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Home My WebLink AboutCOM 0040.001 2024-2026HEATHER L. KIMBALL Council District 1 (North Hilo, Hamakua, and portion of Waimea) MEMORANDUM DATE: TO: Phone: (808) 961-8828 Fax: (808) 961-8912 Email: Heather.Kimhall@hawaiicounty.gov HAWAI`I COUNTY COUNCIL 25 Aupuni Street, Ste. 1402. Hilo, Hawaii 96720 July 1, 2025 Dr. Holeka Goro Inaba, Council Chair and Members of the Hawaii County Council FROM: SCXq � Heather L. Kimball, Council Member Council District 1 �1 n C:):n c=o < tv CD—c �nc; 3 �rn N SUBJECT: Approved Minutes of the Hawaii State Association of Counties Executive Committee Meeting held on April 25, 2025 Please find attached, the approved minutes of the Hawaii State Association of Counties Executive Committee Meeting held on Friday, April 25, 2025 Please place these matters on the agenda for the next appropriate Committee. HK/scm Comm. No&* Hawai `i County is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer.Ref. To: Ref. Data 11L 3 2015 Hawaii State Association of Counties (HSAC) Counties of Kauai, Maui, Hawaii, and City & County of Honolulu Website: hawaiicounties.g=; Email: hsacaa.hawaiicounties.org cz MINUTES HSAC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETING FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025 12:00 P.M., or soon thereafter Via Videoconference King Zoom link Meeting ID: 842 1618 5537 Passcode: 612212 f Honolulu Honolulu, Hawaii 96813 .• orEM—Wre012 CHawaii,u �;G� TY bFt�li 25 Aupuni Street, Suite 2409, Hilo, Hawi`, 96�72,0 7 e 4ti :. County of Kauai 0 4396 Rice Street, Suite 20.9, Lhu`e, Kauai, Hawaii 96766 County of Maui,\ 200 S. High Street, Wailuku, lViaui, Hawai`i�9,6793 Raw a •r�;Yn-s�_..a . Attendees: President Heather Kimball, Vice President Tamara Paltin, Treasurer- Math : eyer, Secretary Bernard Carvalho, Nahelani Parsons, Kamakan'a Watanabe, Sheila Lee, .Jade Tanigawa.', CM Jenn Kagiwada, Letani Peltier MegantMoniz, Kasie Apo Takayama, CM Felicia Cowden, Kasie Apo Takayama. 1. CALL TO ORDER `~ I 11: 07 am 2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA April 25, 2025, HSAC Executive Committee Meeting Minutes Page 1 2 Sass"TE�s` a 9 O'CCOUNT� Agenda approved. 3. MINUTES a. February 14, 2025 Executive Committee Meeting b. March 21, 2025 Executive Committee Meeting Minutes approved. 4. REPORTS a. Treasurer's Report CM Weyer: I stand on the written report. Motion approved to receive treasurer reports. b. County Reports: i. County of Hawaii 11 CM Kimball / CM Kagiwada: Written report sent earlier today. Highlighting bill 21 relating to nepotism. We're adding a nepotism clause into our ethics code. And we're adopting basically the State's language around nepotism. HSAC conference for Sept 10-12. We will be offering a 2 person scramble golf tournament. The theme is resilient counties, resilient communities - if you have any recs on speakers please let me know. We were going to do a video project, but decided to pull back from that and instead have a panel about disaster response. Tamara, would like to have you on panel to talk about Lahania, still looking for someone from each county. Registration should be live next week online. We would like to do something meaningful/appropriate as well for Sept 11 th. Women's legislator luncheon on Friday the 12th. Working on sponsorship for both the golf tournament and conference itself. ii. County of Kauai CMCarvalho: We've had several bills regarding our land areas and stuffparcels located near housing projects. The other ones are pretty much more for our budget stuff that is on the table right now. Everything is moving forward, and I stand on my written report. iii. County of Maui April 25, 2025, HSAC Executive Committee Meeting Minutes Page 1 3 a�sSPSEA4s°Gq 3 � 6 court`e CMPaltin: We didn't send a written report because we've just been in our budget this whole time kind of talking in circles. The mayor presented us with a 1.6 billion dollar budget. The way we've traditionally done it has been, go through, make cuts, make ads. And at this point, as of today