HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconomic Development-Energy & Workforce Investment Act, DEPARTMENTAL BUDGET CALL-BACKS FY 2014-15 4/22/2014
DEPARTMENTAL BUDGET CALL-BACKS FY 2014-15
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT -
ENERGY AND WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT
April 22, 2014
Budget Call-Backs (Office of Economic Development—
Energy and Workforce Investment Act)(ss)
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There being no objections, the Committee was called back to order at 2:38 p.m. and
proceeded as follows:
Office of Economic Development
Honorable Gary L. Hooser
Honorable Mel Rapozo
Honorable JoAnn A. Yukimura
Honorable Jay Furfaro, Council Chair
Excused: Honorable Tim Bynum
Honorable Mason K. Chock, Sr.
Honorable Ross Kagawa
Chair Furfaro: We are back from our recess and now we are
coming back and these are call-back items, very specific times and topics. We have
Economic Development returning to us. The first area we want to talk about is Energy and
followed by WIA, followed by other Economic Development issues and then allowing in that
time, some closing remarks from the Mayor. Okay? So is Mr. Costa here? There he is.
George, if you would come up and bring your Energy people up and there is a subject-
matter that has been posted and not all over the area of Economic Development. George, if
you could introduce yourselves and Ben, the floor is yours.
GEORGE K. COSTA, Director of Economic Development: All right. Aloha
Chair Furfaro and Honorable Councilmembers, for the record, George Costa, Director for
the Office of Economic Development. As you mentioned today we have three topic items,
Energy, Workforce Development, presented by Kaeo Bradford and I will finish up with our
OED budget. Without further ado I will introduce Ben Sullivan, our Energy Coordinator.
BEN SULLIVAN, Energy Coordinator: Ben Sullivan, energy coordinator.
I assume that projector is warming up and we will have visibility.
Chair Furfaro: If you could turn off the lights, sir. That is a
good topic with you.
Mr. Sullivan: Turn off the lights, wonderful and today is Earth
Day, very appropriate. I am sure you considered that when you scheduled us to come back.
I want to start out by saying that I am really happy to be here and I am really happy that
you are giving us an hour to discuss this challenging topic. It has been a challenging year
for us but we have learned a great deal. We believe there is a lot of good things happening
and we are, in fact, moving forward with regards to energy and progress within the County.
See if I could advance that slide. Beautiful view there. Starting off, many of you attended a
wonderful conference in collaboration with KEDB last August and we had quite a good
amount of participants and something just under 200 people participated and we had a
very interesting conversation about a transformation that is happening across the energy
sector and everybody with managing more data and driving energy-efficiency and
institutionalize it and many other things. We were very happy with outcome of this
conversation and this progress and this work is going to have to continue because there are
a lot of challenges that we face. We have all three of the PUC Commissioners attend. A
number of other people from O`ahu and around the State and other people from around the
Country. One of the things that really stood out for me, we are in a position to take some
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bold step and indeed we need to and one thing the Mayor announced at this conference we
have an objective to reduce our energy consumption by 30% over the next ten years. As
well as a target of 50% fossil reduction in our fleet over the next ten years and we believe
that we have the projects identified to get us most of the way there. We know we have to
come up with some things to really achieve those goals, but believe that long-term
aggressive goals are key. We also know that it is all about collaboration and I will touch a
little bit more on some of the collaboration underway as a result of this conference and
other things. This is just intended to give you a quick review of some of the things that we
presented as our goals and objectives from last year. We said we wanted to start moving on
the landfill methane and street light for energy production. I will not spend a lot of time on
LEED certification, but some of that is completed and some is in the works. You set a goal
of 2% right at the end of the budget cycle last year that we are working hard to achieve.
This is a look at the kind of data we are getting out of our energy management system. If
you recall from the last slide, we put a lot of effort last year into building this new system,
which is to say previously we had financial accounting of our energy costs. We get an
aggregate dump of data from KIUC every year that shows us basically how many kilowatt
hours we used. It is very difficult to discern in more specific detail without this system in
place. This is a cloud based system, we get a fee from KIUC every month, which is not
completely automated but currently this system is running and we are still tuning this up
and getting it to total accuracy. We are not satisfied with the degree of accuracy that we
have out of it right now. It is about 1.5% off from the actual data and we have done the
comparisons. So I am going to get to the actual data later, but the important thing that you
are seeing here this is the kind of graphics that we want to present across the County for
individual accounts. Other things that you can see quickly, a seasonal swing for all
accounts. You see a really big higher usage in the summer months driven by air
conditioning. We are happy with the movement that we have taken, but we know that we
have to do a lot more and leverage the tool and get it out to more County employees which
is an objective we have for this year. One thing you will notice and I did not highlight we
are candidly saying that we did not get there at all from our goal from last year, 2%
reduction in cost and we have 3% increase in use and we are trying to be very plain about
that and we are going to talk about why that happened and what we intend to do about it.
It was not due to weather and that is what this slide is primarily about. These have figures
normalized for weather and that 2012 was slightly hotter than 2014 and we cannot blame it
on the weather for the additional usage. It was not because the price of energy went up
because the price of energy actually went down. This is an indicator and it is a rollup cost
for all of our utility costs and does not include Water and Wastewater as noted on the slide.
It is higher for that reason, but there are a lot of accounts like the Civil Defense meters and
things like that, do not have any energy use. We just pay a fixed charge and that drives the
unit costs up. Also we have numerous accounts that have quite high demand charges that
we will cover as well. But those things contribute. This is not what you are normally
looking at to say what is KIUC charging for kilowatt hours. This is all-in cost including all
services divided by the usage. So here is what happened. We used a little over 400,000
kilowatt hours more year to date than last year. Here is what is driving that. In
Wastewater we have a new facility as you are all very aware of. Year over year in total,
that facility will ultimately account for 240,000 kWH a year difference from the old plant.
Year to date, I am showing 54,000 and the reason for that difference because this plant has
been starting up and crossed over the fiscal and there were anomalies and there is higher
use in the transition due to some of the process at the plant. At Kaana Street we made
needed improvements with Police in IT equipment and it came with a price and it had to be
cooled. We added a split AC unit that runs 24/7 and that added some use there. Waimea
Police Substation, you are all very aware of and it just opened up. New facility and more
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service, and more electricity use. Lihu`e Civic Center, although the Fire Admin space was
moved two years ago in the previous fiscal...the density in terms of occupancy in that space
has increased and therefore the use has as well. That is part of the change there. We are
still tracking where the rest of the change came from. We do not have that high a
resolution on the facilities yet and it is hard to know exactly where these increases came
from. We are very interested to find out where it came from. At the Water Department, we
have very little resolution as to what is happening there. This is just an account of the
additional usage they have to-date. We felt this was important noting that the other data
that I presented earlier showed...has some inaccuracies and we talked about that in terms
of the methodology in the billing and inaccuracies in that. We created this chart from the
raw data. This is as good as we can get direct from KIUC. There is always the possibility of
errors in data and it is almost inevitable, but we feel the margin of error is smaller. You
are seeing 3.2% increase and you can see various Departments and how much the increase,
Water with quite a large increase, Wastewater, all the way down. Notably, Police in this
slide includes the Kaana Street facility. As you all know well that is not just Police using
that energy. That is the Prosecutor's Office and Civil Defense and that is a very high use
facility that we are keyed into and I wanted to footnote that because I think everyone is
very aware and we are working hard to reduce energy profiles at that facility, but it is
noted as part of their account. I will proceed. One of the things that Council Chair was
very specific in asking for was some comparisons and some data like this and I hope this
satisfies that desire. We could certainly get into more detail, but these slides have showed
where we should be focused on. These are the top ten accounts by use. The Wastewater
Plants used a lot. Kaana Street and the Civic Center use a whole lot. You start getting
into water wells and other things. That third one is actually a higher use than the first one
which may be odd to people. We are saying that this is actually a higher kilowatt usage
facility at the Lihu`e Wastewater Treatment Plant, but the reason is because Wastewater
Treatment Plants in general have relatively low demand charges. So you see where those
kinds of things impact the bills. If I go to the next slide, which is about demand charges
you get more insight into that. So this is a very similar slide to the last one except it is
organized by highest bill demand in the last 12-month period and so you are looking at the
facilities in order of demand charges. Most of these are schedule P facilities which is the
basically the large user rate from KIUC, which offers...which comes with a demand charge
of$11.14 times the kilowatt hours per month. So there is some substantial cost just related
to demand, especially into the smaller facilities it becomes a much bigger piece of the bill
and something that we are paying attention to more and more. One of the nice things
about the new system we are able to track the data and we are anticipate some projects
that will hopefully move to address that. So we have covered it. We came to you and...
