The Hawaii County Council held a special finance hearing on April 16, 2026, to review the proposed fiscal year 2027 budgets for the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Parks and Recreation, Office of Aging, County Auditor, County Clerk, and Mass Transit Agency. Council members questioned department heads on staffing, capital projects, rate structures, and program performance, with several commitments to follow up on specific issues.
Aloha, welcome back. We are in a special finance hearings calling this meeting out of recess. Our next department joining us this morning is the Department of Environmental Management. Director, when you're ready, please introduce yourself, introduce your team, and thank you all for being here this morning. Remember to push your for everyone just push your the green button, which turns the mic on when it goes red, you're live and you're being recorded. And that way our folks who are joining us in Kona can hear us as well. Thank you. Well, good morning, everybody. Our team this morning has four people myself, Dan Gervin, and uh Robin Bauman, and we have Chris Lande and Mike. So uh hopefully we'll be able to answer all your questions for that group of people. Uh we'll go through our um our presentation here. There we go. Well, in uh over the last year uh we have uh transported nearly 87,000 tons of uh waste and refuse. Uh the landfill has accepted uh 214,000 tons of refuse. The um our maintenance crew has cleaned uh 36 miles of sewer lines, and we have processed 1,357 abandoned cars, and uh 437 of those were uh disposed of. As far as uh fiscal year 27 goes, some of our goals are to uh complete construction at the Pahala wastewater collection system. There's really two phases to that. The uh collection system, which is well underway. Uh as of yesterday, I think the estimate was that it's 40% complete, and that that will be uh finished this fall. We have just recently started construction on the wastewater treatment plant. I believe they are clearing trees on the construction site at this point. The contract's been awarded, and that will go forward over the next couple of years of construction. The um eye uh main force main line is again well underway, and that will be done early this fall. That needs to be done in time for the Iron Man competition that takes place in Kona, and so we'll be well ahead of that. An item that we'll be coming to you with later this year is a new rate structure for sewer fees. Uh, the current rate structure does not fully cover our ongoing operating expenses. And uh what one of the questions I heard here on Tuesday at some of the opening discussions was how did we get here with this extreme commitment to uh reinvesting in our wastewater facilities? Well, one of the ways we got here is underfunding our wastewater operations, and you do that for a decade, and suddenly you have a very large repair bill. So we are trying to fix that so that uh we don't just go down this uh same road again, and uh we will be bringing forth a proposal for a rate structure that will be increasing rates over a five-year period with the ultimate goal to balance our ongoing operating expenses with our collection fees, and at least have a balanced budget from that standpoint that will not cover capital projects, but at least it will cover our ongoing operating fees. So uh that's in development right now. It will start the process and be showing up before you end of summer to early fall. Uh we have noted the uh new model for the signs for the county signs, and uh, we are already working to put some of those signs at our properties. I believe Lapa Hoyhoy already has one of the new signs. Is that a true statement? Yes. Good. Okay. Um we do hope to plan uh one more auction. Uh the last auction they did went very well. A large number of vehicles sold off, and uh we hope to do another auction uh yet this year. The groundbreaking at the Hilo treatment plant that occurred July of last year in 2005, but we are quickly approaching the date when some real construction will start on the site. We've been waiting for major pieces of equipment and pipe and electrical supplies to arrive. That is coming in, and hopefully in June, this coming June, we'll start to be doing some real construction on a day-to-day basis out there. We all also had the groundbreaking at the Hail Holloway, but as I said, that is going to be done late summer, early fall, and that'll be completed. We did award construction of the treatment plant at Bahala. That's a recent achievement for us. And as I said earlier, I think we have crews on site either right now or will be very soon starting to clear trees on that site. We completed the transfer station at Lapahoi. And I don't know if any of you saw the videos, but they had a very nice blessing, and a nice group of people from the community came out and participated. I believe that you participated in that.