21-04-28 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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approved. She learned it was $50,000 to do this life cycle analysis, which is not a lot of money. If there’s no money, there’s no money. But it’s frustrating for her and for most of us when we havethese goals. Chair Adams was on the SWAC, which came up with these goals, and presented them, and because of money it is not accomplished. But if we want to move forward, this is the exact information that we need to determine whether our programs are doing more than good. One of the examples is shipping our cardboard to Taiwan. Not only is the environmental impact pretty large and we could use that cardboard here for composting projects. That would come up in this life cycle analysis and we would have the science to back up our decision-making process. Would it be helpful to draft a letter to County Council, something in support of passing the budget so something like this could be approved? Maybe that could be something we could do. Chair Adams asked whether there would be any advantage to having the EMC send a letter of support to Council members. Director Mansour said he would leave that up to the Commission. This year the Solid Waste Division is coming up $1.8 million short, so now we have to figure out how to offset that. With the next year’s budget the idea is to continue with a “status quo” budget. So that should cover the revenue shortfall. Anything helps, but everyone in the Council understands that our Departments really need the funding. Chair Adams said the Council would expect the EMC to support funding, and if we had to go through and line-item different things, she’s not sure if the Commission is prepared to do that. Director Mansour said the initial letter to the Council is going to send a message about the Department’s financial state. You already have the message sent, he said. Commissioner Olson reiterated that the Commission came into being by the vote of the eligible voters of Hawai‘i County. This is not a creation of government in and of itself, so the majority of the people on the island at this time believed that this body would improve their overall well- being. That’s what we are here to do. In terms of handling our waste stream and our wastewater. So step up to the plate. Chair Adams said what she was asking is whether there is something specific to this proposed budget that we are prepared to comment on, and if so we need a copy of the budget, to go through it. Commissioner Olson said the Department has produced budgets based on what they need to do. And we have to this point supported what they believe they need to do to accomplish their job. So the question is, are we satisfied with the work that has been done, and it sounds like we are supportive of it. And now it’s up to the Council to figure out where they are going to get the money to do it. 12