Council Meeting - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone, welcome. Council Member Okamoto, can you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you so much. Council Member Okimoto, would you like to introduce your guest, giving us the message of aloha?

Thank you, Chair. Aloha and good morning, everyone. This morning, I am so honored to introduce our message of aloha presenter, President Jared Hester, who is the recently appointed president and CEO of the Polynesian Cultural Center. Joining him today is his beautiful wife, Priya, President Hester previously held the roles of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of the PCC and took on this new responsibility on May 1st. A native of New Zealand, President Hester worked in Auckland for the administration of the church system for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the South Pacific, which included Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati, and Tonga before coming here to Hawaii. Jared and his family moved here and made Hawaii their home in 2013. He is a family man at heart. He is a proud father of five children, four grandchildren, and I heard one is coming in about a month, and cares deeply for our cultures here. He brings steady purpose and thoughtful leadership for the Polynesian Culture Center and its people. The PCC is affiliated with BYU Hawaii, my alma mater, where approximately 80 to 90 percent of their employees are students, which drives a pivotal mission of employment throughout the educational experience. Throughout the center, you will find students who are from Samoa, Tonga, Aotearoa, Fiji, Hawaii, and even other parts of the world like the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and even our council member Tupola used to be an employee of PCC. Local kids are there too. Anyone who steps foot onto the Polynesian Cultural Center will immediately feel the warmth and aloha spirit there. It is like no other place on earth. Outside of service, you might find Jared spending time with his family, enjoying a friendly competition of pickleball, although friendly is the operative word according to his wife Priya. His competitive nature comes out strongest during their matches, or out enjoying the ocean sailing. All in all, Jared or President Hester will always find a balance in the moments that life is grounded and meaningful. Please give a warm welcome to President Jared Hester.

Thank you. Mahalo. Aloha mai kaka'o.

Aloha.

It's an absolute pleasure to be here with you today. I'm not used to these type of situations. My preference is normally to be in the back of house playing with numbers and spreadsheets. My background is in accounting. And recently, three months ago, they've asked me to fill this new role. And so I'm learning to be a little bit more front of house and have to speak with a lot more people and shake a lot more hands and share a lot more of aloha. And so it's my privilege and pleasure to be with you today. I've been asked to share a little message on Aloha and coming from the Polynesian Cultural Center, that's a little daunting because Aloha is very precious to us. It's what we're about. And so I take that very seriously in terms of sharing that message. And I've written it out so that I can try and say it properly, so please bear with me. But it really is the essence of what the PCC, the Polynesian Cultural Center, exists for. I stand before you as someone who has been shaped by the islands of Polynesia. from Aotearoa, from the mountains and the waters of the land that shaped me as a young man and as a child, through to coming here in Hawaii, which continues to teach and shape me now. I have learned that we are bound together by values older and deeper than place. In ,, aloha is formed from two words, alo, meaning presence or face to face, and ha, breath of life. And if you take that back, it's actually from its roots, if I've understood correctly, it's in the presence of or face to face with deity. And so it's a sacred word to greet Another with Aloha is to acknowledge that we share the same sacred breath. It is more than a feeling. It is a decision to see the divine worth in the person before us and to act accordingly. This understanding is shared across all of Polynesia. In different islands, we hear it, but through the same heartbeat. Alofa, if you're from Samoa, or Ofa, from Tonga, or Aroha, if you're from New Zealand. Among the Maori people of Aotearoa, that shared breath is made visible in the hongi. Now, you may have seen this a few times, where noses are pressed together and foreheads are pressed together, and then a breath is shared, the breath of life. And in doing so, in that quiet moment, the boundary between self and others is softened. and life is exchanged through that breath. Our kupuna have taught that aloha is the conscious acknowledgement of this divine breath, shared between people. When oleole Hawaii experts speak of living aloha, they reach back to this deeper sense, the practice of recognizing and honoring life in another. Aloha at its core is a spiritual concept. The spirit of Aloha is connected to deity. It is not simply a cultural idea or a warm emotion. It is a sacred way of seeing and relating to one another that reaches beyond the human and toward the divine. I believe the spirit of Aloha to be the light of Christ, the divine influence, power, and life-giving energy that proceeds from God through Jesus Christ and permeates all creation. It is the quiet courage to seek understanding before seeking advantage and to treat every person as one who carries that same sacred breath we do. When we have aloha, we have charity. If we substitute the word aloha for charity, we can read, and aloha suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in truth, beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Aloha is the pure love of Christ and it endureth forever. At the Polynesian Cultural Center for more than 60 years, we have sought to live this truth. Every day under a simple yet profound motto of one ohana sharing aloha. We are one family, students, employees, kupuna and our guests. from every corner of the earth bound by that same shared breath of aloha. Our vision is clear and aspirational at the PCC. It is to spread aloha around the world. That is why we exist. We do this by inviting visitors to experience the cultures, diversity, and spirit of Polynesia in a unique and uplifting way that blesses and inspires all who come. Each day, we strive to make sure our guests leave not only with the memories of being at the PCC, but also carrying a little more of that sacred breath with them. so that when they return home to their homes, their families, their workplaces and their communities, they are sharing that aloha that they have received from being here in Hawaii. Our student employees are from across, many are from across Pacific and Asia. They grow in skill, character, and faith while they're with us. They return as ambassadors of aloha to their own islands and nations. In this way, the aloha practice daily at Laie at the Polynesian Cultural Center becomes a quiet force intentionally designed to travel far beyond our shores. I would like to personally invite each of you, especially if it's been a minute, to come out to the PCC. We come across many who have been to the PCC who reside here on Oahu. Unfortunately, many of them haven't come since their fourth grade excursion. And so we'd like to invite you back if it's been that long. We've changed. We've got new shows. We've got new experiences. But the aloha is the same. So please come. That's my personal invitation to everyone here today, and especially to the council members, Councilwoman Okimoto. Please come and enjoy of our aloha and let us share of our aloha with you. The same principle of wanohana, sharing aloha, can and should guide the work of these chambers. Every decision made here touches real lives. Kapuna, who need care. Keiki, who need opportunity. Ohana, who need hope. And Aina, that needs wise stewardship. These are not abstract responsibilities. They are daily realities of people who will feel the weight of the decisions made and made in this room long after the meetings concluded. When we lead with aloha, we remember that the people we serve are our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, and children of a loving God. When this council strengthens the bonds of our island ohana, it helps create an oahu from which aloha itself can more fully radiate to the world. I invite us this morning to begin with a simple posture to practice living aloha, recognizing and honoring the divine breath we share with one another as one ohana. May the spirit of Aloha attend your deliberations today. May wisdom and compassion shape your decisions. And may the work of this council strengthen the bonds that hold our island Ohana together. So that we may together, so that together we may more fully live and help spread Aloha around the world. Mahalo nui loa. God bless you, and God bless all those who reside in this beautiful isle of Oahu.

Thank you so much. Members, I have a few procedural announcements to make before we start. Although remote oral testimony is being permitted, this is a regular meeting and not a remote meeting by Interactive Conference Technology under HRS section 92-3.7. Therefore, the meeting will continue notwithstanding the loss of audiovisual communication with remote testifiers or the loss of public broadcast of the meeting. Members of the public will be allowed to provide oral testimony on all items on the agenda, either in person in the council chamber or remotely. As both English and Hawaiian are official languages of the state of Hawaii, pursuant to Article 15, Section 4 of the Hawaii State Constitution and Section 1-13 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, Members of the public may testify in either language. For oral testimonies offered in Olelo, Hawaii, additional time, as may be necessary, will be allowed for the testifier to provide an English translation of their testimony. Before testifying, each person shall state their full name and the agenda item they are testifying on. Each speaker may not have anyone else read their statement and is limited to a three-minute presentation on public hearing and new business items and a one-minute presentation on all other items. Registered in-person testifiers will be called first. When your name is called, please proceed to the podium and begin by stating your name and the item you'll be speaking on. When I call for anyone who has not registered to speak in person, please line up to the right of the podium. And when it is your turn, proceed to the podium. Begin by stating your name and then the item you'll be speaking on. All persons who have registered to testify remotely by videoconference or phone will then be called. When your name is called, please monitor your screen and activate your audio feed when prompted. When a call for anyone else standing by remotely, please utilize the Zoom raise hand button to indicate your desire to speak. For those joining us by telephone only, please press star nine to indicate your desire to speak. The following are some friendly reminders. video conference from a quiet location if possible. If you're also watching the proceeding on Olelo, please mute your television when you're called to testify. When the timer on the screen reaches zero, please conclude your remarks promptly. For those who are joining us by telephone only, I will identify you by the last three digits of your phone number. When your number is called, please press star six to unmute yourself when prompted. Written testimonies, including the testifier's address, email address, and phone number, will be available to the public as described on the posted agenda. As a courtesy, please turn off all cell phones during the duration of the meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Mr. Clerk, roll call, please.

Council Member Cordero. Here. Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excused. Council Member Kiya Aina. Here. Council Member Nishimura. Present. Council Member Okamoto.

Present.

Council Member Toba. Here. Council Member Tupola.

Ayo.

Council Member Weyer. Here. Chair Waters.

Here.

Mr. Chair, eight members are present, one member is absent.

Thank you, Floor Leader Kia Aina, introduction of guests, please.

Thank you, Chair. Actually, you know, normally I would be able to identify everyone, but we have such a full house today, and I think it's because we have the, managing director-designate Krishna Jayayam, and we have many deputy directors and directors of the mayor's cabinet as well as the chief of staff, so welcome everybody. I'm sure they're here to not only show support but out of respect for the six years that he's already been the the Deputy Managing Director. We also have appointees and nominees of the mayors, the boards, and commissions, and of course, the community and stakeholders who are here today to talk about the important issues that we're gonna be discussing.

Thank you. I'll also take a minute to recognize and thank Managing Director's father, Mr. Jayaram, for being here today. Good to see you. Vice Chair, to pull a motion to approve the minutes.

I move that the session minutes as posted on the agenda be approved.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, yes, we do.

Thank you. Members, we're in discussion. Oh, I'm sorry. We do have a testifier for the minutes. Nope, okay. Any discussion on the approval of minutes, members? Seeing none, any objection or reservations? Seeing none, the minutes have been approved. Moving to the top of page four, order of the day. From the Committee on Budget, Councilmember Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 19826 and Resolution 26-154, CD1, as amended, be adopted.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Confirming the appointment of Shannon Smith to serve on the Board of Review for the Real Property Tax Appeals of the City and County of Honolulu.

Thank you so much. I do believe Ms. Shannon Smith is present. Would you like to say a few words?

Hello, Tess.

I just wanted to thank everyone for allowing me the opportunity. I'm very excited to understand better how the process works and excited to lend my expertise to the process. So thank you all very much.

Thank you. Members, any questions for the nominee? Seeing none, thank you so much. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, yes, we do.

I believe Shelby Billionaire. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, ma'am. Can you state your name, please?

P. Amazinga. I actually had registered my concern about the minutes, and you didn't acknowledge that, so I have to raise that concern.

Okay, you know what, let's go back. Members, my apologies. It's been moved, seconded, before We actually will vote on it, we can vote on it again. Go ahead, why don't you state your concerns about the minutes.

Aloha, my name is Pia Mozinga, chair and council members. I'm here to state for public record that this council committed a direct violation of Sunshine Law under Hawaii Revised Statute Chapter 92 during the Wednesday, June 3rd meeting specifically at 333.16. On June 3rd, you shut down the meeting prematurely and truncated the public testimony session by failing to record, televise, audit, and transcribe the footprints of the public testimony session. under HRS section 92-2, which you are legally required to maintain true records of all public input. I have filed a formal complaint with the Office of Information Practices, of which you have already been asked for 10, for the 10-day response. I am here today to demand that this council immediately correct this negligence reflecting the concerns of rapid approaching expiration of Affordable Housing Covenant Act affecting no less than 50,000 of our residents who are low-income, Section 8, senior citizens, and disabled of Oahu. Public testimony is a right, not a privilege that you can truncate off your capricious will. It is a baseline right. It's as Hawaiian as a glass of sweet tea, plantation tea on a hot August afternoon. Mahalo and aloha.

Thank you. I do see that Shelby Billionaire also signed up to testify. Minutes are open. Minutes, okay. Anybody else like to testify on the approval of minutes? Seeing none, any further discussion members? Seeing none, any objections or reservations to the approval of minutes? Seeing none, minutes have been approved. Okay, back to Resolution 26-154, the appointment of Shannon Smith to serve on the Board of Review for the Real Property Tax of Appeals of the City and County of Honolulu. Shelby Billionaire, you have signed up to testify here.

Alo mai kākou. Pikachu shall be billionaire. O Pikachu ko inoa. No Waianae mai au. No Makali'i mai au. If you don't understand what I'm saying, my name is Pikachu. I'm from Makali'i, and I'm also from Waianae. If you follow the Kumulipo from the beautiful message, we come from the stars like Jesus. Even though we're born on this earth, we're not from this earth. So I do want to approve Shannon Smith's, her approval. Hopefully we can speed through this. Unlike last month's one, so that's why I brought my hat. instead of my glasses, so thank you all, Chair, for acknowledging that. And the real property tax, I am concerned, because I know there's certain bills, and I can't address the bills now, but property taxes always seem to go up. So if you're going to be on this committee, can you please lower the taxes for our people? Because even the kids and grandkids can't afford to buy their own house to get out there. Then you're going to raise the property tax, and a lot of the Hawaiians don't pay, you know what I mean, because they don't feel like they don't have to. But you guys get to drift, so I approve this appointment. Thank you very much. Have a beautiful day.

Thank you.

Anybody else, Mr. Clerk, to testify on Shannon Smith's appointment?

Mr. Chair, we have none.

I see Mr. Hulihei, you raised your hand.

Aloha and welcome. Thank you. Aloha. My name's Kelvin Hule, Konohike. Property tax, so that's the agenda today, right, or whatever we're talking about. It's illegal, taxing Hawaiians, because the land is a Kuleana land, or royal patent. Again, people over here are gonna follow me in court. Somebody gave them to me pertaining about certain parties land and we gotta fight things in court to bring out the truth, the laws, the rules, the rights, and the constitution, which we all gotta follow. And all you guys can take on certain oath, or following whatever pertaining to the Constitution. So hope you guys act with aloha, because that's our law too, aloha. And you guys gotta follow that aloha spirit laws. When you guys make decisions, when you guys do everything in life, especially with the environment, Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, please come forward.

Kona Ike. I oppose all government operations. First of all, Hawaii is not a state. Hawaii never was annexed to the United States. The rule of law you folks are not following. Next, Hawaii, you folks took over Hawaii illegally by claim, not by lease or deed. You folks are all squatters in Hawaii. The state of Hawaii never have a real property tax ownership. The ownership belongs to the kingdom of Hawaii. Statehood, is cover up of the overture of Queen Liliuokalani. The identity theft, that you folks cause is continuing to go on and on and on from the time of Queen Lilo Kalani and the provisional government. The provisional government is all bogus. The territorial government is bogus. The city is bogus. The 50th state is bogus. Where is your folks' proof that you folks can prove This is the 58th state. I thank you for your time, and aloha.

Thank you very much. Mr. Clerk, do we have any other testifiers?

Mr. Chair, we have none.

Thank you, members. Any discussion? Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR 198-2026 and Resolution 26-154, CD 1, has been adopted. Thank you so much, Ms. Smith, and congratulations. Moving to the bottom of page four, Council Member Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 19926 and Resolution 26-155 be adopted. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Confirming the appointment of Shannon Alivado to serve on the Grants and Aid Advisory Commission of the City and County of Honolulu.

Thank you so much. I've been informed that Shannon Alivado couldn't make it this morning, however, we did have- She's here. Oh, she is here. Oh, wonderful. Aloha. Thank you for being here. Please proceed.

Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Council. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I look forward to hearing from the nonprofit organizations that may be coming forward to the GIA Advisory Commission and helping this Council with all the hard work that they have ahead of them. Thank you.

Members, any questions for the applicant or nominee? Seeing none, thank you so much. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers? Mr. Chair, yes, we do.

Okay, please proceed. Aloha mai kakou, aloha. Shannon, thank you for joining the Grants and Aid program, and I want to approve your appointment, because I just started my own foundation, the Billionaire Foundation from the EIN. I don't got no clue, because I know the grant aids has a lot of paperwork, because OHA inspired me to apply, but you can't do it as an individual. A lot of us Hawaiians kanakamole lose, because you have to have official NHL status or a 501c3, and you have to do the paperwork properly. So hopefully we can do this with you and the people to help teach the kanaka and all the locals Because even kids, you can start a nonprofit. Donald Trump's kids have a nonprofit. So hopefully we can educate people, and then the community can address the real concerns. Thank you very much. Aloha. Thank you.

Mr. Clerk, do I have any other testifiers? Mr. Chair, we have Mr. Armstrong. Okay. Aloha in person today. Thank you for being here. Good to see you. You have to press the button.

Aloha, Maikako. Thank you for recognizing me to speak. Rather than standing on my testimony, I would simply state that having known Ms. Olivaro for about a decade, I would commend her sense of public service. This is a spirit that we need to encourage throughout the city, throughout the state, and candidates like Ms. Olivaro have a lot to offer. Mahalo.