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Ben, could you go back a slide?
Mr. Sullivan: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: And revisit the $11.14 by kilowatt again.
Mr. Sullivan: The demand charges in the schedule P rate and
actually, I have the rate schedules here in my book. My recollection it is slightly over $11
per kilowatt per month. For example, at Rice Street we pay 446 times 11 per month, just in
the demand charges and the balance is kilowatt hour charges and what not.
Mr. Rapozo: And that is different for each facility?
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Mr. Sullivan: That demand charge is different for each rate. So
these facilities all have different peak demands obviously.
Mr. Rapozo: I got it now.
Mr. Sullivan: But most these are schedule P facilities.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: We are good now.
Mr. Sullivan: So here we are. We are...I will say I am very
disappointed we did not meet the target and I will take most of the responsibility because
was my job to make it happen across the County. We do have a lot of work to do and we
believe that your target reduction was reasonable. We also believe that it really helped to
drive system change. So we have done a lot of work towards that, but obviously I am not
here to sit here and show you the positive results that we would like to improve on
dramatically.
Chair Furfaro: One moment, Ben, Mr. Hooser.
Mr. Hooser: Just a quick question. The 2% reduction, if you
back out all of the new use, were we better? Let us say this building or the Piikoi Building?
When I look at 2% reduction, kind of looking at people using 2% less, minus the new
buildings, do you follow what I am saying?
Mr. Sullivan: I do. It is interesting. Because we would have
lucked into it is what I would say, if all the new use was not there. Basically what would
have happened, we had the same amount of use and electricity was 2% less, so we would
have delivered a 2% cost reduction without the added facilities, but that was not the case.
Setting goals we are looking at growth and we do not just look at it from the standpoint of
how much we use.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you for quoting me in the 2% goal, but it
is not going to change for next year. I want you to know that when we sat and talked with
the Bus Transportation Department and so forth, they are all part of the Green Team, but
they have no measurement skills. They do not know what their goal is clearly. So I think
we are going to set one now. That is going to probably be the same thing and the, in fact,
that we are comparing apples-to-apples, we should have taken those five items that Mr.
Hooser just pointed out, those new plants and compared that and you said with that, it was
probably a walk-in, we probably got it. But the new guys are coming online have to buy into
it too. Really have to buy into it. JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: If you take out the growth, the new facilities, you
say we could have had a 2% decrease in costs, but that was due to the lower cost of energy
not due to the lower kilowatt usage.
Mr. Sullivan: Correct. Our kilowatt usage would have been...
Ms. Yukimura: And our goal has to be kilowatt usage. Okay.
Thank you.
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Mr. Sullivan: May I proceed?
Chair Furfaro: Yes. I want you to know that I will be sending
over 196,000 kilowatt hour savings is 2% and that is what I hope we get to.
Mr. Sullivan: Thank you, sir. The last bullet here I think is
something that due to this process, it really jumped out at us which is really seeing the data
better. Awareness and conservation behavior is very important, no doubt. But the biggest
thing that we are lacking right now is looking forward in terms of projecting capital
additions and understanding what those do to our energy budget and that is something we
are grappling with and will learn how to incorporate. Key lessons learned...I do not know if
you had a chance to review these ahead of time but I will read through them quickly. We
have got to have a way to anticipate those changes and build those into what we expect our
energy budget to be. It is not going to be easy because it is a lot of projects, but we will do
it. We have to better integrate and imbed energy planning into our annual processes and
the Departments are coming forward and again, I wish we had more results, but they are
coming forward and there is a lot more activity and conversation from our Office to other
Departments and back and forth about what we can do and how we can save? It is a very
important primary mission. We have got to make it easier for them to do it and if that
means finding tools that are more user-friendly and training to say here is the data and
here what is happening, but it is keep that we have that relationship. Because obviously
our small Office cannot do so it is a symbiotic thing that we all move forward in a positive
way. Fourth, this is not related so much to internal energy use, but back to the conference
and other things. We really recognize clearly that we need to...at some point fairly soon
refocus some energy on the island wide issues which are critical. We have been working
very hard internally and we are pursuing additional partnerships and opportunities in
order to figure out how to do that and raise our volume on the island wide efforts. The
KESP has been sitting a little longer than it should.
Ms. Yukimura: Say what KESP is.
Mr. Sullivan: The Kaua`i Energy Sustainability Plan. Some
good people have done some good work with that. There are some ideas and a lot of things
have already happened but we need to keep it going.
Here are things in the pipeline. I think you have all participated in the planning at
one level or another for most of these. The LED street light project led by KIUC and we are
happy to be working with them and we expect a significant amount of energy savings.
Obviously some of that cost-savings goes back to the capital costs and we will have a better
idea on that fairly soon. We do not know exactly where that will land. It is an involved
process that involves a new tariff at the PUC after which they will proceed with the project.
We are expecting that the tariff will be established and developed in the next fiscal and in
the following year, the installation will happen. The next one is the project that Ed and his
team have been working on for a while, a major repair on `Ele`ele Wastewater Treatment
Plant, substantial energy savings there. Those guys have done a great job and I think NTP
is coming up any day. So work will start very soon and be completed in the next fiscal. Civic
Center, obviously, we attached ourselves to the efforts ongoing at Piikoi and I think we
talked about this within our CIP review. But basically we are going to try to optimize the
system with a full analysis and drive down energy costs. Part of what we do not know yet is
exactly what is being added and how much that is going to contribute again going forward.
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That goes back to our conversation that we had earlier about how we integrate
improvements and anticipated additions into our energy budgeting and we will have to do
that for that facility in particular. Kaana Street there are no major additions other than
what we have seen recently and we are looking at savings that we expect from the work
that the University of Hawaii is doing, Hawai`i Natural Energy Institute and actually we
are meeting with some people out there on Thursday and then they are going to be in full
force in about a month and reporting and come back to us with recommendations. Some of
these projects will have no cost-savings, especially the bottom two. Some of these will
require some capital, too. So the depth of savings will depend on how much capital we put
into the projects and we will have a better idea of that once the reports come back.
Chair Furfaro: May I say, if I just said 2% is 196,000 kilowatt
and the first two projects 1.2 million kilowatts we should be able to realize those savings
with those two projects coming online.
Mr. Sullivan: Whether those occur in the next two fiscals,
because the construction will likely start next fiscal.
Chair Furfaro: We have got to set some standards. I like the
way you laid this out on kilowatt hours because the total mission there is almost 2 million
kilowatt hours to be managing. Thank you.
