2019-02-27 BDHRA Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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our Chapter 343 review, which includes the EIS or EA review, most likely EIS. And the kicker with this one is no funds shall be made available until the County also provides matching funds not only for this fiscal year, $250 thousand, but the next also for $250 thousand. So it's a caveat. They're really only going to put forth, allow us to take that ten percent if the County's willing to put up that extra money, the money matching. Although it seems the ten percent might exceed that $250 thousand, although I couldn't find exact numbers. Maybe Gordon could help us with that. The Ways and Means have recommended the measure be passed with amendments, so there's a draft one of this bill that's been put forth. And I could go over, I'll be going over some of the changes from the drafts at the end here. DLNR opposes this; again, they remind us that they've spent a lot of money from the Special Land Development Fund to consultants. The County, they made a pretty bold statement that the County should fund its own portion of the redevelopment efforts. They think that diverting lease revenue to BDHRA would supposedly negatively impact DLNR operations and would not be a fair allocation of resources between the County and State. So they came up pretty far hard against 914. Mayor's Office of course supports that, but states that the current County budget is strapped, we all know due to a number of issues. And that they hope that, the Mayor hopes that the State will fund the EIS because that's really the sticking point where we're at right now we need in order to move forward, and he's kind of just said that it'd be difficult right now for the County to match those things. The Oahu County Committee on legislative priorities for the Democratic Party came in support of this measure. They had no comments. This is the big one, House Bill 1219. This is related to public lands and essentially designates a redevelopment district for any area of public lands, not just Banyan Drive, but any area across the state. And also does name the Waiakea Peninsula as the Waiakea Peninsula Redevelopment District. They put that in not only as a general idea, but then Waiakea specifically so it's been stated though this bill. It seems to be the, one of the primary focus, but not the entire focus of this bill. So it's to include all public lands to allow redevelopment districts to be established. They want to make sure that they implement and establish guidelines for redevelopment. Then I've just put forth a couple important ones: modernize policies; update policies, which we are always trying to do; establish a plan for the redevelopment area, again a no-brainer; and then implement the property management concepts that optimize income, and that's something that DLNRs been struggling with for a few years. DLNR opposes the bill because they say that it creates an additional layer of bureaucracy in our government. A new layer of redevelopment process in addition to the task force and the BDHRA might overwhelm the system and nothing may get done, is kind of how they framed it. A redevelopment district designated by the Leg does not include the County's infrastructure improvements, the County's interests. They feel that that would get left out and so would be in the same place where DLNR and the County would have to kind of fund their own sections. You can kind of take that as what, but instead the district would be confined to just DNLR like I said previously, DLNRs own lands. And they remind us again that the DLNR relies on revenues from the leases to operate. The Attorney General's Office actually asked to amend or recommend amend or defer their comments related to the lease section of this bill. Now, note right off the bat that that section was taken out in the second draft, or the first draft of this bill, so they followed the State Attorney General's recommendation to kind of remove the lease language out of this bill and keep it as it is for State lands. So they, you know, kind of talk about the renewal and renegotiation of existing leases could kind of not really be in line with the laws in place, but it appears that that whole section was just completely removed during that first draft so they followed the AG's opinion. Budget and Finance, they Page 4 of 15 Banyan Drive Hawaii Redevelopment Agency February 27,2019 Minutes