2014-12-04 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

Home

Ms. Beck: Especially when we’re told not to buy any more new vehicles, so we just use the same vehicles over and over. Ms. Leithead-Todd: We’re doing a lot of repairs and maintenance. Ms. Maddox: So you just have to keep repairs and maintenance, increasing. Ms. Beck: So then right. And then the repair and maintenance obviously goes up each year as your vehicle gets older. Ms. Leithead-Todd: We need to address revenues for the department, in particularly for wastewater because they are, it’s been so long and they have lots of projects ahead of them. And the other reason that you need to address it is, if we want to add additional staff, their salaries and wages need to be covered by an increase in the fees too. Ms. Maddox: So if you look at the increase in demand for your services in that same period of time, the additional homes that have been built or the additional facilities or the additional haulers and trash. Ms. Beck: It’s not so much the demand because demand, the population isn’t really growing that fast. I think what it is, is the infrastructure like when I say infrastructure I’m talking about the sewer pipes and the treatment facilities and the pump stations, they’re getting older and so we basically need some revenues to do some upgrades or replacements or repairs and that’s what our repair and replacement account budget is for to address those kinds of situations. But if you, but if there’s the need is just in routine maintenance operation of the plants and the facilities then that kind of takes away from the repair and replacement line item of the budget. Ms. Maddox: Thank you. Ms. Leithead-Todd: You have to think of her pipes as kind of a hostile environment and so you have corrosive environment and because of our permits and the concern over any leaks, she’s got to go in with cameras, they have to go check the lines all the time and if there’s a leak you got to go in and repair it, you can’t say we’ll put it on our list of projects to get to and so you need the ability to have funds that you can go to, to handle that, but that also means that you have to routinely go out and try to get ahead of the curve before stuff corrodes, before it becomes an issue otherwise you’re in danger of sewer leak, sewage spill. Ms. Beck: Just to give you a perspective, the age of the collection system, sewer collection systems in downtown Hilo, those were built in 1900s, early 1900s. So I guarantee you a lot of the problem, a good portion of those, for example, the laterals which are made of cast iron pipe which gets brittle, very brittle over time. A lot of those are probably compromised and leaking. Ms. Leithead-Todd: If you take an area like Hāla‘i Hill, you’re talking ceramic pipes because those go back to the 1930s I think, when we were looking at some of the documents. 5