Mr. Sullivan: Thank you. So this is trying to give you some
insight into what we are planning in regards to Departmental energy savings. We have the
skeletons of very solid plans for the major energy users. Police have really stepped up and
Assistant Chief Contrades and Parks and Fire, everybody is eager and ready to find the
means to save energy. As our communication gets better and as we train these guys on how
to use these evolving tools we will expect that we are going to see savings. One thing to
note at the bottom is this is again a two-way street. We cannot possibly track all the
projects, but we are bringing them on working together and finding energy savings. In
some cases possibly find funding, that is not always going to be the case, but if we know
what they are doing, they will open up.
Chair Furfaro: We have finished with Parks and Parks has
hired a consultant to design a template for all future public bathhouses and I would like to
make sure that you folks are on board with part of that team, because they are saying that
is the template to use in all our future parks.
Mr. Sullivan: Thank you, sir. Here are a couple of programs
that we would like to get more traction on in the coming years. We just developed these
and we tested them in one or two Departments but we did not get them out broadly enough
this year due to the limitation on time and resources. But we are working hard to figure
out how to get them across all Departments. You go to an office meeting and talk to the
occupants about how much are we paying at the County? Give them some awareness about
how much the Civic Center or Police Facility is using on a monthly basis, which I think is a
helpful metric for people working every day to have. Also just talk about human comfort
issues and that is not always known and having this information and awareness is helpful
and also slight modifications that we can make outside of major improvements. Simple
things like moving people from one part of the office to another or getting them a fan to get
them more comfortable and get a slightly higher average temperature in the office. De-
lamping is another program we have done this in our office and several other Departments
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that are getting in there, Transportation is one, Housing is another that we are overdue in
getting to them in helping them do this. Basically the idea is that many, many buildings
are designed with a high level of lighting prior to computers. So in many cases you can
reduce the amount of light and save energy and we intend to do that. This goes outside of
the energy management function and more into project-specifics. That opening slide we
reviewed from the conference actually one of the things that took place at that event is
Mayor and David Bissell signed a memorandum of understanding between the County and
KIUC that really opened the door to say what everybody understands, I think intuitively.
It is a cooperative and a real opportunity for us to work hand in hand and signed the MOU
and identified potential projects to collaborate on. One of the first was the street lights that
are moving forward and there are others as well. We are excited about that. The next item
is solar hot water, always important. We expect an opportunity to really leverage the
installation of solar water systems in collaboration with KIUC and other partners in the
next year, and that has everything to do with the financing program that should be out
sometime...looks like late-summer is the target date. Electric vehicle is a major part of the
strategy, although usage has been low at the chargers and across the island. There are good
examples where this has taken off. Maui County has done an amazing job in terms of
programs that actually build the uptake of electric vehicles and we would like to follow in
their footsteps. We also did some renovations, took an opportunity when Building Division
was renovating the parking lots to reconfigure the chargers, so that they are much more
useful and Doug in Buildings Division did a great job because we fit in at the tail-end and
they made sure it happened. So they are much more accessible and we can have a larger
electric vehicle fleet supported by the same amount of chargers and we are happy about
that. This one really keeps us in touch with things that are happening and trends that we
need to pay attention to. So we wanted to mention that and I think you are all aware of
that, but we are happy to answer questions on that as well. We talked a little bit about that
in CIP, and I am not going to spend a lot of time, unless there are specific questions, but we
are very excited about the possibility of using the methane and we are just approaching it
to award for professional services to get the feasibility study underway. That feasibility
study will include utilization of the landfill gas, as well as this next slide, which is possible
utilization of the existing anaerobic digesters at the Lihu`e plant. These are both projects in
the early stages, but Mayor has said let us look at it and study what the opportunity is.
Again this relates to our strategy, which is to say the County of Kaua`i should participate in
renewable energy projects where we either control the resource or closely related to the
resolution. We are looking at these as resources that we control, the Wastewater plant and
Solid Waste stream and landfill and what we can do to maximize energy production and
deliver other value for the County? So I do not know...I am going to keep going, but you are
certainly welcome to ask questions there. I believe there were questions from the Council
requesting information about our current PV systems. What you see at the top of the graph
to the left is both of these graphs are for the system on top of the Piikoi Building. The
graph on the left, I believe is...that is one month. So those are weeks that you see. Basically
the PV production is down at the bottom and there is grid demand versus overall building
demand. I think the highest is the building demand and grid demand is slightly lower.
When you look at that in higher resolution, you start to see that system is actually pretty
well sized. What you look at on the right is a weekend. During the week, the load, the
production of the PV system is all within our own load and concurrent to our own load. On
the weekend it just barely breaks out of that. So we saw a little bit back to the grid, but not
too much. If you do, the economic value to the system comes down. We are referring to the
Waimea Treatment Plant system here. We do not have...there is an online tool, I just do
not have access yet. We are working on that. This is an estimated value. This is to say
that this is a really exciting development that we owe a lot of thanks to KIUC. This is what
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they call their KIUC My Meter application. They will roll this out publicly soon, but they
have given us access to it to get used to it and we will be deploying and training
Departments this summer. Basically this is quite candidly a big answer to some of my
challenges as the Energy Manager for the County. One of the things that I did not mention
earlier is a real challenge about our data system and getting action out of it, especially from
a conservation standpoint, there is about a two-month lag on the data and it is really low
resolution. So all we have is how much you used in a month and we do not know that until
two months later. So it is sometimes difficult to get action out of that. This is up to 15-
minute intervals and only a couple days old. It has a feature to flag percentages that people
can be aware about overages and we believe this would be a really valuable tool. We are
already looking at our own internal energy management system in trying to figure out a
way to take the data off the internet and be able to do more analyses with it because we see
the value. That is something that we are also going to be focused on in the coming fiscal
year and we are already made some purchases from vendors on software applications to do
that.
Mr. Rapozo: Can we go back?
Mr. Sullivan: Please.
Mr. Rapozo: If you could just explain that chart? I know on
the left is kilowatts and right is temperature and bottom is date.
Mr. Sullivan: Sure. What we have there, this is actually the
Waimea Wastewater Treatment Plant and that is fairly recent data...April. So this was
just a couple of weeks ago. The green line is outside temperature. The blue is the demand
90 kilowatt hours and what you see the big gaps that is every day when the PV system
comes on, knocking out that much energy use. At the bottom of the chart, you see that
darker blue where we are selling back to the grid. Again, kudos to Ed and to the team that
worked on this project. That is a well-sized system. You can never get perfect it is right in
the appropriate threshold.
Chair Furfaro: Do we know the value of what we sold back to
the grid?
Mr. Sullivan: Well, we are selling back very little to the grid
and I do not have that data, because it comes aggregated and I do not have a way to
disaggregate it. I could pull it out of my meter, but the big number in terms of savings is
the stuff that we are not buying because that is coming at $0.40, versus what we are selling
at $0.20.
Chair Furfaro: Understood.
Mr. Sullivan: This is just an overview of the goals that we
already talked about. So I think we have talked about pretty much everything on here. We
want to reduce by 3% a year. That is what we want to do and that is the target we are
setting. It is not fun to be in front of you and saying that in a year where we actually
increased by 3%, but we cannot change our goal because we did not meet this. That is what
you are going to do. Strengthening the Departmental energy planning program and street
light replacement. We did not talk about the motor pool which is another way to drive
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down fossil fuel use and continue to engage in Statewide efforts and others. That is what
we have and happy to take questions.
Chair Furfaro: Very nice presentation. Questions, I will
recognize anyone first here while I walk back. Mr. Rapozo, you have the floor.
Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. And thank you, Ben.
Mr. Sullivan: Thank you, sir.
