107 and move it to the county uh to the council.

We have a motion to forward Bill 107 to council with a favorable recommendation by Mr.

O'Nishi and a second by Ms.

Galimba.

Um before we go on into discussion, I'd like to welcome up uh Chief Henderson, Royd Henderson here to kind of give us a breakdown and some background on this uh amendment to the fire code.

Thank you, Chief, for joining us here in Kona.

Good morning, guys.

If you test the the green button there, the big button, and introduce yourself and the floor is yours.

Okay, I am battalion chief Roy Henderson with the Hawaii Fire Department.

Thank you guys for having us today.

I appreciate you guys bringing this to the council.

Um what we're trying to do right now is simplify our county code.

So I am up for questions or any concerns.

Any specifics, Chief, you wanted to talk about in terms of specifically.

So I brought an example.

We a little bit of background to make it real quick.

So the code works in three phases essentially.

So it starts at a national level, then it goes down to the state level, and then finally at the county level, so much like other things.

But what happens is as the process of that in that happening, it makes it difficult for some of the designers to do their job because essentially in that process, it gets confusing because who's adopting what and when these things change during the seasons, what we're trying to do with this particular code is say when we work on the state level, we're gonna just adopt it when the state adopts it.

And mainly because with the state amendments, we come together as all of the counties and actually put in our amendments instead of doing it here at the county level, we're just gonna do it at the state level.

And um essentially what we found in the past is that people would have trouble designing projects and have to go back and redesign things based on when we adopt certain codes.

So, in an effort to try and make it a lot easier for the public and designers in general, is we decided to just basically stay hey when the state adopts it, we're we're game, and we've set our piece and we'll move on.

So kind of the basic of it.

Yeah, appreciate that pieces of it.

Any questions from the members?

Councilman Runishi.

Thank you, Chip.

That sounds great.

You know, with a lot of commercial right plans that come in, right?

And that's where the confusion is right here.

Yeah, for sure.

The other thing I have, um, have you folks, I guess, worked on about the pressure of water that's needed?

Right, because I guess it's a 2000 P SI or P T I or yes, the GPMs.

Yeah, so the thing is is that the county standard of water from the water department is actually in the planning code section.

And so on our end, that's why we wanted to adopt our actual code, because on the code it changes per the project.

Because some districts, let's be honest, are commercial, but they don't have the infrastructure for it.

And so if you stick to a certain you know, standard, whatever it is, um, for that project, it could present challenges.

And so sometimes we run into those issues where we have to work with people anyways, and so for something like that, we in our code, it actually changes per the building type or building size or the or like what you're gonna use it for, right?

So we don't end up in a space where it's this or you can't do your thing.

Right.

Um, and I think more so the reason why we want to simplify our code on the county side is because we run into the same thing all the time where it's uh we're not sure, go call Royd and see if he can help us, right?

Or our our team, right?

Call Ed or Jay or whoever's doing it.

So, really what it boils on to is because in the code it gives us the ability to help people anyways with particular projects, we don't want to make it any more complicated than it needs to be.

So, for something like water, it there's so many different ways we can attack that.

Oh, good you know, to help people out, right?

Because ultimately we understand, right?

Is if we don't help the community girl, I mean, right?

We're all stuck in the mud, right?

So yeah, ultimately, our job is to push the push everything forward with that CFD aspect in mind.

So something like that, we always work with people anyway, so it's not too much.

No, you guys don't, which you know, I appreciate that.

But just for mirror that, you know, like certain areas.

I mean, it's like they only have like a six-inch or something smaller, and so you know, in order them to do a project, then they would have to dig up that whole lines, which can be costing millions of dollars, and they ain't gonna be able to recoup their expense, right?

And so that's great to hear.

Thank you for sure.

And and to be honest, on the flip side of that is we've appreciated all the support from you guys, you know, over the years with extra tanker trucks and those things because those things actually give us the leverage to say, well, we have movable water trucks now, so we can kind of work in that you know, sense.

So it helps a lot when we're doing projects.

And and you know, I've noticed too, you know, with the the recent with um, I guess BC um.

I mean, that that uh fire prevention, you folks really became more friendlier and more helpful.