 Condo Insider, what you show about association living is about 38% of our population lives in some form of an association and this show is to try to educate both owners and board members alike on what's going on in the industry, what the new laws are, solutions to problems and we get a lot of people write feedback and email and I keep waiting for someone to say, your show is a lot of rubbish and no one's written me about this show is a lot of rubbish so I decided to invite Jane Sugimore to come back and since no one wants to say our shows about rubbish let's talk about rubbish. Let's talk about the Apollo issue. Yeah there's an issue you know I have to say frankly that for years I've heard so many people complain about how hard it was to get a driver's license. They put the program in where you make a reservation to go get your license and my wife recently did it and it works fabulously and so now they're talking about for the bulky item pickup they have appointments for rubbish pickup bulky items so what's the rubbish on this? Okay yeah and there was a bill and I wonder still there's a bill it's a bill seven bill 13 and there was a CD2 and what this bill called for and I didn't believe it but when I went down to city you know to the city council hearing and sat there ready to testify I learned more than I wanted to learn but anyway the bill and they sent people around the neighborhood board to tell them about this pilot project that was going to be started and then the bill kind of takes off after the pilot project and we'll talk about both at the same time but the the bill talks about the resident manager or the site manager of the association actually making the calls for the residents of the building and when I when I heard that and I saw that I'm thinking this is nuts I mean you cannot have this is an association employee how can how can the city tell the associations that your employee has to make these calls for residents in the building to pick up the the the the the bulky out of pickups and I mean and for multi-family building you know high-rises with 300 600 500 units one day for pickup right now it's one some once a month but there's only one day and it's limited to 20 items you're talking you know as a single family homes they can have five items but the multi-family buildings you can only have 20 items are they proposing to charge for this yes that that's part of this budget process and there you know where the mayor there is a bill part of the budget bill there's a bill I don't remember I think it's a bill 11 which is asking for I think it's 15 10 or $15 for every resident to pay and of course it doesn't affect most of the high-rise buildings because we already pay private haulers to take away our rubbish because none of us qualify most of us don't qualify for city pickup but just I'm not that smart but it seems to me so there somebody calls let's say it's the residents says I have a couple items to pick up and the fee is 10 or 15 bucks so I'm the neighbor so I'm just gonna wait for you to put your stuff out and then I'm gonna tag on my stuff the way it works is that the person who wants well the way the bill originally worked is that the property manager or the resident manager would make the call for the resident and tell the city and there's a website opala.org and it's going to be flashing on the screen there it is there's the website this is a city website environmental services there's a place where you can either call or just log in and tell them where you are and what you want picked up and you can there are dates that you can pick that you know this is how you make your appointment it will give you available dates and you pick that date and so if any of somebody else calls from your building that same address they're going to say oh but we have a you know this is a date we're going to pick up at your building because somebody else called and so they're trying to lump all the calls so that you know what they don't want to do what I heard it from the city is the way the bulky item pickups work now every day they got trucks driving around the city on every street looking for all the bulky items and this is very inefficient so now you make the call and they will pick up on so you put your stuff out on the night before the pickup and so hours later it's not because right now you put it on the sidewalk right and they have four days to pick it up and in four days we all know what happens to that original pile right it just multiplies because people see they see they see the stuff on the sidewalk they say okay I have a pickup and they go and they add their stuff or you have scavengers who walk by and they say oh I want that couch and so they take that couch and they take it off the pile and so you know the stuff that and you know that gets put on the sidewalk is not the stuff that gets picked up well generally speaking I would say I like the idea of a reservation system there's got to be some inefficiency of drivers just drying being all over on some route and with regard to that it may be zero on that routes you have wasted labor energy gas and expenses so I like the idea very much of having a reservation system I'm not particularly understanding right now we get bulky pick up for free I'm not quite sure now we want to charge $10 and that scares the heck out of me because I'm convinced that the administrative cost the bill and collect the $10 is going to be more than $10 so the city is going to be losing more money and they want to raise our taxes more well the way it was contemplated and I had heard that they were going to try to charge the associations for this and I'm thinking well you can't do that because if a resident in the building calls in for bulky item pick up that's not a common expense so how are you going to charge it to the association well I found out when I got to the city council hearing on Tuesday Lori Kangekini who is a director of environmental services was talking about how they were going to collect the money and they're going to put the bill they they're going to be charging the person who calls and you know at that point it would you know they kind of played it was the association and they're going to and the idea is that you pay before pick up but if they can't collect the money they're going to add it to the board of water supply the sewer bill which is an association bill right it comes to the association and and council member Sunayoshi