CHC 1979-02-06 - Laserfiche WebLink

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day to day communication with the mayor. I believe under the provision of the Charter if the Water Department through the Water Commission wishes, they may elect not necessarily to follow the general program that the county has established. I haven 't seen that happen, thus far, but the possibility does exist. Generally speaking, I would venture to say that in terms of coordination, perhaps there should be a very deep study by this Charter Commission as to the status of the Water Commission and the Water Department in terms of its effectiveness in coordinating its program with the county program. Certainly, I think that in certain cases there are advantages to the county, if this is done. MR. CADINHA: Thank you, Mr. Harada. MR. TRULSON: Sir, I notice your department is funded through five separate sources. Just for my own clarification, I would somehow tend to put, outside of the funding part, the sewer with the water. Why is it separated? Why is the sewer in the Public Works and not in the Water? MR. HARADA: Primarily, I think the structure is dIctated by the Charter, itself. There has been discussion from time to time. There I been attempts by the State Legislature, for that matter, to marry the sewer and water activity. This was tried some years ago by the City and County of Honolulu and I think it was overturned by the action of the City Council, at that time. Certainly, there are certain merits that go with putting sewer under water. Because of that certain activities are at the present time being coordinated with water. For example, the sewer billings are processed through the Water Department because they have the capacity to do so. There has been discussion, in the past, that the 'activity:'should be further pursued by having the Water Department take over the whole sewer billing-collection operation. There have been problems currently with the collection and billing because they bill and we collect. In terms of properly aging the billing, for example, that there have been some difficulties. Which, I think, would be improved by putting it under one structure. MR. TRULSON: It wouldn ' t be a question of coordinating one with the other if it were under one. MR. HARADA: That is right. And one other advantage that we looked at is that when a person doesn ' t pay his sewer bill there isn ' t very much we can do about it. We can ' t turn his sewer off. But, in-:;the event that the sewer and water billings are put together conjunctively if a guy doesn ' t pay his sewer bill , you turn off his water. This may sound kind of crazy but that is how the City and County of Honolulu operates. It is all under one operation and the rules acid regulations of the Water Division gives them the authority to turn the water off in case the sewer billings are not paid. -18-