Thank you. Anybody else like to testify on this subject? Seeing none, members, we're in discussion. Council Member Topola.

I just wanted to thank Ms. Olivado for her service. She also did serve on our police commission very faithfully, and now she's serving on the GIA commission. We are juicing her for all she got. We love her. She is such a big community advocate, always responsive to many of us in the council when we have questions. So thank you for sharing your heart with all of us and being willing to serve on another commission. Mahalo, Chair.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Council Member Kia-Aina.

Thank you. I also just wanted to reiterate my strong support for Ms. Olivado, apart from her previous experience, just including just her professionalism as Director of Government Relations for HECO. We deal with her on a multitude of constituent requests, almost like a request for investigative services, don't you think? My offices would say that we send just as many requests to HECO as we do to the mayor's office sometimes. for concerns expressed by our community. But I also wanted to thank her for HECO's participation tomorrow night for windward town hall and wildfire preparedness. So all I'm just saying, all around strong candidate. And if we could clone her so that we could have her on other commissions, we'd all be better off for it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further discussion, members? Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR199-2026 and Resolution 26-155 has been adopted. Thank you for your service. Moving to the top of page five from the Committee on Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, Councilmember Weyer.

Thank you, Chair. I move that Committee Report 226 and Resolution 26-130-CD1 as amended be adopted.

Second. I move that seconded, Councilmember Weyer for the explanation.

Confirming the reappointment of Melanie Islam to serve on the Climate Change Commission of the City and County of Honolulu.

Thank you so much. Is Melanie Islam present? Aloha, welcome. Thank you for being here today.

Good morning, Chair, members of the Council. I just want to thank you all for the opportunity to continue to serve on the Climate Change Commission. It's a privilege given my profession as an architect, so thank you.

Thank you. Members, any questions for the nominee? Thank you so much. I believe we have two registered testifiers, Shelby Billionaire followed by Dylan Armstrong.

Thank you, Melanie, for taking up the position. And to be honest, I have no idea what the Climate Change Commission does, because we have a lot of hurricanes and stuff. And I use Zoom Earth, because I don't trust the weatherman. And I grew up on Captain Planet. Remember the song about planeteers? Some of the generations weren't even born yet. But we're fighting pollution and corruption on a worldwide scale. You're looking at the Middle East, and if they do a nuclear weapon, it'll do that cancer like it says on ancient aliens in Anunnaki. So we're afraid of what's going to happen, but you're looking at the typhoons, the wind pressure, the weather. It's humid and hot as hell in Waiana. I don't even leave my house, and I melt inside. So it is turning up, and I don't know how we can change it. It's not like I'm going to pray, hey, weather, stop. It's not gonna happen, but we have to adjust for what's going to happen. The weather's going to change, as it is. We can't stop that, but we have to adjust and endure. So I'm not sure how the Climate Change Commission's gonna handle Mother Nature, but we definitely have to clean up the planet, plant more trees, and the reason why we're not getting fish in our reefs is because the algae's being polluted, and if the fish don't come, the turtles don't come, and then we have a hard time. Thank you very much, planeteers. You have the power.

Next, we have Dylan Armstrong.

Aloha, Dylan Armstrong again. With regards to my support for Ms. Melanie Islam for the Climate Change Commission of the City and County of Honolulu, I want to commend Ms. Islam's interest. I appreciate her background as someone who's worked in urban planning and related fields for a number of years. Climate change is not simply an event we look forward to in the future or with dread. It is a process that is affecting every single aspect of the City and County of Honolulu's business. Ms. Islam's background with infrastructure as an architect is incredibly useful. It is not a single background that we need to discuss climate change and take action. It is all backgrounds. And I appreciate her sense of service as well. Mahalo.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify? Oh, come forward. Aloha, welcome.

Hello, everyone. James Ryan Malish. I just want to touch on climate change real quick and say I love it. It was really hot outside. It's nice and cool in here. Everyone should enjoy climate change. It happens every year. You can go anywhere else in the world. We're a little unique because the climate doesn't change too much. But if you go to the mainland, you know, in the wintertime it's cold, in the summertime it's hot. So yay climate change. I look forward to more of it.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on the appointment of Melanie Islam? Seeing none, members are in discussion. Council Member Cordero.

Thank you, Chair. First off, I really want to thank Chair Islam for dedicating her time to the Climate Change Commission. I've mentioned to many appointees to different commissions and boards that if they want to look how to engage the community, that the Climate Change Commission is a great place to start with how they not only promote their meetings, how they engage the community, but also how they make it available to the public. And that's under the leadership of Ms. Islam. And I do also want to note, as Mr. Armstrong mentioned, her background really would highlight things that all city departments need to really focus on with infrastructure, managed retreat, the different green infrastructure that's necessary, especially as we're building in our primary urban center. Mahalo.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR 200-2026 and Resolution 26-130CD1 has been adopted. Thank you, Ms. Islam, for your service. From the Committee on International and Legal Affairs, Council Member Nishimoto.

I move that Committee Report 206-2026 and Resolution 26-129 be adopted.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Nishimoto for your explanation.

Confirming the nomination of Krishna Jayaram to serve as Managing Director of the City and County of Honolulu.

Thank you so much. Aloha, Managing Director. Would you like to say a few words?

Good morning, Chair Waters. Good morning, Vice Chair Tipolo and Council Members. I'd really like to thank you, Chair, and the Council for the time and effort put into vetting this nomination and the time we spent both in chambers and one-on-one having discussions. And more than what I might have said, I hope that I have demonstrated in the last four and a half years my commitment to working with Council in a positive manner. my commitment to this administration, and most importantly, my commitment to this public and serving the public. And I hope I've earned this confirmation from you all. And I'd also like to thank the members of the administration, members of the mayor's staff, members of the MDO staff for being here today. Thank you.

Thank you. Members, any questions for the nominee? Seeing none, thank you so much. I see the mayor here. Mayor, would you like to say a few words on behalf of your nominee?

That would be great. Aloha, welcome. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Waters, council members. I've had the privilege of, and thank you for the opportunity. I couldn't let this moment go by. I've had the privilege of working with Christian now from almost the very first hour we came into office. And I've always been amazed by him and his capability. And so for the first year was deputy corporation council, and since that time as our deputy managing director. He, in my mind, has more than earned the right to have this opportunity to lead the extraordinary team we have and to work with all of you. He not only embraces the responsibility of the office, but he has the capability to meet it head on. And I'm just so proud of him. I'm so grateful to him personally and for all that he represents in our community. intended efforts, if you will, on a going forward basis to serve the rest of our term in the best possible way. I'm absolutely thrilled that his father is here. I think this is such a special opportunity for a dad, if I can say it that way, to see his son take on such an important moment. I know that Christian's been a source of great pride for his family over the years because he's such an accomplished guy. This is great for the city and county of Honolulu. I can't say it enough, as you know and you've heard me say it before, put a premium on leadership. And Krishna certainly is that. So I feel really blessed that he's there and I look forward to the days ahead. And thank you all for the opportunity. Thank you, Mayor.

I believe Ernie Lau also registered to testify.

Is Ernie Lau available?

Aloha, managing, manager and chief engineer, aloha.

Aloha. Ernie Lau, Manager and Chief Engineer for the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. I've known Mr. Jayaram Krishna for a long time. Since he served on the Zaratepeti Corporation Council advising the Water Board, I've always found him very effective. Some characteristics that I find very impressive with the EMD is he is soft spoken. And I think that doesn't mean that there is a lack of fortitude and power, because I find that he is resolute. He is humble. He has deep-seated values, I think, earned from his family, learned from his family. And I think he would do a great job as managing director. So I support his appointment strongly. Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else from the administration would like to testify before I turn it over to the public? Okay, seeing none, we also have Shelby Billionaire and Dylan Armstrong.

Hello, Maekako, Pikachu, Shelby in your back. Namaste, I'm glad you brought your father, because I'm pretty sure I said this last month to approve the appointment again, so I approve you again. May the force be with you always, because you have to deal with your boss right next to you, you know, with that shiny head of his, and he actually had the courage to come to our Hawaiian convention and call his own self, how would he describe himself, an Okulapuka. So you have the courage to be with him, to deal with all that stuff, because I wouldn't be able to do that, because he's from Boston, and I'm from Queens, New York, so... East Coast we get along, but I know you can manage city council, all that stuff, Kung Fu Panda, all these taxes and things. So thank God you got the job and I 100% approve this because I wouldn't take it. Thank you very much. Aloha. Thank you. Next we have Dylan Armstrong.

Aloha again, Dylan Armstrong. Rather than simply stand on my testimony, I would iterate one bit of verbiage I put in there, which is that my background with Mr. Jayaram is actually from my emergency management time during the COVID-19 pandemic. where I was one of the people in charge of the state video teleconference and the restricted senior leader briefing, which Mr. Jayaram contributed to in his capacity at that time. I would also note that I have considerable respect for his experience as an attorney. I'm not an attorney, but that is a very useful skill set for a managing director. And I would thirdly like to repeat something I've alluded to in the past, which is, With the administration in its final two years, with the council reorganized, with the council having these policy discussions, as Mr. Jayaram already indicated, this is your prime opportunity to have that cooperative, forward-thinking discussion. Where does the city want to go? Mahalo.

Thank you. Would anybody else like to testify on this matter? Tim Gary, aloha, welcome.

Yeah, good morning, everybody. I strongly support Krishna. He always returns my phone calls, always makes time for people that have concerns, follows through. He'd be a great managing director. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sir, please proceed.

Hi, James Malish again. So a few years ago, there was a lot of discussion about aviation fuel in our water supply. That kind of just disappeared from the news. I know that's kind of fallen on the Navy to worry about, but as far as the Department of Water goes, their slogan is, There is no substitute for pure water. I believe that's what it says, something to those effect. I was just curious, is there still jet fuel in the water? The infrastructure is what, 50 to 70 years old on average? Where I live in Waikiki, I pour a cup of water, I can set it on the counter, and after two days of stagnant water sitting there on the counter, it reeks like a used toilet. So I can only assume that there's huge levels of bacteria throughout all of our water lines that are decrepit and falling apart. I yield.

Thank you. Members, we are in discussion. Council Member Tupola, Vice Chair Tupola.

Yes, first off, I want to say that I'm in support. Looking back on all the years that he's been with the city and serving us as the council, I can remember some fond memories of the commitment that Mr. Dry Room has. He shows up for some of my cleanups, which are no joke. and he's out there in the hot sun in Waianae. He came to the opening and the renaming of the Waianae Boxing Gym. There's various other occasions where you've shown to me that you care about the constituents of my district and that you're willing to go above and beyond. Secondarily, I think your legal background is much needed. I do believe that the tip of the spear of where we can make differences in the city oftentimes has to do with policy changes, law, altercation so that we can make sure that the effect that we want to have for the community can happen. So I'm looking forward to your expertise in that way. The very small time that you've served in this interim position, I've already seen small pivots. I've seen differences in how some of the directors are taking our feedback. I am somebody that is very attuned to people who listen well and are able to take what they hear and make a change. And you've shown to be a person to do that. So from my heart, deeply I am grateful because the work that we do is sometimes thankless and sometimes there's no end to it, but it's great to know that we have a partner in the admin that's going to be able to listen to our concerns, make those pivots, and really work side by side with us. So I'm in support and I look forward to more days of working together. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Council Member Kea Aina.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair. You know, I stated this before with regard to Krishna's competency and professionalism. His educational, professional, and personal background is off the charts. But I think what's most importantly is what has maybe inspired me personally, and that is that I feel that he brings out the best of all people. including those of us in public service, and that's really hard. And I'm someone who's been in this business for decades and it's so easy to get jaded. But when you go in a room, and it doesn't mean that we may agree on everything, but you're treated with respect and fairness in how you talk, that means a lot. So I just wanted to let you know, that is what makes you stand out. And through that, you inspire those around you, including the community who you interface with. So just wanna say, strongly support him. And I talked about Shannon and how we should clone her, but I think we should clone him too.

Thank you so much. Any further discussion, members? I just want to also say that I really appreciate your intellect, your commitment, and your demeanor, really. So great job going forward. Good luck to you, and thank you, Mayor, for this wonderful appointment. So having said that, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero.

Aye.

Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excused. Council Member Kia-Aina. Aye. Council Member Nishimoto. Aye. Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Tolba.

Aye.

Council Member Tupoula.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. Aye. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you. CR 206-2026 and resolution 26-129 has been adopted. Congratulations to our new managing director. Thank you. Turning to the top of page six, Resolution 26-172 relating to the reappointment of Na'alehu Anthony to serve on the Board of Water Supply of the City and County of Honolulu. Is Na'alehu here? No, okay. We do have Ernest Lau present, Board of Water Supply Manager and Chief Engineer.

Aloha, Ernie Lau, Manager for the Board of Water Supply. Naalehu was not able to be here today, but I do want to say I strongly support his reappointment to the Water Board. He's been very instrumental on the issues of the jet fuel and contamination at Red Hill. Red Hill is not pow yet. There's still work now to be done to clean up the environment to restore our aina and our vai. and whose role on the board will be instrumental in ensuring that the military is held accountable. Mahalo nui.

Thank you so much. I actually now see my notes saying that the nominee is not going to be president, couldn't make it today. So my apologies, but thank you so much for being here. We also have Shelby Billionaire registered to testify. Not present. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on the, please come forward. Aloha, welcome.

Aloha nui kakou. Kimi ono kane wa manalo. In strong support of na ale ho'i athani. He served our community very, very well. Very accessible. And I've had the privilege of serving with him on a previous board as well. And so I really appreciate his engagement and his authenticity in the work that he does. So, mahalo nui.

Thank you for your testimony today. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify? Shelby Billionaire, aloha. Please proceed.

Aloha mai kakou. I just ran outside, had to use the bathroom, and man, everyone's outside taking pictures. I'm like, are we still on? So yes, I do want to approve na aleku for Anthony, because you can just follow Ernie Lousley for water supply nuts. Captain Planet, obviously you have the Hawaiian name inside. Just remember, water is protected under HRS 7-1. We don't control planet Earth. We don't own the water. Comes from the sky, Vakea, goes to the mountain, and then somehow we're charging and paying extort amounts for it because the water pipes haven't been changed for like 200 nautical miles when you talk to the Navy. All the pipes got to be changed. It's going to cost multi-millions of dollars. So follow the boss. Thank you very much. Aloha.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to testify? Seeing none, members, we're in discussion. Seeing none, resolution 26-172 has been referred to the Committee on Energy, Environment and Sustainability. Turning to the top of page seven, new business. Vice Chair Tupoula.

Chair, I move that resolution 26-179 be adopted. Second.

It's been moved and seconded by Chair Tupoula for the explanation.

Approving collective bargaining cost items for Hawaii Firefighters Association, bargaining unit 11 included and excluded managerial employees of the City and County of Honolulu.

Thank you so much. I believe we have Nola Miyazaki, Director of Department of Human Services here. Aloha Director, would you like to explain what we're approving today?

Aloha, Chair Waters, members of the Council. Nola Miyazaki, Director of Human Resources. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I didn't provide written testimony, but I really was here to answer questions. But I'll summarize the resolution that we have presented before you. So the Council has already approved the collective bargain agreement four years for the Hawaii Firefighters Association that was the result of a final and binding arbitration award given earlier this year. The jurisdictions, all of the counties and the governor have agreed to an addendum to that arbitration award and this is the result of that agreement. It provides the continuation of the longevity step movements to the firefighters and two slight increases in the final two years. So the result of that is that in fiscal year 26 retroactive, there will be a $951,142 cost item. In the current fiscal year, the additional cost item of $3,314,811. And in the upcoming two years, fiscal year 28, $8,492,875. And in fiscal year 29, $14,640,000. $359 for a total cost for the four-year period, $27,399,197.

Thank you so much for that explanation. Members, any questions for the director? Sinan, thank you so much for your hard work on this. Really appreciate it. Thank you. I do believe we have Shelby Billionaire. Well, is Robert Lee here? Oh, aloha, welcome, come. on behalf of the Hawaii Firefighters Association. Thank you so much for being here.

Good morning. Hi, my name is Michael Hadlock. I'm here in support of Resolution 26179, and I am a 20-year firefighter and seven years on the board Wahoo Division for the HFFA. I have a written statement and then I have some personal comments. Good morning, Chair Waters, Vice Chair Topola, and council members. The Hawaii Firefighters Association Executive Board and our members are in strong support of Resolution 26179, approving the additional cost items for the Bargaining Unit 11 Collective Bargaining Agreement for the period July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2029, based on the ratified proposal settlement agreement between HFFA and the employer group. The settlement agreement reflects a fair and balanced outcome for both the county and its firefighters. Approval of these cost items demonstrates the county's commitment to honoring the collective bargaining process and maintaining a stable professional fire service that serves the people of Oahu. And on behalf of the HFA O'ahu Division, I respectfully urge the Council to adopt Resolution 26179. Thank you. And on a personal note, I'm fire captain up in Hawula now, close to the Polynesian Cultural Center. And I love my job. I love serving the community in the area that we provide for. But this job has gotten a lot more complex and a lot harder and a lot more dangerous. Just certain things such as cancer potential and the hazards that have increased in the building construction and a lot of other things that we have to deal with that have changed just in the 20 years I've been there. I love the job, but it's really dangerous and it's hard for me to even promote it to nieces and nephews who are interested because it's become such a hazardous job. But I thank you for this bill is starting to provide some preparation for the new dangers and hazards that we're facing and that's just something i wanted to add but thank you very much for your time thank you sir and thank you for your service

Do we have any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, okay, Shelby Billionaire.