Mr. Rapozo: To be honest, I was not looking forward to an
hour of energy presentation, but I was really glad I was here, because it was a great
presentation and very easy to understand and I appreciate that. I want to...because you
talked about the anaerobic digestion at the Wastewater Treatment Plant and I think your
final statement or sentence was we continue to look for ways to reduce or to find energy
from elsewhere. I am going to bring it up, but it is not your Department, Solid Waste, I
know to some people it is not a good word, but I think that is a real potential solution for
this County. Where we could drop significant energy costs by producing our own. I say
"waste to energy," it would be whatever technology is out there. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Sullivan: I mean the waste stream should be looked at as a
resource. I think anaerobic digestion is similar and the advantage that we have a lot of
infrastructure in the ground and it does not have the same high-capital cost and food waste
is a big part of the waste stream. So we can gain energy the same way without combustion
and there will be capital improvements, but they are not as exorbitant as otherwise.
Mr. Rapozo: I am not advocating any particular technology,
but I want to make sure that we understand the potential value of taking our waste,
whether it is food or solid waste, and converting it to some sort of energy that we can at
least reduce our dependence on the KIUC grid.
Mr. Sullivan: Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Rapozo: No, thank you. Thank you again. I really
enjoyed the presentation.
Chair Furfaro: JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes, Ben, thank you. It was a very good
presentation. Exciting to get to this level where we are actually able to measure. So thank
you for that. This issue of adding activities and facilities that contribute to an increase in
energy use, could we not solve that by requiring net-zero buildings and activities?
Mr. Sullivan: That would certainly be one way to solve it.
Obviously, there is a discussion there about the capital costs and trade-offs, but the
California Building Code is going to require net-zero building codes by 2020, a very
aggressive move. We need to do something. We need to plan and anticipate when we add
facilities how we are going to address the additional energy costs.
Ms. Yukimura: To set some standard for energy usage, if it is not
net-zero, then it is only plus whatever, and I do not know how to do that. But would begin
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to turn off the faucet, so to speak, so then you could concentrate on reducing use of existing
buildings and activities.
Mr. Sullivan: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: So I would urge the energy...whoever is looking
at all of this to look at procurement in terms of new buildings. It is all in the design, well
maybe not all, but at the point of designing new facilities, it is very much in the design. I
do not know that we are using that opportunity well. So I hope people understand what
"net-zero" means, it means that you are creating buildings that use net-zero energy
basically.
Mr. Sullivan: One of the things that is fascinating to me,
because we have a cooperative, really, what we want to is have net-zero for the island, but
whether had a makes sense at an individual facility level...so I agree with you. I am just
trying to add to the conversation and try to understand better what you are getting at.
Ms. Yukimura: I know that net-zero buildings will help us solve
this problem of never achieving on or before goal, because if we are just adding on new uses
and facilities and we are a growing community that forget the 2% increase a year.
Mr. Sullivan: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: You know, it is just like our multimodal plan, we
are talking about growing as a community, but keeping our vehicle miles traveled stable,
not growing. That requires extraordinary effort, but that is what sustainability is all about.
So if we are about sustainability, then we have to take on these challenges. So I am giving
you the challenge, and asking you, I think the procurement-level, even if we do not go
directly to net-zero, if we start and Parks is doing that. Looking at...I mean what is a net-
zero energy restroom? You know, if you start small. They are saying in Kekaha, during the
hot Kekaha day you could be net-zero. At night, then it changes, but when we get batteries
eventually, maybe we can get there. Maybe we can go on to someone else and I can get
back to my questions later.
Chair Furfaro: Okay. We have 14 minutes left of his time. I
have a few questions. Ben, we are targeting a reduction, but what is in the budget now to
me, your 3% is interesting. It is obtainable, but yet it has got some reach. I want to look at
this and say, what is attainable to me is at least the 2%. All of this talk about the kilowatt,
the rates going up and so forth, it is a falsehood. I mean, dropped 1/10th of one penny, the
fact of the matter I have got to measure some dollars from that. So I am going to go with 2%
as a goal. I will be submitting my comments on Friday to the members. I did not hear a
couple of items that I would like to get close to and that is for our chill water plants, you
know, I would still like to find out where are we going to be, do you think, with setting some
of those temperatures and so forth? That is the acceptable level, but it is also going to give
us some measurable results? I cannot help when I look at the Police Department, and Civil
Defense, they were the higher of the averages, and I do think it is connected to their AC
system and not fully utilizing the Trane systems that are there in managing the process.
The other one, I have to tell you, that I am very, very anxious to get a target that we can do
something with the landfill as far as recovery. Because here is the picture everybody needs
know as I said, I think yesterday, in 2010, the contribution from the General Fund to the
operation of Solid Waste was $7.9 million and costs us to operate $12.1 million. With the
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changes that we have had in Solid Waste is a $200,000 change of money from the General
Fund, but the difference is $3.6 million in costs for Solid Waste. There seems to be a
resource there that could change that picture for us. We have made a very small dent in
how much we are transferring from the General Fund to pay for Solid Waste. The
additional increases have all been related to having to equally challenge ourselves with
some fees. But there is money there that could change that picture for the General Fund.
So between chill water and this particular, these are really big pieces. Then what about our
solar initiatives that we have started? Is there bigger opportunity on the horizon? Is there
more out there for us to be doing?
Mr. Sullivan: We could definitely do more solar and that is an
important discussion to have. There are a couple of significant liabilities that we have to be
careful of in my view and certainly there are other views. You know, one of them is that the
rate paid for surplus energy is going down and that is already in the works. That is at the
PUC right now. To what extent it goes down is dependent on what the PUC rules on that,
but that is being looked at. But the overarching issue, even when we save $0.40, that
money is going from one pocket into another. That is not actual system savings because
obviously KIUC like us can buy PV and there is only so much we can put on the question
and really the Mayor has said collaborate and we have even had conversations about
making County land available. Just very preliminary conversations could this work kind of
thing? So we have not introduced anything yet. We are really working hard on the Mayor's
direction so everybody wins and there is collaboration. We have not hit it out of the park in
figuring out exactly what those were.
Chair Furfaro: I did not realize at the $0.20 there is talk about it
going down even more. Those were the three big parts I was looking at, AC, chill water
costs, the landfill opportunities, and maybe looking at other photovoltaic.
Mr. Sullivan: If I may respond? The chill water you are
absolutely right and we have heard that from you before and we are going to act on it. You
have been unequivocal on it, and projects are in the pipeline. As discussed a report back is
due and we will be able to hopefully report positive on changes.
Chair Furfaro: Quite frankly, I think your presentation showing
Police at being 8% higher, I am sure I am convinced it is probably related to some of those
costs. JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. On slide 2, if we can put on slide 2,
please? You have Kekaha methane, etc...I would like to know how much fossil fuel use we
are going to be replacing with those projects?
Mr. Sullivan: Sure. I do not off the top of my head recall the
conversions.
Chair Furfaro: We can send it as a follow-up.
Mr. Sullivan: Kekaha Landfill we can clarify now that the total
resource if it is all utilized would obviously be optimal about 800,000 diesel gallon
equivalent. That is a baseline and spikes over the production curve. It is not typical that
you could use it all, because it does not work that way.
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Ms. Yukimura: Still, 800,000 gallons of diesel equivalence per
year?
Mr. Sullivan: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: What is the County's diesel usage annually?
Mr. Sullivan: Far less.
Ms. Yukimura: So for how many years average? For 20 years?
Mr. Sullivan: 15-20 years and depends on closure date and
composition.
Ms. Yukimura: The study that is being done should get us more
accurate figures on that?
Mr. Sullivan: Yes, very much.
Ms. Yukimura: I have said before, that will dovetail with our
multimodal transportation plan, because it is been pointed out that 30% of the bus' budget
is fuel costs. If that doubles, we are in big trouble. And it will double over time, if we stay
on fossil fuel.
