2019-11-15 HCHA Approved Minutes

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Special HCHA meeting November 15, 2019 Le: Urn so the one section of the action plan that we've put pen to paper on has started with the housing program, so looking at buy-outs. Looking at business aspects of it, its...its...definitely somethings that's on the table and something we've been talking about internally corning out of the kinda needs assessment and opportunities assessment that our kinda of consultants whose leading the economic plan, the Institute for Sustainable(?) Development, they are pulling together. I've seen small business loan or grants programs work successfully, even with certain challenges, in other jurisdictions and I think there's an opportunity here in Hawaii County. I also think that part of it is, you know, understanding, of course, were the lava erupted and where kind of folks were directly displaced. But al...while also acknowledging that the economic impacts were felt island wide. And so, we look to work with business stakeholders, community members, you all as council leadership to land where we can with not only the CDBG-DR funding but also other fundings that may be available urn tied to a disaster or just leveraging these dollars to kind of catalyze other economic development opportunities. Kanealii-Kleinfelder: Yeah this, when we first started the discussion on how to recover from the disaster, it was very, Leilani, Pdhoa, Puna focused but it was realizing like we all realized very quickly that Volcano, had taken a HUGE economic hit... Le: Ummhmm. Right. Kanealii-Kleinfelder: ....to where there's between the short term vacation rentals to... ??: can't hear you. Kanealii-Kleinfelder: ....between short term vacation rentals to ah the lack of lava and the state...or the national park. And when we realized that it was an entire corridor that had been removed kind of financially from the picture maybe not a direct lava impact like Leilani Estates but you can see the impact now and it continues so. Although it would benefit us and the rest of the island, I mean there's very key areas that would benefit from a business approach. And being that business support a lot of workers and pay a lot of taxes it's in our best interest to help them out. Le: I would agree and really HUD did our island a favor by acknowledging that the mid-earned, the kind of most impacted and distressed area for these specific DR dollars would be...could be used island wide. So we have that...that area to look at. Kanealii-Kleinfelder: Okay. Thank you. Page 29 of 31