Hello, Mike . So I'm here in support of the firefighters, but going through this, I didn't know there's three types of firefighters. So there's the city and county, there's the state that does the airports, and there's the federal that does stuff on the bases. Because I have a personal story with Austin and Kalei Salcedo. Her son, Austin Del Salcedo IV, got injured on the job working at Wheeler. and somebody break checked them was a fellow firefighter and now jumped into the police force. I won't mention the name because of sunshine law, but I'm very concerned. So I'm glad you're going to get the collective bargaining because Austin Salcedo is paralyzed from his waist down. The firefighters on that unit took him from Wheeler. When they break checked them, he probably had a spinal fracture. They carried him back to the base, Navy, Pearl Harbor, pick them, pick them up, all the stairs, have fireman's carry, they didn't use a stretcher, probably paralyzed them from there on, and they lied on the report, and now that same guy is working for the Honolulu Police Department, just recruited of the second class. So I'm very concerned with what's going down, because I didn't know there's, I thought there was only one firefighter. Because their firefighters are different the way the trucks are. So hopefully you guys can work this out. And thank you for sharing the math with me. It's very concerning. It's $29 million. But when you look at the value of someone's life and the values of your property, you're going to save way more than $29 million if you help take care of the firefighters, take care of the cops. Because most of it's arson, like 99%. So thank you very much. Please protect the firefighters and their families. Aloha.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Resolution 26-179? Seeing none, members, we're in discussion. Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, Resolution 26-179 has been adopted. Wonderful. Moving to the top of page eight, first reading items. Vice Chair Tupola.

I move that the first reading items listed on pages eight and nine of the agenda pass first reading. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Vice Chair Tupoula for the explanation.

Bill 52, 2026, relating to streets, sidewalks, malls, and other public places. Bill 53, 2026, relating to shopping carts. Bill 54, 2026, related to parking.

Thank you so much. Let's take testimony and then we can discuss. Starting with Bill 52, starting with, is Paul Okamoto here, HPD? As far as designees? Aloha and welcome.

Morning Chair Waters and Council Members. My name is Deysen Toma. I'm the Captain for Honolulu Police Department District 6 Waikiki. The HPD supports Honolulu City Council Bill 52 relating to streets, sidewalks, malls and other public spaces. Tourism is the lifeblood of Hawaii's economy and Waikiki is the epicenter of it in our state. Visitors often navigate through a gauntlet of peddlers that compete for their attention to sell various items and services as they walk down Kalakaua and Kuhuyu Avenue. Many of these peddlers operate with little to no regulations and have no brick and mortar storefront to refer their customers to. HPD often encounters incidents of tourists being scammed through aggressive sales tactics and overcharging. Victims return home and discover the scams weeks later on their credit card statements, sometimes leaving little evidence for investigators to follow. Even if the item or service being peddled is legitimate, businesses that pay for an actual storefront on Kalakau Avenue and conduct businesses professionally and ethically are undercut by these people who steal their business. For these compelling reasons and many more, there is an absolute need for the government to properly regulate peddling in Waikiki. One challenge we face in effectively regulating peddling is that the current penalty is not sufficient deterrent to many operators who engage in it. Many see the current fine as merely a cost of doing business and are not dissuaded from them. Imposing stiffer fines and consequences and removing the financial incentives will help improve this problem and assist us with our efforts to keep Waikiki as safe and desirable travel location. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate your testimony today. Members, any questions for HPD? Seeing none, thank you, sir. Next, we have David Erdman, retail merchant. Oh, sorry. Yeah, David Erdman, retail merchants. I believe he is remote. Oh, there he is. Sorry.

Good morning. Aloha.

Are we good? Great. Good morning and aloha, Chair. I am here in person, Vice Chair and members of the Council. I'm Dave Erdmann, Interim President and CEO of the Retail Merchants of Hawaii. I'm also a Honolulu resident in the 96814 area, Council District 5, and our Retail Merchants of Hawaii offices are in Kaimuki 96816, Council District 4. RMH, or Retail Merchants of Hawaii, strongly supports Bill 52. Our retailers see this as a very practical issue. We have unlawful peddling taking place on public sidewalks, sometimes directly outside businesses that are paying rent, taxes, wages, insurance, licensing, and all other costs to operate legally. The problem is that some violators are cited, Paywood is now a relatively small fine and simply come back. If the penalty isn't enough to discourage the activity, it can become just another cost of doing business illegally. These activities can also obstruct our sidewalks and disrupt pedestrian access for customers, employees, residents, and visitors. We believe Bill 52 provides a more meaningful deterrent particularly for repeat offenders, while helping to maintain safe and accessible public spaces. Retail merchants supports fair and consistent enforcement, and we respectively ask for your support of Bill 52. Mahalo for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for the testifier? Council Member Kea'aina.

You know, I do have a question because, you know, these are difficult issues. Many of the people are homeless and have mental issues or, you know, and I guess, and just in my neighborhood, I'm just wondering, we need help too. from the retailers because it's normally the community who's calling 311 or calling HPD. And I'm just wondering, can you guys also COCOA and just help? You have managers on site and help with follow up because it's the community. I hear from them directly just in my neighborhood. And then I don't even bother the managers or the clerks in the store because they don't seem to do anything. So I'm just wondering, shouldn't you guys also cuckoo a little bit and help the community? But if you see people who are impeding the public from accessing your stores to also follow up with the city?

Thank you very much for your question. I'd like to respond to it in this way that the people who are violating are actually businesses who are peddlers. This bill is about peddlers and increasing the fines to peddlers who are out on the street. So that's what we're talking about and they're disrupting the foot traffic and also in some cases disrupting the businesses as retail merchants of hawaii is here to advocate for the retailers in the retail industry but we're here to work with our law enforcement and our council members to see what we can do to help mitigate the issue the bill itself is on increasing the uh fines to those businesses that are acting illegally So that's the key portion that we're focused on at this point. Does that help you?

Yes, I guess I thought it was in general, so it's not. But for that issue, I'm just saying, so some of the challenges we're facing are from others on the sidewalks in accessing stores. Right. Yeah, and so that's all. Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much for the question. So you can peddle, you can sell your whalers on a sidewalk if you have a permit. But if you don't have a permit, it's illegal. And a lot of people will do it without a permit because the fine is only $100. So they just take the fine and continue to peddle without a permit. So this would raise the fine as a further way to disincentivize people from breaking the law.

Got it, and thank you for clarifying. In my mind, I see an impediment for other activities and I'd like to see what will be done about that.

Yeah, no, good point, good point. It's especially bad in Waikiki. Go ahead. Thank you for the clarification. Okay, thank you. Next we have Shelby Billionaire.

Hello, I'm in support of this bill because I was just looking at streets and sidewalks. I've even got a road to go down to the Samoan store I live by the post office. All of my neighbors complain. They're in a wheelchair like my friend here, Carl Dix. We can't even go to the Supreme Court of Hawaii because it's not ADA compliant in the front door. You have to go through the back. You know, I got friends in Waikiki here, my friend James Ryan, first time city council. He doesn't know who his council member is. He's at Waikiki District, Scott Nishimoto. This is his first time, so I'm giving him courage to come talk to address his issues, since we can't address it in one minute or less, but please introduce. I will after. He can actually meet his city council member, send the emails and contact, so we can start working this stuff with the county, not just council, from your members here to the community out there. So thank you very much, and I approve this.

Aloha.

Thank you.

Sir, would you like to testify on this bill? This is dealing with peddling.

Well, it involves streets as well, right? Or is that later? Sorry, did my time start already? Go ahead. Because I thought it said streets, sidewalks.

Bill 52. Bill 52.

So streets are included? Bill 52. Yeah, I know. But you guys started talking about sidewalks. That's why I was wondering. Can I start my time now? Please. OK. So yeah, as previously stated, I live in Waikiki. And I just want to say that whoever's idea it was and signed off on reducing the laneage on Kuhio should be ashamed. And the mere fact that since its existence, it's had those two separate lanes on each side, and then people paid taxes on that, and then just by the stroke of a pen, it's gone, reduced to one lane. That's theft. You guys stole from the taxpayers that put in all that money to build it, and now you've taken the economic hub of this entire state, and you've turned it into a gridlock. It's absurd. You guys need to redo that whole logic with the bus lane, and I know that's part of the agenda, so everybody rides a bicycle or walks everywhere, but in the meantime, we should have all lanes open. And I know it's a source of funding for the state. And in final, real quick, we have the least amount of roads out of any state and the highest registration taxes. Make it make sense. Make the money, make it worth it. Stop deleting traffic lanes that have been paid for by the people over and over again.

I appreciate that, sir. Your testimony isn't germane to Bill 52. However, we do have the Deputy Director of the Department of Transportation, who hopefully will listen to your comments, because I actually agree with them. Well, not the conclusion, but the closure of lanes. Anyway, Mr. Clerk, do we have any other testifiers? Mr. Chair, we have none. Tim Gary?

Good morning, Tim Gary. Bill 52 kind of focuses on Waikiki. I'm in Waikiki every day. I observe everything that goes on. And there are some severe problems with peddlers and them taking advantage of our visitors. A lot of people that don't speak English are confronted by them. and are swindled. There are some people that hawk in front of their businesses down there to try to lure people in, mostly like these cosmetic companies that have been under investigation. And they lure them in and they get their credit card. and a lot of the visitors will make a purchase with the credit card, and then when they go home, all of a sudden, all these charges are on their card. It's been documented. So that, along with people just going up and down Calacalla and stopping visitors, and kind of confusing them. They look for the people that are confused, and then they take advantage of them. So in closing, I support this 100%. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Let's move on to Bill 53, Bill 53, starting with HPD. This is related to shopping carts.

Hello, welcome. Captain Jason Tomo again for District 6, Waikiki, for the Honolulu Police Department. HPD supports City and County Bill 53 relating to shopping carts. Hawaii is known for its natural beauty. We invite people from all over the world to come here to share in the appreciation of the splendor of our islands. And we all have the obligation to keep our communities free of sign and urban blight. The people that live here also have the right to clean and accessible public spaces. We must remain diligent of urban decay and do what we can to maintain what is beautiful. Abandoned shopping carts in our public spaces and people pushing them far away from commercial zones in residential areas are one indicator of that deterioration Past legislative efforts have tried to focus on mandating technology to deter the removal of these carts from private property. But there is little to no consequences for these people committing the theft of these carts. Removing these carts from private property onto public property, exerting unauthorized control over the carts, appropriating it for your own use, and retaining it to the private owners of its use is theft. Retailers report a single cart costing several hundred dollars to replace, which ultimately is paid by the customer through higher prices. Retailers have little recourse other than spending more resources to drive around and collect these unattended carts. Retrieving carts from people, pushing them on our sidewalks and parks often lead to confrontation that businesses do not want. Many times these carts have been defaced or covered in ways to make identification difficult, and the police department can do very little to conduct enforcement and return the carts to their rightful owners. Coordinating prosecution for possession of these possible stolen carts is also very difficult for the police department for various operational reasons. Currently, HPD assists in retrieving identifiable shopping carts through our sidewalk property ordinance programs and transports them to the Department of Facility Maintenance for the return to the retailer without any penalty to the person found in possession of these stolen carts. This theft continues to occur because there's no consequences for taking or being unlawfully, unlawful possession of them. This bill will disincentivize this behavior and will improve the beauty and safety of our community. I ask for assistance in creating a way for the police officers to address this long-standing problem. HPD strongly urges you to support City Council Bill 53. Thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you. Members, any questions for HPD? Seeing none, thank you, sir. Next, we have Dave Erdman.

Good morning again and aloha chair and members of the council. I'm Dave Erdmann, interim president and CEO of Retail Merchants of Hawaii, which is a trade association supporting retailers, shopping centers, allied business throughout Hawaii. We support Bill 53. Shopping carts are provided for the convenience of our customers. but they're also a valuable business property. When a cart ends up on a sidewalk, a bus stop, in a park, or even in a stream, the retailer didn't abandon it. The cart was taken off the retailer's property without their authorization. These carts aren't inexpensive. Larger commercial carts can cost now nearly $500, up to $700, and in some cases, $1,000 or more. You add freight, shipping, and tariffs, and replacing them becomes a significant expense. Every cart taken affects the retailer's bottom line. The business has to absorb the loss, replace the cart, or perhaps in some cases not replace it. That can put pressure on prices or simply mean fewer carts are available for customers. And there's one important principle here. The retailer has already been victimized once through the loss of this property. We don't want the business effectively penalized a second time simply because the property if later found somewhere else. At the same time, we recognize the public safety issue. As mentioned, carts that are possessed, used, or abandoned in public areas can block sidewalks, bus stops, and create problems for kupuna and persons with disabilities, and end up in our parks and waterways. Those are real concerns identified in Bill 53. Retail merchants want to be part of the solution. We're prepared to work with the council, the city, law enforcement, appropriate agencies and community partners on prevention, signage, retrieval, and reasonable approaches to recovering and returning these carts. We have one clarification to the bill that we might recommend. which would indicate that it covers the premises where the retailer has a legal interest or a legal right to use the property. In that case would be like shopping centers and things like that. The bottom line is simple. Retailers want their carts back and we don't want them on our sidewalks, streets, parks, or in our waterways anymore than the city and our community does. We respectfully support Bill 53 and I thank you all and mahalo for the opportunity to testify.

Thank you members. Any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you. Next we have Natalie Wasa followed by Tim Gary.

Good morning, Chair Waters, Council Members, Natalie Wasa for the record. I oppose this bill. Basically what it does is it makes it illegal to use shopping carts on public property unless the cart is owned by the government. It also includes penalties and violations. And I kind of feel like why, I don't quite understand how so many people can support this. We already have a law on theft. And that should be enforced. Something is missing here in the way our system is working. And as far as the definitions go, I'm not so sure that all of the available personal shopping carts are included in the definitions. So you might have people out there using legitimate shopping carts that would get caught up in this. And the other thing is if you're concerned about the penalties, I encourage you to work with the state because they are the one that holds the law on theft. This law, in my opinion, would be superfluous, redundant, unnecessary, not needed. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Tim Gary followed by Lauren Zerval.

Good morning, Tim Gary. As a 40-year Grocery expert. Shopping carts, shoplifting is the reason you pay $8 for a loaf of bread. It's an affordability issue. Supermarkets, Costco, Sam's Club, they're not insured, they're self-insured. So when they suffer a shrink loss, that comes out of their bottom line. Especially in Hawaii, they pass that on to every one of you that goes to the store. We strongly have to not enable people to break the law to where it costs all of us. I'm sure you've gone into stores. I go into Safeway at least once a week and I see people shoplifting. And I asked the store director, why don't you do something? And he says, we don't wanna have a liability. So they just let him walk out the door. People that professionally shoplift, they know this. They know they're not gonna get stopped. So in turn, Safeway, if one apple gets stolen, as an example, they have to sell 100 apples to get back that cost. So just use that as an example. Shopping carts, $350 for a plastic one. Costco shopping cart, $1,000. Costco loses one shopping cart, they have to sell $100,000 to recoup that $1,000 loss. They jack the prices up. We all pay for it. And the reason in the past that supermarket chains and whatever did not file theft laws and everything is because on a cost basis analysis, it ended up costing them more money to go to court to hire somebody to represent themselves. So they just enabled it and they decided to let the public take the cost. I've been advocating this for years. I got a text from Anton Krucke. Stadium County last year picked up 5,000 shopping carts and they store them in a halava. That should tell you it right there. I strongly support this and I can't wait to go to committee to expound, thank you.

Thank you, next we have, Excuse me, Lauren Zirbel, hello and welcome from the Hawaii Food Industry Association. Actually, you have to push the button.

Thank you, Chair and Council Members. Lauren Zirbel, on behalf of Hawaii Food Industry Association, we represent grocery stores, food suppliers. Just to echo, we're in support of this measure. Just to echo some of the comments already made, when shopping carts are stolen, just like any other merchandise, It increases the prices for everyone else. It's a huge resource burden for us to have our staff members go out, try to collect the shopping carts, clean the shopping carts, repair the shopping carts. At the end of the day, we're having our property stolen and it's expensive. So we support this measure and thank the chair for introducing it. Mahalo.

Thank you.

Shelby Billionaire. Hello, I'm Pikachu, Shelby Billionaire. So the shopping carts, this kind of seems superfluous, like she's saying, to just talk about this, to talk about shopping carts, because I'm thinking more street style from Wai'anae. Go get your carts back. Go to Pokai Bay. Go and grab them. What are you afraid of? If it's from Times Square in Kalihi, because I've got a guy running security right now working today. He's getting shoplifted just like they said. They've got 10 Micronesian kids running, rape them, rob them, and they can't stop it. The security guards out there from Allied Security can't stop them. They're not allowed to carry pepper spray. No. No weapons, no guns, no nothing. And so when they get into these encounters with crazy people, because of Josh Green's law, they have literally samurai swords, crazy ninja swords, and they are loaded with knives, and we can't stop them, what they're going on. Now, the shopping cart issue, you can see them with the bums. They just roll them, take them, and park them. So if you're being honest, some of you guys are afraid to go get your carts back. I'm from the streets. I'll go and talk to them. How much your Costco cart worth? $1,000? Don't worry. I'll get it back. Here's $5.20 each cart. I'm going to give the bums the $5.20, and I'll get your cart back. I'm going to get your losses back. You want to fix it? Put the magnetic stuff so when you go in that little range, you cannot get past the little zone. Boom. Problem solved. Thank you very much. Let the retailers pay for it. Don't put the cost on us. The retailer's got money. Costco, Sam's Club, don't put the burden on the people. Put it back where it belongs. Thank you very much. Aloha.

