 Aloha, everyone. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Waihei, and today I have another great program for you. And before I begin, I want to make a disclaimer. I always do this when I feel that it ought to be said. First of all, everybody out there knows I'm a Democrat and I'm going to be supporting the Democratic candidate for all offices, including Mayor and the rest of that. But so, having done that, got that out of the way, I want to tell you why and what we're doing on this show today. I have for the last few months been a member of the Charter Commission for the city and county of Honolulu. And during that time, I've learned a lot about what the city does for all of us on Oahu. And I thought it would be fun if we could actually talk to some of the people who are doing the work there, separately from any kind of political statement or marketing. So this would be talking to two individuals, I've got two guests today, who are hands-on. The ins and outs of the city and county of Honolulu are with us this afternoon. First of all, we have the Mayor's Managing Director. This is the guy that's better than the Vice President. Vice President doesn't have regular jobs, but he's sort of the Vice President of Honolulu. So he's the Managing Director, Roy Amimea. Welcome, Roy. Welcome. Thank you for having us. Yeah, let's do that. And we have with us Ray Soon. And Ray is the Mayor's Chief of Staff. So you do all the things that the Mayor is supposed to do that he then waves at people for doing. No, no, you better not stay there. Well, we're great to have both of you here today. And so why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, Roy. You know, before you became Managing Director, how did you this journey end up where it is? Just for the sake of your guests before we get to that, I guess the Managing Director, it's kind of like if you look at a corporate structure, it's like the chief operating officer. So I kind of handle the day-to-day operations of the city, the mayor being the CEO, the big picture guy. And Ray supports the administration by working with the mayor to help devise policy. And that's a major part of what he helps get done. Well, that's great. And so that's what you do. But how do you get to where you are so that you're now the CEO of the city and county of Honolulu? So my background is quite diverse. I started off in banking. I was at the Bank of Hawaii for 20 years. Then I took a position with a former mayor as the Budget and Fiscal Services Director for one term for four years, went back into banking for another 10 years, and then became the CEO of O'Leilow Community Television, which was quite different again. Five years into that job, mayor called and said, and asked if I'd be interested. So from public television to back to the city? Back to the city. Wow, that's terrific. And what about you, Ray? Well, like Roy, I've been around for a while. So the journey is me and you're in there. A lot of private entrepreneurial work, a number of companies which I still have and I'm still alive. I also put in 12 years at the state. In fact, I came back because you invited me back. I was in Boston. I was having a great time in Boston. I've been waiting for you to say that. You twisted my arm to come back to Hawaii. That was in 1991 and I've been home since. Oh, fantastic. And a lot of public service in there and enjoying it a lot. So folks, these are the two individuals we have. If you have any questions for them, please call us at 415-871-2474. 415-871-2474. You can also tweet, TinkTechHI. So, okay, can't talk about the city and county of Honolulu without getting into the biggest public public project in the history of the state. So, obviously, Mass Transit. Mass Transit is the issue that everybody talks about no matter where. So, you know, what's up? I mean, where are we? Tell us. Well, we're well on our way. As you know, the people of this community voted for a steel on steel rail project five years ago and construction is well underway. It's moved from East Kapolei through the Ewa Plain through Waipahu, Pro City. And now it's in the middle of IAEA and heading on its way to the halfway point, which is the stadium. You also have contracted to purchase a number of the cars. Right. 80 and all, I believe, as well as have built a operation center over by Leeward Community College. That is some 90 percent of the way completed. So, rail is on its way. It's pretty exciting. You have your challenges, obviously, but the message is that rail is on the way. Yes. And the biggest challenge, of course, is that construction costs continue to accelerate and that's put a crimp on the revenues versus the expenditures that we need to expand to complete the project. Isn't there some kind of relationship between success and the rising costs in this sense that one of the reasons why construction costs are going up is because there's a lot of construction work. Wouldn't you say that? There's a limit to the amount of rebar, to the amount of concrete, the amount of labor that's on the island and the more pressure there is on construction and development, the higher the costs go. It's the marketplace. Right. And so, yes, we're caught up in that. Quite a bit of it is caught up. I think everyone who watches the economy, though, expects a little bit of a tail off in the next few years. And hopefully, that'll mean dropping the last segment, which we're still struggling with, how we're going to finance, how we're going to do it. The mayor is totally committed to getting that last segment done all the way to Alamoana. But it'll be a challenge. Well, I tell you what, you know, Governor Biden, he found out about rising construction costs. You know, he wanted to, and he really should, air conditioned classrooms right across the state. And when they finally went out to bid, they realized that the cost had gone up because everybody's, you know, working. You know, I had to go through that. And it's tough. But you seem to be facing the challenges. The mayor, one of the things that I learned as I worked with the city on, as I said, during the charter, was that the mayor was not satisfied, in my opinion, with, wasn't satisfied with the management of this project. And he seems to be, seems to have taken control of that, you know, with the appointment of former Congresswoman Hanabusa. And, you know, it seemed that there were some structural challenges, and she seems to have stepped right in there. And there's a kind of different air. I mean, is this true? I mean, is this the feeling? Don't discount the appointment of Cobra Matsumoto as well. Oh, Cobra. Cobra brings a discipline, a business discipline that's absolutely necessary. And it's hard to say that the mayor was reaching in to improve the management because, you know, during the charter, he doesn't have the authority to make those kinds of decisions. Right. He can only do it by influence. So the appointments under the board were really important for appointments. And then Mike Formby has also stepped up. Yeah, Mike, Mike, your transportation director, excellent person, by the way. And, you know, you've got really good staff at the city and county. If there's anything that I've noticed. But, yeah, I know, and people ought to be real clear about that. And as I discovered, and that is that the way that the project is structured, that