she's the newest one right she's very sharp very sharp and she said to the director have you talked to the board of water supply and the director said well no not not yet but the mayor was in the room and the mayor mentioned that he appointed everybody on that board and if he told them to charge the associations they would do that I was horrified and when I got when I was my turn to get up and testify I said you can't do that you can't charge the association for individual pickups for people who live in the building because it's not a common expense and if you do that you're going to get sued well they get I mean I know this is all hypothetical and theoretical right now but were they going to have like a flat fee charge or somebody's per cubic foot or someone's per item or how was the how was the charge going to work per cubic foot or cubic foot right and and my my my my response that is about a couch doesn't fit in a cubic foot is that's what is that three feet by three feet by three feet right and a couch doesn't fit there so how do you measure a couch you take half of a couch and figure okay that that's one cubic foot well let's let's just walk through one of these from my little brain so I call in I want you to pick up my couch and they have an average size couch there's ten cubic feet I'll just use a brown number and so they say okay that's ten dollars and I give them my credit card and I put my couch out then my neighbors put out a couch and a chair and so the driver now comes to pick it up how does he know which couch and chair because I paid for my couch they might pick up the wrong couch and I'm confident I don't care what you tell me you know people see that stack people are going to add things to the bulky item pick up and that was one question we asked the assistant director and he said that if they get a call saying that there's only one couch and one chair and the city gets there and there's three couches and two chairs they're only going to take one couch and one chair and that was exactly our question well how do you know which chair and which couch we're called in because that person obviously prepaid because you're not so you don't pick up the the items until you until you get payment and he didn't have an answer for that but he's but but you know he said if you call in one couch and one chair they're only going to pick up one couch no matter what is out there they may pick up the wrong couch and chair right and so I'm the owner who paid for my couch and chair and they picked up the one there I'm now following a complaint which means I need more admin people at the city to cancel the complaint calls in addition to the collection people collecting the ten bucks for the couch and chair all complaining and then I gotta send the driver back and with the gas and a truck a second time when they were already there the first time we're gonna picked it all in one big time and made it more efficient yeah but you know and I think I think practically speaking they're gonna have to pick everything up whether it's called in or not and then figure out who's going to pay for but that's that's the issue we told them you can't expect that if somebody calls in a number of items that though that same number of items is going to be on the sidewalk when the driver gets there because it never works that way because the minute people see stuff on the sidewalk then it they bring down their own stuff and they just add it to the pile or then you put the couch out you didn't pay for it and then the city picks up the wrong couch you said I put that in a curb with my brother in law was that pick it up and you took my antique couch away trashed it and that antique couch that had family historical value was worth ten thousand dollars so now they sue this that equally picked up the wrong one yeah I mean but you know the word in the dictionary for this you know this description of this business process of providing public services and you know what the word is in the dictionary government government doesn't know how to think through sorry I think we have some good legislators and council members but it's kind of like how can this get even of course the good news is bill 13 that's an unlucky number that should be the death of the bill right there before anything happens but well you know what happened and what happened at the end of that hearing it's just a you know cut to the chase they decided that they weren't going to allow resident managers and site managers to coordinate the bulky item pickup and I think it was because there was this one female resident manager from Waikiki and she must have been very slight you know she wasn't a big lady but you know she was very slight and she testified that she only had a janitor as an association employee he was 65 so it's just her and the janitor and so if if they were tasked to coordinate this she wouldn't be able to do her work you know managing and you know the building the repairs and what not and if they were tasked with also moving the stuff because the bill calls for storing it in a room except none of us have rooms you know the mayor talked about well now we're building high-rises with rooms to store but you know those of us who whose buildings were built back in the 70s and the 60s we don't have an extra room to store bulky item pickups so and assuming we had a room the city was talking about having association staff move it to the curb and I mentioned that you know that's putting the association employees at risk or a single you know resident and that's something that the association's probably would not tolerate because if that person gets hurt it's a workers comp claim what I don't see is right now we have bulky item pickup and it's in our property taxes and it's free and I think the system is inefficient I think a reservation system probably will work a lot better if they don't make it too complicated try to take advantage of it by taxing us more because they had a reservation system over time they'll get a good handle of what where the most bulky items are maybe more and white kiki and less in Kailua or wherever it may be and they'll get a better handle on resources on how to deploy that won't be perfect in the beginning but we're paying for it now in our property taxes I just say okay we have a reservation system bulky item pickup and the city will save money because they'll be more efficient with labor more Christmas with the trucks and