MIN CHARTER 2018-08-10 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -2 August 10, 2018 I recognize that you may not have considered that, but it's been an ongoing concern that the department is frequently not collecting as much as it should in order to cover the cost of operations. Particularly Wastewater has fallen behind because the fees have not been raised since 2002, I think is the last time they were amended. I know there has been an ongoing fee study. But I was just wondering whether the commission should have more than just the authority to hear appeals from decisions of the Director. MR. KUCHARSKI: That is a good question. My personal belief is that the authority to raise fees and to impose costs on the public should be from elected officials. I would think the Council is the appropriate venue for increasing the fees. A recommendation from the commission would be helpful, but I would—I personally don't think it's good policy to have an appointed, non -elected group setting fees for external users. MS. TODD: Okay, what do you think about trying to make the department semi- autonomous, similar to Board of Water Supply since it's really operational? MR. KUCHARSKI: Again, I think the system operates fairly well, and I'm not certain that there's an advantage to being semi -autonomous other than having a board that would review some of the senior people. In that regard, it might be good to have the appointed personnel there corning in outside of the political process. But other than that, I'm not certain that there is overwhelming benefit to changing the current system. MS. TODD: Okay, another question. I think I probably have more questions having previously been in the department. Another thought. Both Solid Waste and Wastewater were previously part of the Department of Public Works. Then the thought was to kind of carve them off so that they could have better funding. But that's had some downsides. The ability of some of the employees to transfer and apply for other positions. Previously if you worked at Solid Waste or Wastewater if there were openings within Public Works, you could within the department move. So it's really impacted the ability of employees to move to other positions. Also, as you're moving forward and going into recycled water, because the plans are for Kealakehe, then I've wondered whether we should be following more of a model like Oahu and taking a look at whether Wastewater should be combined with Water Supply. Because it's a very different operation to deliver and charge fees for the recycled. water. The operation is very different from what you currently do with Wastewater, which is basically gravity flow. If you're going to do and switch over to recycled water, you're going to have to have entirely different types of systems, which are more comparable to what Water Supply does. Page 14