety brochure which was created in 1999. We print 100,000 of these every year and they are distributed via the County's Office of Economic Development. The guide was designed originally by Pat Durkin and some partners and Winston Wellborn in recent years has helped us to update it and make it all little bit more readable. We, last year, started asking the Hawaii Hotel & Lodging Association to help us with that cost and they have pitched in, this year, $10,000 toward the cost of printing and distributing those brochures. We also were able to - create a website with the help of Winston Wellborn that was created in 2002 that was assisted through a grant from the Office of Economic Development and really is helping us to get to folks via the web, and we have some statistics that show us that is a great way to reach people. Since that original website which focuses primarily on ocean safety, we have been able to work with Winston to include hiking, safety information, -and other good information for visitors before they get here. This is a shot of the website and this is the home page on the beach safety portion. It is just an amazing resource and if Winston was doing this to make money, he would have gone out of business a long time ago. His heart goes into this very much so. It is really the centerpiece of what he has done and so committed to it, but it is a very, very important resource for us, this web page which talks about the various beaches, gives you information on riptides, and all kinds of great information. After launching the website, this group got together and we are always talking about what more we can do and Winston wanted to launch a daily ocean report that would give real time information every single day that we could make available via the web, and any other way that we possibly could to get into the hands of concierges and people staying in hotels and such. So through, again, this partnership, we were able to create the Kauai Ocean report which is available on 'the website and he also a-mails this out everyday as wide as he can to as many visitor industry businesses as he can to... it is an amazing partnership... I think the lifeguards every morning takes some conditions and call them in and the National weather services call them in, and they update this. It is fresh everyday and if need be, if conditions change, he will even update it throughout the day, so it is an incredible tool that we have been able to put into our (inaudible). COUNCIL MEETING - 28 - February 11, 2009 Other educational pieces that we have worked with the airport because baggage claim, obviously, is a place where pretty much every visitor comes through trying to increase education in that area of great opportunity. We, of course, have our brochures out in the racks there. We have, at times, had a safety video in place. It has been displaced during reconstruction of those baggage claim areas, but we are hoping to get a video back up out there. And then this is a banner that was created... you can see Dr. Downs there with the banner that was created and placed up in that baggage claim area. The WAVE program (Water Awareness Visitor Education). This is Pat Durkin's baby. We helped him, again, with a grant from one of our HTA programs and it was designed to help educate visitors through our front line employees. The thought was that we could do a better job... probably our concierges really are not that aware of maybe even which beaches are guarded... not aware of which beaches are most safe, where they should ask people to stay away from, so created a training tool... about a 30 minute training program and has offered it to visitor industry businesses. He has done... let's see if I can get my statistics here. He has done an incredible job in the last two (2) years of getting this information out to so many of our businesses. You can see here in 2007, he did trainings at each of these places and then in 2008, he has continued this effort. You can see down there at the bottom, total presentations that he has done... 25 presentations, about 550 attendees, and about 80 companies and organizations. And we really thank the businesses that are listed here too because many of them... like, for example, the Hyatt on the southshore, they hosted... they have hosted trainings for other businesses on the southshore, so they will open up their doors to allow other businesses to bring their employees in. So it has been a really wonderful piece of this educational partnership and we hope to help Pat keep this going. Part of what Pat did in his first year was that he just went out to the beach and started surveying people at the beach and trying to get a sense of how our educational efforts were working. This is one of the key questions that he asked and that was what was the best way to get safety information to you, and you can see there that resort staff is a huge part of that, 40% of the people said that they are... they would obviously like to get that information and looking to access that information from the resort staff, but the web came up very high as well. Guidebooks also are a source of information, but at least in this limited survey was not as much as resort staff and web. So that tells us that our WAVE program is on the mark. You know, it is a very important part of what we are doing and also, again, our web resources and I guess finding more and more ways that we can connect visitors with those resources before they get here and after they get here. Other things that have happened, print advertising... we have actually help pay for ads in some really key visitor guides, but Winston Wellborn especially has been very good at getting many of our more popular publications to run these ads for free. So now we are pretty much asking publications to do this as a public service and you can see there that we've got some visibility and some very, very important publications that touch many, many visitors. We continue that effort in trying to get COUNCIL MEETING ~ - 29 - ~ February 11, 2009 more of these pro Bono ads into these guidebooks and publications. We have also done water safety conferences and there is one coming up in February. Those have been very, very key, again, in creating a place to talk about a lot of different topics around water safety. Guidebooks are a challenge for us. Many of the guidebooks point people to places that we would rather they not go... such as Queen's Bath and that is what we are talking about today and also Kipu is another area of concern that seems to pop up in these guidebooks. Many efforts have gone on throughout the years to try to convince the guidebooks to be more responsible about this information... letters have been written to the authors. There has been negative media attention. Monty Downs actually created a bookmark and a really nice bookmark that talks about ocean safety, and personally called the author of the most popular guidebook and asked them to use this bookmark and insert it into his books... did not get a positive response, but that is okay, we will find other ways to get our bookmarks out there. But this is a key area that, you know, we continue to try to work because as much as we educate people, when they get information through these really easily readily accessible sources, it sets us back. Another thing that has happened is rescue tubes have been placed at some unguarded beaches. Monty, again, there he is and he is part of this effort, so that they can be utilized in the event of an emergency, and I don't have any information about how often those are used, but they certainly... something additional that we can do. Do you have any information (inaudible)... other things that we are working on are, again, thinking about these guidebooks, how we can work with theses authors to edit some of the information that they have there. We are talking about some potential... some kind of a seal of approval that might have some value to an author if they would agree to certain guidelines of how they talk about things and what they talk about. I know this is going to be a topic of the upcoming conference on February 20, but it is an idea that is being explored here. And then I know that Kalani Vierra has been talking to Hawaiian Airlines about them incorporating some of the ocean safety information into the map that they give away complimentary on the airline. That has been another area that we have, over the years, had many discussions with airlines, and really haven't gotten to a point where we feel that we have been able to get a good effective message out via the airlines, but we continue to work on that. This is just to illustrate the frustration in this effort as much as we try to move forward, it just feels like every now and then, we take a step back. This was an article that appeared last month in the Portland monthly. A travel writer was here and we never talk about Queen's Bath when travel writers come here. We never tell them to go there, we never give them a picture to show, and yet, these things happen. You know, here is Queen's Bath, front and center in this article, which is very disappointing. I can tell you that Sue Kanoho got on the phone right away with the person who wrote this article to let them know that this is not a place that we want to highlight. But, again, you know, we try to do all we can and then there are these variables outside of our control that are very frustrating, but the group continues on and we will continue to work on, on all of these fronts. And the COUNCIL MEETING - 30 - ~ February 11, 2009 networking happens regularly at the Kauai Water Safety Task Force and other areas where we discuss all of this. So in some summary, we've got a multi faceted program here to deal with prevention of drownings and we continue to work and partner, and collaborate the best we can. I guess even when we see bad years like this past year where we do have more drownings, then obviously, we would want to have. We would like to think that perhaps some were prevented by these efforts. As the visitor count has grown over the years, we have to believe that, you know, that these efforts have had some impact. Obviously, we would like to get that number to zero and we will continue to work and keep that in our focus as a whole. Chief Westerman: I just wanted to point out 2 things. You noticed all the way through this, it really takes people. You notice how many interactions that the body, the lifeguard or the water safety officer on the beach that interact with the public makes a difference. Pat Durkin's WAVE project, it was physically the concierges in the hotels... the hotel staff that got the training that interacted with the public and the public is looking for that. The 2 ancedotes that I want to give you. This one, just yesterday, was (inaudible) by George at the luncheon for the Food Bank... yet his previous job before he came over to OED working in the hotel industry, he was talking with a couple one day about what they were going to do. They decided... he said that they were going snorkeling on the northshore and said, oh, please go to a guarded beach, and talk to the lifeguard and be careful on the northshore this time of year because there is really not too many places to go snorkeling. Not thinking much about it, later on that afternoon, when he saw the couple coming back, he had asked them where they went, and they said, well, we went to Queen's Bath. He said you are absolutely right, you said that the northshore is dangerous this time of year, so came back to the southshore and ended up going snorkeling on the southshore. He said, we do not realize how dangerous it was until we got down there, so that interaction with that couple before they even had left made an impact on them. Earlier this year and I will give you the other one. Earlier this year, this summer, a family member distant to some point, came to visit with his family, and it being... him being a child like person himself and really wanted to get everything done that he could get done in Hawaii in the 7 days that he was here... (inaudible) to me on everything that he was going to do and most of it came out of the guidebooks. So I tried to tell him about how dangerous I~ipu could be and how dangerous the oceans could be and everyday that I came home, he went somewhere I told him not to. So they were staying out at the base, so I had come home one day and they were out at Major's Bay and even though it was summer, there was pounding surf and him and the kids were in the water in the pounding surf. I went and asked them to please come out of the water, talked story with them again... of course his mother-in-law kind of tried to beat him over the head too, but no matter what I imparted to him, he, and I guess the term is kind of treated that Hawaii is Disneyland. So we can do all the efforts that we want to do and impart as much COUNCIL MEETING • - 31 - • Febru 11, 2009 ~`3' education and work as hard as we can, people do have minds of their of their own. But then, again, knowing that sometimes they leave their minds at home, we need to maybe prod them a little bit harder and maybe do a little bit more effort to try an keep them educated on how dangerous our beaches... our beautiful beaches can really be. So, again, a I think a lot of that just showed what efforts we have done in our interacting with the people are on track and need to continue to move forward. Ms. Tokioka: There is a second part to this presentation that will be provided by Donald Fujimoto regarding this... specifically Queen's Bath and the County property there. I don't know if you... we would be happy to take questions now or turn it over to Donald or whatever you prefer. Chair Asing: Is there any questions for Beth and Chief first? Mr. Kaneshiro: I have one for Beth. Specifically to the Portland monthly article, was it... was Queen's Bath mentioned in that article? Ms. Tokioka: Yes it was. Mr. Kaneshiro: And it even comes across my thoughts that perhaps, we should seriously think about renaming it rather than keeping it Queen's Bath. I mean seriously, if they are still referring to it as Queen's Bath because I believe that maybe even Mr. Furfaro could correct me, but I don't think it is a historically called Queen's Bath. It is a name that probably popped up and if they keep referring to Queen's Bath, we need to call it something else. Ms. Tokioka: Wipe it off the map basically, so they can't find it. Mr. Kaneshiro: That could really discourage these writers to... Ms. Tokioka: Right, make it as difficult to find as possible. Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, anyway, that is a whole different story. Chair Asing: With that, Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: First of all, I want to thank Beth and the Chief for giving us an update on water safety in general, but the agenda item is triggered by a couple of our most serious exposed places and one of them being Kaimaumau and to answer Mr. Kaneshiro's question, the resolution makes comment that any signage we do there, we want to use the appropriate place name and, yes, I do not think the Queen went there to bathe. It is some (inaudible) name that was given to the place we know as Kaimaumau. I look forward to Donald's presentation and, again, want to sincerely thank you and the life saving staff that is here to talk about the general issue, but the agenda item today and I want to say this before Donald comes up is a discussion of this resolution that I introduced. The resolution, so we COUNCIL MEETING. - 32 - • February 11, 2009 can revisit this is a policy statement from the Council and I have to tell you that I really believe that your work has reduced drownings from an educational standpoint which was one of the 5 items in this resolution in addition to using the same name. But in this resolution and if we need to re-agenda this item as an executive session because of legal questions, then, you know, let's do it. Chair Asing: We will be doing that. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you because the questions we have in here are number 1, the County Engineer has the power to close any of our easements for the purpose of maintenance. This resolution talks not only about drowning, but we have had people that have broken ankles there and so forth because of the incline on the path. We also know that our most rainy season also happens to co-exist with what is typically our largest surf period. It specifies certain times of the year and it suggest that on a regular basis, the County Engineer take those 60 days and do repair and maintenance work on the path by closing it which is allowed by law and preferably, we look at the possibility of that happening between December 15 and February 15. Only suggested dates, only periodicals in here because it is also our rainy season. Secondly, it talks about the Hawaii Tourism and the Kauai Visitors Bureau are urged to install the appropriate kiosk on this particular trail to give educational information to our visitors. And under separate cover, I wrote to HTA, they did first come back and say that they were interested in participating and thanks to Cyndi who used to be with our analytical department here, and is now working across the street... a well deserved promotion, she shared with us the signs that the State used at Seven Sacred Ponds which also has a high exposure rate. And we sent those along, but then in the budget crunch, that kind of fell to the wayside, so we need to pursue that. We also asked for the DLNR in this resolution to consider placing the appropriate signage where our easement terminates and the DLNR starts, and we never heard from the State. This also ask that a direct correspondence and it is something that probably needs to come out from our legal department goes in the form of a suggestion to the guidelines to the tourism and visitor bureau books that specify, you know, particular data that we don't want them to recommend this destination. And copies of this resolution went on to the Governor and our State Senator and our Representatives, and Laura Thielen and others to say, you know, we are really asking you to consider our policy statement here, and that is what I wanted to talk on the agenda item, and this went out November 6 of last year. It has been 90 days. We continue to have people that work hard to make things work, but if it takes putting those questions because we may have some legal exposure, in a separate communication, I will hold my comments to then, and that was the intent of the resolution. I greatly appreciate your presentation, but I would be willing to defer some of my questions if there is liability exposure. Chair Asing: Any other questions for Beth and the Chief? If not, thank you. Donald? • • COUNCIL MEETING - 33 - February 11, 2009 DONALD FUJIMOTO, COUNTY ENGINEER: My name is Donald Fujimoto and I am the County Engineer. I have a short presentation. Before I start, I would like to thank, you know, the Council I guess for bringing up this point and we do share the same concerns. This is a very serious problem and we are, I think, on the same page in trying to resolve this. However, unfortunately, I wish I had the answer for everything and I think the Council in their wisdom is trying to provide us with another option in addressing this problem. With that said, I will kind of jump into the presentation. Okay, I will just briefly go over the issue, the liability issue, some mitigative options, and some considerations. So the liability issue... rough sea conditions is a major cause of fatalities. Powerful waves has swept unsuspecting bystanders from the rock ledges into turbulent white wash against sharp unforgiving rock coastline creating conditions where fatality or serious injuries has occurred. Travel guidebooks encourage unsuspecting visitors without sufficient warning of the inherent dangers during high wave conditions associated with the area. And our objective, again, we share with the Council is to prevent future fatalities or any injuries to completely eliminate that possibility. Anyway, this is some pictures of the area, and, again, this is misleading because this is a calm day, but even on a calm day, you notice how much white wash there is along the coastline and the fact that the coastline is pretty rough. It is not a sand beach and for those of you that know that Queen's pond is that area right in the middle. Okay, mitigative options... again, right now, the Fire Department has taken a lot of the initiative through their ocean safety program, and they have addressed this education process. But some of the issues that were discussed, I guess, were to provide on-site rescue tube life preservers and provide on-site lifeguards which is a very expensive option, and partial surveillance. So this picture depicts where the rescue tube is. It is right over Queen's Bath. There is another one right at the entrance of the path where the path meets the coastline. And these are some pictures of the trail as Councilman Furfaro mentioned. The trail is a natural trail which is... has its inherent, you know, safety issues. So, really, the purpose of my presentation was to kind of show you what the issues were and to kind of look at the considerations. There has been an emphasis on education through the Fire Department Ocean Safety Program as mentioned. And they already addressed these issues, but there are more to a solution than, you know, just... right now, we are still deliberating the possibilities and I think the Administration has arranged an executive session with Council to deliberate all the issues involved in our options, in our final options. With that said, are there any questions? Chair Asing: With that, are there any questions for Donald? Mr. Kawakami: I was trying to look it up on the Internet, but do we know what they did with Hanauma Bay and the toilet bowl down there because when we were younger, you could kind of walk around and it is kind of similar. I COUNCIL MEETING. - 34 - • February 11, 2009 think people have drowned. One site said that they have closed it since the '90's, once site is giving you descriptions on how to get there. Mr. Fujimoto: I am sorry, but I wasn't prepared to address that. Mr. Kawakami: Okay, that is fine. Chair Asing: Any other questions for Donald? Councilmember Kawahara? Ms. Kawahara: Thank you Chair. At Councilmember Furfaro's suggestion that you might be able to close the path to Queen's Bath for a certain period of time during the rainy season. Could you actually get much done if it is a rainy season and Councilmember Furfaro did mention it. ` Mr. Fujimoto: I would like to reserve the answer on that until the executive session is out. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thanks. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any other questions? If not, thank you very much Donald. Is there anyone... Glenn? GLENN MICKENS: Thank you Kaipo. For the record, Glenn Mickens. I just want to thank Donald and Beth and Bob for their fine presentation. I thought it was outstanding. The figure here on their sheet that they showed on the presentation, I think it is the most glaring... the drownings on guarded beaches were 15 and the drownings on the unguarded beaches were 77, and that is from 2001. I think that really jumps out at you. With Jay, you have always pointed out that the more guards that we have, the better... whether you have a kiosk or whatever it happens to be down there at Queen's Bath. I don't think there is any (inaudible) dollar signs in the world that aren't going to be as good as this. But I think these figures are glaringly obvious, and I would implore you Councilmembers to do everything that you can, you know, to give them all the guards that they can possibly get on every one of our beaches because it appears that is the contingent fact here on making these beaches safe. Thank you. Chair Asing: Bruce? BRUCE PLEAS: Bruce Pleas for the record. Pretty much what I testified on last time. Feet on the ground would make a difference. Signs don't make a difference. You can waste as much money as you want on signs like Chief Westerman said... there is family there, you tell them what not to do, that is exactly what they are going to do. People have that inherent nature to them. What we need are lifeguards down there or somebody up on the top of the trail too. That is what is going to make the difference. How do we fund it? The publications they put COUNCIL MEETING • - 35 - • February 11, 2009 out for that area, the hotels, the concierges that send them down there, they should contribute if they feel like it to the fund because then they can put it in there that all we contribute to the safety where we are sending you. Also, too, we have the State is coming out with their recreational (inaudible)... for the recreational areas or whatever that is. That meeting is at Chiefess Kamakahelei 5 p.m. this Friday. If people are interested or maybe Councilmembers are interested, I believe DLNR, Laura Thielen will be there... it would be to approach her and say that the people of Kauai would like the State to aim some money towards the County or partner with the County to provide a safety net in this area. That may be something that could help, .but I think you can do whatever you want, but we need people down there. That is what stops drownings, that is what will keep people informed, and the lifeguards keep an eye on the people that are there and hopefully alleviate the situation before it gets serious. As Chief Westerman brought out, the guards are coming back after hours because stuff happens then. We need budget funding for the guards, the lifeguards to do split shifts sunrise to sunset at these important beaches. This is much needed. We are there, the surfers are there, the junior lifeguards are there, and we help a lot, but the lifeguards are the professionals that - have the equipment with them, and saving one life to me is worth money because these people do spend money when they come here. Thank you very much. I'd like to really appreciate everything that Chief Westerman and Beth and Donald have been doing on this. Thank you. Chair Asng: Thank you. Is there anyone else who wants to speak on this item? Dr. Downs? MONTY DOWNS: For the record, Monte Downs. I promised myself I wasn't going to say anything today, but I broke my promise. Bruce, thank you for your testimony. That is really good. One other technology that is being developed that I want you to be aware of is... they have been working on Oahu now for a couple of years and that is surveillance cameras and Ralph Goto, as usual, is kind of in the forefront of modern lifeguarding techniques, and is working closely with the international person named Tim Chandler who is setting these up in places in Australia and on Oahu. These cameras are quite remarkable. They actually count the number of people that are at the site. They can record the wave heights and the latest version has actually a loud speaker on it that automatically if there is dangerous surf coming in, I don't know how often, but they call down, stay out of the water. You know, it is not as a good a human being as Bruce mentions, but Kalani and I went around and made a site visit up at Princeville trying to figure out where we would mount such a camera that would overlook Queen's Bath, and there is a couple sites that would work. One is on a private piece of property that we haven't researched yet how we would get permission to install the camera there. The other is way at sort of the tip end of one of the holes on the golf course. I forget the hole. Both of these have good views. Actually, the golf course one has a good view not only of Queen's Bath itself, but of people accessing it walking along with what the guidebook calls a lava beach. That is a very deceptive term. It is really... as you saw from the pictures, it is pretty rough terrain, so that is a technology that I hope COUNCIL MEETING. - 36 - • February 11, 2009 Kauai is going to start working its way into. You get into the question of who watches the camera, what the camera is seeing, and Oahu, there is still, I think, kind of a developmental stage, but progressing rapidly. They actually, I think, have enough staff there that they have one poor guy that (inaudible)... looking at all the cameras they are showing and making decisions that are based on that information to how many people are at the beach and how big the swells are. And, again, this added new technology of the cameras actually being able to make some noise. I just found out about that in an a-mail this morning. So we may be able to bring that into play at Queen's Bath. One other quick thing is just our conference... Kauai Ocean Safety Conference is next Friday at the Hilton and Kalani has worked really hard putting this together. It is sort of a... we are nervous about it because the economy is so tough that we are hoping that the hotels will be able to allow a staff member to (inaudible) the conference and to increase their awareness of the tools that we are working so hard to make available to them. This is our flyer and I kind of want each one of you on the Council to have one if I could just hand this here. If you any of you haven't been... our keynote speaker is going to be coastal captain from Oahu Barry Kaponyane(sp.?), Italian fellow and he e-mailed me that he is going to be talking quite a bit about the Hudson River miracle that was so inspiring to all of us and the fact that the vast majority of the people that were actually saved and pulled off the airplane wings... where the rescues were done by lay people, by ferry boat captains, and water taxis... before Fire and Coast Guard and everybody else got there and, to me, it is a great parallel to Kaua`i's situation and what we are trying to do at the conference. These lay people are called force multipliers and we are hoping to increase the skill level and number of our force multiplier. There was no accident that the ferry boat captains are highly coast guard certified, so they knew what to do. But that is kind of our goal here too and I think it is kind of a nice parallel that we are... we definitely need... the more lifeguards that Bruce talked about, but recognizing economic crunch times where also working very hard to increase our force multipliers. Chair Asing: Councilmember Kaneshiro? Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you Dr. Downs. I know many effort and long hours you put into this to try to mitigate these drownings and I remember you here a couple of months ago and one of the questions that I brought up was about posting signs about how many really drowned there. Have any thoughts been given about that idea that I brought up to post it there, so people can really see it. That we have had "x" amount of drownings. I know signs are not really effective, but something powerful like that can really touch some people... or sayings or names or something like that, that happened. Has any thought been given into something like that? Dr. Downs: Yes, definitely. You know part of it... I mean it is a sign and part of what... as far as signage goes, there is Act 190 that has something to say about signage and kind of describes the signs that if we put them there, they actually free of liability. Well, let me take that back. One problem with signage is it can increase your liability like a kiosk and a way that it would make it more • COUNCIL MEETING - 37 - February 11, 2009 attractive. Wow, here is the place where the kiosk... and maybe this is worth checking out, so there is some liability problems with signage. Act 190 absolves your liability if you post signs that are in agreement with the State signage task force and there is only a couple of signs, rip currents, and shore breaks... dangerous shore breaks, so as far as putting up that sign kind of like you are describing within the frame work of Act 190 takes some doing. Private citizens... underground private citizens I might say have actually done a bit of this and I am not... you are not supposed to know about it and I am not supposed to know about it, but there is some... actually, as I understand it, someone sent me an e-mail... one that went up on the Queen's Bath trail with the number of drownings there. There has been one at Hanakapiai Trail for quite a few years. One of the doctors... Craig Netzer and the hospital staff came up to me yesterday and said, I will give you a check for $500 to make a sign that shows how many drownings there are, big sign, and I will stick it right in the ground at the trailhead of Kaimaumau and no one counted them... have anything to do with it. So it is a tricky area, but I agree with you that I think it is possibly an effective area. Mr. Kaneshiro: Thank you for pointing that out. Chair Asing: Yes, first of all, the question that Mr. Kaneshiro raised is truly the question about demonstrating reasonable care. This is Act 190 that, in fact, as long as you use the international symbols and you incorporate them into the kiosk, it can relieve you from some exposure and that is what Mr. Pleas needs to know. If the sign saved one life as you guys made a presentation, you know, we see the difference in signage and lifeguards, we would never know that, but it is something in the resolution that we agree to pursue and with the appropriate questions about incorporating the international warnings into those signs, I guess it is a question for us to have legal counsel on in an executive session, but it is in the resolution that is my point. This is something you said we were going to pursue. You know, along those lines, I saw in Donald's presentation, they had the 2 safety belts in the trees not provided by the County. Dr. Downs: Absolutely not. Mr. Furfaro: Absolutely not, but absolutely could expose us to more liability, why? Because people get in trouble there when there is big surf, an untrained person runs to get the safety belt, jumps in off the cliff, gets pounded on the rocks, and they go, it was provided. Is that okay? And the counter that I had and I know Dr. Downs, you know, I was a Water Safety Instructor for the City & County of Honolulu and these options including in the Cook Islands in Rarotonga in Arorangi in particular, they have these lagoons that dump out water and when the tide is rushing out, they actually have buoys planted, so that an outgoing current, if it takes a snorkel guy with him, he has at least an opportunity for something that is on the outside. And that was part of our discussion, the possibility o£ but that is, again, is a liability question. Do we have somebody... instead of trying to swim up on the rocks, do we have them swim out to the buoy until the jetski comes from • • COUNCIL MEETING - 38 - February 11, 2009 Hanalei. The closed circuit t.v.'s and everything... as you know, I was part of that discussion with Ralph. I never found anything that came to the Council to discuss that potential purchase for life safety and since you have your water safety piece next week, I would like to have something, so we can discuss... how does it help our liability issue if any. I would encourage you to talk to the community association at Princeville... the golf hole is number 7 that you talked about, but in reality, that is the true point for Hanalei. That is the true Hanalei point right there and, you know, coming around is Lae honoiki with the curved reef on the inside by the hotel. But you need to have some dialogue with them about if we can pursue the closed circuit t.v. It is actually something that has to be placed on the Princeville Community Association's (inaudible). They are all good pieces, but it certainly... this discussion leads us to believe that we have questions for our attorney because it has been a number of months and Donald has questions that we should also refer to our County Attorney about repair and maintenance, liabilities, and exposure. Thank you for all you do. Dr. Downs: You're welcome. One last comment about the rescue tubes which I personally am involved in and I know the County and the State can't be for liability reasons, but my counter to the double drowning scenario... Mr. Furfaro: I want to make sure that it is not a check and balance... I mean double drownings are very serious. Dr. Downs: Right and I've personally seen 3 happen in the last few years... Lumahai, Marine Camp, and `Anini in the last 8 years or so without a rescue tubes there. So I am wondering if it knows, that might have gone from 2 to 0 with the tube. So in a way, it is not question... I am too worried about the possibility of someone getting in trouble, but I know that double one at `Anini on Super Bowl Sunday 3 years ago that there was a retired fireman on shore and this lady drowned and his wife was there with him and he said, I am sorry, I just can't just watch her drown. So he went out and drowned and if there had been a rescue tube... Mr. Furfaro: So people know when we talk about inexperienced people going out in a double drowning, what typically happens is the person that goes out to help and rescue, ends up in a headlock or something of that nature because the other person panics, and what happens is they both become fatalities. Dr. Downs: And that is where the rescue. tube can help. Mr. Furfaro: Possibly, I agree, but it is questions that we have to ask our attorney. Dr. Downs: And we feel that it has actually saved 3 people last - year, the rescue tubes. • COUNCIL MEETING - 39 - February 11, 2009 Mr. Furfaro: And the one at Marine Camp, I was involved in it when it involved the visiting ship from New Zealand, and we only saved one individual, so these are questions that we should talk to legal counsel about. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: Hello Dr. Downs. Dr. Downs: Hi. Mr. Bynum: I think all of us thank you for your efforts and I appreciate that. I just want to address this issue about signage for a minute. I mean residents and Princeville and northshore has been concerned about Queen's Bath for a long time and I understand that Act 190... you have these approved signs that helps us with liability, but those approved signs end up being everywhere, and I think people habituate to them. You know, they see them at calm beaches and make assumptions like, oh, that is just the liability sign, but the residents in Princeville... when I was working in the Ka Leo program strongly wanted a unique sign at Queen's Bath. They came up with the language... I think it is still there. It says, treacherous as I recall and it did... there was a review by the County Attorney to see if we were... it was okay to put anon-standard sign up there because they felt like something that was unique would catch somebody's attention. And the attorney at the time said, Act 190 signs need to be there, but there is nothing that would legally preclude us from allowing a unique sign along the lines that Councilmember Kaneshiro suggests. We all know about the sign that was at Hanakapiai for a long time... I don't know if it is there now. I haven't hiked for a while, but it sure gets your attention. So I believe that sign is still in place and I also concur that signs that are specific to a place and are unique, you know, may get people's attention where the standard signs don't. So thank you again' for your efforts and... Dr. Downs: (Inaudible) on this $500... off the record. Okay, thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you Dr. Downs. Is there anyone in the audience that wants to speak on this item? If not, I would like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Is there any further discussion? We will be setting on the agenda an executive session for this item at a later time. So with that, any further discussion? COUNCIL MEETING. - 40 - • February 11, 2009 Mr. Chang: I just had a comment and I want to thank the Chief and Beth and Donald for your presentation. I thought it was an excellent presentation. Just a couple of comments. Bruce had made mention that the concierges are sending people to the Kaimaumau area itself. But I just want to clarify from my involvement with the visitor industry, I think that the visitor industry are the last people that are sending people out there. If you poll a lot of local people and you ask the local people, how do I get to Kaimaumau, I don't believe a lot of local people know where the entrance of Kaimaumau is in the first place and that is where the guidebooks are involved. I also do want to say that I do agree with him because I believe that we could find volunteers with the Northshore Rotary Clubs or the Lion's Club because the main thing is to get people up on the top and letting people know about the hazards on the bottom. I do feel that the community up there is very strong and very concerned and I hope that we are able to get community support to get at least that volunteer service up there in the meantime. But, again, I do want to just verify from my briefing, activity presentations to the visitors, I think that the last people that are sending those up there are those that are in the visitor industry simply because they hear it over and over and over again as to what is happening. And one last comment. I have hiked out to Hanakapiai several times to see the sign that says there are drownings, people have been killed here, and what was interesting, I think those that have used the beach there are unaware of the currents and the waves... it is interesting that their backpacks are laying right next to that sign as you folks will probably know... they used that sign as a storage area when they jump into the ocean. So I just wanted to make that a point of reference because the times that I have been out there, that was usually a storage area, and people obviously see the sign, but I don't believe a lot of people believe what they see at that particular time. Most people don't know what the regular condition should be and they don't even know that the conditions change, you know, every 10 minutes or so, or after every swell or so. So thank you. I just wanted to make those comments. Mahalo. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion? Councilmember Kawakami? Mr. Kawakami: I just kind of want to clarify a point so that the viewing audience doesn't think I was in outer space when I was referencing the toilet bowl at Hanauma Bay because somebody might be watching and thinking what the hell is this Kawakami talking about. But the toilet bowl at Hanauma Bay is a very popular spot where it is similar to Queen's Bath where, you know, there is a puka... when the water comes in and out, it is actually like Spouting Horn and the kids used to jump in, and it used to rise and drop, and there were some injuries and drownings out there, so I was kind of just referring to, I wonder what City & County of Honolulu did in that case, so thank you. Mr. Kaneshiro: That is an appropriate name, the toilet bowl rather than Queen's Bath. We have to think about that a little bit more. • COUNCIL MEETING - 41 - February 11, 2009 Chair Asing: With that, Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, so Mr. Chair, I think I heard you earlier, but your intent is to reschedule perhaps an executive session that addresses some of the potential liability questions that I raised in the communication. Chair Asing: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? If not, I would like to also thank Beth, Chief Westerman, Donald, and Dr. Downs for their participation and showing what the fine water safety groups, and what the visitor industry has done to try to prevent drownings. I think it shows that the County together with private industry has been doing a lot to try to mitigate the.problems that we have with the drowning incidents. So I want to thank them for all of their hard work. With that, is there any further discussion? If not, can I have a motion to receive this item? Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-62 for the record, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next item is communication C 2009-80. C 2009-80 Communication (02/05/2009) from the Mayor, requesting Council confirmation of Amy Esaki as the County Attorney at the February 11, 2009 Council Meeting: Mr. Kaneshiro moved to approve C 2009-80, seconded by Mr. Bynum. Chair Asing: I'd like to suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: Bruce? BRUCE PLEAS: Bruce Pleas for the record. Over the last decade that I have worked with the government, I have also worked with Amy Esaki off and on, on different boards, different commissions, general plan, and everything. I find her very well qualified and I am 100% behind her as County Attorney. I think it is a very good choice. I think it will lead us in a direction that I believe the County Attorney's Office really needs to go in. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. COUNCIL MEETIN • - - • G 42 February 11, 2009 GLENN MICKENS: For the record, Glenn Mickens. I just want to reiterate what Bruce said. From what I have known Amy over the years, I think she is an outstanding person and very (inaudible) and she is community oriented, so I completely support her. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. Is there anyone else? The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Do we have a motion? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes. The motion to approve C 2009-80 was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Congratulations Amy. Can we have the next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next item on the agenda is LEGAL DOCUMENT: C 2009-81. LEGAL DOCUMENT: C 2009-81 Communication (02/03/2009) from Max W.J. Graham, Jr., Belles Graham Proudfoot Wilson & Chun, LLP, requesting Council approval of an assignment of guest house rights from unit "C" to unit "D" at Kilauea Bay Vistas Condominium, located on Lot 16 of the Wailapa Subdivision, Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii as follows: • Assignment of Guest House Rights, unit "C" (Kilauea Bay Vistas Condominium) Tax Map Key No. (4)-5-1-005:016 (CPR No. 0003), to unit "D"(Kilauea Bay Vistas Condominium) Tax Map Key No. (4)-5-1-005:016 (CPR No. 0004), which is owned by Kauai Public Land Trust: Mr. Kaneshiro moved to approve LEGAL DOCUMENT: C 2009-81, seconded by Mr. Furfaro. Chair Asing: What I would like to do is... Max, can you come up please? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: Max, I think just for the newer members, maybe you can kind of roughly go over what this really means. You don't have to go into that nitty gritty details, but kind of a general overview. MAX GRAHAM: I do want you to understand the reason for this. There is an underlying financial reason, so I want this to be very clear with all of you. The Kilauea Bay Vistas Condominium is a typical... it is an condominium and it has 5 units, so 5 condominium units, and has density for 5 dwelling units, farm COUNCIL MEETING • - 43 - ~ February 11, 2009 dwelling units. And it has also the right to one guest house on this whole big lot. Now this property is located right at the mouth of the Kilauea stream fronting Kahili Beach. It is on the eastside and it wraps around the beach and then comes up the river a little bit. The upper 2 units, units A & B are going to be used or if they are not already used for farm dwelling purposes. Unit C, D, & E are the lower units that wrap around the beach and are at the very mouth of the Kilauea Stream. The Kauai Public Land Trust has been trying to acquire those units to preserve them for wildlife preservation purposes and sanctuary, and actually is part of the extension of the Kilauea Point Wildlife Sanctuary. So prior to the purchase by or prior to Kauai Public Land Trust acquiring the first unit which was Unit D... the condominium documents were... had been amended to provide that the guest house rights went to Unit... were going to be owned by the owner of Unit C. So a fourth amendment to the declaration was recorded which granted to the owner of Unit C, the guest house rights. Then this was around 2003, the end of the year, Kauai Public Land Trust was able to acquire title to Unit D and Unit D is the one right at the river mouth. In fact, this is the property where the County's easement comes down to the beach. So Unit D was acquired by donation from the then owners... it is really Louise and Monte Weebin, they own the property through entities, but they are the ones who made the gift. So it was the complete gift over to the Kauai Public Land Trust. Thereafter, the Kauai Public Land Trust with a grant from NOAA acquired Unit C and here is what happened then. So now they own Unit C and Unit D, the land trust does. Unit C was then transferred onto the County and what the land trust does. Unit C was then transferred onto the County and what the land trust intended to do was to... prior to the transfer, shift the guest house rights over to Unit D. And it failed to do so in going through this transaction didn't realize that Unit C had the right to the guest house. So title was transferred to the County and now the County owns Unit C and is the owner of the guest house rights. That was a mistake from the Kauai Public Land Trust point of view and the reason for the request today is to ask you to rectify the mistake to transfer the guest house rights from Unit C which the County owns to Unit D which the Kauai Public Land Trust still owns. Now, the reason for this is that there is a value to the guest house rights. The owners of Units A & B who have home sites may, we don't know, but may want to purchase the guest house rights So they can have a guest house associated with their unit. So only one guest house, so either A or B. So there is a certain value and I don't know what that value is, but it is worth something and if the land trust were able to sell the guest house rights, it would have funds which it would use for its non-profit purposes. But I want you to understand that there is a value to that guest house on Unit C, but underlying all of that, it was really a mistake that the guest house was still associated with Unit C when the County got title. So that is the purpose for the request and then just to keep you up to date on what is happening, the land trust is also pretty close to consummating the purchase of Unit E with further grants from the State. So we are hoping to get title to all those properties, and then get them into eventually the right hands to preserve that entire area. COUNCIL MEETING - 44 - • February 11, 2009 Chair Asing: Any questions? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Max for the explanation. So the long term goal is the land trust will have C, D, and E hopefully. Mr. Graham: Well, the County has C. Really, the long term goal is... it is possible that Fish & Wildlife will eventually control all of these properties. Mr. Furfaro: And so it is currently D with potentially E that will be in the hands of the land trust. Mr. Graham: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: And what are their intentions? Will they be giving it to Fish & Wildlife... gifting it. Mr. Graham: It would be a transfer and that hasn't been decided yet, but it is generally not the land trust desire to hold on long term to properties. Mr. Furfaro: So I guess what I am getting at here is C is still with the County. We are transferring the guest house rights back to D. Will Fish & Wildlife eventually want to have a custodian cottage there. I mean, do we know? Mr. Graham: We don't know and I think that both the County and the land trust when it makes this decision as to who will hold these properties permanently. It really needs to be done in consultation not only with the greater Kauai community, the Kilauea community to make sure that their desires and rights of access to... and use of this area is preserved, so I think we have a little ways to go on that. Mr. Furfaro: But you can see where my questions are going to, right? Mr. Graham: So when the transfer is made, do we transfer it with any right to... Mr. Furfaro: Conditions or use or... Mr. Graham: I am sure there will be conditions and we will have to decide what those conditions are. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chair Asing. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, Councilmember Bynum? • COUNCIL MEETING - 45 - February 11, 2009 Mr. Bynum: Thanks for coming here today and for your involvement in this issue and the transfer for Unit D and these other units is a tremendous benefit for the public and the County of Kauai. You know, I know that the Kilauea community has been very deeply involved in this and in fact it is a model for collaboration between the land trust, the County, the Kilauea Point Wildlife Refuge and the community has worked really hard to clean up that area to keep... to preserve, it to deal with it properly, and have it continually available for public use. I know that the commitment was that certain portions of... the high value of the public use areas of the beach will be available to the public, but there has also been really improved stewardship in my opinion because of that collaboration with the Kilauea Community Association, and others. So this is like one of those win/win stories and I certainly understand the intent of this and I am supportive, so thank you. Mr. Graham? Thank you. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? Any questions for Max? Mr. Chang: - You know, what is the total area of A, B, C, D, and E? Mr. Graham: I would have to pull this map out and I don't think I can, but it is... it is Jennifer Luck, the Executive Director of the Kauai Public Land Trust by saying about 28, 30 acres. A substantial parcel of land. Mr. Chang: Thank you. Mr. Graham: I just want to say something. You are thanking me. I am here just representing the land trust. We really all owe a great... a lot of thanks to Dr. Gary Blaich who really spearheaded this acquisition. Chair Asing: Well, no questions for Max. Thank you very much Max. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Do we have a motion? Mr. Kaneshiro: Yes, we do. Chair Asing: Is there any further discussion on the item? Go ahead. Mr. Furfaro: I do think as we move forward on this, the fact that the preservation of the access area and so forth will be a great concern to the COUNCIL MEETING - 46 - • February 11, 2009 northshore community. I presume at some time, there will be some interaction with them about this potential transferring of density. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion? Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I would just like to echo what Mr. Graham said about Dr. Blaich and his volunteer efforts that really help put this together and also the Kilauea Neighborhood Association and other volunteers there who had repeated work days down there. In this area once it became clear that it would be open to the public. There was a lot of trash, there were a lot of things that were happening in the Kilauea community... assure that there was continued boat launch area because that had been an area where fisherman and others have launch their boats... you can't launch from there, but there is an alternative provided and the community, you know, hundreds, thousands of hours probably cleaning it up and keeping it nice and if you have a chance to go there, it is just a spectacular spot. Again, there is collaboration and concurrence wasn't always agreement from every member of the community, but they came to a consensus and a norm that I think is working really well there now. So thanks to Dr. Blaich and the Kauai Public Land Trust. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion? If not, I would also like to thank Dr. Blaich, Jennifer, the Land Trust, Max, and everybody's concern. The one concern that I always have is when I hear, as an example, Max make reference to possibly being turned over to Fish & Wildlife, I have some concerns. And my concern is that I don't want to be picking up lands that the Fish & Wildlife gets a hold of and, therefore, eliminating the community's enjoyment of the area. So, you know, I hope that when the whole deal is worked out, that there is some area in there that makes reference to community use and not preservation, and it is Fish & Wildlife, and the community can't use it. It is of no use to us if that happens, so that has always been a concern of mine whenever we have an opportunity to pick up land. With that, thank you very much. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, may I also thank you for framing that concern. It was partially what I was leading up to, but I want to thank you for framing it the way you did. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, any further discussion? The motion to approve LEGAL DOCUMENT: C 2009-81 was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next item is page 3 claims. COUNCIL MEETING - 47 - February 11, 2009 CLAIMS: C 2009-82 Communication (01/22/2009) from the County Clerk, transmitting a claim filed against the County of Kauai by Wendell T. Okura for damages to his vehicle, pursuant to Section 23.06, Charter of the County of Kauai: Mr. Furfaro moved to refer C 2009-82 to the County Attorney's Office for disposition and report back to the Council, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously _ carried. C 2009-83 Communication (01/26/2009) from the County Clerk, transmitting a claim filed against the County of Kauai by Thomas George Associates, Ltd. as subrogee,of American International Recovery for damages to a vehicle owned by Shawn Silva, pursuant to Section 23.06, Charter of the County of Kauai: Mr. Furfaro moved to refer C 2009-83 to the County Attorney's Office for disposition and report back to the Council, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously carried. C 2009-84 Communication (OU27/2009) from the County Clerk, transmitting a claim filed against the County of Kauai by Cushnie Construction Company, Inc. for reimbursement of costs incurred, pursuant to Section 23.06, Charter of the County of Kauai: Mr. Furfaro moved to refer C 2009-84 to the County Attorney's Office for disposition and report back to the Council, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next items are Committee reports. COMMITTEE REPORTS: BUDGET & FINANCE CONIlVIITTEE REPORT: A report (No. CR-B&F 2009-02) submitted by the Budget & Finance Committee, recommending that the following be received for the record: "B&F 2009-1Communication (U29/2009) from Committee Chair Daryl W. Kaneshiro, requesting that the Director of Parks & Recreation provide an update on funding for park facilities lighting retrofit project," Mr. Furfaro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously carried. PLANNING CONIlVIITTEE REPORT: A report (No. CR-PL 2009-02) submitted by the Planning Committee, recommending that the following be approved on second and final reading: COUNCIL MEETING - 48 - February 11, 2009 "Bill No. 2295 A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING CHAPTER 8, KAUAI COUNTY CODE 1987, RELATING TO ZONING DESIGNATION IN PO`IPU, KAUAI (Richard E. Fuller, Jr., et al., Applicant)," Mr. Furfaro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Kawakami, and unanimously carried. (See Zater for Bill No. 2295) Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: Next items are resolutions. RESOLUTIONS: Resolution No. 2009-22, RESOLUTION AMENDING RESOLUTION NO.2007-65, TO REPLACE AND CONFIRM THE APPOINTMENT OF A MAYORAL APPOINTEE TO THE CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION (Carol Ann Davis, Partial Term): Mr. Furfaro moved to approve Resolution No. 2009-22, seconded by Mr. Chang. Mr. Furfaro moved to amend Resolution. No. 2009-22 as circulated, seconded by Mr. Chang. Chair Asing: Any discussion on the amendment? If not, all those in favor say aye. The motion to approve Resolution No. 2009-22 as amended was then put, and carried by the following vote: FOR ADOPTION: Bynum, Chang, Furfaro, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Kawakami, Asing TOTAL - 7, AGAINST ADOPTION: None TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: None TOTAL - 0. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next item is Resolution No. 2009-29. Resolution No. 2009-29, RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING LIMITED EXEMPTION FROM H.R.S. CHAPTER 514B FOR HAOA STREET AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROJECT: Mr. Furfaro moved to defer Resolution No. 2009-29 to the first meeting in March of 2009, seconded by Mr. Chang, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: I believe... why don't we break for lunch. Excuse me, do we have any other items? Margaret, do you want to take the executive session, so when we come back, we will go into executive session. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. COUNCIL MEETING • - 49 - • Febru 11 2009 ~'3' , MARGARET SUEOKA, DEPUTY COUNTY ATTORNEY: Good morning. Deputy County Attorney Margaret Sueoka. I would like to request that this Council reconvene into executive session on ES-377. ES-377 Pursuant to Haw. Rev. Stat. §§92-4 and 92-5(a)(4) and (8), and Kauai County Charter §3.07(E), the purpose of this executive session is for the Council to receive a briefing from the Office of the County Attorney and consult with legal counsel for the purposes of deliberating, deciding, and authorizing a proposed settlement in Dominador Lopez, et al., v. County of Kauai and Danilo Abadilla, Civ. No. 06-00325 JMS/KSC (U.S. District Court, District of Hawaii) and related matters. The briefing and consultation involves consideration of the powers, duties, privileges, immunities, and/or liabilities of the Council and the County as they relate to this agenda item. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Thank you. Why don't we do this. We will break for lunch. After we come back for lunch, we will have the public hearing at 1:30 and after the public hearing at 2 o'clock, we will move into executive session at that time. Hopefully, when we get through with the executive session, we can schedule approximately 3:30 will be the ag park project. Mr. Furfaro: First of all, I'd like to make the motion that we could convene in executive session as so stated. Mr. Furfaro moved to go into executive session on item ES-377, seconded by Mr. Bynum, and unanimously carried. There being no objections, the Chair called for a recess at 12:15 p.m. The meeting was called back to order at 3:35 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Pasion: Communication C 2009-63. C 2009-63 Communication (01/15/2009) from Council Vice Chair Jay Furfaro, requesting that the Administration be present to give an update and overview of the Kilauea Agricultural Park Project which should include, but not be limited to, the work/recommendations prepared by the project's consultants, projected cost of the infrastructure improvements, plan for financing the improvements, projected timeline for the different phases of the project, etc.: Chair Asing: With that, I'd like to suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. COUNCIL MEETING. - 50 - • February 11, 2009 Chair Asing: Beth, thank you for being here. BETH TOKIOKA, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE MAYOR: Thank you very much. I am Beth Tokioka, Executive Assistant to the Mayor. I appreciate this time today and also accommodating a special timing request for this item, so we could ask some members of the community to be here as well. We will be talking today about a project that has almost... actually more than 2 decades of history here and the... I will call it phase I and phase II. Phase I is roughly 20 years of history that predated the County's actual ownership of the 75 acre parcel that will become the Kilauea Agricultural Park. My presentation today is going to focus mostly on what has transpired since the County took ownership in the late 2006 and where we are to date. The central component of the presentation today is the final proposed masterplan for which we are seeking County and community support, so that we can move forward to the next phase which would actually be making this project happen. I do want to make it clear that this is not the only opportunity especially for the residents of the K-lauea area and others who are interested in the project to comment. We do plan to go back to Kilauea as we have done several times in the past couple of years to meet with the community to talk one on one and hopefully get to a point where we can all agree on the plan to move forward. But before we get onto actually talking about this proposed masterplan, I want to walk us through how we got to this point. So activities to date, again, starting from relatively late in the process, but, again, the beginning of Phase II. In the Fall of 2006, this property was deeded to the County and it was the intention of everybody who was in office at the time to move forward, and to make this agricultural park a reality. Mayor Baptiste, at the time, charged the Office of Economic Development and I was the Director of that at the time to make this a top priority. So we started immediately again putting... first of all, putting some money into our upcoming budget to do the master planning, but also starting to meet with the community in May and June of 2007, we had some meetings with a core group about 30 folks out there who have been in constant dialogue with us, and very good productive dialogue. We put the masterplan contract out to bid and we were able to award that contract in February '08. In March of '08, we started our first round of community outreach and we started the process of beginning to see what this masterplan should look like. We did a field trip to Maui to the Kula Ag Park there which is run by the County of Maui and seem to be somewhat of a decent model for us to look at. We did some... after that research and initial community outreach, our consultants which were Kimura International, Kimura International developed 3 alternatives for us to take out to the public which we did from September to October of 2008, just a few months ago. And we took those alternatives out to get some feedback, so that we could create a final proposed alternative which was presented to us by Kimura in December, so that is where we are now. I want to take us back for a moment to those 3 draft alternatives and these are the 3 alternatives. Alternative 1 is in the upper left hand corner. Alternative 2 • • COUNCIL MEETING - 51 - February 11, 2009 is in the upper right hand corner and Alternative 3 was in the lower... is in the lower portion of the screen. So we were trying to show some different configurations, some different features that could be considered and to send that out to some public comment. They range from, again number 1, being a very simple alternative which consisted of 6 conventional lots. They have ranged in size from 7.8 acres to 11.6 acres. Alternative 3 was the most complex of the 3 that were proposed. They contained a mixture of organic, conventional, incubator lots. Alternative 2, again, in the upper right, had 11 farm lots ranging in size from 2.4 acres to 9.2 acres. Alternative 3 had 10 lots ranging in size from 2.3 acres to 9.2 acres. All 3 alternatives incorporated in irrigation reservoirs, you can see in the blue there which is a natural depression on the property that doesn't lend itself necessarily well to farming, and we felt might be a good additional source of water for the project. All 3 alternatives included an energy farm lot which you can see there that comes up as sort of white on the screen. Community garden lot and a shared composting lot for the various tenants to utilize. Alternatives 2 and 3 also included incubator farm lots of varying number and sizes, and those are kind of the light yellowish lots on 2 and 3. The thought there was to provide new farmers in area to sort of get their feet wet as they can graduate to larger lots here or somewhere else. And alternative 3 down on the bottom in the purple there on the left along Kilauea Lighthouse Road included a farmer's market site. So these were the 3 alternatives that we took out to public comment last Fall. So we were actually pleased with the amount of feedback that we received during this public comment period which extended from September 17 to October 31. We had meetings with the then Mayor Kaipo Asing, we had a meeting with our Council Chair Jay Furfaro, we had a great meeting in Kilauea where about 60 folks came out to Malama Kaua`i's facility, and we had a great dialogue there and good input. The Kauai Agriculture Advisory Committee which is the County, the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Ag, and the Farm Bureau board provided some input to us in order to expand the group to stakeholders beyond Kilauea. We did attend a meeting in Kilauea for the Ka Leo O Kauai program and presented to that group and received comments there. We had several articles that ran in both the Garden Island newspaper and the Honolulu Advertiser which generated some telephone and a-mail comments, and we also met at the request of the then President of the Kilauea Neighborhood Association. We did receive some written comments by the homeowners as a group who live on Quarry Road which is just on the south end of the project. So, again, we were pleased with the amount of feedback that we got. There were some major themes that arose throughout that commentary period and I have summarized them there, but basically, I wanted to outline the major themes that came up repeatedly that really influenced the final plan which I will show you in just a moment. But there was a lot of discussion about the mix of organic farming versus conventional farming. There were a lot of individuals who felt the park should be completely organic, but there is also a lot of interest from conventional farmers. ~ So COUNCIL MEETING. - 52 - • F ebruary 11, 2009 we feel, at this point, that we need to somehow make accommodations for both types of farming. And we did through the process find some examples of good... of co- existence right now that is going on that we feel can be used as a model and that this type of co-existence can work. Other major themes were dealing with buffering between organic lots and conventional lots that needed to be better buffering within the park, and also between the park and its neighbors. Up on the northern end of the park, you have the crater hill subdivision. Down to the south across Quarry Road, you have a number of landowners there, homeowners there, and across Kilauea Lighthouse Road, you have a school and some other commercial type entities. So there was a lot of input from those folks about taking them into consideration as neighbors and how we can minimize the impact on them. So there was also very strong support for a sunshine market site and a community garden site. We had request for things such as walking pads and educational center for schools, a commercial kitchen, a County baseyard, housing for the ag workers, and even a dog park. Not everything made it into the final plan as you will see in a moment, but we did take as much into account as we could. So this is where we came to on the final draft, and this is what we want to, you know, again, receive some input on it. Eventually, we have to come up with a plan if we were to move forward. So taking into account the comments that we received, this is what we have come up with. We have 4 organic lots and those would be those on the upper part of the diagram there, the darker green. And the average size of those lots is 5.6 acres. We have \ conventional lots down below. Those are the lighter... they almost look yellow there on the screen, but we have 5 conventional farming lots and the average size of those lots are 3.9 acres. We tried to even out as much as we could the acreage... the organic lots actually have about 2.7 acres more than the conventional lots, but it is pretty even at this point in time. We also have an orchard down in the very bottom right that is approximately 3.6 acres. We did expand the buffer between the organic and the conventional lots, and there is that road that runs in between them and there are some additional buffer area on either side of that road to deal with that concern. We also had to expand the wind break. On the previous examples, the wind break really extended along the very top... the area is by the Crater Hill subdivision, but because of the concerns from the neighbors, we did include buffering along the perimeter... all the way around except a little portion along Lighthouse Quarry Road. We centralized the composting area and that can be seen... it is kind of a white shaded or a whiter area sort of in the middle there. Chair Asing: Do you want to use the laser? Ms. Tokioka: Okay, here we go. Oh, there we go, technology. This is the composting area and there were concerns and in one of the alternatives, we had it down here, but the Quarry Road owners were concerned about the composting area being down in that area. So we have the composting area there and then we have the energy farm located here still. Along this area, along Kilauea Lighthouse Road, we have located the more public areas of the site. We have the A • • COUNCIL MEETING - 53 - February 11, 2009 incubator lots here. We have a sunshine market site here, and the community garden site here. We've got... we've added a little parking there as well to accommodate the sunshine market site and the community gardens. The parking area would accommodate... it has about 84 stalls. The community garden lot here is smaller than it was in some of the other alternatives, but it is still would provide for a 125 plots in a standard community garden size of 20 by 20. So, again, this reflects what we were hoping would be an incorporation of a lot of those major themes and concerns and better organization of the site. So in the final proposed alternative versus the originals that were proposed last Fall, what I put up .here is this... this is the final alternative that we were just talking about. This is alternative 3 that we had discussed and alternative 3 is probably the closest to this, so I put them up there together, so you can look at them together. But, basically, a big difference here is our organic acreage has increased by 35%. Our conventional acreage decreased by 13%. We were able to reduce the interior road acreage by alignment basically of the various elements. The total farm acreage, though, was reduced by 11.8% and a lot of that had to do with the buffering. It takes space to do all this buffering in between. The buffer area is actually 3 times larger in this final alternative than it was in this alternative 3. And the composting area is a little bit larger to accommodate. The incubator lot area you can see was reduced to these 2 areas, so this is where we are now, so we did reduce the acreage there. The community garden lot is actually smaller now, but we still feel at 125 plots, we are offering a fairly nice size community garden. This gives you a snapshot of the acreage by use. So the largest slice of the pie there are the farm lots and they represent roughly... almost 51% of the acreage. The composting area is here. We have the energy farm here. The market site is here, the irrigation reservoir, the infrastructure which includes roads, buffers, and parking, and then... I am sorry, it includes buffers and parking, and then this last slice is the road acreage. So you can see, again, the usage on the site by the various activities. As I mentioned earlier, there was a lot... there is a lot of history to this project and about 20 years went by between the time that the condition was imposed on the landowner to transfer the land to the County in the time that it actually happened. The Kilauea community has been actively involved in planning. There has been many, many activities that have happened over the years to make this happen. And I want to thank Linda Sproat because last week she dropped some information off to me which was historical from about 1988, 1989 when some information was put together by the community and a survey was done by the Kauai Public Land Trust. So what I have taken here is from what Linda shared with me that I think' shows that we are still on the same track. There are a lot of things that were important then and are important now. Number 1, you know, back then, they wanted a fruit stand, a market site, the neighborhood gardens were important and a composting area. As I said, a survey was done back in 1989 asking what are the most important uses for this site. Farming obviously came up as number 1. There was a need for a passive recreation area... at that time which we have not COUNCIL MEETING. - 54 - • February 11, 2009 accounted for now... community gardens and a composting area. Some more information. Again, back in 1988 and 1989, the hope was to provide, you know, 5 or 6 larger parcels of land. It becomes more difficult for us now if we are trying to accommodate both organic and conventional to do that on 5 lots. But the point was to... I think to provide as much acreage as we could to farmers in individual lots and that one of the farm lots could serve as a training farm for new farmers which is the incubation lots that we have been... that we have accommodated for in the plan. So another big difference that we have now is that we've got a lot of neighbors on all sides of the park. We have homes on top, we've got schools to the side, and, again, it just creates another element to plan for and other stakeholders to be sensitive to as we move forward. Costs... so this is probably the most jarring slide that I have in my presentation. When we look at what it is going to cost to fully realize what I have just shown you on paper, we were looking at over $4 million. However, not to get too excited about that right now because there are certain things that really have to happen, and there are other things that can happen later or that hopefully some of this we can find grants to cover the cost. But what I have done here for you is kind of break down, you know, what this price tag will buy us, and the biggest chunk will go to interior roads... $1.8 million to just basically grade and gravel those roads. Okay, it is unbelievably expensive to do that and then the waterlines, we have 5, 5/8" meters on the property that we will be able to utilize, but we will have to run waterlines to each of the lots, and that is another $662,000. So those would probably be the most critical improvements that need to be made right upfront and are not nice to haves, they are have to haves, and that is about $2.5 million. You know, there are other cost that we can look at how we can manage. Wind breaks, for example, you know, to the extent that the tenants can absorb these costs, we can ask them to help us share in some of the cost of the development of the park. And areas such as wind breaks, if that could be prorated out per acre in some other fair way. The cost of building the reservoir, you know, we will try to find creative ways to make that happen. There might be some grants available for that to make that happen. The energy farm is, I think an important component of the park from the sense that it is... it is the area where we might be able to realize some cost savings or even some revenue generation to offset some of these costs. So the energy farm preparation cost may not even be born by the County if we were to contract that out to a third party which in the process of doing research for this plan, Kimura had talked to several contractors who felt that we could probably get somebody to come in and create that energy farm at no cost to the County. But that is probably, you know, one of the more important parts of the project to consider because, again, it is the one area where it might return some dollars to the County or save us some dollars. So, anyway, that is the projected cost at this point. COUNCIL MEETING • - 55 - • February 11, 2009 How are we going to pay for it? Well, we have included this project in the County's 6-year CIP list for the last couple of years. We do have $100,000 set aside that is available to us to move forward with the planning process and that would have to go first and foremost to preparing an environmental assessment. Beyond that, $2.5 million has been called out in the current 6-year CIP, and that would be a consideration for the bond float that is likely to happen some time this year. So, obviously, we would have to find the money for this and the bond float would probably be the most likely source. Again, we would be looking for grants to defray some of these costs. The Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other sources. And, you know, looking at some of the revenue generation that would come... the leaseholders that will be minimal, but it would be some revenue generated back to the project, and then, again, the prospects for the energy farm, you know, could provide us some savings. The next steps. We, obviously, we have a final masterplan. We can't really move forward until we have all agreed on a final masterplan and we take it to the next step. So we are looking for acceptance of a final plan by both the County and by the community. Once we are ready to go and everybody is in agreement, we can start on the environmental assessment which would have to be done under the Hawaii Revised Statutes, and that would probably take about a year to complete. But while that is being done, there are a number of things that will be going on concurrently, so that we don't lose time. We will be looking at how to best subdivide that property, so that we can actually legally lease out sub-lots. We may need to amend... the County does have an ag park ordinance in place. We may need to amend that in certain ways to make it relevant to this project. We will need to draft application and lease documents, and during that period, we will, again, be seeking additional funds for design and construction. And just a note on the environmental assessment. As we look at this plan and we think about what is necessary, what is not .necessary, there are a number of elements that could be changed, but when we go through the EA process... if we ever feel like we might want something like a sunshine market site, we probably should include it in the plan that goes through the EA because to try to add it later after the EA is done, and it wasn't included, makes it that much more difficult. So, anyway, just a note on the importance of the environmental assessment. Once that environmental assessment is done, then we could go to design and engineering, and construction. I wanted to just talk briefly about applications because there has been request throughout this period of why aren't we taking applications for the parks, why aren't we taking applications? And we have looked at the Maui process for applying and, you know, when you get down to the point of actually accepting a formal application and looking to turn that into a lease, it is a pretty substantial process. This just shows you what comes out of the Maui application and what they require the applicant to provide is a financial statement prepared by a CPA or Federal and State Tax Returns for the past 2 years, current State tax clearances, a detailed business plan, identification of sources of capital, and a letter of commitment from the lending institution, and a marketing plan. So what we don't COUNCIL MEETING - 56 - • February 11, 2009 want to do is to run people through hoops too early because things