Thank you. You might want to stay there. Moving on to page 9, Bill 54, Shelby Billionaire.

Oh great, going to parking, I have to leave, because we're out of time. We only came here for two minutes, so I support this bill, but I really have to leave, because we're out of time in our parking lot downstairs. So if you can waive that for your number one testifier from wine who has to catch the bus, this time I caught a ride, gas costs more than the bus. So you know what I mean? So I would change it to Park Queen if I could amend the bill. Thank you very much, Chair. Gotta go, out of time. Don't want a ticket. Aloha.

Thank you. Next we have Natalie Iwasa, followed by Dellen Kam.

Thank you, Natalie Awasa for the record. Just some comments on Bill 54. So basically this would allow neighbors or communities to request no parking within a quarter mile of a trailhead. And I guess my concern with respect to this bill is that there would be selective enforcement because people value their parking in front of their homes, right? They have three cars, two car garage, so one other car has to go somewhere else. And if they see a neighbor's car in front of the, in the no parking area, they're not going to call. But if they know that it's a hiker, they're going to call the police. So you have selective enforcement. The other thing is that, you know, I'd like you to take a look at what happened at Makapu'u because the Makapu'u decades ago, they used to park along Kalanianaole Highway. Somebody said, well, let's build a parking lot so people can park in the parking lot. Well, they did that, but now they're still parking on the highway. So honestly, I don't think that this will solve the problem. And I think that we should actually be motivating people to be more physically active. So those are my comments. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, we have Dellen Kam. Aloha, welcome.

Aloha, Chair Waters, Vice Chair Tupula, and the rest of the council members. I am Daylan Kam. I'm speaking on behalf of the O'ahu Transit Riders. The O'ahu Transit Riders advocates on behalf of the almost 70,000 daily riders across the island of O'ahu. We work to enhance affordability, speed, reliability, comfort, and accessibility of people's everyday transit commutes. We are testifying today because we are working with our members to further these goals means ensuring that their voices are heard, especially when meetings like these such as this are held during regular working hours when most commuters cannot attend. Parking is becoming a large problem in these communities and that have direct access to outdoor recreational trails. and the lack of parking affects many neighborhoods across the island, and we appreciate the City Council for taking steps to address this island-wide issue. If moved forward, we also urge the City to ensure access to these recreational sites through means other than driving, and look forward to supporting the City and Council in these efforts. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on any of the first reading items? Seeing none, members, moving on to discussion, just want to point out, as Tim Gary said on Bill 52, you got guys dressed in a Spider-Man outfit, and they'll come up to a tourist and ask if they want to take a picture, and then they take a picture, and then the Spider-Man will ask for $50, and demand it, and oftentimes these are Japanese tourists. they get really, really upset and they start to argue with them. And the fine is only $100. So it gives the police department the opportunity to enforce, charge a higher fine, which hopefully will curb that behavior. As far as Bill 53, dealing with shopping carts, I encourage you all to try to figure this problem out. In some communities you got, hundreds of these, hundreds of them. And I thought this is the best way after looking at it and looking at five or six different mechanisms to do it. But that's just me. I'd encourage you folks to try to solve this problem. Because as Mr. Erdmann and Ms. Zirbel said, it gets passed on to all of us. And these shopping carts are not cheap. So rather than just voting no, come up with a better solution if you don't like mine. And then lastly, dealing with Bill 54, we didn't have Department of Transportation coming up. I know they're gonna testify against it, understand that, but what's happening on some of the trails, hikers are not respecting the people who live there, they park in front of their driveways, and people are at wit's end. It allows the community to ask the Department of Transportation, and then the Department of Transportation has the discretion to do it or not do it. But right now, they can't do it. You can't paint curbs red anywhere. I did not know that until recently, but again, it is an enforcement problem, but we do have a shortage of police officers and they can't be driving up to these trail heads every single day when there's a lot of other important things that they need to do. Anyway, hopefully this all goes to committee and we can work that out at the committee if people have any serious concerns. Having said that, any further discussion members? Council Member Tupola.

Thank you so much, Sharon. Thank you for the background on some of these. I will say with Bill 53, I'm going to go reservations. I hear you on, I think we discussed this actually in 2023, I remember. The conversation was very robust. My concern is the city, I guess, being the... in 13.4, letter B, that any person violating the provision shall forfeit the shopping cart to the city, which I don't really want us to be over all of the actual materials or the collection of these carts. We have theft on the books. We have obstructing sidewalks on the books. We have unauthorized use of property on the books as far as laws that HPD can already enforce. I mean, I myself, after one of our cleanups, pushed 26 carts back to Longs in Waianae. So I know it's difficult, but I don't necessarily think that this is any different than what HPD already has the ability to do as far as enforcing on people who are, it's theft. who are taking this, but again, most of the people who are, are people that if they were fined with this or sent to jail, they're homeless. It's, I mean, the overcrowding issue. So I hear what you're saying. There's a lot of curves on every end of this bill, but for right now, I'm not in support, but I'll go reservations, and I will think through your invitation to think of a better solution. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Kia'aina.

Now that I better understand Bill 52, yes, I understand that, and I would be pretty pissed off if Spider-Man was squeezing me for $50 for taking a picture. in Waikiki. On the shopping carts, I am concerned about the HAMR approach because a great majority of the individuals, first of all, would not be able to pay the fine. And some of them, many of them are homeless. So I guess I'm just worried about the HAMR approach. I still believe that the businesses play a role with regard to improved technology for shopping carts, because this is a problem across the country, not just here. And I feel that that we need to explore that. So I'm also gonna be voting with reservations, but as it moves along, I would have concerns if it kept on moving along as is. And then the last one on your Bill 54, coming from a district that has these challenges, I support the concept. I would like to make sure that for those who live that, that they're not gonna be adversely impacted. by also being prohibited from parking. So I would worry about that balance. But thank you for moving these measures forward for discussion.

Thank you. Council Member Cordero.

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate your measures moving forward. I have similar thoughts on Bill 53. I do have to note that while I do have a lot of condominiums, both in Aiea and in Salt Lake, Moanalua, as well as in Kalihi, a lot of them, while some of them have their own private retail cards or shopping cards, a lot of them actually do tend to utilize the ones that are at Salt Lake Shopping Center or other shopping centers. And a lot of them are on fixed income seniors that need to utilize that to get their groceries there. So I do take your call out to look at this bill better. So I will be voting with reservations.

Mahalo. Any further discussion, members? Seeing none, thank you, members. Noting the reservations of Council Members Tupolek, Kiana, and Cordero, the first reading items on page eight and nine have passed first reading. Thank you, members. Moving to page 10 from the Committee on Budget, Council Member Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 192.26 be adopted and Bill 68.2025 pass second reading.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Related to real property taxation.

Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers? Mr. Chair, we have Ms. Iwasa signed up. Okay, please proceed.

Thank you, Natalie Wasa for the record. Just some comments on this. I've been asking for the income to be looked at with respect to the real property tax credit for over a decade now. But what this bill does is basically it removes the spouse's W-2 income and Social Security income if that spouse is not on the title but they file a joint return. And first of all, I think we have to ask ourselves, is it fair to not include a spouse's income just because the person is not on title? And with respect to what's happened with Residential A, shouldn't we be encouraging that extra spouse or the other spouse to be on title so that when the person who's on title dies, that the classification doesn't automatically go into Residential A if it's over a million dollars? If it's fair, then we need to also look at why isn't the other income of the spouse being included? What if that spouse who's not on title has self-employment income or disability income? Why are you only looking at those two types of income? It seems very tailored to one or two people, and you need to look at the entire group that you're considering here. You should also consider that there are pre-tax amounts such as dependent care that should be included that I think are often not. And then with respect, there's just a little error in the bill. You have the Internal Revenue Code listed as 1954. It should be 1986. That's in Section 8-3.1. So those are my comments. I think when you're looking at this kind of thing, you really need to, if you're not familiar with tax law, you need to ask somebody to help you with that because if you get it wrong, you'll create another unfair and inequitable situation. So those are my comments, thank you.

Thank you, members. Any questions for Ms. Iwasa? Seeing none, is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 68? Seeing none, members, we're in discussion. Seeing none, roll call, Mr. Clerk. Chair. Oh, I'm sorry. Council Member Weyer.

Just for discussion, this is a 68, you said, yeah? Yes. So I think for me, and just to give some explanation why I'm going to be voting no, the concern was just that I think we really should be looking at the broadest applicability of the credit, and I don't want to send homeowners into this you know, scuffle of like, oh, how do we bring our house into compliance with me putting us in the best position and refiguring the title and whatnot. And really my preference overall, I think as I've mentioned before multiple times is to really evaluate how we can push up that low income tax credit. And initially the discussion and what I had put forward was basing it on the household income, the AMI, which I think is more equitable. overall too, right, because it would give us the reality of what a particular family is in, and then I think making sure we're working towards providing for the needs of those who really need it. And so just wanted to give that explanation. Mahalo.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero. Aye. Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excused. Council Member Kia-Aina.

No.

Council Member Nishimoto. Aye. Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Tauba.

Aye.

Council Member Tupoula.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. No. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are six ayes, two noes, one member is absent.

Thank you. CR 192 of 2026 has been adopted in Bill 68. 2025 has passed second reading. Council Member Okimoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 19326 be adopted and Bill 44-2026 pass second reading. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Relating to revenues and funds.

Thank you. I believe we have, we had one registered testifier, Shelby Billionaire, but we also have Natalie Wausau.

Thank you, Natalie Wasa for the record. Some comments. So on this particular bill, basically what you're doing is you're taking the TAT, the county TAT, and allocating it certain ways. You know, we have about 50 special funds and This particular bill would require that 10% of the TATB deposited into the Botanical Gardens and Urban Forestry Revolving Fund. Now I've looked at the ROH Section 6. I have not seen that fund listed there. And I also noted that Bill 33, which did not move forward, created a special fund for that. So my question is, do we really have this fund to put it into? But you've heard me say multiple times that special funds are not a good way to manage our fiscal responsibilities in the city. I just wanna give you an example because I think if I bring it down to a personal level, you might understand a little bit more. This particular bill would require that the funding be supplemental rather than supplanting. So imagine that your spouse or your partner agreed that all of your bonuses for the year would go into a repairs and maintenance fund. And then, in addition, you would regularly put in whatever you put in for repairs and maintenance from your salaries. But this year, however, your insurance, your taxes, your groceries went up, and so your regular budget doesn't cover all that stuff. So what do you do? You have this money sitting aside that's allocated for your repairs and maintenance, but you can't touch it. And that's the point that I'm trying to get across is that when we have all these special funds, we have money, but then we can't use it for something else that is needed. And when that happens, then in your own personal situation, we just say, well, we're gonna have to work some overtime. We're gonna have to have a rummage sale, whatever. But when you're talking about the city, then we have services that don't get performed, or we have taxes that go up. And we know every single year, our taxes go up. So I ask you to consider that as you go into committing, assuming this moves forward some more. I just really am concerned about our special funds and how they are taking pieces out of our very much needed general fund. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 44? Seeing none, Council Member Topola, we're in discussion.

Thank you so much. Can I have Director Thielen, just a real quick question. So this is a parks, and zoo bill. But I would say that I do agree with Ms. Iwasa in regards to special funds that sit, but I do not think that this special fund is gonna sit. I mean, the needs that we have in the parks are great. I just had a meeting with a bunch of the tennis guys who said that they've been waiting for years to get it resurfaced. So could you just address that? This fund, especially directing the TAT into it, how do you foresee it helping and benefiting parks? Will it sit? Will you spend it right away? Go ahead.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Members of the Council, Laura Thielen on behalf of the Department of Parks and Recreation. I understand what the testifier was talking about, but the reality is the base funding for parks and amenities like this is not sufficient to maintain the areas that we have. We have a very large park system. We have a lot of aging infrastructure. And we have demographics where people have moved to areas of the island that have no infrastructure. So right now, we're struggling to just maintain old buildings and to meet the needs in new areas. These funds will go out to supplement the base funding for the Parks Department and allow us to be able to keep pace with the repairs and maintenance that are needed and then to also put in some new infrastructure to meet the changing demographics. And that's what that language is intended to mean, is that it's going to supplement that base level of funding that the city is already providing but is currently not meeting the recreational needs for the population.

Thank you, Director. Chair, if I could continue in discussion, or do you want me to wait if other people have questions?

Yeah. Can we see if anybody else has questions for Director Thielen? I do. What is the Recreation Services Revolving Fund?

So there is a separate bill that is proposing to repurpose two existing special funds. One is the Central O'ahu Regional Park Special Fund, and one is the Waipio Soccer Peninsula Special Fund. Those two funds would be repurposed, one for parks maintenance and recreation services, and one for the botanical gardens and urban forestry. The Waipio and corp will be accounts within the parks maintenance and recreation services fund. So portions of the TAT that's dedicated for parks will go into the PMRS special funds. The proportion that is dedicated for the botanical gardens will go into the botanical gardens special fund. We are looking at the master plan for Hoʻomaluhia to charge an entry fee for tourists, not for residents. those funds would go into the botanical gardens and urban forestry special fund. We are in discussion with other groups about revenues that would be able to be generated, small amounts, but what we found time and again is members of the public say we would be willing to pay for a permit so long as we are guaranteed that the money will go to be used to support the parks. And again, that is the thing that's missing. If it goes into the general fund, the public is not guaranteed that the permit price would go in to support the parks and the maintenance. So the special funds are there to be able to provide that guarantee to the public so that these supplemental monies that would come in would be used for those purposes.

Okay, but that's just a little different that the money that people are paying for example, parking would go into this special fund, but here we're talking about the TAT right, completely separate from what you're talking about, right?

Correct. And what the proposal is on the TAT is currently those monies have been allocated for these purposes, but they all expire and go back into the general fund after one year. What we are asking is because frequently we're having to do new contracts for things and we're coming up to the end of the fiscal year and there's always a rush and in some cases We've missed it by a couple days in getting the contracts through. The funding has lapsed. So the request for this TAT that has been set aside by the council under existing law for recreation and natural resource areas, that they would go into these dedicated special funds so that we would be able to contract them out efficiently and keep using them for the budgeted purposes.

Can the recreational services revolving fund be used to fix our restrooms, our bathrooms? Waikiki has been shut down for years off and on. Bathrooms all over the place really need help. I'd be more happy to support this if you tell me that this is gonna help clean our restrooms.

We are using those funds to be doing the massive amounts of renovations under the master contracts that we have. And we are currently working with purchasing on doing a master contract that would allow us to redo interiors of buildings because we cannot keep pace with our in-house crews. that would allow us to do that more efficiently through some larger regional contracts but these are the types of monies that are going in currently to replace many of these areas that we have and in addition putting in like the new playgrounds and the other things that we have the master contracts for so yes it is going to do a lot of those repairs and maintenance that you're talking about

So the Recreation Services Revolving Fund can be used to repair the restrooms? Yes. Okay. Any follow-up questions, members? Seeing none, thank you so much. Council Member Topolo.

Thank you. I just wanted to say that, you know, as Parks Chair, I've been trying to work very diligently with Director Thielen to solve this issue of us being able to generate revenue for the betterment and upkeep of our parks. It is no secret that all of us struggle with us being able to maintain the parks at a level that the community and that the public are happy with, including bathrooms. And so I will say that in the MSS budget for just the maintenance support that parks has for just one bathroom that we renovated I used more than half of my MSS budget for one whole year and that's just for one restroom and I have so many in the parks that need it so I will say that for me this as well as some of the other bills within the parks package is kind of the vision I had as parks chair when I first started with director Thielen is We can't keep this up. I mean, I don't want to name everyone's gyms in their districts, but my kids play ball everywhere. So I go to every gym, every park, and sometimes I'm embarrassed because there's city facilities, there's families there, maybe the bleachers are broken, whatever is happening. And I do think that it is part and parcel of us not understanding that, one, we have master contracts, And we have only an annual budget that we're cutting for parks instead of ongoing revenue that's helping them to do more than just the status quo. So I do want to thank Council Member Kiannan, her leadership on this bill. This is the one that got pushed out of budget and it is going to help our botanical gardens of which I've visited all of them. They're beautiful. The staff is hardworking, but we're basically just managing the status quo there until we change some of the policies and of course to Director Holyfield for the improvements and of course the new zoo director having some funds towards that. I want us to be all proud of the facilities that we have and if this is a mechanism that can get us a step closer then I'm in support. Thank you chair.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Council Member Keohane.