the and the fuel cost so they'll save money as soon as they start saying we're gonna have fees and all this admin the administrative costs are gonna explode and then it's gonna have to raise the fees more or raise taxes oh another upshot of it was that the committee decided that they would not charge fees so you know this this I think this council just doesn't have the stomach you know to to raise taxes so to speak so there will not be any fees for the bulky item pickup well you've given me a lot of rubbish so far so let's take a quick break for a minute we'll come back more on Opala Hi I'm a Buhai my name is Amy Ortega Anderson inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with Think Tech Hawaii we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday we invite you to listen watch for our mission of empowerment we aim to enrich and lighten educate entertain and we hope to empower again maraming salamat po mabuhai and aloha aloha I'm Cynthia Sinclair and I'm Tim Appachella we are hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii we provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii we are Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep ongoing we'd be grateful if you go to think tech Hawaii calm and make a donation to support us now thanks so much welcome back to condo insider we're not only talking about bulky item rubbish pickup we're talking about the rubbish bill 13 that has so much rubbish in it it's gonna make it almost impossible but when does this pilot program begin I know they said they're gonna have a pilot program I got a postcard to mail yeah the postcard well it's gonna start June 3rd June 3rd is when when when they will start and it affects a single family homes and high rises from Ulster Village to Hawaii Kai so in the test starts June 3rd have they gotten far enough to figure out whether they're gonna charge or not or is it just like well we're gonna start this June 3rd and figure it out later I don't know if they're gonna charge I think I think at this point they probably won't charge they're they're trying to see you know basically what they're saying is the way the pickup is working before where they set one date and you know people put it on the streets it was not efficient and so now they want to do it by appointments so that's what I think they're concentrating on is their appointments making the appointments and having the trucks just go to that area to pick up and they're not worried they're not thinking about charges although I think the website still says that and the website still says that the property manager or the resident manager or site manager has to make the calls for the residents of the building but we've been assured that that's gonna change the website as of today still says that but we're told it's gonna change what assistant director Tim Houghton told us it was gonna change why help me what I'm hearing so we're gonna do bulky item pickup by reservation right it's on the website right but we don't have any plans and how we're gonna do this and who we're gonna charge or not charge who's responsible the website's wrong and we don't know all the answers but let's just go ahead and start this June 3rd right that that's what it is I mean the website says it for high rises that the the site manager property manager is the one who calls it in but at the hearing on the 14th the Department of Environmental Services agreed with us that that is not appropriate and so that the residents or you know who want to pick up will make the call and they can go on to that website that you know is is appearing on our screen right now and they can go and you know see you know make an appointment on that website and and and and you know I don't know if they're going to be charging of during the the pilot project and I don't think they they would be because they they voted at the council hearing on Tuesday that they weren't going to charge a fee I think that's probably a good start you know I can understand this is work in progress and maybe I sound a little spiteful about moving on down the road without much thought on this but it's the truth there isn't been much planning with regard how they're gonna do it and you know the public at large are gonna be confused by this I like the reservation idea I think that's probably a really good system but I don't like they didn't think through what are they you know it's kind of like the great hallucination we have this plan this is where we're gonna get to but they haven't thought about how they're gonna get there what collateral damage you're gonna create in between and you know but you know and I think the discrepancy to between the single-family homes and the and the high-rises because with single-family homes you can put out a maximum of five items for this thing for the multi-family residences high-rises you can only put out 20 which doesn't seem realistic when you think you know an average condominium has got maybe a hundred or 200 units right and and so for the bulky item pickup you can't put more than 20 items out there and we all know that when you put even if you put 20 items on the street by the time the driver gets to the next day it's going to be double that amount of items we know the way I look at this I live in a single-family home and I've had my garage a couple of times I wanted to clean up and there are private haulers out there I'm not going to give any names that offer picking up your junk and taking it to the dump or and even recycling it and some if some of the items you're turning over are worthy of recycling and they obviously have a bunch of trucks they have to do their routing and planning who they're gonna go when where and whatever the city should talk to these people because I know what I would call they would ask me what do you have and I'd go through my list and say well that's about a half a truck or a quarter or a truck and they were planning their loads that truck that they're going to dispatch to go to these five or six stops or two or three stops or whatever it may be had a plan it seems to me that the city ought to talk to so many people who've been picking up quote junk forever and recycling it and taking it to the landfills well you know one of the things about the website and that's why I urge everybody it's a Paula.org you go on to there because when you put in your items they'll be and if it's an item that can be recycled though something will pop up