 This is State Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Good afternoon. Welcome to another episode of Kondo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host today. And I have as my guest, my special guest, our good friend, and she's a very good friend of Kondo's over the years, council member Kara Fukunaga. Thank you so much for having me, Jane. Well, thank you for being here. I mean, we are so grateful that you are our champion in the City Council. Council member Fukunaga is going to talk about her bill 72. But before we get to bill 72, which relates to fire safety, I mean, we got to talk about the original fire safety bill, which is bill 69. So why don't we just... What is bill 69? Sure. Bill 69 was the bill that Mayor Caldwell introduced immediately after the Marco Polo fire. And I think, you know, everyone was very concerned at that time. So what the bill did was mandate the installation and retrofitting of older buildings with fire sprinklers for individual units. And of course, you know, when you take a look at the number of older buildings that we have in Honolulu and the fact that many of these buildings have older residents, that really became a problem. So the first thing that we did on the City Council is solicited really broad-based community participation and support. And I do want to thank you and your organization for really letting people know about the community forums that we had and really spreading the word far and wide. And that was you and Council Member Anne Kobayashi and Council Member Trevor Ozawa? Yes, because our districts have the largest number of older buildings built before 1975 when the building code changed. And so what we did was, you know, really take a much closer look at the bill, which originally started, you know, with the premise that all buildings, you know, would have to comply with this requirement. And as we kind of went through the process, I think the fire department recognized that they were imposing a really severe burden, you know, upon elderly residents in many of these older buildings. So the final bill ended up being where we focused primarily on those buildings that were over 10 stories in height, those buildings that were built before 1975, and they would have to undergo a life safety evaluation process administered by the fire department, but subject to the individual decision-making of condominium associations and their owners who would then decide if they went through this evaluation process, they would decide for their building what the best steps were in order to safeguard their premises. And how many buildings in Oahu would be affected by this bill? Well, roughly we started with about a little over 300, and as we looked at those buildings that had exterior hallways or exterior stairwells, we found that we were really talking about 150 or so buildings. And so for the most part, I think the buildings that were potentially at greatest risk were those that were very tall, because those make it more difficult for the fire department personnel, to be able to successfully access all floors of the building. But by and large, every building that is over 10 stories high and which was built before 1975 is going to be subject to this life safety requirement. Let me just go back to the process or with the community meetings. Why don't you describe to the people who are listening? You know, and I really want to, because I want them to know, and for those of you listening, because I was present at those community meetings, you can make a difference by showing up. Oh, absolutely. We invited primarily residents of the buildings that would be required to comply with this requirement. And we were very pleased to note that over 50% of the affected buildings did have representatives at our forums. And we tried to make sure that we posted all information that we received online. We asked a lot of the questions that they raised, you know, to the individual agencies and to the fire department so that answers could be provided. And we posted those online. So I think it was a really educational process for all of us. And although this is a compromise bill, which means that nobody really is, you know, really crazy about it, what it does is it gives the associations basically the choice to select what they want to do. And if they want to do fire sprinklers, they can do fire sprinklers. And the way the bill is set up, there's all this extra time for them to put it in their budget and maybe save money, set aside money so that they can pay for these repairs. And so I think the bill takes that into account. And then for those people who absolutely do not want to do fire sprinklers, they have alternatives. There's a life safety evaluation. They got to get a passing score. And so there is a process. And this is something that, you know, the fire department accepted that, okay, these buildings don't want fire sprinklers, but they're willing to do the life safety evaluation. So, you know, why don't you tell the... what is a life safety evaluation? Okay, the life safety evaluation process is basically a series of criteria that have to be met in order to have your building pass basic safety requirements. It affects your individual units. They take a look at your common areas. They take a look at your stairwells, your elevators, and all of the other features, you know, that buildings are supposed to be rated on. And what was important to note during this whole process was that each building is actually a little different. So you really do have to take into account the individual building specifications, you know, the kind of construction that is involved, because say, for example, if you were going to have to install sprinklers for individual units, for many of the buildings that were built before 1975, you may not have any space available on your property in which to install new water and pumping systems. And, you know, that becomes a big challenge if your building is a very tall building. So in many ways, the life safety evaluation process helped to identify what the most important safety features would be that should be evaluated as the building was going through this process. And so who would be doing the inspections? The inspections would be done by the design professionals that would be hired by the associations. And I think as the design professionals started to meet with the fire department, that's when we first realized and learned that the original legislation that we adopted might really need a few more tweaks. And that was when, you know, the question came up as to whether or not buildings that were 75 feet in height were different from