Mr. Sullivan: That was one of the primary reasons, if I recall
why Mayor green lighted for us to proceed in that direction to talk about the bus as a
resource.
Ms. Yukimura: It is really a great project. So if you could get us
for all the projects how much fossil fuel replacement we will be doing? That will be a very
useful figure and you also said that the Mayor said we are to reduce our energy use by 30%
in how many years?
Mr. Sullivan: Ten years.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. That is a Holo Hobo project goal? I would
like to see it stated out there, so we all know what we are aiming for. It is not articulated
anywhere here. So I just wanted to be clear, but I love those goals. What is the trend of the
island's fossil fuel use, not just internal County, but island wide usage? I am hoping that
those are some of the indicators we will start tracking.
Mr. Sullivan: We certainly can, and I think last time we
discussed this individually, we gave you some data from DBEDT, but I did not include that
in the presentation. My apologies. So we can send that information over to the whole
Council, if you would like.
Ms. Yukimura: Maybe it was with Glenn's presentation, I asked
about some sustainability indicators and maybe then that was for next year. I did not need
it for this year, but use the years' time to identify, even five indicators that are already
measured, hopefully. That might be one of them.
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Mr. Sullivan: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you. I did not get to look at it. This
report has nothing about County's liquid fuel usage.
Mr. Sullivan: You are correct. I would say the three areas that
we are focused on the motor pool is going to in part about accounting for our vehicle use
more closely. There is a potential for slight reduction there. The biggest piece is the landfill
gas and that is a bigger discussion to have at a later date once the study shows more
information.
Ms. Yukimura: Perhaps next year you will have more data to
share with us.
Mr. Sullivan: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: I want to commend you for the motor pool idea
that has been a team effort and looks like we will be getting a lot of benefits out of that.
Fuel use, maintenance, purchases, that is great. Then in your slide 8, top-ten facilities by
use for some reason I was wanting to know the kilowatt usage from year-to-year? So Fiscal
Year 2013 and Fiscal Year 2014 comparisons?
Mr. Sullivan: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: To see what the trends are, up or down on these
large users.
Mr. Sullivan: So you are saying maybe similar to what we
had...like similar to this?
Ms. Yukimura: Right. And maybe that is it.
Mr. Sullivan: It does not break it down by the facility, but just
breaks it down by Department.
Ms. Yukimura: If you stay there for a moment, you are showing
that there is much more change from kilowatts then from cost and that is because of the
counter dynamics of increased use, but decreasing per unit costs, right?
Mr. Sullivan: Per unit costs came down a cent.
Ms. Yukimura: That may not be the projection for this coming
year.
Mr. Sullivan: Correct. It is always a liability. With the good
work that KIUC is doing they are really stalling the inflation and energy costs with a lot of
their projects.
Ms. Yukimura: By shifting to renewables?
Mr. Sullivan: Yes.
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Ms. Yukimura: Right.
Chair Furfaro: While we are on the slide, can I just ask, here is
that slide I was referencing, the 8.7%. When you identify Police, we would be identifying
the building, which is Prosecutor, Police, and Civil Defense.
Mr. Sullivan: The lion's share of that is that facility?
Chair Furfaro: Yes.
Mr. Sullivan: That includes all other Police facilities as well
which are maybe another 15% of that figure.
Chair Furfaro: Got it. I did not take that into consideration.
Thank you.
Ms. Sullivan: You know, this is actually for Keith Suga and
Ernie, but that proposed Police substation in Kapa`a, the drawings that I saw were
frightening in terms of energy use. Because it was going to be built for a 20-30-40-50-year
period and only use a small portion of it to begin with, but it felt like the whole building
was going to be air-conditioned. So those kinds of issues and we were just talking about
KCC and how the Performing Arts Center was tied to the whole campus. I am told it is now
fixed. But you had to turn on the whole campus system to have the energy usage in the
Performing Arts. These kinds of design issues are horrendous in terms of costs and energy
use. So hopefully we are guarding against that in any new facilities that we are going to be
designing and building.
Mr. Sullivan: I appreciate that comment.
Chair Furfaro: We are close to running out of time, JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: Last one, there was a controversial horizontal
drill project for the Water Department. The Department of Water energy costs are among
the highest, between sewage treatment plants and potable water pumps that is one of our
biggest oil-energy users. That project, if it was gravity-flow was going to cut our energy
costs tremendously. So I just want your Department to do the analyses to understand what
values may come out of that in terms of a sustainable future for this island. There are all of
the other issues that have to be fully analyzed, too. But certainly from the energy
standpoint, we need to know and understand it. Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: I will give the floor to Mr. Hooser.
Mr. Hooser: Just to follow-up, I was not clear on the last
request. Whether you can provide an analysis of the horizontal drilling project in terms of
energy?
Mr. Sullivan: My understanding is that there was some
feasibility done and that actually did show the energy savings. So I am not sure exactly
what we could provide in addition to that, but whatever you want to send over, obviously
we will evaluate and provide a response. I do not have more than that.
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Mr. Hooser: Okay. That is what I was just wondering if it is
within your scope of work. It sounds like a lot of work for a project that is not going
anywhere.
Mr. Sullivan: If you send us over some specific questions about
the project, we will do our best to answer them. That is the best I can offer.
Chair Furfaro: We will ask JoAnn to summarize her questions
and send them over. Mr. Hooser is correct at this point, it is only an ad hoc division of the
County, but we believe that project is put on hold. I will be very honest with you, which
also leads me to another question about the money we co-signed for CIP money. If it is not
a live project, what might be our responsibility to have other ways to use that money? And
that money might be used on energy projects. So we will leave it at that for right now. Ben,
George. Thank you for a very interesting presentation. I think one of my expectations is
going to be, 196,000 kilowatt savings at $0.48. That will be a line item in my interest.
Mr. Costa: Thank you, Chair. I want to acknowledge Ben,
because alongside Ben, Melissia Sugai is charged with the leg work of going into each
Department and training them, so that we can delegate the responsibility to each
Department to track their own energy use. Thank you to Ben. At this time I would like to
call up Kaeo Bradford, who is going to present the Workforce Investment Act portion.
Chair Furfaro: George I allocated half an hour for you on this.
Welcome.
KAEO BRADFORD, Workforce Investment Act Administrator: Aloha, Chair
Furfaro, Councilman Rapozo, Councilman Hooser and Councilwoman Yukimura. For the
record, I am the Workforce Investment Act Administrator, Kaeo Bradford. We put up the
picture of the Workforce Development State Employment Division staff that is getting
ready for a job fair and we wanted you to get an idea of who those people are. Anyway,
from the first time I came here to do a presentation last year, I do not think anybody really
knew anything about the WIA. So that is why I brought my folder to the Council last time I
was here. So you could review it beforehand. What I wanted to do was talk about the
different principles. So the Workforce Investment Act was passed in 1998 by President
Clinton and was mandated into law to help with local areas strategic redevelopment and
improvement of local workforce systems. The WIA is basically designed to increase
employment, retention, earnings of participants, increase occupational skill attainment,
and reduce welfare dependency and enhance the productivity and competitiveness of the
area. The seven WIA principles that involves the collaborative work on the island which is
streamlining services, empowering our individuals in universal access. Through our Hire
Net Hawai`i System people can access employment throughout the State, not just Kaua`i
and of course from the mainland. Increase the accountability, strong role for our local
Workforce Investment Board and State and local flexibility and improved youth services on
the island. Again, I am Kaeo. This is the first time...not really the first time, but the
second time I am presenting the WIA program. It has been around, like I said from 1998.