Thank you. Yes, I just wanted to just reiterate, we brought this up the last time with regard to Ms. Iwasi's testimony. Again, currently the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services oversees these funds, and after a couple of years, I think many of us in the City Council feel quite comfortable with ensuring the flow of funds go to the programs that need it the most. So that's what this is all about. And I feel comfortable about that. With regard to supplemental funding, I just want to make sure that the Department of Parks and Rec ensures that as you're negotiating right now for your upcoming budget, that budget and fiscal services does not decrease your underlying budget. You need to be very vigilant. And lastly, I hope that your continuing negotiations with the Department of War's REPI program for invasive species management moves forward, we are doing everything we can to look for funding opportunities for you. And again, since the Blangiardi administration, many of us only have two years left, I encourage you to work with us to ensure that we do that and to give you a strong foundation so when you're gone, the Department of Parks and Recreation has a solid funding stream. Thank you.

Thank you, any further discussion members? Council Member Nishimoto. Please note my reservations. Reservations. I'm gonna vote with reservations too and I'll tell you why because I have a question and we don't need to answer it today but we could do it in budget. Does the council still maintain the ability to appropriate the money from within that fund? As an example, people are talking about the Panda And if we simply put this money in the Honolulu Zoo Revolving Fund, does DES have the ability to take that and go put it towards the panda? Where most people that I talk to don't want to spend that kind of money. Although the administration is saying that it's going to come from private funding, but Really, once we pass this, if we don't have a say in how this is spent, it could be used for stuff like that. Anyway, Council Member Keai.

Good question. Because we did think about that. It's sort of like the Climate Resiliency Fund. They delineate, and they're also in the same throes because they're new. And so they delineate the projects, and so we do have the same in the budget. So what I would recommend for both the Department of Environmental Services and Parks and Recreation is that they delineate it and so council members would have a say with the projects that they're delineating from these funds. That's what I would recommend. So again, the Climate Resiliency Fund was clearly delineated this year for TAT. It all went to the funds that are gonna be used for roofs. And of course, I know I shared concerns over that, but moving forward, Director Thielen has assured me that for the next fiscal budgets, they're gonna do a better job with regard to delineating the projects. And I also said that for the use of the transient accommodation taxes, they should endeavor to spread it among the districts so we would all be able to look at the specific projects.

Thank you so much. Council Member Topolo.

Yeah, and just to iterate also that the delineation in the budget is going to reference the special fund. So it does have to be line itemed out. So just like the sewer fund and whatever, it'll show us where it's being spent, except for your concern about the bathrooms of which I do believe, and I'm not trying to speak for Director Thielen, that it's always gonna be put into the MSS line items. So we're not line iteming out specific bathrooms unless it's a CIP request. Thank you.

I see, thank you. Okay, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero. Aye. Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excuse. Council Member Kiya Aina.

Aye.

Council Member Nishimoto.

Aye.

Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Toba. Aye. Council Member Tupoula.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. Aye. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you. CR 193-2026 has been adopted. Bill 44 from 2026 has passed second reading. Moving to the top of page 11, Council Member Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 194-26 be adopted and Bill 45-2026 pass second reading. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Relating to real property taxation.

Thank you. I believe we have a number of testifiers starting with Natalie Wausau.

Thank you, Chair. Natalie Wasa for the record. I oppose this bill. Basically what it does is it increases the homeowners exemption from 140,000 to 160,000 effective July 1st, 28. And you just passed a bill recently that increased it from 120 to 140 effective next fiscal year. Every time you increase it by $20,000, the gap between homeowners who live in their homes and landlords grows by $70 at the current rates. The current exemption of $140,000 is a value of about $490, and it's subsidized by, heavily anyway, by the residential A classification. This type of policy further widens our affordability gap. And I've said this many times. You folks know how I feel about our tax system in general. And I'm wondering, has any one of you yet asked the city for a breakdown of that charitable exemption? Because that, I think, really needs to be revised. We have labor unions in there. They are not charitable, but they fall into that exemption classification. business leagues, others that are not 501 organizations. And we just had an election. We know that unions spend millions of dollars and here we are giving them taxes of only $300 when their property would normally have to pay be assessed at tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands even. I agree with the director of BFS when he says that you need to get either a permitted interaction group or have a real property tax advisory commission again, something to look at this entire issue because continuing to increase the exemptions for homeowners is not sustainable, it is not fair, not equitable. So those are my comments. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next we have Damian Waikolo. Is Damian Waikolo here?

Aloha, Chair, Council Members, Damian Waikoloa, in my personal capacity in opposition, solely on the fact that this bill has been messaged as a meaningful reduction to cost of living for our local residents, which this is absolutely not. A once a year savings of $70 does absolutely nothing for families who are managing tight monthly, weekly, or even daily budgets. And I would say if this council seriously wants to tackle any kind of meaningful cost of living for residents, we need to start with reductions again at their daily, weekly or monthly expenses. Again, giving us $70 a year is really not going to do anything. To quickly illustrate for our family home here in Manoa, we did benefit from the previous increase in the exemption. However, that was completely wiped out by our more than $1,000 increase in our homeowners insurance in 2025. And for 2026, our homeowners insurance is going up at least $350, if not more. The reason why I bring up our homeowners insurance is because the things that drive up those costs, like wildfires, floods, and those kinds of natural disasters, individual homeowners can't do anything, $70 in hand or not, to address those kinds of things that are affecting our insurance rates. The city, the state, the federal government are the only ones that have the ability to put in flood mitigation, wildfire mitigation, so that when the next natural disaster happens, it either doesn't happen as intensely, as devastatingly financially or to the health and safety of our residents. And then I just wanted to throw in a quick reminder that the FEMA flood maps got updated recently. So there are a number of our neighbors that are now in flood zones that will now have to pick up an additional new expense. They'll have to pick up flood insurance in addition to their hurricane and hazard insurance. And just for the record, Chair, this will be my testimony for both 45 and 46, so you can save time on that one.

Mahalo. Thank you. Next, we have Amy Brown.

Mr. Chair, the testifier is not logged on.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 45? Tim Gehry.

Good afternoon. The two previous test fighters brought up good points. There's a lot of people not paying their taxes. The unions, people like that, nonprofits. Also, there was an article in Civil Beat, maybe a week or two ago, about historic homes. I got a guy, that lives about five houses away from me. Our homes were both built in 1955. He pays $300 a year on a 10,000 square foot lot. My house, same thing, built 1955. I pay $6,200 a year. This is a scam. I don't know how many people, I forget in the article, that qualify for this, but it's not fair. Why should they pay $300? They put a little plaque in front of the house and they supposedly have a walking tour once a month. That equates to $5,900 in savings. So Natalie brings up good point, the last testifier brings up good point. I appreciate the council expanding the exemption rate on the homes, but like the last testifier said, my hurricane insurance went through the roof this year. My homeowners insurance never had a claim, ever. and it went up $380. All these expenses are what is helping force people to leave this place. Ask Augie what it costs in Indiana. Unbelievable. These are some of the things you guys need to take into consideration. I appreciate the exemption, but For Kupuna, I'm gonna fix income, Social Security and small pension. And I can't incur these costs year over year. We need to fix the price of the home tax for Kupuna and maybe have it as a COLA increase similar to what my Social Security goes up. maybe 2.7% or whatever. So I appreciate you thinking about it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Cody Soodle. Aloha, welcome.

Aloha, Chair, members of the committee. Cody Sula with the Hawaiian Iron Workers Stabilization Fund. We did not submit a testimony on this, but we'd like to testify now. We're in support of this measure. Some of the other testifiers mentioned that $70 or whatever the cost might be might sound modest to a lot of people, but I think the council should take into consideration the powers that they have in the areas that they control, which would be property taxes. And $70 for somebody might not be a lot, but it's something. And one thing that I'd like to point out is that the average cost of a home now in Hawaii is $1.2 million. Our property tax exemptions, when they don't raise, we're still paying property taxes for a higher property. And even at $70, that means that the property tax exemption is not keeping up with the price of the homes. So we're in support of this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 45? Seeing none, members, we are in discussion. Council Member Weyer.

Thank you, Chair. Just to briefly explain, and I won't reiterate for Bill 46, so I was gonna vote for reservations with both at this juncture, and I don't think it's new info, because I brought it up before, so I just wanted to explain a little bit. I appreciate the sentiment and the thought. But I do think if we're going to do these continued incremental increases, I think it is pertinent to do a broader plan, particularly maybe in a permitted interaction group. I know when we had introduced our $400,000 exemption a couple years ago, it was in response to just the dramatic increase that we saw in valuations and when we ran the numbers and shifted the burden, it was revenue neutral. So it didn't cost the city anything. And so I just highlight that because I don't think the homeowner occupant exemptions are the mechanism to really provide immediate relief to our families because I think there's a need to really assess and hone in on those that are most burdened by the increased cost and then structure our broader framework in response to that. And so I just wanted to note that. And the same reasoning applies for Bill 46, so reservations for both.

Thank you. Any further discussion members? Council Member Topola.

Yeah, voting in favor, also in favor of a broader look in a permitted interaction group of all of this. I know that we're getting more serious about it, and it might be upcoming, but I do think that a broad look at all of it all together is going to be useful, especially since there was an exemption just recently passed, and that also will help to stabilize our conversations during budget next year. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no further discussion, we'll call Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero.

Aye.

Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excuse me. Council Member Kiya Aina.

Aye.

Council Member Nishimura.

Aye.

Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Toba.

Reservations.

Council Member Tupala.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. Reservations. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you, CR 194-2026 has been adopted. Bill 45-2026 is passed, second reading. Moving to the bottom of page 11, Council Member Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 195-26 be adopted and Bill 46-2026 passed, second reading. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Relating to real property taxation.

Thank you. We have a number of registered testifiers. Shelby Billionaire is not here. Damian Waikoloa incorporated his testimony with Bill 45. Cody Sula. Aloha, welcome again.

Hello again, Chair, members of the committee, Hawaii Iron Record Stabilization Fund, Cody Sula, strong support of this bill. And we're in strong support of the bill because we just want to express that we think that this is a great way that the City Council and the City of Honolulu can acknowledge our kupuna, take care of them, give them a little exemption. One of the testifiers mentioned that a lot of these guys are retiring. They're living on a fixed income. and prices keep going up, so if you can offer them some type of relief to honor their commitment and the sacrifice that they made. They've paid for the infrastructure and all of the benefits that we've received in our time growing up here in Hawaii, and it's time for us to just take a moment to honor them and give them some kind of relief for the property tax. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Natalie Iwasa.

Thank you, Chair. Natalie Iwasa for the record. I oppose this bill, too. It's similar to Bill 45. However, it relates to homeowners who are 65 or older, and it also repeals the in lieu of exemption. The $200,000 exemption would equate to about $700 at our current rates. And again, this widens the gap. I found it very interesting, the testimony from BFS, that over half of the homeowners are in that age bracket. But we keep hearing that, well, we're on fixed incomes and people can't afford it, so this is why we're doing this. However, not everybody who's over 65 is having problems financially, and so this would benefit them as well. I would like you to consider that. But for those who are, and certainly there are, we have the real property tax credit, and that's why it's there. So I oppose this. Other than I support the removal of the in lieu of exemption on pages seven and eight. That came out of our Real Property Tax Advisory Commission recommendation about a decade ago. And just kind of for background so you kind of understand what people go through when they have to file this paperwork. It was very confusing for somebody who's 65 who applied for the exemption, the in lieu of exemption, as well as the tax credit because it's working with two different divisions within the BFS. And there was a lot of paperwork. So when you're working with older people especially, I think it's important to consider that, that it can be confusing. There's a lot of documents that come through in order to meet the requirements of exemptions and that kind of thing. But I oppose this for the reasons stated and ask you to vote no. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 46? Bill 46. Seeing none, members, we're in discussion. Council Member Topola.

I just wanted to ask a question to the Deputy Director of BFS. Aloha, Deputy. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Vice Chair.

To Paula, Carrie Casto, Deputy Director with Budget and Fiscal Services.

So my question is in regards to this bill, I know that you came to testify on some of the real property tax related bills. Do you have a broad summary of where you guys stand?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair. So on Bill 45 and 46, so BFS is opposing or expressing concerns with respect to both bills and the addition of $20,000 in the homeowner's exemption. While it may seem, you know, we said it's about $70 per year per taxpayer, but on an overall basis, for those that are 65 or less than 65 years of age, the impact to our total real property tax revenue is $4.95 million. And for Bill 46, where the age, the 20,000 additional homeowners exemption equates to about $5.5 million in additional tax revenue. or loss of real property tax revenue. So on a combined basis, we're looking at nearly $10 million of loss revenue. And knowing that real property tax is our largest source of revenue for the city, it's very concerning. So we are expressing concerns.

So your main concern is about the revenue loss, but you don't have any specific iterations or amendments to any of the bills. Do you support the position of a permitted interaction group?

Absolutely. We have been, Director Cuono has been reiterating on multiple occasions that we strongly suggest that a permitted interaction group be stood up where we can discuss these property tax measures holistically and not individually. Would have loved to had the opportunity to say more about Bill 68, for example, But I think if we form the permitted interaction group, then we can look at all these property tax bills in total and not just one-offs and really understand the impact to our real property tax revenue.

Thank you, Deputy. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Hey, just a follow-up question. How much did the administration lapse last year?

Well, last year, we don't have that final number yet because...

Okay, the year before that. Good point.

I think it's about... About $200 million, right?

Maybe more, actually.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's not fair to really look at FY25 because in FY26, our costs increase. We know that with respect to collective bargaining, our salaries are, year by year, have increased by about $55 million in FY26. In FY27, we're looking at another $55 million or so. That's $110 million just with respect to salaries alone. So I don't think it's really, I think when we talk about how much has lapsed, we need to consider a change from one year to the next.

Fair enough, thank you so much. Any follow-up questions for Deputy Director?

Council Member Weyer. Thank you, Chair. I guess I just want to make sure, so, I mean, I know BFS oftentimes is taking the position that they have concerns or oppose legislation because of the impact on the revenue. And I know that's always hard for the community to digest sometimes because they feel like, okay, we're the ones facing the pressure of these increased taxes and the tax burden. And so I don't think they're opposite sides of the spectrum because I think, I would hope we can all agree that those that are really struggling should receive relief and there should be equity. Like we want rental units to be incentivized too, like Ms. Iwaso always brings up very astutely. And so I guess I'm just wanting to make sure that BFS would be committed to working with the council on actual adjustments and changes if a permitted interaction group was created. Because I know I bring up the low income tax credit all the time, but that's just one tool. And I think there's a broader discussion we've been having with some of my colleagues having great ideas about maybe simplifying the classification structure, right? So just wanted to confirm that.

Thank you, Council Member Weyer. Thank you for that question. I say definitely we want to work together to come up with improvements, I guess, to our real property tax structure. I think back to the first permitted interaction group that we worked on together, I feel like it was very positive. What came out of that was, initially, I think we went in with some 34 proposed bills, and we narrowed it down, we worked together, and by working together in the group, we could actually see the impact to our real property tax revenue right there in terms of some of the decisions that were being proposed. And having that information, I think, was valuable for coming to our conclusions that came out of that group. So I feel like by forming, again, the permitted interaction group will be very beneficial as opposed to sort of talking about each one in and of its own. If we talk about Bill 45, 46, and 68, last year on Bill 68 for the low income tax credit program, we were able to give taxpayers tax relief in the amount of over $8 million. So if you consider Bill 68, the low income tax credit, of $8 million and these two homeowner exemptions, 45 and 46, we're talking about almost $20 million of additional or potential reduction in, again, our largest source of revenue, which is real property taxes. We really need these revenues to be able to provide ongoing core services to constituents.

But just to confirm, you're not opposed to providing relief in some form, but I think when we had met, I can't remember if it was you or Director Cuano, that it needs to be planned, strategic, phased in, and contemplate the impact on revenue.

Absolutely.

Okay, mahalo.

Thank you.

Mahalo for that. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Any further questions or discussion? Seeing none, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero.

Aye.

Council Member Dos Santos-Tan. Excuse me. Council Member Kiana. Council Member Nishimura. Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Toba. Council Member Tupola.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. Preservations. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you, CR195-2026 has been adopted. Bill 46-2026 is passed, second reading. Moving to the top of page 12, Council Member Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 196-26 be adopted and Bill 47-2026 passed, second reading.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Relating to the motor vehicle weight tax.

Thank you. I believe we have a number of registered testifiers. Starting with Daylan Kam. Aloha, thank you for being here. Bill 47.

Aloha Chair Waters, Chair Tupoula, and Council Members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on Bill 47. I am Daylan Kam representing the O'ahu Transit Riders. Ensuring affordable travel options for all road users is something that this Council has made clear that it is committed to affordability. And we would like to comment and say that we would like to see this reflected in in the affordability of public transportation. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Is Representative Darius Kila online?

Mr. Chair, the testifier is not logged on.

Okay. Cody Sula.