buildings that were 10 stories or higher. And so as we began identifying all the areas of either discrepancy or confusion, it became clear that we needed to provide more time for the implementation to take place. And so that's what Bill 72 is intended to achieve. Okay, and one of the provisions of Bill 69 was that the buildings had to, all the buildings that were affected, which means that all the 300 buildings that, you know, high-rise buildings that were, and there's a list. There's a list that was written in the original ordinance or the original bill. There was a list of buildings that listed all of the 300 and that list also listed the heights of the building and whether they had interior quarters or exterior quarters. And I think that list is somewhere on the city website and people can look at it, but they should not rely on it because during our meeting with the fire department in the task force, we found that there were some buildings that were, you know, in the wrong section. Right, right. The out-harvard tower was in the interior quarters section, so we moved it over to the exterior core. And so, and during the process, we found that there were lots of errors. So, yeah, there's a list of 300 buildings that are subject to the law, but it's not really all that accurate, but it's helpful. It's a starting point. It's really a starting point. And so when, you know, individual condo associations hired their design professional to conduct the life safety evaluation process, that's really when they're going to have a chance to get someone taking a close look at their building and what their circumstances may require. Okay, and under the original bill, November 1 was a deadline. Exactly. And in fact, I talked to the fire chief yesterday about your bill, and he told me that they had over 200 letters. Okay. So over 200 buildings, and he said that yesterday there was another stack, he said there must be almost 50 letters. So they're close to 300. So he's real happy. I think the buildings are taking this very seriously, obviously, and so the good thing is by giving individual condo associations and owners choices as to what they could do, I think it takes into account the fact that the owners are really being asked to pay for these improvements themselves. This is not really something that the city or state is actually going to be doing very much on other than some tax credits and some fee waivers, but by and large individual owners and associations are bearing the responsibility for upgrading their buildings. So I think it's really commendable that people are taking this process very seriously and are looking for the best ways that they can improve safety in their buildings in a way that is going to be very sensitive to their needs and the building design and construction. And we have you to thank for that, for listening to us and setting up these community needs. And I want to talk, right now I want to bring up a start, mainly because I've been saying this at a lot of the Hawaii Council meetings about you people, meaning you listeners who live in condos, you can make a difference. You've got to become best friends with your elected officials, and this is why. Trevor Ozawa, remember at one of the hearings? Oh, that's right, that's right. Trevor Ozawa said that when the mayor's bill came out, he was 100% in favor of the bill as written, and then he was compelled to go to these community hearings and sit through hours of testimony, and he changed his mind. I think when he heard from actual residents and owners, and he heard about their individual circumstances, he realized that it wasn't just a matter of one size fits all, but every building was different. Every set of owners' circumstances were a little bit unique, and so after a while, I think he began to realize that you cannot really just assume that everything is one size fits all, but you really have to take into account different neighborhoods, different communities, and the circumstances that they went through. But I thought his testimony at that hearing was so compelling that to hear an elected official say, you know, I did a 180, and I changed my mind, and I'm now dead set against the bill 69 as originally written, and I am in favor of these changes that came about through those community meetings. And to me, I think that is the most outstanding testimony that I've heard, I mean better than us testifying. Is to hear an elected official say that we were able to change his mind? Well, I think it was partly because the diversity and the range of participation was so great. You know, when we first started, we had a community forum, you know, where we invited a panel of experts to try and respond to many of the questions we were receiving. And the fire department was on that panel? The fire department was on that panel. We had insurance industry representatives. You know, you were also a part of it. We had a resident manager participant. But the number of attendees was over 200 for that initial forum. And it really demonstrated that people were worried. They were concerned about what was going to be considered and that might apply to their building. So people started paying attention and over the course of several community forums. And the second one was the week before Christmas. That's right. That's right. The week before Christmas. And I remember, I got there late and the line was outside of the committee room. It was down the hallway. I figured, oh, my God, it looks like a leasehold. It was very positive because, you know, people provided their comments, their testimony. And you could really see that people had thought long and hard about the way that the bill would affect them and their building. So the range was really quite remarkable. Really remarkable. You know, I'm just so grateful for you and Trevor and Anne, you know, for holding these community events and for all of you guys who showed up. Because if you hadn't shown up, we wouldn't be here talking about the revised compromise bill that resulted because the community came forward and basically, you know, let off steam and told you what they thought. Well, and they also, you know, really provided very compelling reasons why they should be given flexibility because when you think about, you know, just the number of people who would be impacted, it wasn't just 100 people or 200 people. It was thousands of people. And, you know, the sheer enormity of the impact upon this group of residents was something that you had to take very seriously. Well, we're very grateful to you three for taking, you know, the lead in, you know, coming up with this compromise bill. And we're going to take a break now for a minute and then we're going to come back and talk about bill 72 and why we had to have a revisit of bill 69. Okay, so we're going to take a break now. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. That kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. When we're not hungry for breakfast, we're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to Hungarys.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. And then every episode is uploaded to the Cyber Underground. That library of shows that you can see of mine on YouTube.com. And I hope you'll join us here every Friday. We have some topical discussions about why security matters and what could scare the absolute bejesus out of you. If you just try to watch my show all the way through. Hope to see you next time on the Cyber Underground. Stay safe. Okay, well, welcome back. We're here speaking with Council Member Carol Fukunaga. Thanks, Dane. And Carol was very instrumental in helping us get the compromise bill that came out of City Council in May. But I guess we thought when that bill came out that that was going to be the end of it. But apparently it wasn't. It was just the beginning of all of the term. What happened after the bill passed? I think we tried to make it as clear-cut as possible. You know, the bill also includes the actual matrix that covers all of the categories in the life-safety evaluation. And once the fire department and design professionals started talking together, it became evident that there was a lot of confusion as to what the bill would cover. For example, that question about the 70-foot, 75-foot building code requirement, and then the bill reference to 10 stories were two different things. And so the more questions that arose, we said maybe we need to take a time out and pause in this process really to give the fire department time to work with design professionals and the condo associations to identify where the problems were so that we could correct them. And you know, I think too, because I was getting phone calls, some of the condo, I think two or three associations decided they wanted to be proactive because they didn't want to be... The last ones. The last ones. So they contacted some companies, and one was Dorman-Lays, I think, and one was Dana Bergman's Bergman Group. And basically, when they started meeting with the professionals who had said that they talked to the fire department, they were getting all kinds of mixed information, and the associations were being told that they could not pass the life-safety evaluation. This was all a bogus thing. Oh my... You know, I remember they came back and I think I had a conversation with you. I said, you know, one association told me, they were told that if they had one person who couldn't walk down the entire length of the building, that they couldn't pass. And when I told the fire chief, he said, that's ridiculous. But this is what they were being told. And one association was told, under the hazardous material section of the matrix, they had a can of hairspray. Oh my goodness. In their unit, that they would fail. And again, the chief says, where are they getting this? I says, they're getting it from the contractors that they talked to about doing the life-safety evaluation. And it's like, well, you know, and I had suggested to him many times, you know, chief, you need to have the association people and the professionals and the fire department all in the same room so that we can talk to each other. And so that when you hear the professional telling the association about the can of hairspray, that you can step up and say, no, no, no, no, that's not what we meant. And that's what was happening when I think we came to you and said, you got to stop this. I mean, because nobody knows what they're doing. Dana, when I call Dana Bergman for a bit, he says, you know, I can't even give you an estimate because I don't even know what we're supposed to do. And I'm the professional that's supposed to certify this. Well, so it actually worked out really well that, you know, some of this confusion arose in the aftermath of the adoption of the legislation. And by September, we were pretty clear that there needed to be some sort of timeout. So Bill 72 was introduced to initiate that timeout and to really provide more time for condo associations to be able to comply. It also tried to clear up some of the areas that were causing alarm as between condo associations and design professionals. And I think for where we are now in November, people are a lot calmer. You know, they're beginning to realize, okay, here's the best way to interpret the life safety evaluation criteria, and it doesn't have to be as complicated as the steps were initially made out to be. And there was a meeting with some of the design professionals and the fire department on October 26th. And I think we got some feedback from them. In fact, some of that feedback is ending up in your Bill 72. Oh, great. That's perfect. That's perfect. I think the, you know, the question of really being able to have more flexibility, you know, having the design professionals be able to supervise, you know, resident managers or building personnel from an individual condo makes a lot of sense because it then prescribes sort of the scope of their responsibility, but it also allows flexibility because you wouldn't expect a particular design professional to be personally inspective, you know, every unit in a 30 or 40-story building. Right. And the way we contemplated it, you know, we didn't expect them to go into every unit. You know, in fact, when Dana, when I had a conversation with Dana Bergman, he was talking about non-destructive testing. I said, what? I said, you're going to make holes in our building? I said, how do you do non-destructive testing? I said, that means you're going to make holes in our building. I said, no, no, no. I said, we didn't contemplate. That's not in the ordinance. You can't make holes in our building. And I said, you know, so, you know, this is one of the things that, you know, we need to be able to discuss and it's got to be negotiable. And, you know, he and I agreed that some of the stuff that they have to inspect, like smoke alarms in the units and the unit doors to see if they're, you know, fire safe, you know, like they have to be solid-core doors, an inch and three-quarters wide with metal closures. He said, he agreed with me. The association shouldn't be paying an architect or even a junior architect to do that inspection. Right. Well, you know, and he agreed with me. So I said, you know, what associations do and Dana was very familiar with this, we have a high-risk