2021-11-24 EMC draft minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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at Hilo College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resource Management, Bruce Mathews, about the option there for education as well as the requirement needed to be in the work force before being hired for certain DEM positions. But we are still talking. Vice Chair Gaffney said the sewering of Honokhau Small Boat Harbor is proceeding. $2.2 million has been released for the planning and hopefully that will take us into the bid process. It is not enough money to do the job, but it is enough to get it designed and move it forward. We have a strong commitment from the Department of Land and Natural Resources to get that done. Chair Adams explained that these were the priorities that we set at the beginning of the year, that were personal efforts we each were trying to make to keep things moving along outside the meetings. Because this is our last meeting of the year, we will pick this back up in January and see if you find them to be of value, and whether you would like to keep working on them, or if you want to revise them, or move on, she said. b. Status report on action items from previous meeting 1 i. Continued review of solid waste funding options and recommendations, if any, to DEM and the Council. This is a continuation of the discussion in the October 2021 meeting, Chair Adams said. A request was made to continue talking about the solid waste funding options paper that we looked at last time. She had added in the comments that were made at the time. If anyone had made additional thoughts, and if there is a reason to put together some specific recommendations to DEM or the Council, we can consider them. Were there specific things Commissioners wanted to talk about? Commissioner McIntosh said he wasnt sure if it would fall under the enterprise fund category, but if the County had set aside a certain percentage (such as the 2 percent of property tax collections that goes toward the Public Access, Open Space, and Natural Resources Preservation Fund) of funding for the operations of the wastewater and solid waste divisions, that might be another alternative to consider. Director Mansour was asked about how the funding amounts for Solid Waste Division are decided. The Director said the Finance Department gives instructions on preparing the budget, starting with a status quo budget. What you do is go around the numbers regarding salaries, wages, and expenses, and everything we have done this year, and we have to maintain the same bottom-line dollar figure. That does not consider inflation or any other contractual obligation. Once we do that, we determine the shortage. You cannot stay status quo without adding inflation and the contractual obligations. Currently we are about $1.5 million short, so that means our services are going to be impacted. So we have to do a supplement. We have to fill out certain forms and justify why we cannot stay status quo, or we need to offset the additional contractual obligations and inflation. Usually the Solid Waste Fund receives a certain 1 Solid waste funding options: http://records.hawaiicounty.gov/weblink/DocView.aspx?dbid=1&id=113227 3