Getting my steps in today. All right, hello again, Council. Cody Sula with the Hawaiian Ironworkers Stabilization Fund. We're in strong support of this bill to propose an amendment to the motor vehicle weight tax. provided that it brings some tax relief, lower our taxes for our taxpayers here. I read some of the testimonies saying that it might be small, $45 to $60, depending if we drop it one cent on the vehicle taxes, but... when you have a family, when you have multiple vehicles, and that $45 to $60 can add up. When you're looking at a month and you know that your registration is coming up, people think about, oh, how am I going to pay this? How are we going to pay our increase in our water and sewage fees, which went up 30%, or our electric prices that went up 30%, or our food prices that's been going up, and of course our gas prices. When you're a taxpayer, a working person, and you're looking at that, you take any relief that you can get. So we're in strong support of this because what we're thinking about is make Hawaii a little bit more affordable for the people living here, keeping our skilled workforce home and the Hawaii people in our communities. And I know one of the things that's always going to come up is, what are we going to do with our loss in revenue? Well, what are we going to do with our loss in people? 2021, we had over 45,000 people move out of state. All right, we're losing our communities, we're losing our culture because we don't do anything to bring down affordability. And as our managing director, T. George Paris would say, a zero is zero. So something small can help our people. And another thing is if we're looking for revenue, we read in a newspaper a few months ago, we get $90 million in uncollected feeds from the city. That's revenue that can be made and brought into the city to make up these losses to help make our place a little bit more affordable. So we're in strong support of this. We urge the council, please pass this. Help us get our head out of the water.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Damian Waikolo.

Aloha, Chair. Damien Waikoloa, in my personal capacity, in opposition of Bill 47, reiterating the same point I made for Bill 45 and 46. If this Council is contemplating cost of living, really tackling that issue, this is not the way to do it, despite what some members on this Council are telling the community. Again, A $45 to $70 reduction a year is not going to do anything when a lot of our residents are having to manage their budgets at a monthly, weekly, or daily level. I respect what the other testifiers say about how everything a little bit counts. But for example, I recently renewed my vehicle registration for my 2014 Toyota Corolla. And I calculated what would my savings have been if this was enacted. And it was $44. That very same day, I had to go fill my tank of gas. Three quarters of a tank, right? From quarter tank to full. $55, gone. That was it. This didn't even buy me a full tank of gas that would maybe last me a week. That's the same thing that's happening for these families. And then what's the tradeoff? $20 to $30 million in lost revenue, right? Again, individual drivers or registered owners cannot fix the potholes. We cannot go and fix the sidewalks. We cannot improve our driving infrastructure that these revenues are supposed to address at a local, state or federal government level. Again, we cannot do that $44 in hand or not. So personally, I would rather you keep my $44 a year and you know, fill the potholes repave the aging roads, improve our road safety infrastructure so people stop dying on our streets, and fund roads that are made for pedestrians, bikes, and buses, you know, because we cannot do that as drivers, individual drivers. Only our local government can. Mahalo.

Thank you, Mr. Waikoloa. Next, we have David, uh, Darius Kila, Representative Darius Kila.

Aloha, Chair and Council Members. I want to stand on my written testimony in support and just add context. I appreciate that we continue having this discussion. I've engaged with many of you during the legislative session about this subject matter, and if the Council's concern is revenue, maybe as you folks know, at the state level, we assess two different classes of vehicle weight from 0 to 4, and then 4,000 to 7,000. If we also, if the proposal, you guys leave commercial vehicles and try to tie it in with the state different classes different levels, that's potentially a possibility. And then when you talk about using or trying to deflate some of the upfront costs, right? I mean, we know that our systems don't allow for a buy now, pay later system. And although minimal savings is $44 to $50 for some, that's an extra $44 or $50 that they actually could put forward to paying it in the registration. It's an upfront cost that not everybody potentially has. And if the council is still concerned about revenue, if there's a way for us to look at income-based reductions to allow people our Hawaii drivers who probably need it the most that are just trying to commute to and from work. I want us to continue to allow these discussions to happen because I get it. There are people in the state that do not have any problem paying the weight tax for that is assessed from the state and county. But for the communities that I represent, Council Member Tupoula represents, it is not a secret that you see vehicles several years backdated because that's how expensive it's gotten for them. And so... I appreciate the council just willing to have this discussion. I appreciate you folks at the legislature willing to have this discussion. And however the council chooses to move, I hope we can continue moving it forward to just make it better if that's the concern. So again, in support, mahalo.

Thank you, Representative Aquila. Next, we have Amy Brown. Chair, question? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Council Member Tupola.

Oh, Council Member- Representative Keillor, thank you for participating today. I did have a question because as you were talking about potentially lost revenue, I was thinking in my head revenue that the city would like to have that the state currently receives relating to parking. So I'm just hoping maybe because we have HPD out there and other folks who collect fines and it currently does not come to us. So I'm just hoping maybe in the next year we can work with you to see whether or not the state would be open to helping us.

Well, and then if I can respond, Council Chair, is that There was an amendment I did to a bill during the session where five years ago during the COVID pandemic, the legislature amended the ticket collection to pretty much still remove the stopper that occurs on vehicles with tickets. And I understand the social justice aspect around some of those. But you folks, you and I both seen that there are prolific repeat offenders at $7,000 to $8,000 in tickets. So at some point, where do you draw that line and threshold? So if the council would be willing to try to support reinstalling that stopper. Obviously, put it at a threshold and try to find a way that the ticket that was written, that if there's a shared collection, I'd be totally open to it.

Okay, terrific. Look forward to talking story.

Thank you.

Council Member Tupoula.

Aloha, Representative, thank you for tuning in today. My question is in regards to the bill that you introduced this past year and if there is thoughts of reintroduction, just because I do think that Chair Waters' proposal is something we're doing on our end that's a little bit more modest than what you did, but if conversations are starting up again and you're looking to reintroduce it, I think we should work together to kind of have that discussion. What are your thoughts?

Oh, make it no secret. I'm not trying to attack the county or the council anyway, right? But I think in the discussion I had with you and budget chair Okimoto, I was concerned that the way the means of funding with the council budget that you folks use highway funds that the state does not. And so I was even willing to consider a delayed implementation date to do a slow stagger effect to have the counties come into that same way, right? And I don't want it to become this bashing session, but the state has assisted county on some of these roads, especially in our shared district, right? That lump sum of funds that we have in the state highway budget has allowed us to work on the county roads that have fallen to the wayside. So... I don't want to go back to that part. I want to give you folks the autonomy, right? But it is of concern when highway funds are spent in a different way. I think from the preliminary assessment, I think $100 million was, 140 was collected and only 40 went to repair and maintenance. And obviously the other 100 was floated in different ways. if there is a way for us to continue having discussions. I want to get to a place where we don't have to do legislation, that the county, the council can look at revising the ordinance or revising the schedule to get to a place for all of our drivers.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you, Representative Keillor. Next, we have Dale Vanderbrink, followed by Luca Cuniberti.

Mr. Chair, the testifiers are not logged on.

Okay, is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 47? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry, Director Martin, aloha.

Hello, Chair Waters, council members. My name is Roger Morton. I'm Director of Transportation Services. I did submit written testimony that you probably all have in opposition to Bill 47. And I thought I wanted to just, without going through it all, I wanted to highlight some of the points in that testimony. First, we had estimated when I wrote the letter that this would be about a $30 million revenue loss. Since we delivered the letter yesterday, our Department of Community Services has actually done a detailed analysis of the actual dollars. It came out to $39.5 million instead of $30 million. As Representative Keillor said, the transportation fund does cover a number of things besides road surfacing, but $40 million of loss is about the same amount as what we spend every year on road resurfacing. We also use the largest expenditure though for the highway fund is debt repayment, which is legally required. And that amount is 139 million per year for the next budget year. That's to pay off bonds that were used for highway projects in the past. This year, we will float more bonds, so there will be a continuing need to do that. What else does the Highway Fund pays for? It pays for about $30 million of HPD's traffic enforcement. It pays for about $30 million of transfer to public transportation. It is noticeable that we've asked our public transit riders to pay $110 more per year, but we're planning on giving a $45 or a $50 reduction to vehicle owners. It just doesn't seem equitable to me that we would do that. We recognize that the highway registration tax is higher on Oahu than it is on the neighbor islands. But we also have the lowest gas tax of all the counties. In Maui, the gas tax is 24 cents. On Oahu, it is 16 cents. In addition, when you look at on the mainland of how roads are financed, It's very common that there are additional revenue sources available for counties beyond weight tax or gas tax. Many of them have direct sales tax that goes to support transportation in general. And so I think in looking at this, it needs to be looked in the context of the total funding. The reality is for Oahu that we are a heavily urbanized area and the cost of our road maintenance are higher than they are on our neighbor islands. Just by the virtue of the number of vehicles, the congestion, the vehicles per lane mile make the cost here more significant. Another factor is compared to neighbor islands where 24% of vehicle miles are on state highways. On Oahu, it's only 16% of the vehicle miles are on state highways. We have a lot more city streets proportionately than are on the neighbor islands. There's also... Reducing the vehicle weight tax for us will not reduce the cost of maintaining our streets, repairing bridges, operating traffic signals, maintaining our street lighting, or supporting public transportation. Most importantly, as I said, the bulk of the money goes to paying off debt that has been incurred in the past. So we support and we understand the issue of trying to make Hawaii more affordable, and we just think that there needs to be a balanced approach and not one that will result in reducing the user pay fees that we have, where the people that pay our transportation fees are the ones that benefit from the payment. For those reasons, we oppose the Bill 47 at this point.

Thank you so much, Director. Just a quick question. If we're talking about trucks and commercial vehicles, we're currently paying six cents or would be paying six cents per pound instead of the 7.5 cents. What I'm talking about is trucks 35,000 pounds or more where their current tax is $2,625. It would reduce by $525. And again, I'm just trying to help businesses, but if we were to take that portion out, right, so we're not helping the businesses, the commercial trucks, does that make the bill more palatable and how much Could you recalculate the funds if we take out the commercial vehicles? So we're really just helping local people who own a car.

Well, I would hope the bill would be stopped at this point, but my instinct is we'll talk about this more at committee when we get to committee, and I'd be happy to have those figures for you at that time.

That'd be great. Thank you. Any follow-up questions? Council Member Weyer.

Thank you, Chair. Kind of along those lines, I'm just curious because I know for like our sewer rates, there's a CARES program. And I know Representative Keila mentioned like he's not, you know, he's open to the idea of maybe a needs-based program. So I'm just wondering if there's an alternate structure that you'd be opening to look at in terms of if there's certain types of relief we can provide, because I agree 100%, like we wanna provide as much relief to as many people as we can. And I do get complaints about the tax, but I also get many, many complaints about our road conditions as well. And I just wanna make sure we have a plan, because I think that's my biggest concern as we look at shifting revenue sources and streams, you know, wanna make sure there's a plan and how we go about it. But to ask the question again, just if you're open to that, maybe an assessment of needs-based programs.

That's a citywide question. Hard for me to give you an answer from a transportation perspective. I would just note there are other ways to raise. Many states on the mainland use an ad valorem tax. where what you pay is based on the market value of your automobile rather than on the weight of the vehicle. There are many, many ways to raise revenue. I'm not advocating one or the other, except that I do share the concern that everybody has that Hawaii is becoming too expensive a place to live in. There's multiple reasons for that, and the cost of local government is one, but probably not the major one.

Okay, so I guess I'm hearing from that we can have the conversation. Yeah, thank you, thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Any follow-up? Council Member Topola.

Thank you. Aloha, Director, and thank you for being here. I appreciate your comparison with our gas tax being less, but overall, Honolulu drivers, even if we compare our registration and our gas tax, equitably with all the other islands, we're still paying more. My concern is, and the question that I gave to Rep. Keila is because if they do pursue another state bill, this is where we fall short in our arguments. One, when the question was asked how we specifically spend the vehicle weight tax, the specificity of that was not clear in the committee hearing that they had. There was not a specific apples for apples, we collect vehicle weight tax and therefore these roads are fixed. And that was a problem. So I will say that, that that was one of the issues as to why they thought it was a good idea. If we can't justify that we're using the vehicle weight test for roads, then why do we need it? Secondarily, I do think that if another bill gets introduced, and this one is much more mild than what they were introducing, we need to kind of come to an understanding of maybe where the lapses or the gaps are. I will say that, I mean, I could name exact roads in my district that I waited for 10 years for the city to do and then DOT just handled it for me. And so that's maybe a different process. Maybe Ed Sniffen has a different contract where he can just get a speed bump dropping out of the sky from the heavens. And we might have to take more years to do that. But my concern is if the reasoning is that they feel like they're stepping into city roads and streets and handling things that we should handle, then we need justification there and we also are going to need justification on the actual expenditure of the vehicle weight tax and how we think that it's a fair amount to spend. Does that make sense?

It makes sense. Also, the good news is since July 1st, we also have a contract like Ed has to allow us to drop those speed humps much more quickly.

Well, that's good news.

But I hear what you say. I mean, I think the responsible part is looking at the total revenue picture for the city. And if there are measures that historically the city has low property taxes, at least low rates, We do have, when I compared our vehicle registration rates with some of the peer cities on the mainland, it's a mixed bag. Cities like Seattle have $900,000 vehicle registration, but those are value-based registrations again. So I don't... I'm not thinking that we would design the whole system over again. I personally think the weight tax is equitable. Weight is a factor on roadway damage. It is also pro-climate change because the heavier your vehicle, usually the more fuel you use, usually the more climate change impact you have. I think weight tax in general is a pretty good way, but I just think that if we were to take $40 million out of the system, We're going to continue for many years to require 140, 150 million a year to just pay back debt service on expiring bonds that the discretionary part, if you want to call it that, out of the fund will be less and less and less. So the impact will be that, will be much greater than simply the proportion of the weight tax to the total transportation fund because of the debt load that we have to pay back.

Thank you, Director. And I hear you. I appreciate the comparisons maybe with property tax or gas fuel, but at the end of the day, the only conversation that we lost at the legislature was the conversation about where exactly does all the vehicle registration funds go, specifically, in specificity. So I think if we don't have that answer again, meaning that we're just still kind of generalizing this is how much we collect and we generally spend it here and we generally spend it there, we will be caught again without any justification for it. So I'm iterating that that part is going to be important for us regardless of this bill or any future conversation.

I hear you. I have that information and I'll make sure that the council get it.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Any follow-up questions for the director? Seeing none, I do want to note Amy Brown, Dale Vanderbrink, and Luca Cantiberti, who registered to testify, are not logged on. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify? Cody Sula.

Hi, Corey Sula again with the Hawaii Iron Worker Stabilization Fund. In my testimony, I did forget to mention parts of the bill that we would propose an amendment. I think the council chair ended up bringing it up in his conversation. This bill, we want to target and help the regular taxpayers who drive and work every day. give them the exemption or drop the price down for them, the one cent, but then for commercial vehicles, which are working and generating revenue, that would help alleviate some of the loss in revenue, but then still give the people something to help them. Thank you.

And Chair, on that point, the amount of revenue we get from commercial vehicles is 5.8 million out of the 39.9 million. I see. Thank you.

Okay, any further discussion? Oh, sorry, Council Member Cordero.

Thank you, Chair. For this discussion, I know that I mentioned that registration, motor vehicle registration is something that a lot of us as Council Members have concerns about and receive concerns about. Of course, this bill, I do have concerns about the lost revenue that was mentioned, and I worry that if we had that lost revenue, I do like the idea from Mr. Sula though, and maybe it could be an increased rate at that, but if we do have the lost revenue without looking at any amendments to, I guess, lowering the amount that may come from I guess, gosh, what's it called, regular cars and taxing it higher for the commercial vehicles, then we can make up that revenue. But we would then still have revenue that we would then need to rely more on the state to cover our roads more. And also, I do worry that it incentivizes those that are buying or purchasing or leasing heavier vehicles in general. Also, I think that the concerns about local matches for our federal grants that we apply for, for both DTS but also for local projects through the O'ahu Metropolitan Planning Organization is a concern for me as well. So it's tough because I know that it is something that our constituencies have great grief over regarding our motor vehicle registration. I will support it moving forward to go to committee, so I'll just be voting with reservations.

Mahalo. Thank you. Council Member Tolba, followed by Council Member Tupola, and then can we vote? Chair.

Thank you. I'll be voting on the bill. I understand the goal is to help residents and also support making it more affordable to live here, but $30 million a year from transportation is a lot. We still have roads to fix, infrastructures to maintain, and services to provide. If we take away money, we have to find it someplace else. Until we have another plan for that, I can't support a bill in this court form. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Tupola.

Thank you, Chair. I definitely support modifications to the registration. Ours is six times higher than every other county, and it is actually one of the reasons why we handle some abandoned cars in our district, because people, after so many years of not paying registration, I mean, for some people, it's better to just scrap their car, which is crazy to think that it's cheaper to scrap a car than just to catch up on your registration, but it's that expensive. I mean, upwards of 500 a year for one car, depending on the weight. So I think there needs to be more broad discussion, and especially if the state legislature is thinking about entertaining the discussion again, which would be more severe than this. I think the discussion they were having was more like $130 million cut to our revenue. So I think with that, balancing and the throws, like this needs to be discussed because what we're proposing is a lot, but what the state was proposing was three times more than this. So where does the balance fall? And so I'm looking forward to more discussions in budget committee about this. I can see both sides of it. I guess I will save the rest of my comments for if there is another iteration coming. Thank you.