So our Workforce Investment Board that started back in 1998 has gone through a lot of
different challenges. We offer a lot of education and training opportunities for people in the
community and the value of investment for our community continues to grow. So the
KWIB, our board is made up of approximately 30 authorized people that make local
decisions regarding workforce development strategies, the policies of the Workforce
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Investment Act. These members include representatives of business, local educational
entities, labor organizations, community-based organizations, economic development
agencies, and representatives of each of the one-stop partners, which is the Workwise
Kaua`i Americans Job Center. So we have a variety of companies in workforce
development, Alu Like, John Latkiewicz, Michael Machado from ILWU, Sean Mahoney,
Lance JYO the Community School for Adults, Kevin Mince, Rural Development, Lisa
Nakamura the UI Office, Sandy Poehnelt, Layne Shigeta, DVR, Kamika Smith, Lisa Ubay,
Nathan Wood, Mia Ako, Kelly Robinson from the DHS Office, and of course Diane Zachary.
Under the direction of Leialoha Sanchez, our Youth Council Committee. They are very
progressive. They are charged with the responsibility of developing portions of the local
plan related to the youth. They also recommend the providers of youth activities to be
competitively awarded contracts by the local WIBS and they are also responsible for
overseeing all youth activities. These are your Youth Council Committee members who are
very, very active and we have a student representative from Kaua`i High School, Keola
Data. These are the goals, objectives, and accomplishments. What I am tasked to do is to
continue monitoring and reporting all activities that have to do with the WIA. I also have
to report to the Workforce Development Council, which is a State entity with part of the
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. We have to commit to funding for at least
one person or board member to attend the National Association of Workforce Boards
Conference held in Washington, D.C. and the other objective and goal is to look for other
grant opportunities for education, training, and career development for the Kaua`i
community. We also have a lot of veterans that we service on the island and this is
constant every week we make an effort...they have 100% priority when they walk in the
doors for any kind of assistance. You know, job-finding. How to do resumes? If they want
training or education, maybe extended training with certification. Those things are done,
like I said on a continual basis. Continuous basis. Other services for veterans can come in
and ask for assistance from the various programs. We also handle all the job fairs and the
last one we had we hosted 60 participating employers at the Convention Center with over
600 plus job-seekers come in the doors that day. We had several job fairs, Heroes for Hire
Veterans Job Fair, The Energy Team LLC — Biomass Plant job fair that was held at KCC,
and just recently the Kukui Grove Shopping Center had over 100 jobs available, including
newcomers to the scene, Sports Authority and Pier 1 Imports and later on there is another
one coming, I think it is Ross. So the current employment statistics for the island are with
our census, the unemployment rate this past quarter 5.3%, compared to 5.8% in 2013 and
total average employees in the island is currently 28,100. Accommodation and food services
account for 26.2% of the workforce, public administration is 15.5%. Retail is 13.3% of the
workforce right now. This graph that you see is one that comes from the Department of
Labor, State Department of Labor and they showed that Kaua`i as of March 2014 is at
5.3%. As compared to last year, which was 5.8%. However, I wanted to mention that
anywhere on the island, this is just an average figure, but any place on the island you can
go to the West side, the rural sides, the North Shore, and the unemployment rate can be as
high as 7%.
Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, question? I see three people that are
still in the Workforce Investment Board when I was on the Board. One of the big parts was
as our indicators drop for unemployment, so does compensation from the Federal
government?
Ms. Bradford: Yes.
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Chair Furfaro: I have not seen that in your presentation. So
what kind of moneys are we getting from the Federal government right now?
Mr. Costa: It is coming up.
Chair Furfaro: I am sorry, I spoke ahead of myself.
Ms. Bradford: So these are measures, statistics for what we are
doing, because we have to report to the Federal government. They give us common
measures to follow. If you look on this slide, the far left are the goals and measures that
they gave us to follow. And it is a little bit different from the previous years, because they
changed the goals for what they were looking for. What they did, they combined both the
youth and the older youth...the younger and older youth. So it is a little bit different. If
you look at the second column on the left, next to the goal, you are going to see the
measures for just this part quarter, which is not too bad. It is pretty good, if you look at it.
It is pretty much meaning in that 100% range, 90% range. So we are getting there. I
suspect that we are going to have really good results by the end of this year. Other
statistics that we get is compiled by the DOL and sent to our statistical office on what is
happening on Kaua`i. Because they have electronic printouts of everything that comes out
and what is done at our Workforce Development Division, Workwise Kaua`i. These are the
different services that we have available. The top total, 12,484 types of services that were
distributed just for one year and you can go down the whole list.
Chair Furfaro: Kaeo, I want to share with you, this is
slide...looks like 38 or 40 of what is almost 70 slides and we are coming inside of 12 minutes
before our time is pau.
Mr. Costa: She just has three or four more slides and then it
is my turn.
Ms. Bradford: So the one that I had left, the last one...last time
you asked about funding. This is basically what is given to us by the Federal government.
You see the Federal funds have gone down since Fiscal Year 2010 and we suspect it will go
away completely pretty soon.
Chair Furfaro: What percentage of unemployment will make it
go away?
Ms. Bradford: What percentage of unemployment?
Chair Furfaro: If we get down to 4.2%, are we expecting that we
will get no money from the Federal government?
Ms. Bradford: Negotiating with the DOL Office...the State of
Hawaii is negotiating right now to take over all of the funding that all of the Counties
have.
Chair Furfaro: So the State is going after all of it?
Ms. Bradford: They are going to take care of everything.
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Chair Furfaro: That is so unlike the State. Oh, my gosh.
Mr. Costa: One of the things that just recently happened
was in 2009 during the recession, the State office laid-off quite a few employees. And now
they are wanting to basically take the funds allocated to the neighbor islands and their
claim is that they are going to rehire the staff on Oahu and then run the program out of
Oahu. But our concerns and we have shared this with Dwight Takamine, the Director of
the Department of Labor that the type of services, one individual like Kaeo provides on-
island, we do not understand how that would be duplicated from somebody in Honolulu.
Chair Furfaro: George, my comment was sarcasm. Half a
million dollars that the State wants to take and the services get very centralized and we are
not right in the community.
Ms. Bradford: Yes.
Chair Furfaro: Okay.
Ms. Bradford: That was our point that we made to the DLIR
Office and Dwight Takamine. The challenges are that the WIA funds are diminishing and
it is hard to function with the limitations on that. While collaboration...active
collaboration with the State Workforce Development Council and other entities is essential
to secure additional funds for County Workforce Development activities, each potential
grant application requires significant staff time to research and compile meaningful
support data and whether the grant is actually pursued or not? It is a big challenge. While
each new funded grant and program benefits the community, it multiplies the workload for
the Specialist and part-time Accountant who is Kent Hirokawa in the back there. Since
most requires similar intensity of administrative activity and oversight regardless of the
dollars funded. Since typically no additional staff is hired or assigned to oversee these new
program requirements, important program and administrative activities and
responsibilities, especially for our core programs are not completed to the desired level of
execution. Improvement, meaningful collaborations continue with the Work Board
members and community and Youth Council and other organizations within the
community, serving youth. One of the improvements is our hiring at Hawai`i Website
System that helps job-seekers online, as well as business people, employers seeking
employees. So my job as far as improvements is to continue all WIA / WDC monitoring,
reporting and events and continue to support any and all community initiatives and
collaborations with all service providers that have to deal with education and training and
employment in the community. Just more community liaison initiatives and continue to
seek more grants. So basically that is my goal to continue and manage the Workforce
Investment Act and look for more grant opportunities for our County.
Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. Can I ask you and this is
not a deadline for the budget, but within the next 90 days or so, so you write me a little bit
and I will send it over as a question, what grant opportunities do you think are out there?
