2018-10-24 Meeting Minutes (EMC)

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Step 1 is feasibility. This is where the residents approach their councilmember and ask about initiating a resolution to start the process of looking into the feasibility. To determine if it’s feasible, the council will ask the Director of Environmental Management to do a report on it. The report is basically a preliminary engineering report that estimates the cost and what the possible assessment would be for each of the owners. Step 2 is the community’s opportunity to say yea or nay. If the council accepts the feasibility report, a public hearing is to be set up so the people have an opportunity to say yea or nay on whether to proceed with the improvement district. Those who do not agree need to provide written disapproval. If 51% of the people within the proposed improvement district boundary provide written disapproval, then it fails. If there is a silent majority that do not say no, it would go through. The 51% binds 100% of the residents. As long as there isn’t 51% disapproving, then everybody benefiting within that improvement district is subject to the assessment. Step 3 involves the council passing another resolution to authorize the design. With the detailed engineering design, the project goes out to bid, and then there is a firm cost to lock in what the assessment would be. With the Lono Kona Sewer Improvement District, the county had a great partner with USDA Rural Development, which has a water and wastewater loan and grant program. Once you have the final bid cost, the final assessment and who will be subject to it can be locked in. If it turns out to be more than 10% of the estimate of what it would be when it went to the public hearing where people said yea or nay, it will have to go back for another public hearing to see if the people are still in favor of proceeding. If everything is a go, it gets locked in by an ordinance, and there is also a bond ordinance that secures the loan portion. Discussion was held on what types of systems could seek to become improvement districts and whether public-private partnerships have been explored. Mr. Takemoto said they are exploring public-private partnerships where the collection systems would be public but would feed into a private treatment plant. It is still being looked into. He explained that the assessment cost is only one portion of the total cost burden. People will also have monthly sewer fees and the cost to connect from the house to the lateral. If they have an existing cesspool or septic system, there is also a cost to close it down. These are costs the improvement district cannot cover. Chair Bennett said the clock is ticking, and the state has a mandate for closure of private cesspools. It is his opinion that the county should move forward aggressively to find ways of using public-private partnerships to utilize the capacity of the Heʻeia Treatment Plant. In today’s newspaper, Kamehameha Investment Group announced a very large high-end subdivision that will be mauka of the bypass road. It will most likely be sewered, which means a sewer line needs to be run from there to the treatment plant, passing many private non-sewered residences along the way. It will take a public-private partnership to get those residences on board with sewering. He would like to recommend the county and DEM move forward aggressively in trying to find a way to make public- private partnerships a priority.