Thank you. And the fact that, I mean, what Council Member Weyer pointed out that it's possible, working with Department of Transportation, where we could simply help the people who need the help, rather than just across the board. So I'm open to those types of amendments as well. Council Member Kia-Aina.

chair again thank you for all of the bills i i i didn't um say that i had you know i had concerns over moving 45 and 46 as well however the um the lost revenue is not as much and i'm again i'm i'm hoping that we could look uh holistically as all of this so in its current form i am concerned i will vote with reservations i had mentioned uh if we do uh move a vehicle like this that maybe narrowly tailor it to Kupuna. And I know the Director of Customer Services said that she might get those numbers. I don't know if it would make a difference with regard to the loss in revenue. I'm just throwing something out, but just wanted to let you know, I do have concerns, $40 million is a lot.

Yeah, I understand. I think we did this for military folks, didn't we? But anyway, Mr. Clerk, roll call.

Council Member Cordero. W.R. Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excused. Council Member Kia-Aina.

Reservations.

Council Member Nishimoto.

Aye.

Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Tauba. No. Council Member Tupoula.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. No. Chair Waters.

Aye.

Mr. Chair, there are six ayes, two noes, and one member is absent.

Thank you, CR196-2026 has been adopted. Bill 47-2026 is passed, second reading. Moving to the bottom of page 12. Council Member Okamoto.

Chair, I move that Committee Report 197-26 be adopted and Bill 50-2026 pass second reading.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Okamoto for the explanation.

Relating to funds.

Okay, I believe we did. We have one registered testifier, Natalie Wausau.

Thank you, Chair. Natalie Wasser for the record. I support this. What this bill does is it repeals the Land Conservation Fund, and as you know, we have the Clean Water Natural Lands Fund, which is heavily used. I really appreciate it when you folks look at our current laws and see what you can do to simplify them, to remove things that are not necessary or are outdated. I think that's really important, and I'm really glad that I can support this. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify on Bill 50? Seeing none, any discussion members? Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR 197-2026 has been adopted and Bill 50-2026 has passed second reading. Moving to the top of page 13 from the Committee on International Legal Affairs, Council Member Nishimura.

I move that Committee Report 204 be adopted in Bill 16, CD 1, as amended, pass second reading.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Nishimoto for the explanation.

Relating to the regulation of dogs.

Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, we have a remote testifier standing by.

Okay, let's start with Stephanie Kendrick. Hawaiian Humane Society.

Hello, Chair, Vice Chair, members of the City Council. Steph Kendrick for the Hawaiian Humane Society. You have our testimony in strong support of this measure. We want to thank Council Member Okimoto's office and the other Council members for working with us on this. We think this is going to make a huge difference in terms of our ability to really hold pet owners accountable when their dogs routinely get out. Right now, we've got some barriers with the current language in our stray dog ordinance, and this is designed to fix those and to give us a civil penalty option so that we're not overburdening our criminal courts with these cases. So we're in strong support, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much. Next, we have Inga Gibson, followed by Dylan Armstrong.

Aloha, Chair, Council Members, Inge Gibson with Pono Advocacy. Thank you for the opportunity. In strong support, echoing the comments of Stephanie Kendrick and thanking the Council Members specifically for working on this. As I'm sure most of us agree, there are no bad dogs. They say only bad owners, but I prefer to say uninformed or irresponsible owners. So this is a very common sense measure. Many municipalities across the country have civil penalties. They've proven very effective at serving as deterrents for especially those repeat offenders and offenses. And it really is sometimes the financial penalty that gets these irresponsible pet owners to basically change the behaviors when it comes to their dogs in particular. So strong support and thank the Council for considering this measure. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next we have Dylan Armstrong.

Mr. Chair, the testifier is not logged on.

Okay. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify? Seeing none, we'll call out discussion members. Council Member Okamoto.

Thank you, Chair. I stated this in committee, but I would like to thank my Vice Chair and his team, as well as my team that worked with Stephanie Kendrick at Hawaii Humane Society, as well as Director Hashiro from our Department of customer services. You know, this bill, if you look at it, is Bill 16. So it's been, we've been discussing it for a while, but I am thankful that we got to this point. I look forward to it hopefully passing because it is a way for us to, again, keep our community safe, hold dog or pet owners accountable, and make it more possible for enforcement as well as, the bottom line for me is just being able to keep our communities, especially our families, safe. So thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero. Aye. Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Aye. Council Member Kia-Aina.

Aye.

Council Member Nishimoto. Aye. Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Tauba. Aye. Council Member Tupoula. Aye. Council Member Weyer. Aye. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you, CR204-2026 has been adopted in Bill 16-2026. CD1 has passed second reading. Moving to the bottom of page 13, Council Member Nishimoto.

I move that Committee Report 205 be adopted and Bill 48 pass second reading.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Nishimoto for the explanation. Relating to condemnation. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, we have none.

Thank you. Members, we're in discussion. Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR 205-2026 has been adopted. Bill 48-2026 has passed second reading. Moving to the top of page 14 from the Committee on Infrastructure, Transportation and Technology, Council Member Cordero.

I move that Committee Report 202-2026 be adopted in Bill 35-2026, which relates to streets, sidewalks, malls, and other public places pass third reading. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Cordero, thank you for the explanation. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, we have none.

Thank you. Members, we are in discussion. Seeing none, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero. Aye. Council Member Dos Santos-Tam. Excused. Council Member Kiya Aina. Aye. Council Member Nishimura. Aye. Council Member Okamoto. Aye. Council Member Toba. Aye. Council Member Tupola. Aye. Council Member Weyer. Aye. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you, CR202-2026 has been adopted in Bill 35-2026, has passed third reading. Moving to the bottom of page 14, Council Member Cordero.

I move that Committee Report 203-2026 be adopted in Bill 41-2026-CD1 as amended, which relates to transportation, passed third reading.

Aye. I'm sorry, second.

It's been moved and seconded as well as explained. Is there a motion to amend? Council Member Cordero. I move to amend Bill 41-2026-CD1 to the hand-carried FD1 identified as OCS 2026-0479. Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Cordero for the explanation of the amendment. The proposed FD1 makes the following amendments in section 13 of the bill. It revises proposed ROH section 15-18, unauthorized modification or alteration of electric bicycles or electric foot scooters by clarifying in subsection C that modified or altered electric bicycles and electric foot scooters must be reclassified only if the vehicles operate upon a highway, bikeway, or sidewalk. and deleting subsection D, which prohibited the sale or distribution of speed modification devices for electric bicycles and electric foot scooters. B, in section 19 of the bill, revises proposed ROH 15-19 electric system and battery compliance for electric bicycles, electric foot scooters, and electric micro mobility devices by deleting subsection A, which prohibited the sale or distribution of electric bicycles and electric micro mobility devices that did not meet specified standards. And two, clarifying and re-lettered subsections A and B, formerly subsections B and C, that the provisions apply only to electric bicycles, electric foot scooters, and electric micro mobility devices that are operated in an area Designated by the city traffic code for their use and see mix miscellaneous technical and not substantive non-substantive amendments Thank you Mr.

Clerk do we have any testifiers? Oh, I believe we do deal in camp. Hello. Welcome again. I

Aloha, Dale and Cam representing the Oahu Transit Riders. Bill 41 builds on the great work of House Bill 2021 to create safer, more unified, understandable e-bike rules to help our streets work for all road users. Helping people safely bike to transit, whether that be the bus or skyline, will only help improve transit ridership and help get congestion off our roads and grant commuters a more sustainable, affordable option to get around. We humbly ask you to support Bill 41. Mahalo for your time.

Thank you. Next, we have Morgan Lee.

Hi, my name is Morgan Lee, and I stand in support of Bill 41. I don't have a car. I'm an avid bicyclist, and I'm always excited to see people embrace other forms of transit, including e-bikes, mopeds, one wheels, electric unicycles, and so on. I'm grateful for the efforts to designate more vehicles at a certain speed in the bike lane as this keeps sidewalks calmer for pedestrians. And I'm also glad that this legislation keeps higher speed vehicles out of the bike lanes as this negates the purpose of the bike lane safety. Finally, after reading numerous articles about e-bike fires across the country, it's good to see that this bill is trying to keep that phenomena from starting here in Hawaii. Mahalo to the legislature for its bike legislation earlier this year, and now to the Honolulu City Council for doing its best to help all of us coexist with each other, be they innovative mobility pioneers, bicyclists, car or moped drivers, and pedestrians.

Mahalo. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do we have any other testifiers? Mr. Chair, we have none. Thank you. Members, we're in discussion. Council Member Topola.

Yeah, thank you so much, Chair. In support of Bill 41, and I want to thank Councilmember Toba and Dos Santos-Tam for their leadership on this bill. Councilmember Toba specifically for what he's been doing in the community with town halls and active events of education. I know that the most important reason why we need this is because the technology has been moving faster than our laws. And there are so many people that use it as a more Effective or modest form of transportation. Maybe it's cheaper However, there have been so many accidents and I know that many of the larger concerns were happening in West Oahu January this year 13 and 14 year old boys that got in an accident in June and couple a a 13 year old a And EMS actually reported that over the past few years, a third of all their injuries are e-bike related injuries. So it's really important, especially for families that are grieving the loss of loved ones because of this. And so just this past June, HPD actually did enforcement in Eva, Kapolei, Nanakuli, and Wai'anae targeting illegal electric dirt bikes because now there's multiple forms of bikes that some look different than others, but really the ones that people are riding are not allowed on streets, not allowed on roads. So during that enforcement, officers arrested five juveniles, issued 12 citations, and recovered nine e-dirt bikes. So it's important because not only is HPD trying to do their best as well as EMS by responding to these, but parents who are buying bikes for children and families who are utilizing this deserve to know what is safe and what is not. So it's important that not only does this law get passed, but that each and every one of us in our homes, in our communities is being educated about what we're purchasing and what we're allowing our kids to be on because we don't want any more fatalities and we don't want any more young children who didn't know any better, who weren't wearing helmets or didn't know the speeds that these bikes can go up to getting injured. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, any further discussion? Council Member Toba.

Thank you, Chair, and I echo everything that Council Member Tupala just said. You know, e-bikes are becoming a bigger part of how we get around our communities and we need to make sure our laws are kept paced with that growth. And this bill takes an important step creating clearer rules and stronger safety standards for e-bike. while giving the city better tools to address the challenges that come with the increased use. It will provide greater clarity for riders, improve safety, and help make our public spaces safer for everyone. I also want to thank Councilmember Tyler Dos Santos-Tam for his leadership and partnership on this important issue. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Any further discussion, members? Seeing none, any objections or reservations to the motion to amend? Seeing none, Bill 41, 2026, CD1, has been amended to the posted FD1. Any further discussion? Seeing none, roll call, Mr. Clerk.

Council Member Cordero.

Aye.

Council Member Dos Santos-Tam.

Excused.

Council Member Kea Aina.

Aye.

Council Member Nishimura.

Aye.

Council Member Okamoto.

Aye.

Council Member Tauba.

Aye.

Council Member Tupoula.

Aye.

Council Member Weyer. Aye. Chair Waters. Aye. Mr. Chair, there are eight ayes, one member is absent.

Thank you. CR 203, 2026 has been adopted. Bill 41, 2026, CD1, FD1 has passed third reading. Moving to the top of page 15 from the Committee on Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, Council Member Weyer.

I move that Committee Report 201 of 2026 and Resolution 26158 be adopted.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Weyer for the explanation.

Urging the City Administration to conduct a citywide energy vulnerability assessment and to report its findings and recommendations to the Council.

Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, we have none.

Thank you. Any discussion members? Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR 201-2026 and Resolution 26-158 has been adopted. From the Committee on International Legal Affairs, Council Member Nishimoto.

I move that Committee Report 207 and Resolution 26-157 be adopted.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Nishimoto for the explanation. This is accepting of a gift. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do we have any testifiers?

Mr. Chair, we have none.

Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, any objections or reservations? Noting no objections or reservations, CR 207-2026 and Resolution 26-157 has been adopted. Moving to the top of page 16 from the Committee on Zoning and Planning, Council Member Kia-Aina.

I move that Committee Report 210-2026 and Resolution 26-159 be adopted. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Council Member Kiana for the explanation.

This resolution urges the State Board of Land and Natural Resources to direct the Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources to adopt rules prohibiting the harvest of aquatic life from state of Hawaii marine waters for commercial aquarium purposes. Thank you.

We have 17 registered testifiers. Shelby Billionaire is not here, so move on to Lisa Bishop.

Mr. Chair, the testifier is not logged on.

Okay, is Topher Dean available?

Mr. Chair, also not logged on.

Okay, Renee Umberger.

Aloha, Chair, Vice Chair, and Council Members. I'm Renee Umberger with For the Fishes and Strong Support. I'd like to address the pay earned by aquarium collectors when collecting was allowed. The trade's most recent EIS includes reported sales by the 20 aquarium collectors seeking new permits during the 18 years before the court-ordered shutdown, but their annual sales on average were about $12,500 per collector, that's all. This is important because our reefs face many threats and increasing signs of decline. Among the species historically targeted by the trade, nine identified in the EIS as capable of rapid recovery, with population doubling times of less than 15 months, have actually declined instead of increasing in recent years. There are plenty of part-time jobs that pay as much or more and do not require the continued depletion of our wildlife. Let's choose those jobs instead. Thank you for the opportunity. And my testimony would be the same for the next resolution as well in support. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you so much. I was going to ask you if we can incorporate your testimony on both Resolution 26-159 and 26-160. And for those of you who have not yet testified, if that's okay, please state that. Thank you. Next, we have Jai Cox. Aloha, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Awesome. Aloha, my name is Jai Cox. I live on Big Island in South Point area, and I'm strongly against this resolution or any resolution that is trying to keep fishermen from providing for our families. Deep scientific research has proven that this fishery is perfectly sustainable without impacting the environment in a destructive way. I'm an avid spear fisherman who has been in the water for many years. I am constantly in the environment of these targeted species and I can tell you firsthand that their numbers are plentiful. All of this has gone on long enough. Leave the fishermen alone and let us fish. Mahalo.

Thank you. Lisa Bishop. Lisa Bishop. Okay, we can come back to Lisa Bishop. Is Nick Ramirez available?

Mr. Chair, sorry, the testifier is not logged on.

Okay, thank you. Eric Koch.

Aloha Chair, can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can. Please proceed.

Aloha Chair and Council Members, I appreciate the time today. I oppose both of these resolutions relating to the aquarium fishery. I am a commercial fisherman, meaning I fish for a living and I sell the fish I catch. Whether selling ahi for consumption or aquarium fish for a variety of purposes, all of the income I generate sustains my ohana. Promoting bans for sustainable fisheries will ruin lives who have done what was asked of them. This long process has cost us fishermen everything we have. Some have lost their homes, their health, and even their lives being dragged to the dirt over a campaign of misinformation. This has been going on for years now and today is a continuation of that. The opponents pushing these initiatives sued the state asking for environmental review. We the fishers complied and the BLNR approved the EIS for West Hawaii. The activists then took us to court to try to overturn the revised EIS and they litigated it all the way to the Supreme Court. which sided overwhelmingly with the fishermen. All of this came at a tremendous cost. The activists then moved to the legislature multiple times all the way up to this last session in 2026, but the legislature wasn't up for a ban. They don't have an appetite for taking livelihoods away from fishermen, especially when the fisheries have proven sustainable. The Division of Aquatic Resources has been closely monitoring and managing this fishery, and it's crystal clear why they support the fishery. Some seem puzzled why DAR supports us. Why does science support the fishery? Why does the Supreme Court side with us? You think it's because they're paid off by us lowly fishermen, or is it because it will earn them brownie points with the critics? Neither one is true. It's obviously because the truth is what it is, and the science and facts are crystal clear. The process is being honored. Why do all the premier coral reef ecologists support this fishery? Why do they see and realize what the critics do not? Maybe the critics are more of an authority now than the scientists. Let's get serious. All of these questions should be contemplated. I encourage decision-makers such as the County Council today to familiarize themselves with the scientific record. The BLNR is currently doing rules stemming from the completed HEPA process. This matter is being handled with tremendous caution and care, yet for some people, it's still not enough. Some want to speak on culture, but all I want to say is... Mr. Koch, may I ask you to wrap up your testimony, please? Yes, sir. I'll end it right now. Some critics will say that these fish can be aquacultured. Most aquaculture here in Hawaii, the vast majority, in fact, culture food fish that we eat. So does that mean us fishermen shouldn't be allowed to utilize our resources? Just because one private business has cultured one species of fish doesn't mean the overall sustainable fisheries should be shut down. That's pretty much it. Don't pass this measure. I would say check with DLNR and DAR and become familiar with the facts. It's crystal clear. Just do your due diligence, and I appreciate the time.

Thank you, sir. Next, we have Ron Tubbs.

Mr.

Chair, I forgot that, trying to unmute.

Ron Tubbs, not logged on.

