1999-12-04 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 12-04-99Page 21 of 39 HERKES: I attended three of those sessions in three different neighborhoods and I found that they were way off base from where I thought we should go. They were into garbage pick up, which, in Kona, is ridiculous. They were into charging fees, which is, to me, not the way to go. The fact is, we pay for waste disposal. We pay with our taxes. I would love to have a line on your property tax bill that says this part of your property tax goes for waste disposal. I think that everybody would know that they are paying a big chunk of money for waste disposal, and also the County would know how much they’re paying for waste disposal, because they are paying for it now, and there’s no reason to charge a fee. There’s no reason to charge a commercial hauler. They are picking up our garbage and disposing of it. We pay for our taxes in order to have that done. Now, I like your Environmental Department because I think that does the same thing that Public Safety Department, and the Department of Permitting, is that it’s a management tool. We’re managing our waste through environment safety. We’re managing our wastewater. We can manage our garbage. We can recycle. We can look at alternatives. You might even want to put the electric company under there. That’s an environmental. MARTIN: Private entity? HERKES: Yes. I’m on their integrated resource planning. That’s different. We use less fossil fuel. There’s a bunch of stuff that could be managed in that, and I like the Commission idea because the Commission brings the private sector into management. If you put the right people on the Commission, they are people that are in business to do this kind of waste disposal. So, I like some of the things. I don’t like your reasons for doing it. SANTANGELO: Which are? HERKES: I don’t like the reasons that you’ve given for having a Commission. SANTANGELO: Which ones? All of them? HERKES: The fact that you have to figure out how to do sewers, and have to figure out how to do this. SANTANGELO: No, fees. HERKES: Because the County Council won’t do it. That’s no reason to have a Commission. The reason to have a Commission is to manage it better. The fact is that we are all willing to pay for sewers because we know that that protects our water supply, and our water supply is really important to us. No matter how these people scream and holler, and they love to scream and holler, but the fact is that it’s protecting their water supply, like everybody’s water supply. SANTANGELO: I have a couple of questions, Marni, if I could, real quick. How are you paying for sewers? HERKES: I don’t own - I guess I do own a piece of the property in Volcano. I don’t own any other property. SANTANGELO: But they don’t pay for sewers up there. IRVINE: Nobody pays for sewers except those of us who have a pipe in front of our house. HERKES: That’s all right. IRVINE: It’s all right by you. You don’t have a pipe in front of your house. SANTANGELO: So, it’s just that, duties and - RAY: I think what we’re trying to focus on is would a Commission help in terms of dealing with these dynamics, and in terms of planning, in terms of administration, in terms of fee structure. That’s what we just threw out on the table for discussion. Let John finish. SANTANGELO: A real quick thing. Just to read a couple of these things. The primary responsibility of this committee, or Commission, is to recommend actions to the Department of Public Works regarding solid waste management or environmental issues which the committee has reviewed and warrant the department’s consideration. It’s just putting something there that does liaison between the two, and again, it was wrong of me to bring up the pay-as-you-throw issue, which was separate from Recycle Hawaii, and I did work with that myself. If it comes, you’d want a Commission, I think, to file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 12-04-99.html7/1/2011