Ms. Bradford: What grant opportunities?
Chair Furfaro: What grant opportunities do you think that are
out there, if there is a chance that the State of Hawai`i will try to move all of that money
back to Honolulu?
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Ms. Bradford: I have been looking at other Federal grants, too,
that can help.
Chair Furfaro: I would like to know which ones they are,
because it is certainly not a problem for us to write to a couple of Federal people like our
State Congressional Representatives for the State, the Senate and so forth. But I would
like to have an idea in the next 90 days what those opportunities are.
Ms. Bradford: Just so you know, the grants that we just applied
for was accepted and they got it. So we got the verification number and everything and the
tracking number. It was turned in this past Sunday the day before it was due. We are
really happy to do that. If we do get it, it should be about $550,000 and I am crossing my
fingers.
Chair Furfaro: Great work. Outstanding. Thank you for doing
that. Questions for WIA? JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Thank you so much for this briefing
because I think WIA was not really clear to me. Congratulations on making the grant
deadline. I have done grants myself and it is a marathon to get it in on time, but good for
you, and I hope we are successful. I actually do not think I have...well, yes, on page 36 you
said that average annual...total annual average of employees was 28,100. Those are
employees non-duplicated? The number of people who are employees on the island?
Mr. Costa: In the workforce.
Ms. Yukimura: In the workforce and they are unduplicated?
They may have two or three jobs, but you are only counting them once?
Ms. Bradford: I think so, yes.
Mr. Costa: From the State Department of Labor statistics.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay. It looks like...is it your thought that the
trend is a positive one in terms of more job availability for people?
Ms. Bradford: Lately it seems like there are more jobs.
Ms. Yukimura: More availability?
Ms. Bradford: Yes, as opposed to back in 2008-2010, I can
remember when there were only 600 jobs on the island and 2,000 unemployed people
looking for jobs.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, that was 2008 was the big crash.
Ms. Bradford: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: So 2010 we were still really feeling it.
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Ms. Bradford: There is like a real lull, where the unemployment
rate is low, but there are still a lot of people still looking for jobs.
Ms. Yukimura: That is what I wanted to ask about. Are you
finding a disconnect between people looking for jobs and the jobs that are available?
Ms. Bradford: How do you mean by "disconnect?"
Ms. Yukimura: That even though there are jobs available
somehow the people who need jobs are not qualifying for those jobs?
Ms. Bradford: That is why we have the WIA funds to help fund
people for additional training or even their high school diploma, if they do not have it or
maybe further on, if they want to go to college, they can do that. That is what the WIA
funds do for people.
Ms. Yukimura: Okay, that is good. Have you analyzed what the
major barriers are for those seeking employment on Kaua`i?
Ms. Bradford: That is the major barrier.
Ms. Yukimura: What is the major barrier?
Ms. Bradford: The most common problem, I think the biggest
population of people on the island have just a basic high school diploma and the next
highest right under that is just one to three-year vocational degree or certificate.
Ms. Yukimura: Is it the need for higher education credentials
that is one of the biggest barriers?
Ms. Bradford: More training and education and we work in
collaboration with KCC and also the community school for adults to get people in line so
they can get at least their degree or diploma, whatever it is that can help boost their
chances of getting employment.
Ms. Yukimura: Is it also a problem of high school diplomas not
having the qualifications that a high school diploma indicates?
Ms. Bradford: I am sorry, I am not sure what you are asking.
Ms. Yukimura: I understand at KCC, at least 30% or maybe it is
a bigger percentage of those entering KCC from Kaua`i are needing remedial math and
English?
Ms. Bradford: It has been like that for a long time throughout
the whole State.
Ms. Yukimura: Well, what is that telling us? Maybe the source
is not retraining.
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Ms. Bradford: The training needs to start at an earlier age.
That was one of the initiatives that we wrote into our grant that we just submitted to the
Department of Education, start them early, train them early. Teach them how to be
responsible and what is their kuleana is and how to work together with other people,
cooperation, those kind of things. It is really important today.
Ms. Yukimura: So what you are describing actually is not
academic skills, but it is actually life's skills, like showing up for work?
Ms. Bradford: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Knowing how to present yourself.
Ms. Bradford: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: Knowing how to solve problems when you come
into them, whatever the job may be. So how are we addressing that as a community?
Chair Furfaro: You know, I think that might be a nice item to
put on as a Committee discussion. I think we are drifting a little bit from the budget items,
but the bottom line here, I think, JoAnn, is onto something and we should I be having that
as a separate discussion item.
Ms. Yukimura: It may tie in with this whole keiki to career
effort. From what I am gathering it is a serious problem. If it is not about jobs, but it is
about qualifying our people for those jobs.
Ms. Bradford: Yes. Those are the kinds of issues and policies
that our Board goes through all the time. What is the solution to the problem?
Ms. Yukimura: I appreciate the Chair's recognition or awareness
that maybe this is discussion for a later date, but it sounds like a very critical discussion for
our community.
Ms. Bradford: If we get that grant, then maybe we can sit down
and talk about how we can further the discussion on the education piece.
Ms. Yukimura: That would be very good. Thank you very much.
Ms. Bradford: Thank you.
Mr. Costa: Thank you, Kaeo.
Mr. Rapozo: Real quick question...that is fine, I will just ask.
I was more interested in the successes with the veterans and the outreach and that can be
answered at a later time. We will send something over, but I am real curious to know the
numbers of veterans that are...
Ms. Bradford: I can send that information to you.
Mr. Rapozo: I would appreciate that. Thank you.
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Chair Furfaro: I think Mr. Rapozo, we may want to have that as
an agenda item to talk about what services we can really piggy-back on for veterans.
Thank you. George we are really down to the wire.
Mr. Costa: I will try to wrap it up.
Chair Furfaro: I do not know we have 29 minutes left and
everybody is coming to the meeting now. The meeting is almost pau, guys.
Mr. Costa: Thank you, Chair. I will try to wrap this up. You
have heard over the last two presentations many of our projects from the Office of Economic
Development initiatives and just a summary, we manage 42 project initiatives and 28 Holo
Holo 2020 planned projects and 57 County grants and 27 County CPEP grants and 43
Hawai`i Tourism CPEP grants. From a budget perspective every sector had a reduction
between this year's budget and next year's proposed budget. I will just go really quickly
with Glenn Sato, $3,200 reduction. Art Umezu, $2,000 reduction. Workforce Development,
$3,600 reduction. Energy, $18,000 reduction with Ben. Here are some of his grant
initiatives. Basically he is looking for consulting services, and fine tuning our facilities'
energy monitoring program. For the Office of Economic Development from the
Administration side, which includes myself, our Administrative Assistant and our Office of
Economic Development Assistant, as well as Kent Hirokawa our Accountant, we have a
reduction from our sector. There are really only two areas and these are the grants that
fall under our section. The two main ones that we have on here are the Commercial
Kitchen Business Incubator and look at engineering and design expense line item for next
year. Creative Technology Center, which we will be back here on May 7th to present. Other
than that, we continue to fund YWCA Family Violence Center, and the Sexual Assault
Treatment Program. From Agriculture, there are only two sectors that showed increases
from this year to next and in Agriculture basically under "other services," which are the
grants. There is $100,000 grant request to support the Kilauea Ag Park and a breakdown
of the programs. We are basically going from $237,000 to $323,000 next year. These
programs support various agricultural organizations, Hawai`i Tropical Fruit and Flower,
Kaua`i Cattleman's Association, East Kaua`i Water Users, Garden Island RC&D, Kaua`i
Farm Bureau, and also funds the Kauai Grown Program, Kaua`i Invasive Species which
was initially a State program which we continue to fund that very important program, and
also the Kaua`i EBT Program. Malama Kaua`i has stepped forward and they are providing
EBT service in our Sunshine Markets.