component inspection where we send up plumber through the building and they have to go into every unit. So I said, why, if we could send a maintenance person from the association, staff and going with the plumber and they can check to see if the smoke detectors are there, whether it works and the doors and the closure, that takes two, three minutes for each unit because they got to get into the unit anyway. Right. Right? And then make a report and give it to the professionals and Dana was fine with that. He says, but the bill doesn't say that. And so I think that's one of the changes that you've agreed to include in Bill 72, right? That's the language that Dana dictated that the inspections will be done by or under the supervision of a professional. Exactly. And that makes sense because in terms of providing flexibility and keeping costs within range of what each condominium association can afford, that's really the kind of thing that the bill was intended to accomplish. Right. So things like that or providing additional time so that if your building permit process takes a long time, you don't want the two-year period to be counted against, you know, the building permit processing. So that's another instance of change where we wanted to make sure that any time that the condo association is processing a permit gets subtracted or it's not counted in the actual timeframe for your compliance. So I think as we've gone through this whole process, part of what we've learned is that you almost always have to give a lot of flexibility so that people can meet what was originally the purpose and intent of the law but not kill the whole law itself by making it so burdensome that nobody can comply. Right. And one of the things that you've done too is to give extensions. And we've decided on two-year extensions to certain deadlines like, you know, two years to do a life-safety evaluation. That's just being extended from three to five years and to get a passing score because I think everybody, you know, we all are kind of not optimistic that everybody's going to get a passing score the first time. So yeah, you might have to do it a second time. Right. But what you do is you do the life-safety evaluation, see what kind of score you get, and maybe you need six points to get a passing score or two points and you talk to your professional who did the examination say, okay, what do we have to do? We can do, you know, add fireproof doors or we can improve the lighting in the exit or maybe upgrade our fire alarm system. Right. So, you know, you talk to your professional, figure out what you need to get a passing score and then work with that professional to implement it. And one of the things too in Bill 72 is that the building permits applications that arise because of the life-safety are going to be given expedited treatment. Exactly. Exactly. So that, you know, I know the mayor is kind of upset about the two-year extension because that's going to delay the, you know, but the fact that, you know, this bill now provides for expedited treatment for building permits that arise out of the life-safety evaluation means that at least, you know, that portion of the process is going to be quicker. Right. And I think that would benefit everyone because time is money and for all the condo associations, the more people are able to plan, you know, and budget for what needs to be done, the better everyone off will be. Yeah. And the thing of it is that we already know that there's 300 buildings that are subject to life-safety evaluation and out of the 300, about half of them will probably need to have some work done that's going to require a permit. Right. And that's going to be a horrendous experience for the city. So for you guys listening out there, I mean, I think you need to talk to your, you know, talk to your vendors and start talking to them now about, you know, doing the life-safety evaluation because this is a long process that will include building permits. And, you know, right now I'm being told building permits even for repairs take six months to six to 12 months. Exactly. So we're not talking about a period that's going to be, you know, that's why the bill, you know, makes provisions for all of these extensions of times. Thank you very much. But, you know, I think the good thing is the bill is really designed to take into account the many different problems that could arise because we've never undertaken anything of this magnitude or diversity, you know, in terms of regulations that are going to apply to a group of buildings that were constructed over 25, almost 50 years ago. Right. So it's something that I think needs to really be thought through, needs to be handled carefully and the better we do on this round then everyone will end up winning. And, you know, one thing too, and this comes from Dana Bergman and I asked if I could tell people and he said, fine. I said, so now that you've met with the fire department and so what's it going to cost for life-safety evaluation? I said, conservatively it's going to cost between $5,000 and $20,000. Okay? So for a higher building, you know, with lots of issues, it's going to be $20,000. If it's a small building with not so many issues, it's going to be even less. And the more, and I can't stress this enough, the more that the building knows the association, the board of directors and the site manager know about the matrix, the better off you're going to be when you negotiate your contract with your professional. Yes. And the more you know, the more you can, you know, more responsibility you can assume for gathering the information that the professional is going to need the less time it's going to take for that professional to gather that information and the spreadsheet, the matrix is embedded in the ordinance. Exactly. And that means that the professionals get it for free. It's on the city website. Yes. It's free and they can't charge you the matrix or the software. And that means they only charge you for the time that they are in your building. Exactly. Right. And it's good for them and it's good for the buildings. Right. And so that, you know, so a word to the wise, get out there, get online with the fire department matrix and become familiar with it so that you can negotiate your contract with the vendors. And I know we're running out of time and thank you so much councilmember Carol Fukunaga, our champion, in the city. And thank you very much for all of you out there for listening to us and please tune in next week for another show for those people who live in condos and work in condos. Thank you very much for being a condo insider listener. Aloha. Okay. Aloha.