Aloha, City Council members. Thank you for your valuable time on this subject. Strongly opposed to a ban of the fisheries. It's unconstitutional to target one group over another, especially since we're the most sustainable, proven sustainable, and most scientifically studied fishery probably in the world. I'd like to call out some false testimony. DO&R stats for the aquarium fishery from 2009 to 2020, the total value of sales was $22 billion. That's $1.8 billion per year. That's not $12,000 a year per fisherman. And that is wholesale. That doesn't include retail and resales. So there's a lot of false information out there. I don't know where they get their facts, but my guess is they really need to do more reading in the science and be willing to listen to what the science says. Opposition is not founded in science. We are sustainable. The fishery has been around a lot of years. It has a lot of facts substantiating it. I'd like to point out that the United States federal government and UN and state constitution all state that you cannot ban a fishery, especially if it's sustainable and has passed a complete environmental review and supported by the marine biologists that monitor and regulate the fishery. So this is just ridiculous that we should be at this position and try to ban something that's sustainable, which the state greatly needs at this time of war and high cost of living. 10% of our fishery was Hawaiians. They're moving away 15,000 a year. They've lost their jobs. I'm from a high Hawaiian community. A majority of the people that have fished and aided me in my fish sales when we were open were Hawaiians. So please bring back the fishery, bring back jobs for Hawaiians, bring back sustainable, highly renewable, ecologically friendly resource use. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have James Lovell.

Yeah, James Lovell in opposition. Thank you, Chair Waters and members for listening to my testimony. I started fishing here in Kona for 47 years ago. This is my livelihood that you're trying to take away. This resolution, if passed, will ask DLNR to ban this industry because it's not sustainable. Please consider that this is the state DLNR who has spent decades passing rules and management policies to make sure the resource is stable and sustainable. The state scientists have been doing fish counts for over 30 years as a result of the management plan that DLNR currently has in place. The number of yellow tangs on the reef has gone up by over 3 million during the last 20 years of our existence. It is sustainable. It's clearly not having a negative impact on the resource. The Supreme Court recently reviewed all this data and agreed the industry is sustainable, ordered the injunction on the industry lifted. So are we really going to pass a solution here today, send it to DLNR, and tell them that they are wrong, that the scientists are wrong, that the Supreme Court is wrong? I think that if this resolution is passed, it'll probably be dead on arrival since it's the resolution that is wrong and is not based on facts. There's always two sides to every story. It might be prudent to talk to a fisherman and get their side. Maybe it'd be better to defer this for now and look into the decades of work that is done so you can make a more informed decision. Mahalo for your time. This is testimony for 159 and 160. I oppose both of them, and they need to be deferred and looked into. Thank you for your time. Mahalo.

Thank you, Mr. Lovell. Next, we have Mike Nakachi.

Aloha, Chairwaters and Honolulu County City Council members. My name's Mike Nakachi. I'm in strong support of these resolutions, especially the first one to support the DLNR to ask for a ban. For many of us that have grown up as fishermen and also have been raised here and have to this place, there are certain things and certain industries that grade are now in the wrong way. And this particular industry that has been Probably sustainable when it was developed in 1953. However, in that territorial legislature, they ruled that these fish were rubbish fish. Not knowing that these were sustainable food fish for most of the Kama'aina of place. The opposition will say that it's sustainable, but sustainable when and sustainable how and for how long? Their term of sustainable is to sustain something until there is no longer any fish. The people of Hawaii are speaking. The people across the Pai'aina, all of the Mokus are united, and we need Honolulu City Council to come online and be like Kauai, Maui Nui, and Moku o Keawe to institute these type of resolutions that the people are tired of these particular commercial negative practices that impact our reefs and will affect future generations. That is not sustainable. It is time to do the Kako thing and move these resolutions forward. Thank you for your time, Chair Waters. Appreciate the time. Aloha.

Thank you. Next we have Mahesh Cleveland. Aloha, welcome.

Thank you, Chair Waters, Council Members. My name is Mahesh Cleveland. I'm an attorney with environmental firm Earthjustice. We've been working for many, many years with community members and ocean advocates to protect Hawaii's nearshore resources from the harmful effects of the commercial aquarium trade. We are in strong support of both resolutions 26159 and 160. So for decades, commercial aquarium trade removed hundreds of thousands of fish per year from our near shore waters for export and sale as disposable ornamental pets, including culturally valued food fish and herbivores that are essential for our reef's health. Hawaii's reefs finally got a break from this extraction since court rulings halted legal collection in 2017 for West Hawaii Island and 2021 for the rest of the state. and we should not reverse that progress, especially when public sentiment overwhelmingly favors a statewide ban. We want to urge you to pass these resolutions, urging BLNR and the legislature to prioritize Pono fishing, reef resilience and Hawaii's communities over commercial extraction of these public trust resources. We submitted more detailed written testimony and I would be available to answer any questions council members might have. I might also add that the Supreme Court never said any of the things that these gentlemen are claiming and I'd be happy to discuss that I was the one who lost that case. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next we have Alohi Takachi. Aloha and welcome.

Okay. I think it's still on, okay, yeah. Aloha, Chair Waters and members, council members. My name is Dr. Alohi Nakachi, and I am testifying on behalf of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. We stand on our written testimony in support of both resolutions 159 and 160, urging for a ban of the aquarium trade. OHA has constitutional and statutory duties to advocate for the betterment of native Hawaiians. Native Hawaiian rights and protect aina and Native Hawaiian traditional and customary practices. Commercial aquarium collection to collect fish from Hawaiian waters to support a hobbyist industry that exists almost exclusively outside of the pai aina directly conflicts with these duties. Therefore, OHA worked to support the wants of our beneficiaries, calling to ban aquarium collection. We need to hold our public trust resources, our coral reefs, to the benefit of the public, and we need to keep our on our coral reefs and our to continue their and fill their role in systems. While OHA is sensitive to the concerns of industry participants, the industry was judicially banned, and therefore there has been no legal collection for the betterment of a decade, so a ban would not displace existing jobs. And we're available for questions if needed. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next we have Inga Gibson, followed by Eric Monach.

Aloha, Chair, Council Members, Inga Gibson, Pono Advocacy again in strong support. I know Dr. Gail Grabowski testified at the prior Committee Planning and Zoning Committee hearing. She couldn't be there today. I know she submitted written testimony, but I did want to bring up some research that she did recently with Dr. Thornhill. And for those who aren't familiar, Dr. Grabowski is the Dean of Environmental Studies Program at Chaminade University here on Oahu, and she looked at 19 collection sites and compared those to Hanama Bay, which we all know has been a protected area, area protected from commercial aquarium collection since 1967. So she compared those 19 collection sites to those of Hanama Bay and found that basically 90% less abundance in the fish targeted by the aquarium trade. The top five species that are taken by the aquarium trade were more than 90% less abundant than compared to Hanama Bay. So again, I don't know whose version of sustainability. It is definitely not sustainable, has not been sustainable for a long period of time. And so I think it's really important to look at the recent science that is available versus referencing some science that may have been in the past before millions of these fish have been taken from our reefs for many years. I also wanted to just add, for those who may not be as familiar with this issue, um the resolutions the legislation um all the regulatory mechanisms that we've worked on for so long would no way impact aquaculture or captive breeding that is what we want we have over in waimanalo oceanic institute biota that aquaculture at At commercial level, a number of species, there's no reason to take wild-caught. This would not impact food fishers. This would not impact public aquariums like the Waikiki Aquarium. Being able to take these fish wouldn't impact research or education because all those animals are taken under a separate special activity permit issued by the department. very strictly focused on the commercial aquarium pet trade that basically takes 99% of these fish off our important reefs and sends them out of the state and often out of the country with many, many perishing before they reach their final destination. So thank you so much and strong support for both this resolution and the subsequent resolution and happy to answer any questions. Mahalo.

Thank you. Next, we have Eric Monach.

Aloha, Chair. Eric Minnich. I'm testifying on Resolution Items 26-159 as well as 26-160 as requested to consolidate. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can. Thank you for the consideration.

Thank you for your time. I'm in strong opposition to both. And the most basic argument I have for that is that I just can't support and never have supported a complete shutdown of an industry, especially fisheries. I think that when you properly manage them, rather than banning them, but that's the route to go. Hawaii routinely recognizes that a small community occupation or way of life can deserve protection even when it serves only a tiny percentage of the population. The proper response to environmental concerns is careful management, not automatically eliminating the community. Community-based subsidence fishing areas are a prime example of this. If Hawaii believes that small fishing communities are worth preserving through careful science-based management rather than forcing them to disappear, why shouldn't that same philosophy at least be considered for a small community of aquarium fishermen? Specific to 159 and 160, I do find some problems as well. The resolution declares that the fishery is unsustainable, but doesn't demonstrate how that is. I'd like to see the scientific evidence. DLNR's own monitoring shows that regulation has, in fact, worked. The animal cruelty paragraph in 159 is also particularly problematic for me because the statute HRS 711-1109 does not specifically say that venting aquarium fish is animal cruelty. This resolution presents a contested legal conclusion as settled law, which is not. In fact, I personally know from when I used to work on the ambulance that needles can actually be life-saving. But even if you conclude that venting is a problem, then ban venting, but not the fishery. In 160, most of the same arguments apply, but the biggest problem I see with this resolution is that unsupported statement that aquarium fishing is unsustainable again. I don't see the science. The state legislature already considered aquarium ban legislation during the 2026 session and chose not to enact a statewide ban. So why are we here again? I really hope that this council will just consider the idea of regulation rather than banning. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. Next, we have Elena Bryant, followed by Wayne Tanaka.

ALOHA. My name is Elana Bryant, testifying in strong support of both of these resolutions in my personal capacity as a kanaka maoli cultural practitioner. I come from a long line of subsistence and commercial food fishers, levi'a that feed communities, not fish tanks. My ohana has roots in Ko'olaupoko and Ko'olauloa spanning multiple generations. I was raised with the understanding that our ocean is not simply a resource to be used, but a sacred place for which we carry a kuleana to care. We were taught to fish with restraint, to take only what was needed, and to leave enough for future generations. The commercial harvest of reef wildlife for ornamental purposes is fundamentally inconsistent with the traditional values of malamaena and pono stewardship that many Kanaka Maoli families, mines included, were raised to uphold. Herbivores, like those targeted by the aquarium pet trade, are essential to healthy reefs. There's one fact that should unite all of us. Hawaii's herbivore populations, and particularly Oahu's herbivore populations, are in critical decline. DAR acknowledged this. Independent scientists have acknowledged this. If we agree these populations are already in crisis, the responsible course is to reduce unnecessary human pressure, not reopen a defunct commercial fishery that has been closed for multiple years, and relies on removing the very species our reefs depend on. The greatest value of our reef wildlife is not in private aquariums around the world, but on Hawaii's reefs, where they graze algae, promote coral recovery, and sustain the ecosystems that support our communities, culture, and future generations. This conviction is shared by communities throughout Hawaii by organizations representing tens of thousands of residents. I respectfully urge you to pass this resolution. It's narrowly tailored. It applies only to commercial aquarium collection permits. It does not affect food fishing or other commercial fisheries. Instead, this resolution stands on the side of precaution, science, and the long-term health of Hawaii's coral reefs. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have Wayne Tanaka.

Good afternoon, Chair, Chair Walz, Vice Chair DiPolo, members of the council, we are in strong support of these resolutions. You have a written testimony, but I guess I'll just add, you know, on a personal level, I've grown up fishing all over this island, you know, from Mauna Lua to Makaha. And, you know, I've seen such drastic changes, right? The , the , it's all gone. The , the , the , even the , I've seen them dwindle and disappear and go away. And I watched this as a young person. And now that I'm older, I realize that this is because we've forgotten what the ocean should mean to us. The ocean's a source of life. It's a that must be revered, must be respected, not treated like, a dumping ground or an ATM. And so, you know, What these resolutions do, or what they don't do, is ban anything that hasn't been illegal for the better part of a decade. It doesn't ban catching fish you put in your own aquarium or for other non-commercial purposes. But what it does do is first prohibit the industry from returning to our waters after causing decades of significant gratuitous harm, including and especially Oahu. And what they do do is help us remember how we should and how we must think about and treat our ocean, right? And what it provides for us and what it blesses us with. And so I just wanted to thank this council for your support of these resolutions and for the thousands of people who have also echoed what these resolutions called for all the time, but it can also count this as my testimony on the second resolution, but thank you so much.

Thank you. Next we have Rocky Kaluhiva.

Mr. Chair, the testifier is not logged on.

Okay, is there anybody else in chambers who'd like to testify? Please come forward.

Aloha nui kakou. Mahalo for the opportunity to testify on Resolution 26159 and 26160. I'm here in two capacities, Chair. One as the Chair of the Waumanalo Neighborhood Board. We've stood with supporting efforts to remove this particular affect on our aquatic resources at the state level and we're here to show up to do it at the county level. We strongly urge the county to take on these resolutions head on and support them strongly. As a Wamanalo resident, as a fisher, as a kumu in the loko'i'a and a loko'i'a practitioner, we've seen the decrease of these fish in our waters. I cannot speak for other people's waters, but I'll speak for ours, that the decrease of these particular fish and many others are disappearing, and the health of our reef is disappearing. And so the wealth of our waters that was once known has disappeared. We have a very strong urging through our community to try and bring the health of the bay back and part of that requires these particular fish and others and as we know these are genealogically our kupuna and so I just want to end with a comment on a personal note coming from a fishing family that if you are trying to speak for Kanaka and you're not Kanaka, stop. I think that's really important, yeah. We have a right to address this in that way. And I think the way that some folks have been weaponizing that particular position in their lives does not make it right. And so with that, I'll use my time and I appreciate everyone's attention. Mahalo nui.

Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to testify in person or remotely, Mr. Clerk?

Mr. Chair, we have remote testifiers with their hand raised.

Okay, I see there's a Johnny and a Nick. Let's start with Johnny.

Hi, council members. Thank you for hearing us today. Sorry, you guys gotta go through this. I strongly oppose both these measures. I am a little confused here as we have a DLNR that my taxes and everyone else's taxes pay for. Why are we paying them if we're not going to listen to their advice? And obviously, they're saying that the industry is sustainable and manageable. So why aren't we listening to them? I'm also confused because I was listening from when we started all these meetings. Everyone keeps addressing climate change. We've got to trust the science, trust the science on the climate change. And yet here, we're told... When it comes to aquarium fish, don't trust the science. They're liars. They're liars. They're lying about it. Why aren't we trusting the science? I mean, the deal in ours says it's sustainable. I mean, the system can be managed. There's no reason to ban it. I constantly hear on the news and from politicians how we're priced out of paradise. This is why us locals are priced out of paradise, is because we have foreigners convincing locals that doesn't know a yellow tang from a puffer fish that we should be shutting industries down and closing industries because not because scientific data, but because they feel it's wrong for you to put a fish in an aquarium all while they have animals in their house. I thank you for your time. And on a last note, talking about city budgets, if we want to close city budgets, we should really look into taxing nonprofit organizations that are just using it as a tax evasion. Thank you.

Thank you. I believe we had another hand up, Mr. Clerk. I think it was Nick.

Testifier is no longer logged on, Chair.

Okay. Members, we're in discussion. Council Member Tupolo.

Thank you, Chair. Respectfully, I'll be voting no on both. I've sat through hours and hours and hours. I can't even count how many hours as a state legislator that I sat through these discussions. And as well, DLNR hearings, BLNR hearings. I have fishermen from Waianae texting me because this is not a new conversation. It's actually an older conversation. And we're taking a very small segment, subsection of the conversation. And that's kind of what we're having here. It's unfortunate, but to be honest, I think we don't have the larger conversation here because we don't have the authority. Again, these are resolutions, and I get it that it's urging other agencies to do stuff. But respectfully, I've heard all of the sides of it. I do actually know the history of this. I'm not going to bring all of it up. And unfortunately, I wasn't in committee when this happened. I do think that we should leave this to the purview of DLNR. And of course, the kind of conversations they had there lasted for days and days regarding this very topic. And I think when they fleshed it all out as far as the path forward, I do think respectfully following their lead is the right thing to do, seeing as though it's not our purview. And we don't like when the state steps into our purview. But again, for, I guess, the sake of time, I'll just be voting no on both. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further discussion? Council Member Kia'aina.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to thank all of the community advocates who've spoken out today in support of both of these measures, one which would direct the State Board of Land and Natural Resources and the other, the Hawaii State Legislature to prohibit the harvest of aquatic life from state of Hawaii marine waters for commercial aquarium purposes Should today's measures be adopted today, the Honolulu City Council stands united with Maui County, Kauai County, and Hawaii County in sending this message. I also wanted to just remind everyone that regardless of what happens today, that the Board of Land and Natural Resources will be having a hearing on August 28th. The agenda will come out on August 21st. The hearing will be at nine o'clock. We still are not sure with regard to the parameters of what will be agendized. I am just encouraging everyone, we are at the tail end of this discussion, at least at the Honolulu City Council. I'm encouraging everyone. to show up at the Department of Land and Natural Resources. In particular, I have a chair of one of my neighborhood boards, Chair Kimiwa Nakane, so I greatly appreciate him being here. On the Windward side, I know that many other neighborhood boards stand with us, but I just want to acknowledge that in my district, for Waimanalo, Kailua, Kaneohe, and a sliver of Kahalu'u, they all stand with us today. And so I just encourage all of the members today to support both of these measures. Mahalo.

Thank you. Any further discussion? One second, members. Thank you, members. Any further discussion? Seeing none, any objection? Not an objection of Council Member Topola. Any other objections? Reservations?

Yes, please note my reservations, Chair.

Reservations for Council Member Pomodoro?

Yeah, for both measures.

For both.

Thank you.