Tourism, Nalani Brun and Sue Kanoho were here and presented the Tourism side.
Again this is the main area where we show an increase for the Office of Economic
Development. Here are the list of different grants. A lot of what we are proposing are
either support for infrastructure, like shuttles to clear the traffic and cars on the North
Shore, as well as providing shuttle service for Po`ipu and eventually for the Royal Coconut
Coast. We want to continue to do our CPEP match for product enhancement and special
events and grants. Also supporting two very culturally significant, the Kaua`i Nui Kua
Papa and Ka Aha Hula Halauola Conference which is the 4th World Conference of Hula
which is being hosted on Kauai. We are also providing a grant for off-duty police officers so
that any of these organizations with large festivals and events, they can apply for a grant
to hire off-duty police officers and reduce our overtime component for the Police
Department. Here is a quick recap of other services, which is the grant portion of the Office
of Economic Development budget and it is our main sector for our budget. Again, this
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basically summarizes the grants that I just reviewed with you. Again, only two areas that
showed an increase, Agriculture and Tourism. Here is a recap of the Office of Economic
Development budget. Again, showing a $415,000 increase, which most of that came from
the Tourism increase of the grants there. This is a summary of those Tourism grants. Just
a quick slide that shows the pie chart of where our funding goes and our expenses are in
our Department. Three-year summary that shows most of our expenses decreasing, and
again, the only area that we really showed an increase significantly was on the grants. The
last two slides, we were asked to talk about our personnel and succession planning. This
year, this is the first year since 2009 that we have had a full staff. We have our
Administrative Specialist, Theri Martin-Haumea and our Office of Economic Development
Specialist, which is Melissia Sugai, who is now charged with assisting our six specialists in
our Department. The last thing with succession planning is that we are looking to Bill
Spitz, who is our long time Agricultural Specialist retiring within the next year. That is it.
Thank you very much for your time.
Chair Furfaro: JoAnn is first with her hand up again. JoAnn.
Ms. Yukimura: George you mentioned the Kilauea Ag Park. Is
that in the budget?
Mr. Costa: Yes, that is $100,000 that is part of our
agricultural piece. That is to help support the effort of the Kilauea farmers and Kilauea
community. One of the expense line items you are looking at is to initially install the water
meters and provide water for the first phase of the Ag Park. It is an interim step until they
can develop a non-potable water source that is basically being looked at this time, as well as
maybe some other expenses to help defray, say fuel expenses as they start to grub and clear
the property.
Ms. Yukimura: Have they proposed the plan and budget for this
$100,000.
Mr. Costa: They are actually working on their management
and governance plans right now.
Ms. Yukimura: I mean a plan for this $100,000, because it takes
all the money from the Islandwide Ag Park System and you do not have any other
proposals for the Islandwide Ag...you will not have any other needs for that?
Mr. Costa: Actually, right now, for the water meters we are
looking at about $50,000 to be used out of the $100,000.
Ms. Yukimura: I would like to see a proposed budget, please?
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: And this will be going to a non-profit Malama
Kaua`i?
Mr. Costa: And the Kaua`i Agricultural
Association...Kiilauea Agricultural Association.
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Ms. Yukimura: But it is really Malama Kaua`i is the non-profit,
because KAA is not an organized non-profit.
Mr. Costa: Not yet, they are working on their non-profit.
Ms. Yukimura: That is good. Yes, I mean I would like to see
what the other items are under "Islandwide Ag Park System?"
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Thank you.
Chair Furfaro: George, is it possible that you could turn those
over to us by the end of business day on Friday?
Mr. Costa: Sure.
Chair Furfaro: Very important because we start having
individual meetings before we get the reforecast back from the Mayor. Mr. Hooser, you
have the floor.
Mr. Hooser: I was just going to remind, we had spoken last
time they were going to be coming forward to talk about the detail of the agricultural
proposals and plans moving forward. I want to say it is May 7th.
Chair Furfaro: Right.
Mr. Hooser: Looking forward to that. I had sent over a
written communication asking if it is possible for you to meet with the Farmers Union, as
well as other people in the community to get their ideas? My hope is that the
Administration becomes more aggressive and asks for more to fund viable agricultural
programs. Thank you.
Mr. Costa: Thank you.
Mr. Hooser: Thank you, Chair.
Chair Furfaro: I think Mr. Hooser is asking us to make sure
that we focus on page 57 of your presentation, which details $323,500 as it related to the
projects under Mr. Spitz.
Mr. Costa: Right.
Chair Furfaro: As well as the some narrative that relates to the
Kilauea Park as JoAnn had asked for. We want to get a better idea of that page and those
moneys.
Mr. Hooser: You are absolutely correct that is the key page,
but I would ask the Director to not limit himself to this page, if during his conversations
with the other leaders in the agricultural sector that they come up with additional ideas to
be willing to present those as appropriate. Thank you.
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Chair Furfaro: George, I want to make sure that you
understand, that was not a wish-list I was giving you. The fact of the matter is that the
members of the Council have been instructed by me, if they will add items they also need to
find the money to add items. I think what Mr. Hooser is saying to have a healthy
discussion of what is out there and start with page 57. Did I summarize that all right?
JoAnn, you have the floor again.
Ms. Yukimura: Maybe you described in your narrative, but the
Cattleman's Association grant of$20,000, what is that going to be used for?
Mr. Costa: That grant is split between the Sanchez and
Andrade slaughter facilities to help them upkeep, so that they can continue to be in
compliance with USDA regulations on slaughter, $10,000 for each operation.
Ms. Yukimura: Is it issued on a contractual basis where there
are certain obligations in exchange for those moneys.
Mr. Costa: It is issued to the Kauai Cattleman's Association
and there are requirements that they submit invoices for not to be used for operational
expenses, but more for CIP or improvement of the facilities themselves. A good example is
for, like the Andrade slaughter facilities, they are looking to expand and build a mini
processing area, where they can package their meats and expansion of their chill facility so
that they can go beyond more than just two weeks' of chill. They can expand to at least a
month of chill facility. d•
Ms. Yukimura: That sounds like a good goal for the island. So we
are not giving it out to them per se, it is the Cattleman's Association that is managing the
money?
Mr. Costa: Right.
Ms. Yukimura: And making judgments about what...because
these are public moneys.
Mr. Costa: Yes.
Ms. Yukimura: And they should be made in accordance with a
plan that is coming back in public benefits and I am just wanting to know if that process is
well-developed or well-thought through?
Mr. Costa: Myself and our Accountant reviewed the invoices
that are submitted in a final report for each one of those grants.
Ms. Yukimura: So I would like a report on how the $20,000 from
last year was spent?
Mr. Costa: Okay.
Ms. Yukimura: Please, thank you.
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Chair Furfaro: George, I think I might be the last question here.
And I just want some clarity from page 63. The Tourism increases are $485,000. But on
the breakdown, you have an item here that actually references $110,000 of that $485,000
being used for infrastructure improvements. And I want to get a better understanding of
what you refer to as "infrastructure" versus what might be cosmetic improvements. What
is in that $110,000? If you could expand to me, that might actually...if it is infrastructure,
should be in Public Works, versus if it is signage and other cosmetics, you can just send
something over. Other questions for Economic Development? Okay. George, I am going say
thank you. Thank you.
I was just inform you that there are eight minutes left on the tape and I will not
limit the Mayor for his final comments. So we are going to take a tape break and if the
Mayor chooses to use the rest of the time today it is his privilege. Thank you, George and
we are going to take a 3-minute tape change. Nobody go far.
There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 4:19 p.m.
Bo