from the website to say have you thought about this item have you thought about goodwill goodwill will come up and pick up your couch you know so and they have the name of you know the entity you know to to call you know and and and and I think they have a phone I think they told me there was a phone number so you they give you choices in other words you know you're calling us but what about these people have you thought about these these people will come and pick it up or free. Right well there's a lot of there's one TV the night about people who are looking to help people who are needy by recycling old furniture and sofas and things that you may not find you want to replace them trying to help these people with and those are certainly valid approaches. I get a little different note on a Paula because I do recycling of green waste and I'll take it to the Wyman Allo land not the landfill it's a recycling center and you have the bins to put the green waste in so I'll load my car up with a whole load of green waste and I'll take it on a Saturday morning over there I can't tell you how many times I've gotten there there's a sign on it saying close the day all the bins are full so then I got to figure out what other place I can go to and get unloaded my car which is usually over in Kailua side but you think I'm planning I'd realize this Saturday's just probably a busy day that people want to dump their green waste and their stuff right but doesn't seem like that this is well organized and well thought through and I agree with you the condo owners can't be expected to pay for this and they get I'm saying as an association and you can't expect their managers or many of them don't have managers right and I mentioned to and the lady who showed up she's she was a prime example her unit her building had less than a hundred units but it was 86 or close to a hundred units she's the only employee beside the janitor and you know so it's only the two of them and so if you you know if you have that person you know trying to coordinate the bulky on a pickup they won't be able to do their other work that's that's going to benefit that's benefiting everybody who lives in the building and that's why it's you know that's why you know it was important to persuade the city that that had to change and they couldn't be asking the property managers or the site managers and or resident managers to do the calling in that the calling in had to be done by the people who have the bulky item pickups bill 13 they didn't pass on that where they're going to charge the associate where did Bill 13 go to back the committee here no no they were talking about was CD2 CD1 which calls for the bulky item by appointment you know that's still alive and so so that's part of the bill 13 and that's still in committee and they're still working on it mainly because that you know this is a budget committee and so there are other measures where the where the there's a measure by the mayor I think it's bill 11 and that's the one where he wants $15 for everybody right just pick up pick up and in exchange there's another bill that says and the mayor has kind of alluded to the fact that if you give me the $15 per resident you know on the rubbish pick up and I'm willing to reduce the real property taxes by 10 cents and and councilmember it's so Niyoshi got him on that one like mayor I mean you said this is the revenue neutral and yet you know I'm looking at the numbers and it's costing the city this many millions of dollars and and if we do this we're only you know we're only saving like a million dollars and so where is this revenue neutral to the city and and and for the taxpayers that for the taxpayer he had to admit that it wasn't revenue neutral as a taxpayer you know so she's she's very smart I would watch that person the problem I have is that we were talking about this what a show began I when I ever get time I'm gonna write this article is that government is taxing us to death we wonder why we have homeless and people struggling on a poverty level they were paying more and more for everything drivers license potentially refuse pick up you know more in property taxes you know they want more from the investor owner so investor owner then has to charge more for rent you know because they want to hire property taxes we've got to learn to live within our means you know and the problem is government doesn't learn to live within our means they get these big budget these high in the sky big budget numbers they keep spending realizing it's a detriment to the working people who live here in Hawaii right and the thing about property taxes that we all pay including condo owners property taxes are supposed to cover rubbish pick up but most of us who live in high rises don't get the city services and you know so so we're you know so in essence it's costing us more money than the single-family homeowners because they're getting their rubbish pick up for free we have to pay thousands of dollars a month well unless the CD2 gets passed we are getting free bulky picked up right you know I wish they want to take away from it right and they want our resident manager and then the association has to build the owner and that the owner doesn't pay the association it's gonna fall under act whatever it is 195 the one on the common expenses and whether it's priority of payment or not a priority but it just seems to me it's so simple it makes sense to have reservations it makes sense for better efficiency it'll cut costs for the city by having better efficiency we're paying for through property taxes do the pilot program do the test and before you make a sweeping changes let this run its course for six months to a year yeah the pilot project is supposed to go through February or longer so it's it is set to last six months well I think to our viewing audience we've given you enough so you can say this show is full of rubbish you know we were talking about the Apollo and the problems and I kind of joke about that make light of it but it's a very important matter to have better citizens or better utilization and efficiency for the city and I don't think the bulk pick up is working very well now because I see things in the curve seen for days at times waiting for them to be picked up so I guess that's good I just don't think they thought through the end game and we hope they do and well thank you for watching condo insider and we will see you next week and aloha