we're 36 million dollars over the mayor's budget. And the mayor's budget does not include the 1.6 billion Cdbgdr funds. I'm not sure how this is all gonna play out, it seems like tonight might be a very long night, because we just added another 25 million this morning for a workforce housing project in South Maui, 175 units. We are working on a project labor agreement that some of the workforce has brought to me to try and hire local workforce first. We're trying to ensure that all projects that the county puts out to bid over $500, 000 hires local workers. iv. City and County of Honolulu CM Weyer: I'll largely stand on our written report. We do have some RPT as well. One that's looking at just kind of reexamining some of the exemptions. More recently, after just having this conversation for a couple of years, we have been trying to keep bumping up our low income tax credit which is just capping it at 3% so we bumped it up from $ 60, 000 to $80, 000 households. We did get our empty homes tax report back just a few days ago. It got deferred at 3rd reading. We also have a couple of bills adjusting the language in our Fiscal Stability Fund. Aside from the budget issues I brought up, I think one of the big conversations is the sewer fee increase. It has been proposed, which would be probably a little over a hundred percent over the next 10 years. So maybe 8 to 12% a year So we've been looking at ways we can offset that with the rebate program. We just added Bangkok as another sister city. Motion to accept county reports. Approved. c. NACo Report Nothing submitted. d. WIR Report CMPaltin: Shane and I will be going to WIR South Dakota. e. Executive Director Report N Parsons: will stand on my written report. CM Kimball and I will be heading to DC next week to attend the NA CO opioid settlement conference. f. Legislative Report April 25, 2025., HSAC Executive Committee Meeting Minutes Page 1 4 N Parsons: Big ones up today: HB860 - The road in limbo bill, rolled to 2pm today. SB38 - did pass. They did not adopt our language, but added a preamble. HB1161 - Road usage surcharge bill. There is language that would allow counties the authority to collect that fee (doesn t come into effect for 3 years). also tracking HB740 (struggling). HB613 (supporting it) Lots of wins and conversations about interim working groups about property tax with Yamashita, Nakamura, LeeLoy, etc. Motion to accept NACo, WIR, ED, and Leg reports. Approved. 5. UNFINISHED BUSINESS a. Discussion of NACo presidential appointments. Applications due by April 30, 2025. CM Kimball: Supporting Fresh Onishi for NA Co board if no one else is interested. Motion to support Fresh Onishi for NA Co presidential appointment. Approved. b. Discussion of the 2026 WIR conference and the 2026 HSAC annual conference on Maui. Moving 2026 to Kauai would be hard for Kauai. Will revisit the next meeting. 6. NEW BUSINESS a. Discussion on real property tax rates across the state. Long discussion between counties on vacancy tax, property tax, vacation rentals, house value vs property value, tiers, workforce, affordable rental program, longterm effects. CMKimball. So the Lincoln Institute is one of the best resources that I've found for articles. Peer reviewed articles and policy papers, white papers around real property taxes of all different types. IAAO conference coming up, last year I was just blown away by the wealth of information that is out there about property taxes. CMKagiwada: Taxcuthawaii.org April 25, 2025, HSAC Executive Committee Meeting Minutes Page 1 5 3 ' 6 CM Weyer: Zoom for all council members on this topic to get cohesive framing and messaging. NParsons: Scheduling meetings with Yamashita to discuss this issue. b. HSAC legislative timeline. NParsons: Last HSAC legislative meeting will be this coming Monday, 5128125, 12noon 7. ANNOUNCEMENTS a. Scheduling of the next Executive Committee meeting. Next EC meeting: Friday, May 30th - noon June EC meeting- On Kauai: Friday, June 20th (first choice), 27th (second choice) - time TBD 8. ADJOURNMENT 1:21 adjourned.