like, you know, when you get your financing in order, that is not going to... if you were to do that today, it wouldn't necessarily apply perhaps 2 years from now when you are ready to execute the lease. So we have, throughout the process, asked for farmers who are interested to submit a farm plan to us because it would help us better look at lot sizes and how we are going to configure different types of farms. And we still... we still would love to get those farm plans. We have received maybe 2 of those, but, you know, in the meantime, again, there is always that question of why aren't we accepting applications, and I just think for now, I don't know that we want to go through this full formal process, but we would be very interested in hearing from interested farmers about what they would potentially be applying to do there. Lease, I mentioned a lease, so we would have to develop a lease agreement. We would have to establish the rental fee, the term of the lease. On Maui the term of the lease is 50 years. It is quite a lengthy term. I don't know if we would go that far here. And then they also have made accommodations for subleasing and assignment based on different things that might happen throughout the term of that long lease. In looking at rental fees and what type of revenue this project might generate back... with the help of Bill Spitz from OED, we did some research and at the Kula Ag Park on Maui, their rental fee is $100 per acre per year. The Department of Agriculture site, they talk about an average lease being $200 per acre per year, but noting that on neighbor islands, that might be a different story. In looking at different lease agreements here on the island, we are thinking that probably $75 per acre per year would be inline with what is out there right now. We are talking about less than $4,000 a year in lease income, so it is not much. Another question that comes up is management options that is an undecided issue at this point. The County could manage the park as much as they do Maui. On Maui, they have an advisory board that assist with certain elements of the management. There has been strong interest from the community and having a third party manage the park for us. I am not sure how feasible that is given... I don't know how they would do that on $4,000 a year. You know, I am not sure what that looks like, but it is not something that is off the table at this point, but I think we need to talk that through over the next 12 months to really see what that looks like and what kind of resources would be needed to manage this park. I think it is going to take more than $4,000 a year to effectively manage the park. But that is an open question that will need to be answered. So I am happy to take any questions at this time. Again, what we hope to get to in the very near future is an agreement on a final plan that we can take to the next step which would be an environmental assessment... certainly realize that we need to take comments and look at any final changes that need to be made. So I am very happy to hear your feedback now and in the coming weeks, and we will also be meeting with the community as well to talk in depth about what their thoughts are, but I would be happy to take any questions as this time. ry COUNCIL MEETING • - 57 - • Februa 11, 2009 Chair Asing: Thank you Beth. With that, Councilmembers, any questions for Beth? Mr. Bynum: One word, water. Can you talk to me about water? Ms. Tokioka: Water is a challenge. As I mentioned, we have the 5 water meters, the 5, 5/8" meters. In talking with the Water Department, it looks like those... each of those meters could deliver... could, hypothetically deliver 10,000 gallons a day, so all 5 of them together could potentially deliver 50,000 gallons a day to the various farmers on the site. That is not taking into account, though, the fact that Kilauea is already strapped for water supply. So when we start draining all 50,000 gallons a day for the ag park, it comes from somewhere else, but that is the one known that we have as far as water availability. The thought in creating the irrigation reservoir was just to take advantage of this natural depression on the site to create an area that could potentially provide additional water. The way that it is configured there... I was checking with Kodani which did some of the engineering work for us here and that could potentially hold up to 1,000,000 gallons of water, but how it gets to that point, how much rain, you know, will actually fill it up. We talked about possibly drilling for a well on the site. The energy farm could be useful in providing the power for that if any water needed to be pumped. But, again, drilling a well is more money, so water is absolutely a challenge and we have been bringing that up all along especially in discussions with the community and the farmers, but many of the farmers tell us that they are not concerned about the water. They feel that they can be successful with the water that is available there now... that they are doing it elsewhere and I guess that will -~ be remained to be seen, but water is a challenge. Mr. Bynum: So the reservoir would just catch storm water runoff hopefully? Ms. Tokioka: Or, you know, if the thought was to go ahead and drill a well, it could hold that. - Mr. Bynum: But that doesn't... so you don't have to line the reservoir for it to retain water? Ms. Tokioka: Probably. There is some cost associated with building the reservoir that would... it is included in this although the drilling of a well is not included in this cost. Mr. Bynum: So included in the cost is something that would make the reservoir retain the water? ' Ms. Tokioka: Right, exactly. r Mr. Bynum: Thank you. COUNCIL MEETING. - 58 - • February 11, 2009 Chair Asing: Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Beth, thank you for a very nice presentation. The possibility of water coming from across the street on the mauka side where we have another applicant who has a source for water, has that been explored with Kimura and Associates? Ms. Tokioka: We have talked about it. It didn't... we didn't explore in depth in this process. Again, that would add a significant cost to the project that I am not sure who would pay for that. It is possibility that we could explore, but unfortunately, you know, as most people are familiar with the project know many years ago there were irrigation systems that would have easily delivered water to the site and now you've got private property there and we would have to somehow traverse that. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I think there are some of us that are aware of the old stone dam that was originally intended for this, somewhere along that 20 year period. Somehow we went asleep at the switch... people bought those and expanded their backyards. If I remember, this reservoir is planned to have like a hypo long rubber based on it. Ms. Tokioka: I believe so, yes. Mr. Furfaro: Did they talk about any... like any other catchment system to be built in here that would direct water to the reservoir? Ms. Tokioka: No. Mr. Furfaro: So that is not in there. Ms. Tokioka: I think if we were to do that, again, it would take acreage away from the farming activities unfortunately. Mr. Furfaro: Understood. Did the Water Department imply to us that if they could produce 10,000 gallons a day for the development of this agricultural... have they finished their own well capacity as well as their lift station and pump... that was something on their capital plan. Have they completed that? Ms. Tokioka: In my discussions with them, I know they are still looking for an additional well site. I suggested that, well, we have 75 acres, maybe this is the site where you could have a well, but I think the elevation of the site for the well is important, and this is not necessarily a higher elevation. But from what I understand from them, there may be some additional capacity in progress to be added, but they still are looking for an additional well site which they have not located. So they are concerned about the stress that this project would put onto • • COUNCIL MEETING - 59 - February 11, 2009 their, you know, their system that is already strapped and will have to be in close contact dialogue with them and look at the opportunities, again, for... you know, again, if there would be a way for them to place a well, they said that they need about half an acre for a well, so it is not taking much from the site. There will be a way to do that and provide them the land they need, then maybe there could be some way to work that out. Mr. Furfaro: So has the Farm Bureau or a community of ag experts indicated to us based on the acreage that we would have left and depending on what product, farming product, would be produced. Is there a recommendation of certain balances of product that some are more thirsty than others? Watercress, watermelon are extremely thirsty. Cucumbers, somewhere in the middle... I mean, do we have an estimate of what kind of crops should come out of here then? Ms. Tokioka: That is the kind of thing... the kind of research that we will have to start doing right now because in addition to looking for crops that are not thirsty crops, we will also be looking for crops that are not dependent on heavy use of chemicals. _ Mr. Furfaro: Right. Ms. Tokioka: So I am not an expert, but from what I have... I hear some people say, well, papaya trees would be a great type of a crop because they won't use a lot of water, and yet, I think with papaya, you have to spray up high, so it is not necessarily compatible with the other uses. So it would be a matter of really working with U.H. CTAHR on the types of crops and that would have to be incorporated in the application and review process, so that farmers who apply will have to be evaluated on how much water they are using, and how compatible their farming methodology would be with organic users or convention users. Mr. Furfaro: Well, I do think that is probably something we should depend on Mr. Spitz's expertise in there. I also want to agree with you that, you know, if our attempt... potentially, there is a return on investment to carry the operating cost based on the energy component, but on the flip side, if we want to keep the lease rents very attractive, that will not produce a return on investment that dictates anything other than the fact that the County probably has to manage this park with an advisory board from the community. I don't know financially, it allow us to look to an outside third party. It would probably have to be a community advisory board with someone from the Office of Economic Development. Ms. Tokioka: I just don't see how you can make that work for $4,000 a year. It just doesn't pencil out although we are open to suggestions. Chair Asing: What, I would like to do Councilmembers is, we will stick to one subject at a time. As an example, both Tim and Councilmember Furfaro brought up the water issue, so if other Councilmembers have issues and COUNCIL MEETING. - 60 - • Februa 11 2009 ry , questions relating to water, ask the question, so that water is done, and then Councilmember Furfaro have another question, we will try to do that instead of spinning around. So with that, any other questions Councilmembers on water? I have a general question on water. My question is, is there a projected requirement for this project? Ms. Tokioka: No, there is not. Chair Asing: Should there be? I mean we need to know this project in order for it to work should have availability of "x" number of gallons to work. So we need some expert to kind of give us a ballpark. We need "x" number of gallons of water to work the project. So that would be one question that I had. Now, tied to that, we need to work with the Water Department on what is the projected amount of water required outside of the park for the community and then put those 2 together and now project it out on whether it can work or it can't work or we make decisions according to what is available and what could be projected to be available. But I think we need to have those types of issues kind of brought out as soon as possible. Ms. Tokioka: Good point. I agree. Mr. Furfaro: Very well stated Mr. Chair. Chair Asing: Any other questions on water? If not, Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: I guess my next comment is, it seems from what you've presented and the limited returns on investment that if we looked at the full potential expense of this, it seems there is a funding source through the bond and through some money that we may have in CIP. Ms. Tokioka: Correct, yes. Mr. Furfaro: So there is a funding source. Chair Asing: Okay, any questions on funding? If not, any other questions? Mr. Chang: Beth, did you identify what you may be putting in terms of the energy farm, number 1. And number 2, did we talk about what the other was in regards to this 575,575 on your pie chart, the blue? Ms. Tokioka: We are thinking that the energy farm would probably be solar or some type of photovoltaic. I suppose wind is an option, but wind, as we all know, is a little bit problematic on Kauai. But I think definitely some type of solar or photovoltaic would be probably at the top of the list, and on the • • COUNCIL MEETING - 61 - February 11, 2009 other... the other cost which is $575,575, that includes preparation of the energy farm, the recycling area, and the sunshine market site. Mr. Chang: Thank you. Chair Asing: Any other questions? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: I would think that in the close proximity to the wildlife refuge that wind would probably go to the bottom, and I would agree with you that photovoltaic is probably the source to go to, but I will assume that most of that power generated would be to handle circulating pumps, water, and activities for the farmer's market. Is that the scope of that? Ms. Tokioka: Potentially, we could generate some revenue off of that. Chair Asing: Are there other questions Councilmembers? Ihave a question. Other than that, has there been or have you put the plan together on how you would award the lots and what is that? Do you have something available, some draft or is it in the final form. Where are we on that process? Ms. Tokioka: What we are looking at right now is the Maui model and we do have that model in hand, whereby, on Maui, they have an advisory board that receives the applications and then based on certain criteria, they will make the decision on awarding of lots, you know, based on the scoring. I would envision it would be very similar to the process that we go through on request for proposal for goods and services. We would have to develop the criteria and we will be looking actually to work with the Kilauea community on what that criteria should be and we would be very interested in not only things like water usage and chemical usage, and that kind of thing, but there might be other criteria that the community feels are important that should be incorporated. So that will be something that will need to be developed again over the next 12 months. But we are looking at the Maui model: Chair Asing: Okay, I was more interested in who will be awarded. A person from Kekaha is interested in one of the farm lots there. Would that person be eligible, would he not be eligible? Would a person in Kilauea have more preference than someone in Kekaha or Koloa? How... Ms. Tokioka: That has been... there has been a request in the past to give preference to Kilauea residents, but I don't know that we could really legally do that with this type of public resource. Our thought is that we would accept applications from anywhere and that the merits of their application would be that we... the basis for whether they are awarded or not... showing their financial stability, their farm plan, their marketing plan. Again, their intended methods for farming, so at this point all along, we have stated that we would be accepting COUNCIL MEETING. - 62 - • February 11, 2009 applications from anywhere on the island. I just don't know that legally we could narrow that universe down to just Kilauea residents. We might be in some legal trouble there if we tried to do that. Chair Asing: Okay, could you expand a little more on your advisory board because you are using the model in Maui and they have an advisory board, so how many people are we talking about and what, in fact, their criteria that they used. Ms. Tokioka: We haven't gotten that deep into that research, but we would want to have people who have expertise in certain areas. Certainly, I think we would want somebody who can look at a plan and really evaluate and understand the water usage for that plan. So we probably want somebody from U.H. CTAHR on that committee. We need a diversity of interest including I think some individuals from the Kilauea Community since it will be in their community, their voice is very important, but we will need to have a mix of community resources and also the type of technical resources that can look at what we are asking for in the application to be able to evaluate, you know, again, financial stability... perhaps someone from the financial community would be on that committee. So I think before we would finalize anything like that, we will be looking for input from all of you from the community and from others as to who should sit on that committee. Chair Asing: Thank you. Anymore questions in that area? Go ahead Councilmember. Mr. Furfaro: So on the advisory board and on the earlier question about the application, I would think if everything is equal on their application, their financial resources and so forth, I would think that is a good question for our legal department because I think, then, we could say, geographically, if we are considering everything equal, we may want to give preference for farmers on the northshore who can respond for an emergency and so on. And using that same criteria, you know, those are people that are close to the community who may be giving feedback about, you know, activities on the farm, you know? Ms. Tokioka: Right. Mr. Furfaro: So you want people who are rooted in the community. Now I understand the legal question on first making sure everything is equal and nobody is being turned away who might have a lesser application, but I would think that because it is a community based effort, and the overall management will probably be people from the community or involved in the farming, I think we could get by on that criteria. And it probably make sense when we want to manage it, that we have people that understand the concerns. Ms. Tokioka: I think you bring up a good point. I mean a criteria probably should be, you know, an ability to respond quickly if there is a problem on COUNCIL MEETING • - 63 - ~ February 11, 2009 your lot, we want you to be able... because of the neighbors that are involved, we have school children across the street. So if that is part of your demonstration of your ability to be an ideal tenant, then I think some of this will probably give a natural advantage to someone in the area because you are not dealing with transportation cost and things like that. So, financially, I think it might fall out just as a natural advantage for folks, but we do, I think, feel that we need to open it up and make it available. Mr. Bynum: Once an applicant is selected in Maui or do you... if you know, is there like a contract and so there is... I assume there is some kind of performance criteria that if the person continues... ceases to actively use it, then at least it would become available again. Ms. Tokioka: Correct. On Maui, the lease is executed and then I believe they give the individual... it is a 50 year lease, so I believe in the beginning, they gave them 5 years or some period like that in order to demonstrate actual ag activity. What happened on Maui is I think more than 10 years went by and some of those lots were never farmed. So we can learn a lot from the Maui model also of how not to do it, but, yes, there definitely will be a performance clause because we don't want that... if the successful lessee is not performing, we want to make that available to somebody else who will, so that will definitely be part of the lease agreement. It will also... for example, on Maui, they have allowed for an assignment of that lease, so say I have a lease and I am getting older and maybe I am ill, and I can't continue, but I still have 10 years on my lease. I could assign it to a child, you know, or somebody in my family to serve out the rest of that lease. They also give a provision for a temporary... the word is in here, but temporary assignment... say, you got... you are called to military duty or something... that you could... for a period of up to 5 years, let someone else farm, but you can only do that one time during your period. So there are things built into the Maui lease that account for hardships or other things that might get in the way. Mr. Bynum: This property is now fee simple to the County of Kauai. Ms. Tokioka: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Chair Asing: Any other questions relating to that area that we are talking about the process? Then I have a question on... because we are using Maui as a model, what is the size of Maui's entire project? Ms. Tokioka: It is much larger than ours. I believe it is about 250 acres, so in that sense, it is not a good model, but there is no other that is even close to ours. Their lots, I think are... average about 25 acres a lot and some are less and COUNCIL MEETING - 64 - • February 11, 2009 some are more. So it is a much large area and so it does not completely translate for us, but it is the closest we could get within the State to what we are trying to do. Chair Asing: Okay, now, let's say that Maui has 250 acres and how many lots have they broken that 250 acres to? Ms. Tokioka: That is a good question. Chair Asing: Do they have 100? Ms. Tokioka: No, I think they have somewhere in the area of 25 lots I believe. I can get you that information, but I think they have somewhere in the area of 251ots, so my 250 total acreage might not be correct because I know that some of those lots are as large as 25 acres. I am pretty sure they have 25 or 26 lots within that park, so it is a much larger project to manage. Chair Asing: They not small then, yea? They are large. If you are talking about 25 acres, you know, being the smallest lot maybe? Ms. Tokioka: You know, I can't tell you that for sure right. now because (inaudible). Mr. Furfaro: 25 tenants on 250... Ms. Tokioka: I think the 250 acres is not correct. I think it is larger than that. Mr. Furfaro: Because that way the average farm is 10 acres. Ms. Tokioka: And their lease rental $100 per acre per year on Maui. Chair Asing: How long have they been in operation? Ms. Tokioka: That ag park, I believe, has been in operation for about 20 years now, but it has only been in the last 5 years that they have really seriously managed it and they brought a staff member on board within their Office of Economic Development to specifically... I am sure to do other things, but specifically to manage that park to weed out the tenants that weren't performing and do an application process to get new applications on and new tenants on the park. So it has been in existence for, I think, close to 20 years, but it has not been... it is now really starting to perform I think as they originally expected it to. Chair Asing: Any other questions? Mr. Bynum: The Maui project has agricultural water on there? COUNCIL MEETING • - 65 - ~ February 11, 2009 Ms. Tokioka: I have in my notes somewhere where they are getting their water from, but water was not an issue there, and I could get to you where they are getting the water, but they seem to have ample water supply, and each tenant pays for their own water usage. Chair Asing: Would a member of the board be able to qualify to apply for one of the lots? Ms. Tokioka: Well, for me personally, I would think that probably wouldn't be a good situation. I think we would probably rather have people who were unbiased third parties. I can't say that is where we will end up, but I think that we would want a board that is objective and, you know, and not financially connected to the park. Chair Asing: Councilmembers, any other questions? Mr. Furfaro: I think that is a plus or minus because as I mentioned earlier, if you had somebody who had a vested interest as a tenant and as farmer, they would produce good stewardship. Ms. Tokioka: It could be that one seat on the board could be one of the tenants that is chosen among the tenants after they are selected. You know, but I would think if you were sitting on the board and you are evaluating applications, you shouldn't be evaluating your own. So one seat on the board... maybe I misunderstood your question Council Chair, could be a tenant member of the board, and that probably would be a good idea. Chair Asing: Any other questions Councilmembers? Councilmember Chang? Mr. Chang: Beth, has anybody from Maui from their station come over to look at Kaua`i's potential area? Ms. Tokioka: No, we have gone over there, but they haven't come here. Mr. Chang: It might be nice to invite them over and maybe get some feedback from them also to show them what we plan to do. They might have some good suggestions about what worked with them. As you said, it was 20 years in the making and only in the past 5, have they been organized or really into it. Maybe they can tell us what went wrong or what went right in their first 5 years or what have you, so we can skip that block, so we are well ahead as when we start. Because I am familiar with that area that they have that park up in Kula and, of course, their elevation there is about 4,000 feet. Gabe could probably tell us a lot COUNCIL MEETING - 66 - • February 11, 2009 about what they learned in the past, early beginnings, and that might give us a head start when we are ready, set, go. Ms. Tokioka: They have... one of their lots is set aside for the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources CTAHR. So they do, I guess, research on that site. They grow crops and they also bring in kids to the site as a learning experience. It is a really nice feature of the site. Unfortunately, you know, we do that here. We sacrifice some of the farm lots, so it would be a little bit more difficult to do here, but definitely, they have a lot of nice features. And they actually have several farmers that are doing very well on the site. We visited one gentleman who grows mainly onions and it is just unbelievable. His farm was just overflowing with all kinds of vegetables, and it was really exciting to see. A nursery that was just unbelievable going game busters and then another tenant that is just growing sod actually, and selling grass basically on his site. Mr. Furfaro: That is the famous Kula onion. Ms. Tokioka: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, I did write an excuse for today and when I wrote that excuse about my departure at 5, I forgot to calculate my travel time for my next appointment. You know, I will stay very close to this and I know you are going back out to reach out to the community one more time. I do need to excuse myself and I am sorry for the miscalculation on my part. Chair Asing: Thank you for bringing this forward. I think it is great and while you are still here and while it may seem like I am being pushy... I think because of the long time period it has been out there, I would like for your office to put a definite timetable of awarding lots shall be 9 months from today? As an example, I think if we don't put you on the spot... not trying to put you on the spot, but I think we need to do that. We need to do that because if we don't do that and set a timetable 9 months from now, lots shall be awarded, everything will be in place. If we don't do that, then, you know, it is going to be something that could go on and on and on. I think the community and everyone has been patient and I think we just need to set a time and do the best we can with that time. We only have this much time and we will make the best decision that we can at that period of time. So with that said, I really would appreciate your coming back at a later time to give us this timetable and say, here is the time that... the target for awarding the lots is going to be here. I think we just need to do that. Ms. Tokioka: Okay, I appreciate that and I appreciate giving me a little time to come back to you on that. I guess my only question would be that we have the EA to get through first. So we don't want to do anything prematurely that could be impacted by any result or finding of the environmental assessment. So just COUNCIL MEETING - 67 - February 11, 2009 knowing that is a big piece that has to be completed before anything really could move forward. Chair Asing: And I understand. There is lots of work to do and I understand that you have done a lot, but I think without setting a time, it is something that could go just on and on and on. So we just need to set a time and we will meet that time date and at least everybody in the community can look forward to, hey, you know, maybe it is September or November this year... that is when we can see that there will be some awards being made. Ms. Tokioka: Okay, we will look at a timeline that is reasonable and as quick as possible and we will get back to you on that. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, a timetable that is reasonable and obtainable, but I think what the Chair is saying is, the community needs to look for the goal. Thank you and I apologize to my colleagues for understanding my departure time. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, Councilmembers, any other questions for Beth? If not, Beth, thank you very much. I'd like to open it up to the community. Anyone in the audience who wants to speak on this item? DAVID SPROAT: Council Chair and members of the Council, my name is David Sproat. It hasn't been stated... the community has a long term investment in this. Actually, the community saved this parcel for the County and even for the Fish & Wildlife Service that now manages the wildlife area. It was a trade off of values. So several points... if at all possible, it was a trade off of values because you have Seacliff Plantations (very upscale) development and yet it originally was 90 acres and now it is 75 acres preserved in this ag park. Regardless of size, it is good land, it is good ag land... it should come in as reasonable as possible because that was the whole idea in the tradeoff... going to allow upscale development and yet retain hopefully good ag band for use and... if you look at the history of the northshore, of course, values that are declining, but the prices escalated crazily, and affordable... good affordable ag land is extremely important out there. I think the whole country is at a process where we need to grow more food, so that is one thought. Keeping it reasonable regardless of what the return sheet might show... yes, $4,000 is not a lot. Kilauea has about 100 acres... 100 inches of rain a year. It has been farmed in various ways. We've talked about the conservation of water. I think drip irrigation is going to be mandated, but I think, Council Chair, you brought up the most important thing is... I might not live to see when applications are accepted. So I think moving it along and this has been the big concern of the community is when any bureaucracy takes over our project versus letting it go to a private industry, the timeframe that it marches through... you know, we have lands and I can go out and plant a crop today. I don't have to do an COUNCIL MEETING - 68 - ~ F ebruary 11, 2009 EA to plant that crop, but I guess to do an ag park, we have to jump through the hoops, so that is the most important issue right now is how fast can we get applicants and farmers onto these lots. There is a lot of interest and I think whatever it takes to move this along would be in the best interest of everybody. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any questions for Dave? If not, thank you Dave. Anyone else? Once, twice... LINDA SPROAT: Aloha, I am Linda Sproat from Kalihiwai. I just thought I would let you guys know that since the Kilauea ag started this plan, there were 15 members in the Kilauea Ag Association that started this whole plan. Since the time, 25 years ago that they started, 6 of them have passed away already. So we have to get moving because we getting too old. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, is there anyone else? KEONE KEALOHA: Aloha Council Chair and members of the Council. My name is Keone Kealoha from Kilauea. I just wanted to say thank you for bringing this up before the Council and for making it a priority. As Aunty Linda had mentioned, you know, there are some people that have been waiting for a long time to see this realized. As Uncle David had mentioned, the idea that the development in that Seacliff area was... the trade off was, well, let's preserve some of the ag land, so to see this at this point starting to come to the point where people can actually get on the land and start farming again, the community is very interested in seeing this move ahead. I just wanted to say mahalo for putting this on the agenda and pushing it forward. Mahalo. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any questions? If not, thank you. Is there anyone else? If not, I will call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: I am going to ask for a motion to receive. Mr. Bynum moved to receive C 2009-63 for the record, seconded by Mr. Chang. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I am just glad to see the people from Kilauea here today and I want to thank you for your patience. That is kind of an understatement for the time that this was promised, and I wanted to thank Economic Development for following through... good leadership from that department and Kimura International. I am so hopeful that this does move quickly and that it is successful. I am concerned about the lack of agricultural water. I am not a farmer and I am glad that you are optimistic about the chances of success because what I have heard . - COUNCIL MEETING - 69 - February 11, 2009 from farmers regularly for years is that farming is a difficult under the best of circumstances. But there was a promise made and a promise needs to be kept and I am glad to see us moving in that direction and we are going to pray and hope for the best and work as diligently as we all can. So thank you. It is nice to see you guys from the northshore today. Chair Asing: Any other comments? Before we take the vote, I guess we will send over a communication Beth for you to come back at a later time and give us some idea on timetable. I think we need to do that, get a timetable, and just do the best that we can. I appreciate all the hard work that you have done with the consultant... it is much work to do, but I think if we set a timetable and just meet the timetable, and we will just use the best information we have at that time, and just make a decision and move. I think that would be the prudent thing to do. I just looked at the files and I see the Crater Hill SMA use permit was approved in February of 1982. The SMA is the permit condition that required the land to be set aside for the ag use, so we are talking about 1982 which is a number of years ago. With that, thank you Beth. I appreciate all the hard work that you have done and we will hear from you at a later point. The motion to receive C 2009-63 for the record was then put, and unanimously carried. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 4:45 p.m. Respectfully submitted, PETER A. NAKAMURA County Clerk /lki • • COUNCIL MEETING February 25, 2009 The Council Meeting of the Council of the County of Kauai was called to order by the Council Chair at the Council Chambers, Historic County Building, 4396 Rice Street, Room 201, kihu`e, Kauai, on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 9:18 a.m., after which the following members answered the call of the roll: Honorable Tim Bynum Honorable Dickie Chang Honorable Jay Furfaro Honorable Daryl W. Kaneshiro Honorable Lani T. Kawahara Honorable Bill "Kaipo" Asing, Council Chair EXCUSED: Honorable Derek S.K. Kawakami APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Mr. Bynum moved for approval of the agenda as circulated, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. MINUTES of the following meetings of the Council: Special Council Meeting of February 4, 2009 (Interviews) Public Hearing of February 11, 2009 re: Bills Nos. 2299, 2300, and 2301 Council Meeting of February 11, 2009 Mr. Kaneshiro moved for approval of the minutes as circulated, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The first matter on page 1 is communication C 2009-85. C 2009-85 Communication (01/22/2009) from the Director of Finance, submitting Corrective Action Plans in response to the findings outlined in the two (2) audit reports as follows: 1) County of Kauai -Single Audit Reports for the year ended June 30, 2008 (Finding No. 08-01 Grants Management, Finding No. 08-02 Quarterly Progress and Expenditure Reports, Finding No. 08-03 Suspension and Debarment, Finding No. 08-04 Eligibility, Finding No. 07-09 Grants Management, and Finding No. 07-13 Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program). COUNCIL MEETING. - 2 - • Februa 25 2009 ry , 2) County of Kauai -Recommendations Designed to Improve Internal Accounting Controls and Administrative Efficiency for the year ended June 30, 2008: Mr. Kaneshiro: Mr. Chair, I request that we receive this communication. As to what I will do is come out with another communication for Committee meetings and we can handle the departments separately instead of having all the departments here to discuss this item because I don't want to tie them up. I believe the Department Heads and members of the department have many other important things than holding them back. So what I would propose is that I would also send out a memorandum to our Councilmembers here, our members, my colleagues, and basically look at some of the important... maybe you can list down some of the important parts of the audit that we want to take up, and we can take that up into sections. The findings that we find that are... that most of you understand, you are clear about, and we can put those together, and lump those together, but those that we feel make take some time, we will take those up individually, so not to tie up... like I said, the Administration. Okay, basically, we will receive this and come out with a communication for Committee meeting. Chair Asing: Thank you. So we have a motion to receive. Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-85 for the record, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The matter for receipt at the top of page 2 of the Council's agenda is communication C 2009-86, C 2009-87, C 2009-88, and C 2009-89. C 2009-86 Communication (01/23/2009) from the Planning Director, transmitting the Planning Commission's recommendation to approve amendments to Ordinance No. PM-2002-358 and to deny the Applicant's request to delete Condition #14 of said Ordinance, relating to zoning designation in Waimea, Kauai (I~ikiaola Land Company, Applicant): Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-86 for the record, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. C 2009-87 Communication (02/06/2009) from the Director of Personnel Services, transmitting for Council information, the following classification request which the Department of Personnel Services will be reviewing and taking appropriate action: • Department of Parks & Recreation, Position No. 1898 (Reallocation of Present Class of Recreation Assistant to Recreation Worker I): Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-87 for the record, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. • • COUNCIL MEETING - 3 - February 25, 2009 C 2009-88 Communication (02/10/2009) from the Director of Finance, transmitting for Council information, the Statement of Condition of the County Treasury as of December 29, 2008: Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-88 for the record, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. C 2009-89 Communication (02/13/2009) from the Mayor, transmitting for Council confirmation, his appointment of the following: • Jan Roy Kimura (Labor Appointee)-Planning Commission-First Term Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-89 for the record, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: Mr. Chair, we have received communication C 2009-86, if we could go to page 6 of the Council's agenda, and take up the bill for first reading that accompanies that communication. BILLS FOR FIRST READING: Proposed Draft Bill No. 2303 - A BILL FOR AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ZONING CONDITION IN ORD. NO. PM-2002-358, RELATING TO ZONING DESIGNATION IN WAIMEA, KAUAI (K`ikiaola Land Company, Applicant): Mr. Kaneshiro moved for passage of Proposed Draft Bill No. 2303 on first reading, that it be ordered to print, that a public hearing thereon be scheduled for March 25, 2009, and that it thereafter be referred to the Planning Committee, seconded by Mr. Bynum, and carried by the following vote: FOR PASSAGE: Bynum, Chang, Furfaro, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Asing TOTAL - 6, AGAINST PASSAGE: None TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Kawakami TOTAL - 1. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: At this time, we are back on page 2 of the Council's agenda on matters for approval which is communication C 2009-90. Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me Mr. Clerk. I might have been not catching something, but there was a comment I wanted to make on C 2009-88. I know we moved to receive this. Do I have the privilege of just making a comment on that item? Chair Asing: Yes, go ahead. COUNCIL MEETING. - 4 - • F r 2 eb uary 5, 2009 Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, I would suggest maybe during these fiscal times that we are in right now that going forward when we get the quarterly treasurer's report, it might be nice to have a comparison from the previous quarter. Chair Asing: Okay. Mr. Furfaro: Just so that we can keep an eye on what is happening with the treasury under these difficult economic times. Chair Asing: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you for giving me that courtesy. Chair Asing: Thank you Councilmember Furfaro. Let me see, with that, Peter. Mr. Nakamura: We are back on communication C 2009-90. C 2009-90 Communication (01/16/2009) from the .Executive Assistant, Kauai County Housing Agency, requesting Council review and approval of the Proposed Revisions to the County's Limited Equity Leasehold Program Policy: Chair Asing: I would like this item referred to the Committee. Mr. Kaneshiro moved to refer C 2009-90 to the Economic Development/Housing Committee Meeting, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The next matter for approval is communication C 2009-91. C 2009-91 Communication (01/20/2009) from the Chief of Police, requesting Council approval to expend approximately $7,500 from the Kauai Police Department's asset forfeiture account to purchase 90 digital voice recorders for their patrol and traffic personnel: Mr. Furfaro moved to approve C 2009-91, seconded by Mr. Chang, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The next communication for approval is communication C 2009-92. C 2009-92 Communication (01/22/2009) from the Chief of Police, requesting Council approval to accept the donation of a bulletin board and twenty (20) picture frames valued at $478.96 from the "Bread for the Journey of Kauai" organization • • COUNCIL MEETING - 5 - February 25, 2009 which will be used at the Hanalei station to display memorandums and materials that require posting and picture frames will be used to display photographs of past and present Hanalei station personnel: Mr. Furfaro moved to approve C 2009-92 with a thank you letter, seconded by Mr. Kaneshiro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: We are at the top of page 3 of the Council's agenda on matters for approval. The next communication is C 2009-93. C 2009-93 Communication (01/26/2009) from the Director of Parks & Recreation, requesting Council approval to purchase new aluminum soccer goals for various County parks islandwide: Mr. Furfaro moved to approve C 2009-93, seconded by Mr. Chang. Chair Asing: What I would like to do is I'd like to suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: We have the Director here. With that, good morning Lenny. LEONARD RAPOZO, JR., DIRECTOR OF PARKS & RECREATION: Good morning. Chair Asing: Lenny, you want to just briefly go over this item for us? Mr. Rapozo: Sure. What we did was, you know, we are planning to open the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg- Sports Complex out in Lydgate. It is being... it is going to have 3 full size soccer fields there, so we need to purchase goals for that particular complex. With that in mind, we looked at all of our soccer goals islandwide and identified some that maybe we should replace at this time and we wanted to do a bulk purchase for these items. Chair Asing: Councilmembers, any questions for Lenny? Mr. Furfaro: So Lenny, 3 are new and the balance for replacement? Chair Asing: Yes. , Mr. Rapozo: The different sizes are for the different levels of play. COUNCIL MEETING. - 6 - • Februa 25 2009 ry , Chair Asing: With that, Councilmember Chang? Mr. Chang: Lenny, just to reconfirm, nets come with the goals? Mr. Rapozo: Correct. Complete, including stakes to hold them. Those things don't last very long, but we have sand bags for safety and stuff like that. Chair Asing: Okay, any questions for Lenny? If not, Lenny, thank you very much. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Chair Asing: With that, I'd like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Is there any further discussion? Councilmember Kawahara? Ms. Kawahara: These are already in the budget this fiscal year for this year? Chair Asing: I am not sure. Let me ask Lenny. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Rapozo: We identified the funding sources that are already in budget for the purchase of these goals. Ms. Kawahara: So it is not additional to what was already in the budget? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, thank you. Chair Asing: With that, Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: From the Park Trust Fund or... Mr. Rapozo: From different Trust Funds and one of them is the Lihu`e District Trust Fund Parks, Kawaihau District Trust Fund, so where the goals are scheduled to be replaced, we looked at those Trust Funds. COUNCIL MEETING • - 7 - • Febru 25, 2009 az'3' Mr. Bynum: Which district it was in. Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Kaneshiro: So each district would have under that Trust Fund... Lihu`e, Kawaihau, Koloa, and so forth? Mr. Rapozo: Yes. Mr. Bynum: Thank you very much. Chair Asing: Thank you Lenny. I'd like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Any further discussion? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, just for general information for those that are going through this... a special note that park fees are done by district, and, therefore, expenses allocated to specific parks and specific districts are controlled in separate accounting, and, therefore, it would be pretty massive paperwork if we were going to identify each goal going into a particular request. So just for future information, when the Parks Department comes up to apply for money that is in their budget, that actually have several district budgets which those fees are going into based on the assessment that goes to developers in those districts. Thank you Mr. Chair. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? If not, all those in favor say aye. The motion to approve C 2009-93 was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: With that, next item please? ERNIE PASION, DEPUTY COUNTY CLERK : The next item is communication C 2009-94. C 2009-94 Communication (02/05/2009) from the Prosecuting Attorney, requesting Council approval to expend $3,753.10 of State Asset Forfeiture Funds (Account # 251-0401-513.62-01/Small Equipment, Project A08101) for the purchase and installation of partitions in order to reconfigure their office space to become more efficient and productive: Mr. Kaneshiro moved to approve C 2009-94, seconded by Mr. Bynum, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: The next item please? COUNCIL MEETING. - 8 - • Febru 25 2009 ~'3' , Mr. Pasion: The next communication for approval. C 2009-95 Communication (02/11/2009) from the Mayor, requesting Council approval to apply for, receive, and expend Federal funds in the amount of $59,575 for the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) which funds will be utilized to train the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) members which will commence on August 1, 2009 through July 31, 2011: Mr. Bynum moved to approve C 2009-95, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: The next item please? Mr. Pasion: The next communication for approval. C 2009-96 Communication (02/12/2009) from the Mayor, requesting Council approval to apply for, receive, and expend Federal funds in the amount of $313,950 for the Strategic Prevention Framework-State Incentive Grant (SPF-SIG) which will be utilized to carry out the first three (3) year Strategic Prevention Framework steps of assessment, capacity building, and planning to prevent underage alcohol consumption by youth ages 12 to 17 years old: Mr. Furfaro moved to approve C 2009-96, seconded by Mr. Bynum. Chair Asing: I'd like to have Theresa... Do you want to come up and briefly give us a rundown on this item please? , There being no objections, the rules were suspended. THERESA KOKI, DRUG COORDINATOR: Good morning Council Chair and Councilmembers. Theresa Koki for the record. This State Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant is a 5 year grant given to the State of Hawaii, approximately $10.5 million. We have been in a 3 year process with this grant with the State. I have been appointed by the Lieutenant Governor to be the Chair for Kauai island. We have been going through this non-competitive process right now for the counties in the State of Hawaii for approximately $313,000 to build capacity, infrastructure, planning, implementation and evaluation, and sustainability, and to address cultural competence. The next phase of this grant will be through a competitive process and is going to be a separate application that is going to be awarding through an RFP process for programs to address and prevent underage drinking in the State of Hawaii with ages 12 to 17 years. Chair Asing: Any questions? Councilmember Kawahara? Ms. Kawahara: Thank you Chair Asing. If you could just help me because I just had a meeting with the Liquor Commission. So do you work with them on this kind of projects? • • COUNCIL MEETING - 9 - February 25, 2009 Ms. Koki: Yes, they are one of our partners that is going to be identified in the grant. Actually for the Kauai County, I do have a community advisory council that is addressing and helping with the information for this grant and Eric Honma sits on our community advisory council. Ms. Kawahara: So some of the money would go to funding their programs to go out into the community and the retailers? Ms. Koki: No, the program funding will be through a competitive process. I believe the Liquor Commission funding is through their fees from the licensees, and they have... in fact, they don't even have to use the General Fund to run their department, so they do have fees, and we would probably not be given them fees, but because it is through a competitive process later on, I am sure, you know, people could apply, and I am not sure if they would be one of the applicants. Ms. Kawahara: But you guys work together? Ms. Koki: We do work together. They do have a couple of programs that we actually work together on. One of them is the shattered dreams program with the schools and the other is they go into the schools and do what is called the drunk busters program. Lately, we have been doing town hall meetings throughout the island. We have just completed the third town hall meeting at Waimea Theatre which was a success and we do have the Liquor Commissioners participate as a vendor as well as a speaker, and they do address underage drinking laws, etc. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Ms. Koki: You're welcome. Chair Asing: Councilmember Bynum? _ Mr. Bynum: You started to answer my question. What kinds of programs will be funded with this (inaudible). You said shattered dreams and that kind of things, right? Ms. Koki: Well, I think Councilwoman Kawahara was asking me about what we partner with the Liquor Department and that would be the programs. However, because it is going to be through an RFP process, the programs are going to have to apply for the money through us. So I know that is one of the things that we really desperately need to bring back into the schools, but I would not be the sole person to make that decision. Mr. Bynum: So it is kind of a broad request for proposal for prevention programs and the people responding will present their proposals? N IL MEETIN • - - • COU C G 10 February 25, 2009 Ms. Koki: Correct. Mr. Bynum: And the committee will make a decision about (inaudible). Ms. Koki: Yes, and this money upfront here will help them guide them towards their decision because assessment capacity, building, and all of these data that we are collecting right now will show where Kauai is weak or strong, and then help them with the service providers with the programs that we believe that we need to continue. We are going to have to adhere to one of the things that I do know is we are going to have to adhere to the best and promising practices that is identified by (inaudible). Mr. Bynum: So this is mostly planning funds right now and not implementation. Ms. Koki: Yes. Mr. Bynum: And do we have any sense of once we complete the planning, what kind of funds will be available for programs? Ms. Koki: There is going to be like a percentage based on your population of each County ages 12 to 17 years of age. They are also going to look at, on that percentage, how high is our drinking statistics that we do collect. Mr. Bynum: Thank you. Ms. Koki: You're welcome. Chair Asing: Any other questions Councilmembers? Councilmember Chang? Mr. Chang: Do you have any idea now what the drinking statistics are from 12 to 17? Ms. Koki: Actually, for the State of Hawaii, it is quite alarming, but I can send that to you later. I don't have it right now and off the top of my head, I cannot think. Chair Asing: Any other questions Councilmembers? If not, do you have a time constraint on this item? Ms. Koki: Actually, the grant is going to be due this Friday and I am working on it right now trying to get everything, and everybody... all of our partners in line. COUNCIL MEETING • - 11 - • Febru 25 2009 m'3' , Chair Asing: This is something that we have done before, yea? Am I correct? Ms. Koki: We have had a SPF-SIG grant, the State prevention, but not as far as me being the Anti-Drug Coordinator. But the State of Hawaii has partnered... this is money coming down from the Federal government - to the State, to the County. So, yes, if the County has participated in this before, but not myself as the Anti-Drug Coordinator. Chair Asing: The reason for asking that question is I wanted to get an update as to what we have done so far. Ms. Koki: Okay. Chair Asing: And to look forward to, you know, some kind of comparison is what I was looking for. But I understand that you need to get this approved by Friday, okay, thank you. Ms. Koki: Thank you. Chair Asing: With that, any other questions? If not, I'd like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: We have a motion to approve this item. Is there any further discussion? The motion to approve C 2009-96 was then put, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: We are going to take a short recess now before we go into the next item which is the Pi`ikoi Building planning process. Why don't we take a caption break at this time. There being no objections, the Chair called for a recess at 9:39 a.m. The meeting was called back to order at 9:54 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: Council Chair, we are on the bottom of page 2 of the Council's agenda on communication C 2009-76. C 2009-76 Communication (01/16/2009) from Jay Furfaro, Council Vice Chair, requesting that the Administration be present to give an update on the status of retaining an Interior Space Programming Consultant for vacant interior COUNCIL MEETING. - 12 - • February 25, 2009 areas within the Pi`ikoi Building for the potential relocation of the Kauai Historic Society into the Pi`ikoi Building: Chair Asing: What I would like to do is suspend the rules. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Chair Asing: With that, Gary? GARY HEU, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT: Good morning Chair Asing and members of the Council. For the record Gary Heu. Chair Asing: Good morning. Mr. Heu: I have with me this morning Ken Teshima. He is in the back. He is a little shy if we need him. But, basically, Ken has been our project lead on the building consulting service that was approved in the budget. I believe it was back in the budget year '07-'08, the Council appropriated funding for a comprehensive space analysis. A large part of that was to facilitate an eventual build out in the Pi`ikoi Building. The Administration felt that it was very important to get a consultant in to provide an objective analysis of space requirements of our various County departments and agencies, and to really assess whether there was sufficient space both for the near term and the longer term requirements of the County. The reason why we felt it was so important was that... I think we have all been in situations... certainly when I was with Hawaiian Tel and Verizon Hawaii where space allocation becomes a very, very subjective thing, and it is sometimes it is those who yell the loudest who get the biggest spaces, and those sorts of the things. So we wanted a real objective way to approach space planning and space allocation. So as part of that exercise, there are some fairly standard cookbook type of standards which are used for... as an example, if you have a front line engineer performing these types of task, they are allocated "x" amount of square feet for their workspace. You have a supervising engineer performing these functions, they are allocated so much space. If you have an Administrative Assistant, they are put in the closet, but, anyway, it is a very standard type of things which account for bookcases, shelving, desks, and all those types of things. So we brought our consultant on board and what they did was go through a... they actually... there was a survey that was sent out to every agency and department. There were also face to face interviews with members of the Department to try to get a good handle on current space needs and anticipated space needs. We are on... I saw for the first time within the last few days a third draft plan. Right off, I saw that there were some issues in that draft plan that weren't there in draft 2. So it still needs some additional tweaking. We still have not reviewed the plan with the Mayor. So we still need to do a little more tweaking, get the Mayor's • • COUNCIL MEETING - 13 - February 25, 2009 blessing on the plan before we can proceed any farther, and share the actual plan with our departments and agencies. So that is currently where we are with the plan, but this plan is also the jumping off point for a number of the other issues that I think the Council is currently deliberating, such as, you have before you a money bill for the... for some lease expense for the Fire Department, so that all ties into... this all ties into it. Recently, and I think today you guys have up for second reading a money bill for some contingency money for the build out and accommodation of the fish... what we call the fishbowl area. So, again, there is this convergence of space issues on the agenda, so it is a very timely thing that we are here before you to provide you this update. I think the second part of the agenda item dealt with accommodations or provisions made in the plan for the Kauai Historical Society. Previously, the Administration has received 2 separate communications from Vice Chair Furfaro regarding the Kauai Historical Society relative to space planning over at Pi`ikoi. As the newer members may not realize... I think everybody realizes that Kauai Historical Society is currently located downstairs in the former Mayor's Office. We have about 1,300 to 1,400 square feet down there. Previously, the Vice Chair had _ asked that some consideration might be given to... in providing space for them over in Pi`ikoi. After we have gone through the first few drafts of our plan, it appears that Pi`ikoi... the build out of Pi`ikoi would accommodate our existing County, agencies and departments, and there is still some... there are still some requirements that we haven't quite provided for that need to be addressed, and these are things such as the potential relocation of our backup EOC, an alternate dispatch center which is based on Civil Defense and Homeland Security types of concerns... something that is strongly suggested that we have not made accommodations for those types of facilities at this point in time. I guess the bottom line or the point being that given the existing third draft that we have, it currently does not provide for additional space for the Kauai Historical Society over in Pi`ikoi. I am not sure if some of the future plans that we have may have made some accommodation for that relative to... it might not be in the Pi`ikoi building, but it may be some other location, but I don't want to get into any type of commitment at this point in time not knowing fully what or ultimately what our space requirements are going to be. So that is an update that I prepared for this morning to have that discussion with you folks. I am more than happy to attempt to entertain any questions or concerns that you folks might have. Chair Asing: Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Chair and since this is my communication, I just want to go through some of the particular pieces that I see that are quite different perhaps than what you have just voiced to us. First of all, the Kauai Historical Society has, I believe, a 30 year lease. Mr. Heu: Yes. UNCIL MEETING - 14 - • Februa 25 2009 CO ry , Mr. Furfaro: In this building and this Council is about time to finalize its plans on... and this is not a renovation for this building, this is a restoration. In my hotel career, you know, I have had a lot of experience with that being involved in the project that restored the Moana Surfrider, the historical hotels in Suva, Fiji, and there is a lot of detail that goes into that. It was always my hope that we would have an opportunity to maximize the Council's use. A building that will be a showcase for the community. We are talking details from crown molding to doors, to glass, to light fixtures, and put it back in its original state of quality. Over these years, this thing was triggered for the space planner by the County Council and what triggered that was the fact that 4 years ago, there was a plan by the Administration to look at workforce development to go into the fishbowl, 4 years ago. What we dealt with last week was kind of a deadline to meet some FEMA Federal money to assist in that move, but that had been going on for 4 years. So the first thing suggestion out of the box was the fact that maybe the Council could take advantage of using the annex building next door for some of our offices, leaving the Historical Society here, and giving the Clerk's Office the ability to have all of his staff on one floor and evaluate the space that was left over in the transportation department for election, so that Elections would have the entire downstairs. That triggered in 2007... a money bill generated by this Council to say, well, you know, perhaps there are many opinions and comments that should be shared with many different parts of County government. Therefore, we put money in for the space planner. That is how I remember it. I think I was Finance Chair at the time. I also remember the fact that we were promised that we were going to have an opportunity to meet with this individual and I believe surveys did go out, but I don't remember getting a survey asking, perhaps, what my vision would be for the space. To date, I am not even sure that I have ever met the space planner. He has never really come by to perhaps get feedback from any of the Council people, and it is not that we need to be there, but it is a sure courtesy, so that we can work out our problems and our needs together. Mr. Heu: Vice Chair, could I just clarify real quickly. Yea, by the time... again, our recollection is different just a bit and maybe we were having our own conversations on different sides of the road relative to the space plan. By the time that we had procured the space planner, it had appeared that the plans were well underway for what was going to take place at the annex building and the historical County building. In fact, those 2 facilities were not covered by this space analysis because, again, it appeared that Council and Council Services, the Elections Division... we're going to pretty much consume the space in these 2 buildings. Mr. Furfaro: I can concur with you. If I lead you to believe that the approval of the space planner was based on the fact that he was doing the other buildings, then that was not the intent of my dialogue. My intent of the dialogue COUNCIL MEETING ~ - 15 - • Februa 25 2009 r`Y , was that there was 20,000 square feet at the building next door of which at the time, we were told that we were currently using approximately 12,000. So if through my commentary, you felt that I was implying that the space planner was doing all of those, that was not the intent. The intent was to share with you... knowing that we had those kinds of needs across the street here, we should have at least been engaged with some of the common needs because we are one government. To date, I still haven't met with that individual, but we have had several conversations that deal with the need to bring on special project managers when we have large projects. This might have been one of those opportunities since we could coordinate several buildings to really maximize our benefit. I still reflect on the fact that, you know, now we are in a position that we have not stepped forward with the actual space plan... we may have to do some temporary leases for the Fire Department and for us, we still haven't cured the fact that we are not going to get this entire building when the work is done. That is one of the things that was driving me, the Council, Council Services staff here, and often, we do not need our operating because of the fact that we have people to support the Council in certain administrative roles, and we just don't have the space for it. So, you know, I think that is where I was going with that. It was probably most beneficial for us to put everything under one umbrella. That did not occur. We are now remodeling the building the next door, that is where elections is going. We still don't know what is happening with the basement here which, clearly, if we can treat for mildew and so forth, it provides another opportunity for space and what I am hearing from you today is the fact that with the fish bowl now by getting its final approval, the annex building being in Elections, there is probably no space to consider a location for the historical society at this time. That is kind of what I am hearing. Mr. Heu: Based on the last draft that we had, that is not provided for. Mr. Furfaro: Well, there is just so many other things... when you go next door to the Pi`ikoi Building, there are opportunities for us to probably enhance the quality of building by expanding, perhaps using the Guslander collection in the corridors, the public areas, the artwork, the history of our County, and so forth which I just thought were, you know, kind of a secondary benefit if we were able to relocate the Historical Society. Their arts, their crafts, their quilts are, you know, pretty much second to none as it goes to showing off Kauai. I was wondering then who is the space planner? Mr. Heu: Let's see. The lead planner that we have been dealing with is Brian Takahashi and he is with the firm Architects Hawaii. I am sure that you are familiar with them. Mr. Furfaro: And he has done 2 drafts you are saying so far. Mr. Heu: ~ We are on draft number 3 that I saw just a few days ago. COUNCIL MEETING - 16 - • Febru 25 2009 az`3' , Mr. Furfaro: So, and I heard you pretty much say that you are probably not going to share anything with your staff and/or with the Council until such point in time that you folks agree on what you can do there. Mr. Heu: You know, we are much closer to the end than we are to the beginning. Mr. Furfaro: If that is the case, can you assure me that we will not be extending the lease for the Fire Department across the street because we are close to a solution more than what was offered in the 3 year term. Mr. Heu: I'd like to say that, you know, we are going through budget preparation right now, and we are providing dollars... construction dollars. We haven't agreed on the amount, but we are providing construction dollars for a phase of the build out in Pi`ikoi to address some of the most urgent needs and Fire being one of them. Mr. Furfaro: Right now, as I understand it, we are saying Fire would probably be there for a minimum of 36 months. Mr. Heu: At Hale Pumehana building? Mr. Furfaro: Yes. Mr. Heu: Yes, I would say to be on the safe side, obviously, we would like to... we would like to reduce the interval to the shortest period possible. Mr. Furfaro: So the 36 months that I heard is possibly the maximum time? Mr. Heu: That would be my desire. Mr. Furfaro: And in the second or third draft, if you could disclose to us, so that we can make sound financial decisions about the budget coming up and long term. Do you have the Fire Department returning to the Pi`ikoi Building? Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: They are definitely in that plan. Mr. Heu: I think currently they have, you know, there are so many numbers floating around, but I believe, currently, they have just under 2,000 square feet at their existing location. I think Hale Pumehana is about 3,000, roughly 3,000 square feet. The last draft plan that I saw shows Fire in Pi`ikoi... it COUNCIL MEETING • - 17 - • Febru 25 2009 i , does note that it is temporary, but in County years, that could be a long temporary interval, but it provides for a space of about 3,000 square feet, so it is about what they would have over at Hale Pumehana. Chair Asing: Councilmember Furfaro, if you don't mind. Gary, you mentioned that you have a third draft now? Mr. Heu: Yes. Chair Asing: Do you have a copy of that with you? And my reason for asking is, you know, the questions that you are asking is excellent questions, good, and it would be good for other Councilmembers to at least get the draft and look at it while you are explaining what is probably going to happen. We can at least look at this space and have an idea as to what you are making reference to. So if you have a draft, then if you could provide it to the Councilmembers. The Councilmembers would have an opportunity to at least look at this blanket while you are making reference to Fire Department, "x" number of square feet, and I think that will be helpful for the Councilmembers to get that and look at it while the questions is occurring. Mr. Heu: I don't disagree with that Council Chair. I mean I think that is a great idea. My hesitation is that, unfortunately, we haven't had the time to sit down with the Mayor on this, so he hasn't even seen this. So, I mean, that causes me some anxiety because he is my boss and he hasn't seen it. Mr. Furfaro: I think the Chair asked an excellent question and may I point out, in reverse, for me to be asking these questions now, 3 weeks before we get to budget, and I don't have the narrative, the map, or even understanding the role and scope of the space planner, how can I make accurate financial decisions on the budget that you present to us. Mr. Heu: And that is why... I guess what I am trying to do is... I am trying to focus the discussion in on our most immediate concerns which are, I believe... overall, I can say that all the space is allocated for County agencies and departments. I think what is relevant to the discussion is the fact that there are 3,000 square feet programmed into this third draft for the Fire Department which I think addresses the concern of them of having to go off premises for a few years, and then return to a space that is going to be adequate to meet their needs. I mean because by the time we close off this, the final draft, I can guarantee you that there are things that are currently depicted that will change and that is why my hesitancy to show you something that, I mean, is still in draft form and that we haven't had an opportunity to sit down with the Mayor to discuss. I apologize for that. Chair Asing: Okay, it is just that it is difficult for the Councilmembers here while the questions are going on. It is trying to get an idea as COUNCIL MEETING. - 18 - • Februa 25 2009 ry , to what is happening. I think if you don't mind Councilmember Furfaro, I just want to do one thing for now, 2 things. One is how much available space do we have that is vacant that is going to be renovated in the future at the Pi`ikoi Building. That is number 1. Mr. Heu: That number is between 18,000 and 19,000 square feet. Mr. Bynum: Undeveloped space? Mr. Heu: Yes. Chair Asing: 19,000 square feet? Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Wait a minute, I am confused here. You said undeveloped. I think the Chairman asked, how much is going to be renovated. Mr. Heu: How's this. There is 18,000 to 19,000 vacant square feet. Chair Asing: Let me do the question all over again. I said available space. Available space to be renovated, right? We got this blank space, so I want to know how much blank space we have available that we are going to be renovating in the future? Mr. Heu: Based on the current draft that we have, that is between 18,000 and 19,000 square feet. Chair Asing: That is the first question. The second question is, of that 18,000 to 19,000 square feet, is that taking into consideration that a second floor will be built as the end result or we are... are we not going to do a second floor because I believe that there is enough space there that was called, I believe, the mezzanine of the old Gem Store. Are we taking into consideration if we did a second floor, we would still come out to between 18,000 and 19,000 square feet or when we do, if we do, add the mezzanine, then we will have much more space, and how much more is it, so that is really the question. What is available there? What could be added to make more space available? I kind of want that... so, right now, all I am dealing with is 18,000 to 19,000 square feet, but I don't know if you are going to put the second floor in, therefore, expanding the amount of square footage that will be available for us if we decided to do that. If we have not decided to do that, then the following question would be, why not? So those are some of the questions that I think are important for all of the Councilmembers to know. What do we really have available there? • COUNCIL MEETING - 19 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Heu: Those are all good questions. The short answer is that the current draft does not contemplate the mezzanine area that you were talking about. There were various reasons of which I am not certain of all of them that that was not considered in the current exercise, however, we did identify that, and felt that was something that we wanted to go back and take a look at because as I mentioned early on in the discussion, there were needs that we were still identifying that had not been accommodated for within the current plan, so we saw that as an opportunity. Now, you get into... because we believe that beyond the mezzanine area, there are still further opportunities, but then you get into things that go much farther than architectural material designing. You get into some structural engineering type of concerns, ADA concerns... as you probably know, there is no access to the second floor other than the current stairwell. So we didn't necessarily want to get bogged down... totally bogged down in those matters at this point in time understanding that we had some near term needs, and then we also wanted to consider longer term needs, and then I think when we get into discussion of developing that second floor, the second story, those are, you know, what I would call possibly beyond... needs beyond the current timeframe, but we did identify that as an area that we wanted to circle back around to. But, anyway, back to your original question. The 18,000 to 19,000 square feet does not address the area the mezzanine area and right now, I do not have an estimate for you relative to what that space is up there, but that is easily found out. . Chair Asing: I must tell you Gary that I am very disappointed that that has not been taken into consideration. But before I go on, I am going to turn it back to Councilmember Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Asing, thank you, but the order of your questions were appropriate. I think I will hold mine to the second part of my communication that deals with the Kauai Historical Society. There seems to be a lot of unknown variables as being presented to us today, so I will hold any further questions, and the return the floor to you. Chair Asing: Okay. And I have to tell you Gary that I am a little bit disappointed and, you know, I kind of apologize, but, you know, I go back to 1987. I was here. Asing, Correa, Fukushima, Munechika, Tehada, Yukimura, and Kouchi, approved the purchase of the Lihu`e Shopping Center in December of 1986. Intent, why did we purchase the center? We paid $10.5 million. Today, it is worth, according to the real property tax division, $20 million, almost $20 million. It is nineteen point some odd dollars. $19.5 million, but anyway, because history and I know why I agreed to the purchase. We had our offices spread all over the place. We had our offices down in the old buildings, plantation buildings, we had people down the old Hale Kauai, we had temporary buildings, and we had people all over the place. The intent of the purchase of that center and it wasn't easy at that particular time. Everybody... not everybody, but there was a certain segment of the • • COUNCIL MEETING - 20 - February 25, 2009 community that said that the Council should not approve the purchase of the center because all you are doing is you are trying to help Weinberg to get out of his financial problems, and that is the reason you are doing it, and you should not buy it. So there is a lot of history and I know the intent. So the intent is buy the shopping center, move out of all of your outside buildings that we were leasing out, renting, and consolidate all the County services, so that the community will be able to funnel in, and work through one area. So that was the intent and I know that very well. So because as time goes by, I still see this vacant unused space there. I get a little uptight when I hear that we are going to go outside now and rent space for our people. What are we doing? 1986 is when we bought this, so the plans should have been continuous, you know. All the time continuous on. When you need expansion, you have it, it is there. When you need further expansion because the workforce is getting larger, it is there. So now I hear this outside and I hear something else. It troubles me and I have to tell you that. And when Councilmember Furfaro, you know, had the information sent over, you know, I totally agree that, yea, I think we need to do something. We have had lots of discussion as to this building. I have to tell you also that here is what history tells me. History tells me that, originally, when we bought the shopping center, we had another Mayor at that particular time. Then we had a new Mayor and I am not going to mention names or anything, but we had another Mayor that came in. When that Mayor came in, the intent was to have the Council, the Council Services here, move over to the new civic center. That was the plan and, of course, I have to tell you that I resisted totally. I did not agree that the Council should move from this area. I wanted to see the Council here and operate here, and not move out of this building. The Mayor also was here at that particular time. The Mayor decided to move over and, you know, that was done, but the Council, at that time, decided, yes, we are going to stay here and we started the planning process of what we were going to do. And to today, that is still the current plan that we are going to be here. Anyway, I didn't want to bore you with a little bit of history, but that is the reason I feel... when we paid that $10.5 million, boy, we took a lot of flack from the public. You know, it wasn't easy. We take all this flack from the public on what are you doing buying that building and for me and other Councilmembers also felt that we are going to stay here, and we are going to retain this building, we are going to operate from this building, and we are going to buy that building, so that we can consolidate all of our services. So that is kind of where I am coming from, so I still feel the same way. I haven't changed. So, with that, Councilmember Kaneshiro? Mr. Kaneshiro: I just wanted to add that during that period, I was on the opposite end. I was actually on that side because I was working for the Mayor when the negotiations took place, and when they did purchase the building. Like the Chair said, there was a lot of controversy, public was really against us spending that kind of money. We had to make some real hard decisions from the COUNCIL MEETING - 21 - February 25, 2009 Mayor side, from the Administration side, and the Council side. But, again, the whole intent was what Mr. Asing spoke about, it was to consolidate. You know, I know it takes money and I know it takes a lot of time to do that. When I was first elected on the Council 1998, I believe, that was the big concern that I had too. Why weren't we moving ahead with doing what the intent was? Like Kaipo, I still have some concerns about that too. You know, like he mentioned, like the Chair mentioned that every Administration comes, there is a different proposal that comes through. So we see the concerns, but the whole intent was to fully utilize that building for County purposes to get... to consolidate as much of the office space that we can for that purposes. I think we have done a hell of a job, but, you know, to find that, we still have 18,000 square feet vacant, and the mezzanine area not even being considered because I think that was a big issue in the discussions during the purchase of that building. We realize the advantage of the mezzanine that was already in place and bringing that all together, so I am not certain how we are going to resolve those issues Gary, because, again, it takes money to do it. But I can tell you something, whatever the proposals came before the Council, we always supported the proposals of being able to renovate that building. We have gone ahead to find moneys to move ahead to try to accomplish what we first started off doing. Chair Asing: Councilmembers, any questions? Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: So we are going to have a separate discussion about the Historical Society, is that correct? Mr. Furfaro: It is actually the second part of my communication, so I would like to do as the second part. Mr. Bynum: I don't have the kind of history that Chair and Councilmember Kaneshiro has, but I do have really... I have real concerns about us renting space outside when we have 18,000 square feet. And we have how much usable space in that building that we are using now. Mr. Heu: You mean how much space within Pi`ikoi are we currently using? Mr. Bynum: Right. Mr. Heu: I don't have that at the top of my head. I could probably get someone to calculate that. Mr. Bynum: But, you know, if a private entity purchased the building, they would see it as an asset and want to create revenue with that. I can't imagine a business leaving 18,000 square feet vacant for a real long extended period of time, they couldn't afford to. COUNCIL MEETING - 22 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Furfaro: Excuse me, I think I should correct that. The numbers I got last from building was that there is 20,000 square feet without adding a mezzanine of which 12,000 is currently being used, so there is 8,000 vacant unused space right now. Mr. Bynum: I am confused because Gary said 18,000. Do we know what it is? Mr. Heu: Again, I am just going off the last draft that I have. It shows about 18,000 and 19,000 square feet that are vacant. Mr. Bynum: And that is 10,000 square feet because I would 8,000 in my brain as well coming in here today, but is just kind of... so I concur with what you said earlier about wanting an objective look at what are the space needs are. I was disappointed and didn't know until today that that didn't include these 2 buildings here. Because our vision is that this is a campus someday, right? That these are County buildings and I don't... to your knowledge has an objective overview of these 2 buildings been done in terms of that kind of objective space use. Mr. Heu: I am not certain, but I guess what we didn't want to do was complicate matters because I think, again, by the time we have gone through procurement, we got a consultant on board, I think plans were pretty much in place relative to how space would be allocated here. And so to have a space planner come in and tell you something different, I am not sure if that would have complicated matters in an exercise on a project that was already underway. Mr. Bynum: I am certainly not clear on how the space in these 2 buildings is being allocated and used. I know both of these buildings have pretty extensive square footage in the basement. And I know the basement of this building is not being used for anything. Mr. Heu: Currently, it is designated as the backup emergency operation center. Mr. Bynum: So maybe I need to ask those questions at a separate time. Chair Asing: Councilmember Bynum, maybe I can assist. I have to apologize, though, I don't have the paperwork to back it up, but I believe that this building and the annex building was being planned for Council Services and Election Divisions use of both this building and the annex building. That is my recollection of what had transpired up until this point. So the Council and Elections together would be occupying this building and the annex building next door, and that is the reason we went ahead with the contract which is now being completed for Elections Division in the annex building. So as far as these 2 buildings here, you COUNCIL MEETING - 23 - February 25, 2009 are right Gary that it was planned for Council Services and Elections, these 2 buildings. That building on the other side was planned for expansion of the Administration and whatever services or departments that needed space to operate would be taken cared of in that building, so that is my recollection. With that, Councilmember Chang? Mr. Chang: Thank you Chair. Gary, I can understand you not wanting to... prior to the Mayor, of course, seeing draft number 3, but out of curiosity, I would really like to be able to see what draft number 1 looked like, and after draft 1, how did it evolve to draft number 2, and maybe we can kind of figure out what draft number 3 may look like in some form of what is here, what is there. Also, I would like to be able... if he is going to be on island, if Brian Takahashi with Architect's Hawaii would be able to perhaps let us ask some questions, and see where he is coming from because I think it will be, you know, extremely beneficial for all of us to start where it started from square one, and perhaps why that didn't work out or wasn't recommended. And when it got to number 2, because I think that can at least give us an idea of what is where or here or what is potentially available as far as the square footage because we hear 18,000 to 1,000 square feet or 20,000 and 12,000 being used, and there is only 8,000 left. So I think if we can see a floor plan, from the beginning to what you feel comfortable to give us at this point, I know for myself it will be very fact finding. Thank you. Mr. Heu: I mean we could try to arrange something with our consultant... I don't have with me today either draft 1 or draft 2. For me, I think there are reasons why we are at draft 3 which I think is a reasonable draft. I just think that there is some more tweaking to be done. I think that... I hear the concerns from all the Councilmembers and I don't disagree. I think that, like anything else, you know, various Administrations prioritized their work based on what is in their face at a given time. I think expenditures of the kind of moneys that it would take to fully build out Pi`ikoi A and B were good, better, and different, weren',t at the top of the capital hit list at that point in time. Obviously, some of our space requirements... because our agencies are growing, you know. I mean, when you think about it, when you look at between 2002 and current year, our agencies, particular Fire, have grown significantly. Planning, with the enactment of various ordinances and addition of enforcement people, and that sort of thing, space requirements have grown with the addition of personnel. So now, obviously, you know, we are feeling the impacts, and we need to make accommodations. I think the good news here today is that we do have a plan that, you know, is significantly completed. I would agree with the Chair relative to us needing to really take into consideration the second floor which is a discussion that we have already entered into on the other side of the street. So we do recognize that because of those... some of those unaccounted for accommodations that we need to make, again, I do not want to do our space planning here on the floor. As I said earlier, you know, if we found that the space across the street was appropriate for the backup EOC, then all of a sudden, within this historic building as has been pointed out by a number of Councilmembers, you recover significant space for possible use by the Council, COUNCIL MEETING - 24 - ~ February 25, 2009 Council Services, or others. So again, those are things that, again, in my mind are little past the horizon of what we were originally looking at. I am not saying that we shouldn't look at them, but I think we have some very immediate needs that we need to take care of and we want to. So we are trying to do is address the fact that we have these requirements, but we also have budgetary constraints that you all know that we are trying to deal with too. So we are trying to be reasonable in what we try to put in budget. I mean we really true are looking at health, safety, compliance issues relative to the upcoming budget, and consequently the CIP and proposed bonds. So within that context, we are trying to make this immediate exercise take place which would provide for the Fire Department ultimately. Chair Asing: Thank you. Councilmember Kawahara? Ms. Kawahara: Thank you Chair Asing. I just wanted to comment on the extraordinary situation that we have here where we have Councilmembers that were on the original Council when the moneys were allocated. It is incredible to hear Chair Asing being able to tell us what the intent was in 1986, and I really do appreciate that. I am becoming more and more aware of how... it is really... you can't really make decisions in a vacuum and that you do have to have that history, and having the 3 incumbents here is helpful in this kind of situation. Saying that, maybe you can just tell me, is it really quickly... you can tell me what is there now, so people out in the audience and we can general idea of what has gone in. Mr. Heu: What is in Pi`ikoi? Ms. Kawahara: Yes, and we were talking about the round building too where the Mayor is. Mr. Heu: That is Mo`ikeha. Ms. Kawahara: Oh, okay. Mr. Heu: Pi`ikoi is currently where... currently, we have the Housing Agency, we have Elderly Affairs... a portion of the Information Technology Division of Finance is located in there. We have conference rooms in there. We also have a small segment in there being used by our Solid Waste Division. Solid Waste is currently separated. They are in 2 separate locations. We have our little snack shop in there and then we have restroom facilities, and there is a large atrium area. I think that is what you call it. Ms. Kawahara: Is there a State facility in there for permitting? Mr. Heu: We have our Parks & Recreation Department separated out and there is the parks permitting in there where those glass windows are. I believe that is it with a quick run off the top of my head. COUNCIL MEETING • - 25 - • Febru 25, 2009 Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Heu, may I add something there? Mr. Heu: Sure. Mr. Furfaro: The number I got. I went back to check my notes on the building, is 20,000. That number was shared with me when we didn't take into account the storage that is there. Currently, we have Prosecutor's Office, Police Department have activities in that building as well that are related to storage. So not knowing what was going to happen with that space, that storage could possibly be part of the discrepancy that you and I have in our 2 numbers. Mr. Heu: Could be, yea. I would have to go back and take a look. Mr. Furfaro: I just wanted to share that for the benefit for the Council. Ms. Kawahara: So going by what you said, Housing, Elderly, IT Section of Finance... conference rooms. Mr. Heu: What else is in there? I apologize because I was only looking interior, but if you go on the outside portion, Purchasing is also in there. Purchasing is in there and then the Fishbowl area that you guys are looking at providing. That is an area in there that hasn't been built out yet. That is kind of like in between vacant being developed. Ms. Kawahara: So whatever the total is, the 20 plus whatever the storage may be, but the difference. The 12,000 is what is being used and that is what these... all these departments are taking out the 12,000 of whatever the total may be, yea? Mr. Heu: I couldn't... hold on one second. Ms. Kawahara: 12,000 (inaudible). Mr. Heu: We know, we can get a number to you in terms of what is actually occupied at this point in time, but, again, based on my review of the most recent draft. I don't know if someone was rounding up, but the 18,000 to 19,000 feet is vacant, and in addition to that would be the items, the square footage of the items that I just related to you, and I don't know what that number is currently. Mr. Furfaro: May I follow up. You say 18,000 and 19,000, you say is vacant. That is vacant assuming that you are using none of it for storage because some of it is being used for storage. COUNCIL MEETING. - 26 - • February 25, 2009 Mr. Heu: Exactly. Mr. Furfaro: I think such where you and I have our differences in our number because there are other agencies that kind of have adhoc space there for... Mr. Heu: So all of that would have to be removed when we do the final build out. Mr. Furfaro: And it would have to go somewhere. Mr. Heu: Absolutely. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. One more thing. The plan, what do you call, draft 1, draft 2, draft 3. I just really... I don't really want to see draft 1 and draft 2, but I would like to see what you guys have worked out on your own. I don't really need to see the first 1 and 2, but I do agree that it is a fact finding thing that I just would like to see draft 3. I think it would be helpful as we discussed with helping us decide on a budget especially... but it does seem like you are addressing the most urgent case which is the Fire Department, and that is what the focus sounds like. Mr. Heu: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: And that is what you are moving towards with the draft 3 is to finally be able to get them as soon as possible within the 36 months hopefully that you would ideally wish to have them back because that is the budget part that concerns me is that we do have the room there, but it is not allocated, and we are footing money out. We are considering a (inaudible) money out to put rent the one across the street from Big Save. Okay, so you got Mr. Teshima and you got this money in '07-'08, yea? To do the plan? Mr. Heu: '07-'08 is when the funds for the study were appropriated? Ms. Kawahara: Yes. Mr. Heu: Yes. Ms. Kawahara: Okay, it is '08-'09 that we are in or are we budgeting for '09-'10? When you can give it to the Mayor as soon as possible, the urgency. If you can get draft 3 to the Mayor and go through it. Mr. Heu: You know... • COUNCIL MEETING - 27 - February 25, 2009 Ms. Kawahara: I do want you to give it to the Mayor before you give it to us. T might be too polite, but I would like it to go to the Mayor first, and then get it to us as soon as possible. Mr. Heu: Sure, and, you know, who knows, we might have a draft 4 for you because a draft 4 would more accurately reflect, you know, what will ultimately be the plan. Again, there is just some minor tweaking that needs to go on and then there will probably be something at some point in time down the road to address what the Council Chair was concerned about relative to any development of the mezzanine area and/or a larger second floor area. Ms. Kawahara: ~ So I agree with triaging and really taking care of the urgent need first which is the Fire Department because they are going to be impacting our budget like next year. So getting that done first, and then dealing with the rest of the space is good, but it is... like I said, it is extraordinary to be able to hear that it has been... it has been in the plans and the intent of the Council to do it since 1986 to get everybody together, so thank you very much. Mr. Heu: And, you know, although the talk has been focusing on Fire, there are other departments that have fairly urgent space needs. They may not voice them as loudly, but... so we are not sure at this point in the budget whether you will be seeing CIP proposal for just the Fire space or it will be larger than that, and it may well be larger than that. It may also be to accommodate at least one more department, but we need to work through the numbers, and, you know, I mean everybody would like to do so much, but it comes down to dollars and cents, and how much we really have to be able to expand in terms of capital for improvements. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. Mr. Furfaro: Go ahead Mr. Bynum. While the Chair is at the blackboard, I will run the meeting for the moment. Mr. Bynum, go right ahead. Mr. Bynum: This is an interesting discussion because it is bringing up more questions than it is answering for me, so I don't intend to get all of those answers today. I am still stuck on, you know, we are going to rent space for the Fire Department, and we are going to do what we need to do. But that cost, do you recall off-hand what the yearly rent is for that? Mr. Heu: - I think there is a ballpark number out there. All cost... everything in, you know, utilities, and everything, and I am thinking in the range of $100,000. Mr. Furfaro: It is $96,000 from our last notes Mr. Bynum and that did include common area utilities, as well as the common area maintenance lease rent is $96,000 ayear. - IL MEETI • - • COUNC NG - 28 February 25, 2009 Mr. Bynum: And that is how many square feet? Mr. Heu: It is about 3,000. Mr. Bynum: So I guess... you know what, I want to go back and do the math and say 18,000 square feet was potential "x" amount of dollars or revenue to the County over the last 10 years, because the point I was making earlier, I can't see how a private entity could leave a space vacant. Are we doing debt service on the $10.5 million that we spent for the... Mr. Heu: You know, that is a good question. I am not certain. Ms. Bynum: (Inaudible) office space in Lihu`e is an asset. It has a value and we have missed out on that value for a long period of time, and now we are going to... so I will just make that comment, but I do have one more question. Before we get to... because I am holding my questions regarding the Historic Society. This building includes Big Save. Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Bynum: ~ The County is the landlord for Big Save and do we have a long term commitment for there to be a grocery store in our Civic Center? Mr. Heu: It is a real interesting question. I am not sure. I couldn't tell you what the term of the current lease is, but if you are asking a more of a policy question in terms of what is our... like in 20 years, will there be a grocery store there, you know, I couldn't answer that right now. Mr. Bynum: Neither could I, but we currently have a lease with Big Save until when? Mr. Heu: I could follow up and get you an answer on that. Mr. Bynum: Because whenever that lease needs to be renewed, sometimes prior to that, we need to have that policy discussion. Is that correct? Mr. Heu: Yea, and it is probably changed and probably will continue to change depending on who is the Mayor at any given time and what this particular body feels about having a retail operation in that facility. I don't think that is something that we have ever... I have been here for 61/2 years or so, and not half as long as the Council Chair, but I am sure that he has witnessed a lot of that back and forth discussion relative to the longer term use of that particular space. I have heard it discussed on both sides of the fence, so unfortunately, I can't give you a clear answer right now.... 20 years from now what that space will be used for. • . COUNCIL MEETING - 29 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Bynum: I'd like to pose 2 other questions and they don't necessarily need to be answered today, but if we have 18,000 square feet of office space there, that is an addition to the Fishbowl, is that correct? We can figure that out later. My concern is about parking. If that office space was occupied, there would be a lot more employees or whoever that were sited at this, and have we looked at the... has there been a study about whether there is adequate parking and... Mr. Heu: You know, I think when they were actually doing an assessment on the build out of the fishbowl, I think there was some sort of analysis done stating that the current parking could accommodate that. When you are looking at the build out of Pi`ikoi, I think we are just talking about creating adequate work space for our existing workforce, our existing and projected looking into the future. So based on that, it is not as if we are pulling other agencies in. So in other words, that we are not moving the Transportation Administration into Pi`ikoi which would, you know, would obviously cause for there to be more employee vehicles. I mean parking is always an issue. The County does control parking along the backside of this particular building between the State building and this facility which is probably under utilized by County employees. In addition, while there is space provided for Big Save customers currently, we do have State employees also parking in that lot. It becomes an enforcement issue. So, you know, whether or not there is adequate space for existing and near term future County employees based on a build out of Pi`ikoi, I mean, my answer would tend to be, yes, if we utilized all the space that was available for us for parking, and if we were to enforce that it is for County employee parking and County customers versus accommodating State employees. As you probably know, you know, we have probably people parking in our lot who are doing business over at the bank and the post office, and other areas around town. But, again, that gets into enforcement... do we want to pay for security to monitor the parking and that sort of thing. Those are things that I think collectively as the Council and the Administration, we need to address. Again, getting back to your original question, I think there is probably adequate parking for our current and near term future needs. Mr. Bynum: And then we have a Civic Center masterplan that anticipates significant changes to the whole area including parking I believe. I believe a parking structure is part of that plan and... Mr. Heu: You know, I don't know if that particular plan calls it out, but I know there had been at least discussions about a possible second story parking. There are also discussions about utilizing lands across from Kuhio Highway. You've got Mo`ikeha and across that area, and either an underpass or an overpass, I mean, those things have been contemplated, but I don't know if they are actually reflected in any plan. At this point Councilmember, just to let you know, I am probably getting way out of my ballpark in terms of... I am not the subject matter expert relative to some of this information. COUNCIL MEETING. - 30 - • Februa 25 2009 r'Y Mr. Bynum: There is the Civic Center plan, there is a Lihu`e Town Core plan, there are Public Work's projects contemplated to improve traffic circulation on Hardy Street. All of these are all integrated in my mind or should be, and at some point, we need to figure out how does that all integrate in a timeline, and hopefully move to use the asset that we have had for a long period of time that has a real... now it is costing us directly that we haven't built out that space. We have to buy rent outside, so we are not only using... we are not generating revenue from this unused space, we are expending revenue because we are not available to use it. So those are potential funds that could have been used to build out the space, right? So more power to us moving to expedite this and I will look forward to the budget choices you make about how much space we are going to build out, and what kind of timeline. Mr. Heu: You know, just let me say that, you know, sitting here as (inaudible) the cost causer, I feel the pain, so I definitely understand. Mr. Bynum: But it is part of a bigger picture that hopefully we have some clarity to integrate. Thank you. Chair Asing: Thank you. Why don't I just do this? Let me make it clear, so that everybody on this table and everybody watching is clear as to what we are really talking about. Let me just do it real fast. When we make reference to the Mo`ikeha Building, it is the round building. That is the Mo`ikeha Building. When we make reference to... and this is where the Mayor, you know, the Recreation Division, County Attorney's Office, Economic Development, Finance, etc., is in the Mo`ikeha Building. Then we have the Kapule Building area and the Kapule Building extends on this corner here would be the Planning Department, the Real Property Tax Division, Motor Vehicle Division, Wastewater in this area here. Anyway, that is called the Kapule Building, and what we are really talking about now, is the Pi`ikoi Building, so this is the Pi`ikoi Building here. In the Pi`ikoi Building, we have a vacant area, and that vacant area is approximately in this area here. The vacant area according to Gary is between 18,000 to 20,000 square feet of vacant area here. And the discrepancy that was just mentioned by Gary and Councilmember Furfaro could be the temporary use here of which is being used by the Police Department for storage purposes. So this is the vacant area that we are making reference to right now and that is all that we are talking about this area right here which is the 18,000 to 20,000 square feet that is left that is buildable that we could use. So that is really the questions is for the use of this area. Thank you. With that, any further questions Councilmembers? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Gary, I am going to the second part of the communication if I can. I hope you can understand the opportunity that I was referring to here with the space while we are simultaneously making improvements to this building... an opportunity may exist where the Historic Society could find a new home and an adjustment to or an negotiated adjustment to their current lease COUNCIL MEETING - 31 - February 25, 2009 that is here in this building. You know, the lease is the legal arrangement. It is the contract between ourselves as the landlord where every issue related to their status and the terms of their contract and agreement are laid out in this lease. My question is, if the Administration says to us that it does not look like there is a possible opportunity to relocate them, renegotiate a lease, then my question is, was that shared in the sense of what our obligations are and maybe the County Attorney should look into some of these questions that I am going about to ask. Does the current lease... if we can't move them, does the current lease address any business interruption for them and does the lease require that if we do any... and when we do renovations and restoration to this building, what are our obligations to the tenants when it comes to securing and protecting their archives. And I guess also, you know, because this would fall under, you know, a superior force being the need to renovate this building to perpetuate its life, it is kind of under the terms of force majeure I believe, and is the County Attorney looking into those particulars especially as they relate to the upcoming budget... what we might have to budget to accomplish loss of business, protecting their assets and archives as a tenant and/or the cost of a temporary relocation and the cost of that move. Those are all legitimate questions that I think we should be preparing ourselves for. Do you have anything to add at this particular time? Mr. Heu: No, I think you raise very good points. I think primarily, our Building Division folk's concern has been trying to deal with... I am not saying that the needs of the... our lessee aren't as important, but the primary concern up until this point has been attempting to deal with how the movement of Council, Council Services is going to be managed during this period of time during the construction period. Whether or not, the construction was going to take place with everybody in place or if that was not feasible, again, what kind of accommodations were going to be made for Council and Council Services. That is what the primary focus I think has been up until this point, but just before the meeting started, I was speaking with Mary Requilman, and we have been trying to set up a meeting, and unfortunately timing hasn't worked for us yet. I do have a meeting with Mary and I believe Randy Wichman during the first week of March to discuss many of those issues that you just put on the table. Obviously, I don't know what the legal analysis is relative to us making accommodations, and managing Kauai Historical Society, but I think that I would acknowledge that we have some sort of responsibility to our lessee to try to work with them, and try to minimize any sort of disruption. Obviously, if they need to move out of the building, that causes disruption just like it will cause disruption for the Council and Council Services. But, again, you know, I think we have a certain responsibility to help to manage that. So I will be working with our Public Works-Building Division people as well as our Finance and Attorney's Office to assure that, you know, we can manage that in the best possible way for everyone. Mr. Furfaro: Okay, well those are the 4 questions and I am glad the County Attorney is in the meeting just to hear that again. With this potential, COUNCIL MEETING. - 32 - • Februa 25 2009 x`Y , this action that we need to do on our asset called the County building, does it put us in a force majeure type of need with the Historical Society and within the lease that we currently have what kind of guidelines are set forth that deal with either encapsulating them, so they are closed, and then we deal with the potential loss of income for them, or the cost associated with moving them to a temporary location because I am not sure if that... if those kinds of agreements have to be issued in an estoppel that says to them, this is what we mutually agreed on is tenants, and what we are going to do at the time of renovation. So I would certainly appreciate and I acknowledge the fact that you are going to meet with Mary from the Historical Society, but I would like to encourage the Administration and the County Attorney's Office to look into these questions because they are right on the horizon. Thank you Mr. Heu. Mr. Heu: Thank you. Chair Asing: Councilmembers? Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: If I were to ask the Historical Society where they are going to be housed 5 years from today, would they know the answer? Mr. Heu: Well, they have a 30 year lease with us, so I believe. I am not exactly sure where they are into the lease. It is somewhere between 10 and 14 years, in that range. It expires May 20, 2026. Mr. Furfaro: So they know where they are going to be in 2026? Mr. Bynum: In earlier discussions, what I heard was there is no plans or space for them in the Pi`ikoi Building, and I heard this building was cited for Council Services, so what is the plan for the Historical Society? Mr. Heu: They have that current space down there and it is between 13,000 and 14,000 square feet. It is between 1,300 and 1,400 square feet. Mr. Furfaro: It is 1,354. Mr. Bynum: So they will be there unti12026? Mr. Heu: That is what their current lease calls for. Mr. Bynum: In that space? Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Bynum: That is the first time I heard that because the Historical Society, they need additional space, right, for their archives and storage. • COUNCIL MEETING - 33 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Heu: Yea, I am probably not the one to speak to that. Mr. Furfaro: I can answer part of that. I believe they have an additional 160 square feet made available by the County's courtesy, I believe, in the Pi`ikoi Building. So it is 1,354, an additional 160 that was extended manuwahi, I believe. And for those of you that don't know manuwahi, it is a word that means free. It comes from a Hawaiian merchant that used to give a generous portion without charging more. Thank you for practicing manuwahi. Chair Asing: Any other questions Councilmembers? If not, just for your information Councilmembers, Ididn't review this in detail, but I have the lease document before me, and the lease document dates back to May of 1996, which gives them 13 years here, another 17 left which will take them to about 2016, 2017. I think most of the questions that Councilmember Furfaro has asked which is going to be transferred over to the County Attorney's Office is in this document. So this is the lease document. It is... the premises is 1,352 square feet, the term of the lease shall be for 30 full calendar years. It is monthly subject to the terms and conditions of this lease. $1 per month is the monthly lease, so this is the document of the lease. Anyway, are there more questions? Councilmember Chang? Mr. Chang: Gary, are you... I think I heard you say 2016 or 2017. Shouldn't it be 2026? Mr. Heu: According to the Finance Director and the document he has, it is 2026, so I am not sure i£ because it is supposed to be a 30 year lease. Mr. Chang: (Inaudible). Mr. Heu: Chair, while you are reviewing your math, I don't want to further complicate things. I just want to clarify something. I did some math r on the square footage across the way at Pi`ikoi. I said originally that there was between 18,000 and 19,000 square feet vacant. When I went back and looked at it, that also included, currently, the Fishbowl, and we said the Fishbowl is kind of in between, so the Fishbowl is about 2,000 square feet, so if you take that out, you get down to 17,000 vacant square feet. Earlier, Councilmember Kawahara had asked how many... what is the footage that is currently in use, and based on a quick addition of all the various spaces, I came up with approximately 18,000 square feet currently in use by all the entities that I previously described. Mr. Chang: And if I can just add... if I am not mistaken from last week's meeting, I believe the Fishbowl was more accurately 1,700 square feet instead of 2,000 just for the record as I do my math. Chair Asing: Yes, my math was wrong. It is 2026 rather than 16. • • COUNCIL MEETING - 34 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Heu: None of us are engineers or architects. Chair Asing: Okay, any other questions for Gary? If not, Gary, thank you. Mr. Furfaro: So Gary, the questions that I raise, the 4 topics that I raised, I just assume you are going to enter into discussion with the County Attorney's Office. We don't need to generate... Mr. Heu: Yes, relative to the Historical Society. Mr. Furfaro: You are going to explore that and meet with Mary? Mr. Heu: Yes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you. Chair Asing: Okay, with that, thank you very much Gary. I'd like to call the meeting back to order, but before I do, is there anyone in the audience that wants to speak on this item? The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Can we have a motion to receive this item? Mr. Furfaro moved to receive C 2009-76 for the record, seconded by Mr. Chang. Chair Asing: Any further discussion? Councilmember Bynum? Mr. Bynum: I just want to say that I thought this was a discussion that was long overdue and as I said earlier, raises more questions in my mind than it answered unfortunately. So I will try to pursue those questions in the future, but my understanding is that our intent is to vacate this building in several months... in just a few months time. I want to concur with what Mr. Heu said about regardless of our legal obligation, I think we have an obligation or moral obligation to the Kauai Historical Society who does wonderful work on behalf of us all. (Inaudible) is really an important asset not only to have us understand our history, but the archives they maintain help us with decisions that we make in the future when there are lawsuits, when there are plans for engineering new things... they are holding a lot of these documents that can save us money, and I can think of several instances where the access of those documents was a real benefit to the community. So I think, hopefully, we will get answers quickly about how this move will impact them, and how we meet our both legal and moral obligations to them to soften that as much as possible. So I am also struck... one other issue about, you know, I am going to do the round math, but we are going to lease a significant amount of space that we need to do, and I support that. At the same time, I see • • COUNCIL MEETING - 35 - February 25, 2009 those 18,000 or 17,000 square feet as lost potential revenue that sat here for years. It seems to me that it would have been wise to build it out and lease it. It has a real value. I have worked with lease issues before on Kauai where somebody purchases a building and they refurbish it as quickly as possible because they don't want to leave that asset, you know, draining them as opposed... to make revenue. I think the County needs to look at the things that we purchased in the same way. If we spend $10 million, that is serious money, and this is a significant space that has been vacant for a long period of time, and was potential revenue for the County. If we didn't need it, I am sure we could have leased it for a value. So it is kind of swallow hard to expend County money leasing other private facilities when our own space, when we have a lot of a vacant space. I appreciate the dialogue today, and I hope it continues. Chair Asing: Any other discussion? Councilmember Kaneshiro? Mr. Kaneshiro: I just wanted to clarify some of the discussions that we had on the lease that we were paying for the Fire Department right now. I think we had a money bill come through recently and on February 11th, we had a public hearing, and it has been referred back to Committee. But for clarification purposes, it was not for $96,000 per year. We had a money bill come through for about $45,000 at this current time, just for clarification. Mr. Furfaro: That is for partial year. I think the question was, it was for a full year, what would it be? Mr. Kaneshiro: Well, it was for... with 2, 1 year options, so basically, we are looking for a year with 1 year options, and so forth, so just for clarification purposes. Mr. Furfaro: Thank you Mr. Kaneshiro. Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further ~ discussion? Councilmember Furfaro? Mr. Furfaro: Yes, there... the reason for me putting the communication on the agenda today was to just kind of demonstrate to the Administration the urgency and the request from the Council to begin dialogue on the overall space planning as well as what would be a win/win outcome for the Historical Society as we approach renovating this building. So I think we did hear from the Administration, Mr. Heu, and they are actively going to pursue a meeting with them. There seems to be some options where, like I said, they can just encapsulate for the time that we are renovating and/or talk to the Administration about a temporary relocation for their business model. But I do want to thank the Administration for coming here and having dialogue with us, and recognizing these concerns, and we are on a critical path to renovate this building, so the urgency to have dialogue with the Historical Society certainly exist. Thank you Mr. Chair. • • COUNCIL MEETING - 36 - February 25, 2009 Chair Asing: Thank you. Any further discussion? If not, I just want to close by saying that I agree that we have moral, if not, legal obligation to the Historical Society to take care of them also in the renovation of this building. I think one of the reasons though for maybe not touching base with them earlier is that the Council itself didn't know whether we were going to move or not move from this building, so there was, internally, discussion on what are we going to do? Are we going to move or do we stay here during the renovation, so there has been a lot - of discussion in that area. I have been in discussions with the Building Division on trying to make a determination on whether we stay here or move... until we finalize that decision, maybe it was felt it was premature to talk to the Historical Society, but in hindsight, maybe we should have the courtesy to at least let them know that we are thinking about these moves, and what we are actually attempting to do with the renovation of this building. With that, being no further discussion, all those in favor say aye? The motion to receive C 2009-76 for the record, was then put, and unanimously carried. Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, can I ask if we can take a short recess? Chair Asing: Sure. Let's take a 5 minute... you want to take a caption break? Caption break, thank you. There being no objections, the Chair called for a recess at 11:26 a.m. The meeting was called back to order at 11:39 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: With that, Mr. Clerk, I believe we have to go back to page 2, C 2009-89. Mr. Nakamura: Yes, Mr. Chair,, my apologies. On this matter, Vice Chair Furfaro had recused himself on Mr. Kimura's issue, and Vice Chair Furfaro actually made the motion to second this receipt. Mr. Furfaro: So I will retract my motion. Mr. Nakamura: Actually, you would be the second Vice Chair and Councilmember Kaneshiro would have been the motion. Chair Asing: Okay, Councilmember Kaneshiro. Mr. Kaneshiro withdrew his motion to receive C 2009-89, followed by Mr. Furfaro. Mr. Furfaro: My apologies because we took several items at one time and I did not recognize that one. Chair Asing: With that, motion again to receive. • • COUNCIL MEETING - 37 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Kaneshiro moved to receive C 2009-89 for the record, seconded by Mr. Chang, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: We are now back to page 4. - Mr. Nakamura: On page 4 of the Council's agenda, Council Chair, on communication C 2009-97 on the legal document from the Mayor. LEGAL DOCUMENT: C 2009-97 Communication (OU29/2009) from the Mayor, recommending Council approval for `Ele`ele Luna I Subdivision which will consolidate a portion of Mehana Road and Lot 10 and Subdivision of Said Consolidation into Lots 1 to 20, Inclusive, and Designation of Easements AU-1, AU-2, W-1, G-l, E-1, and E-2, Being Portion L.C. Award 7712:5, `Ele`ele, Wahiawa, •Koloa, Kauai, Hawaii (5-2004-29, Kauai Habitat for Humanity) • Quitclaim & Warranty Deed (between Applicant and County) facilitates land exchange between Subdivider and County as follows: 1) Dedication of two (2) roadway lots to the County of Kauai to accommodate roadway widening improvements to Mehana Road; and 2) Applicant acquires a portion of the Mehana Road right-of--way that was abandoned through Resolution No. 2006-17. • Dedication Deed (from Applicant) conveying a roadway lot (Lot 19) to the County of Kauai for roadway improvements to Mehana Road. Mr. Nakamura: My apologies again. There was an error in the posting language for the quitclaim and warranty deed item under this legal document, so if we could ask that the Council receive this matter, and have it reposted correctly. Mr. Furfaro moved to receive LEGAL DOCUMENT: C 2009-97, seconded by Mr. Kaneshiro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The next matter is a claim on page 4 which is communication C 2009-98. CLAIMS: C 2009-98 Communication (02/12/2009) from the County Clerk, transmitting a claim filed against the County of Kauai by Elga S. Peahu for damages to her personal property, pursuant to Section 23.06, Charter of the County of Kauai: Mr. Furfaro moved to refer C 2009-98 to the County Attorney's Office for • COUNCIL MEETING - 38 - February 25, 2009 disposition and report back to the Council, seconded by Mr. Bynum, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The next matter for approval are Committee Reports. COMMITTEE REPORTS: BUDGET & FINANCE CONIIVIITTEE REPORTS: A report (No. CR-B&F 2009-03) submitted by the Budget & Finance Committee, recommending that the following be approved on second and final reading: "Bill No. 2300 AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2008-672 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE OPERATING BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI, STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2008 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2009, BY REVISING THE SURPLUS AND APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATED IN THE GENERAL FUND ($833,696 from the County's General Fund to the Golf Fund of $233,405 and Sewer Fund of $600,291)," Mr. Kaneshiro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. (See later for Bill No. 2300) A report (No. CR-B&F 2009-04) submitted by the Budget & Finance Committee, recommending that the following be approved on second and final reading: "Bill No. 2301 AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2008-673 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE CAPITAL BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI, STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2008 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2009, BY REVISING THE SURPLUS AND APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATED IN THE GENERAL FUND (Work Force Initiative (Fishbowl) Project)," Mr. Kaneshiro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. (See later for Bill No. 2301) Mr. Bynum: I had one of these Committee reports that I wanted to look at and perhaps revise and I can't remember which one it is. • COUNCIL MEETING - 39 - February 25, 2009 ECONONIIC DEVELOPMENT/HOUSING CONIlVIITTEE REPORTS: A report (No. CR-EDH 2009-01) submitted by the Economic Development/Housing Committee, recommending that the following be received for the record: "EDH 2009-1 Communication (2/5/2009) from Committee Chair Chang, requesting that the Director of the Office of Economic Development be present to provide an update on its activities relating to the upcoming Kauai Marathon, and to hear from Bob Craver, Director of the Kauai Marathon," Mr. Furfaro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Chang, and unanimously carried. A report (No. CR-EDH 2009-02) submitted by the Economic Development/Housing Committee, recommending that the following be received for the record: "EDH 2009-2 Communication (2/3/2009) from Committee Chair Chang, requesting that the Director of the Office of Economic Development be present to provide a briefing on the partnership among the Office of Economic Development, the Kauai Visitors Bureau and The Garden Island newspaper for aweb-based advertising campaign to attract visitors to Kaua`i," Mr. Kaneshiro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: ~ I believe Council Chair, these are the items that Councilmember Bynum has asked if we could defer to the end of today's agenda. Chair Asing: Why don't we move these 2 items to the end of the agenda. Chair Asing: The next item? Mr. Nakamura: The next matter for approval is Resolution No. 2009-30. RESOLUTIONS: Resolution No. 2009-30, RESOLUTION CONFIRMING MAYORAL APPOINTMENT TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION (Jan Roy Kimura, Labor Appointee, First Term): • COUNCIL MEETING - 40 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Furfaro: Mr. Chair, I would like to ask if I can be excused. I have recused myself from this as I have done some historical and cultural work for this organization. Chair Asing: With that, thank you. Councilmember Kawahara? Ms. Kawahara: I just had a question about... I am supporting this nomination, but I had a question about being employed at the Princeville Operating Company and as a Planning Commissioner, how does that work? Chair Asing: I am sorry, what was the question again? Ms. Kawahara: That he is working at Princeville Operating Company now and if something comes up at Princeville... Chair Asing: He will have to recuse himself when the vote comes on the floor. Ms. Kawahara: Thank you. That is all. Chair Asing: Thank you. With that, can I have a motion to approve? Mr. Bynum moved to adopt Resolution No. 2009-30, seconded by Ms. Kawahara, and carried by the following vote: FOR ADOPTION: Bynum, Chang, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Asing TOTAL - 5, AGAINST ADOPTION: None TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Kawakami TOTAL - 1, RECUSED: Furfaro TOTAL - 1. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The next matters on page 6 of the Council's agenda are bills for second reading. BILLS FOR SECOND READING: Bill No. 2300 - AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2008-672 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE OPERATING BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI, STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2008 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2009, BY REVISING THE SURPLUS AND APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATED IN THE GENERAL FUND ($833,696 from the County's General Fund to the Golf Fund of $233,405 and Sewer Fund of $600,291): Mr. Bynum moved for adoption of Bill No. 2300 on second and final reading, and COUNCIL MEETING - 41 - February 25, 2009 that it be transmitted to the Mayor for his approval, seconded by Mr. Kaneshiro, and carried by the following vote: FOR ADOPTION: Bynum, Chang, Furfaro, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Asing TOTAL - 6, AGAINST ADOPTION: None TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Kawakami TOTAL - 1. Bill No. 2301- AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NO. B-2008-673 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE CAPITAL BUDGET OF THE COUNTY OF KAUAI, STATE OF HAWAII, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR JULY 1, 2008 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2009, BY REVISING THE SURPLUS AND APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATED IN THE GENERAL FUND (Work Force Initiative (Fishbowl) Project) Mr. Bynum moved for adoption of Bill No. 2301 on second and final reading, and that it be transmitted to the Mayor for his approval, seconded by Mr. Furfaro, and carried by the following vote: FOR ADOPTION: Bynum, Chang, Furfaro, Kaneshiro, Kawahara, Asing TOTAL - 6, AGAINST ADOPTION: None TOTAL - 0, EXCUSED & NOT VOTING: Kawakami TOTAL - 1. Chair Asing: Next item please? Mr. Nakamura: The next matter would be executive session items Mr. Chair. Chair Asing: With that, can we have the County Attorney? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. DARREN SUZUKI, DEPUTY COUNTY ATTORNEY: Good morning ' Council Chair and Councilmembers. Chair Asing: Good morning. Mr. Suzuki: On ES-378. ES-378 Pursuant to Haw.Rev.Stat. §§92-4 and 92-5(a)(4) and (6), and Kauai County Charter section 3.07(E), the Office of the County Attorney requests an executive session with the Council to provide the Council a briefing and discuss the area known as Queen's Bath or Kaimaumau and related matters. The discussion and consultation involves consideration of the powers, duties, privileges, immunities and/or liabilities of the Council and the County and to consider sensitive matters related to public safety or security as it relates to this agenda item. COUNCIL MEETING - 42 - February 25, 2009 Chair Asing: Thank you very much. With that, what I would like to do is open it to the public first. Is there anyone that wants to speak on this item? If not, I would like to call the meeting back to order. The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: Can I have a motion to move into executive session? Mr. Furfaro moved to go into executive session on item ES-378, seconded by Ms. Kawahara, and unanimously carried. There being no objections, the Chair called for a recess at 11:47 a.m. The meeting was called back to order at 2:00 p.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Asing: With that, I believe we are going to take Public SafetylEnergy/Intergovernmental Relations Committee Reports. PUBLIC SAFETY/ENERGY/INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS CONIlVIITTEE REPORTS• A report (No. CR-SEI 2009-02) submitted by the Public Safety/Energy/Intergovernmental Relations Committee, recommending that the following be received for the record: "SEI 2009-2 Communication (2/3/2009) from Committee Chair Kawakami, requesting that the President and CEO of Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) be present to explain their efforts in a Kauai Habitat Conservation Plan and KIUC's current renewable energy projects," Mr. Kaneshiro moved for approval of the report, seconded by Mr. Bynum, and unanimously carried. A report (No. CR-SEI 2009-03) submitted by the Public Safety/Energy/Intergovernmental Relations Committee, recommended deferral of the report: "SEI 2009-1 Communication (2/2/2009) from Committee Chair Kawakami, requesting that the Director of Parks & Recreation be present to provide an update and comprehensive overview of the County's Habitat Conservation Plan which should include, but not be limited to, steps for dealing with Shearwaters, the areas that are affected, the process to follow when constructing new improvements, financial impacts, if any, etc." Chair Asing: Councilmember Bynum? COUNCIL MEETING - 43 - February 25, 2009 Mr. Bynum: I am going to ask my colleagues if they will grant my request to defer this just for one meeting because the minutes of these Committees aren't verbatim like some of the minutes we keep. I had no problem with the accuracy of what was there, I just wanted to make sure that some portions of the discussion are reflected in the record. So I would like to defer this. Mr. Bynum moved for deferral of the report, seconded by Ms. Kawahara, and unanimously carried. Chair Asing: Let's have the County Attorney up please? RICKY WATANABE, COUNCIL SERVICES ADMINISTRATOR: This is a request from the Council. ES-379 Pursuant to Haw.Rev. Stat. §§92-4 and 92-5(a)(3) and (7); and Kauai County Charter §3.07(E), the purpose of this executive session is to provide Council an opportunity to deliberate and discuss the possible acquisition of property located in Hanalei, adjacent to Black Pot Beach Park, TMK 4-5-5-001:011. The discussion and consultation involves the negotiation and deliberation of the possible acquisition of public property as it relates to this agenda item: Chair Asing: County Attorney, could you go up? I just want you to concur with what was just read. Mr. Watanabe: Mr. Chair, perhaps the County Attorney can read the next executive session also, ES-380. Chair Asing: Do you concur with what was just read? There being no objections, the rules were suspended. Mr. Suzuki: Deputy County Attorney Darren Suzuki, yes, I do. Chair Asing: Would you also on ES-380 maybe read that one, and then we can go into executive session and do ES-379 and after we get through with that, we can just go into ES-380. Mr. Suzuki: Sure. Okay, ES-380. ES-380 Pursuant to Haw.Rev.Stat. §§92-4 and 92-5(a)(4)(6) and (8), and Kauai County Charter §3.07(E), the purpose of this executive session is to provide a Council briefing, update, and to request authority relating to possible settlement proposals in Gerard R. Bosma, et al. v. James H. Pflueger, et al., Civ. No. 08-1-0052 (Fifth Circuit Court); Ronald and Gina Calisher v. James H. Pflueger, et al., Civ. No. 07-1-0106 (Fifth Circuit Court); Bruce Fehring, Individually and as Special Administrator of the Estates of Aurora Fehring, et al. v. James H. Pflueger, et al., COUNCIL MEETING - 44 - February 25, 2009 Civ. No. 06-1-0082 (Fifth Circuit Court); and Bette Midler, et al. v. James H. Pflueger, et al., Civ. No. 06-1-0110 (Fifth Circuit Court) and related matters. This consultation involves consideration of the powers, duties, privileges, immunities and/or liabilities of the Council and the County as they relate to this agenda item: The meeting was called back to order, and proceeded as follows: Mr. Furfaro moved to go into executive session on ES-379 and ES-380, seconded by Mr. Kaneshiro, and unanimously carried. There being no objections, the Chair called for a recess at 2:05 p.m. The meeting was called back to order at 3:52 p.m., and proceeded as follows: ADJOURNMENT: There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:52 p.m. Respectfully submitted, PETER A. NAKAMURA County Clerk /lki