the mayor actually doesn't directly run the mass transit project. So he can only, in a sense, be our guardian by appointing the right people there. And actually, frankly, he's done a really good job. But, you know, the rail is not the only project that we have. No, in fact, I tell you what, driving to work every morning, I run into your other projects, at least one of them. And you seem to be fixing every street in the city and county of Honolulu. Tell me a little bit about that. Well, you know, the survey was done a number of years back and more than 40% of the roads on this island were basically substandard. And so the mayor made it a priority for us to pave 300 lane miles a year. First goal was for five years for 1500 lane miles. It now has up that to 2,000 lane miles that he wants to do. And it's making an impact. I mean, instead of fixing potholes, we're repaving roads, and hopefully we won't have to be navigating across potholes too much longer. People should understand that, you know, potholes and repaving are totally different. Potholes are very temporary, and they come and go, and the rain can disrupt them. Yeah, what good rain, and you've got to go back and fix it again. But repaving is often reconstructing the road, which the 1,100 that Roy is talking about is repaving, is actually reconstructing those roads, sometimes rather dramatically, sometimes just the surface. But those roads should last us five to seven years. And then the mayor's also brought in a new technology to extend that life a couple more years as well. You know, it's amazing because I had the chance to do something like that. And it seems like the public always wants you to do, like, pave roads and things, but then they don't really like to go through it while you're doing it. But when it's done, it's noticeably different. It's noticeably different. I don't know any other time that the city and county spent so much time working on infrastructure like you folks have in the last few years. Not only paving roads, but also dealing with sewage and water construction and all of that. And it's all related. We do have a problem with affordable housing. Yes. And you won't be able to get affordable housing if you can't provide the infrastructure in a way of adequate sewer, adequate water. And to even an extent that bus and rail connects our communities, it's all related to infrastructure and the need to improve upon that because for many decades, really, we've neglected to upkeep what we have. And so now we're playing a lot of catch up. Yeah. Well, it seems like, it just seems like it's basic common sense that you ought to take care of what you have. But oftentimes it's more exciting to put funds into a new project than it is to take care of something else. Deferred maintenance is the death knell of public infrastructure. If you keep deferring it, it'll go down so badly that you have to replace it. You don't want to be there. Running the city is a complex place though. It's a lot of these different infrastructures from parks to streets to sidewalks to sewage and water. A lot of it is infrastructure. You know, I remember the reason why I recruited you years ago, it was to build houses. And you sort of mentioned that, you know, and we are going to go on a break. But just so you know, when we come back, I want to talk about the city's commitment to, first of all, it's commitment to affordable housing, what you're doing. And the other big issue in people's minds have to do with the number of people in our community that don't have homes. And what do we do with it? What is your responsibility in the scheme of things where, you know, homelessness is concerned? So while you're doing that, the number to call in if you have a question, folks, 415-871-2474 or you can tweet us at tinktechhi. So we'll be right back with the two very, very important people who make our lives either better or hotter, depending on how committed they are. And fortunately for us, they are committed public servants. Hi, my name is Justine Espiritu. This is my co-host Matthew Johnson. Every Thursday at 4 p.m., we host the Hawaii Food and Farmers series. This is the place you can come to for insight on the perspective and history and passions of Hawaii's farmers and all folks involved in Hawaii's local food system. What kind of folks do we have on? So we have everyone from local farmers, we have foodies, chefs, we also have journalists, researchers, anyone who's actually working to help make Hawaii's local food system that much better. So join us every Thursday and tweet in us and ask us some questions and leave your comments as well. Thank you. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show, Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Aloha and welcome back to Talk Story with John Waihei. And again, we are talking today about your city, the city and county of Honolulu, some of the challenges, but more importantly, you are having an opportunity to get to know two very important people at the city and county. Mr. Roy Amemiah, who is the managing director, and Mr. Ray Sun, who is the chief of staff for the mayor. So we left this just about going into the break, talking about the fact that people, one of the big challenges for government in Hawaii and for all of us is housing in Hawaii. And I know that traditionally the city has had this problem to deal with. And so what are we doing now? What are we doing today with respect to, first of all, housing in general? So people need to understand that this whole housing crisis occurred. And it did come up over a long period of time, but there were certain events that just created the perfect storm. Like we had the Great Recession and the housing bubble burst and people lost their jobs with people coming back from the war and they were not able to take care of themselves, like because of war injuries. We also had a big community down in the South Pacific because of sea level rise and health issues. We're coming to Hawaii, perhaps unprepared to the economic challenges that they would face. And there was a whole host of things. And so we spawned ourselves with not just one group that was homeless, but a whole variety of people that. All different categories. Some with mental illness. Is the mental ill population a very large population on the street? It's not a very large population, but those are the people who you see out there yelling at themselves or yelling at people and pushing shopping carts and defecating on themselves. And so they're probably the toughest group that we have to work with, especially since the mental health services have not kept up with... Which is the state function? It is a state function. Which we'll get into right after this. But we work hand in hand with the state. The governor and the mayor have certainly bonded on this issue. And yes, they deliver most of the services. We deliver a lot of the hardware. Okay, when you say hardware, what are you talking about? We're trying to put together homeless encampments and villages and places where you can move the homeless or buying buildings and retrofitting them in order to house the homeless. But it will never be successful without the services that go hand in hand with it. Helping people deal with their addictions or their mental illness or getting job training so that they can get a job. Oftentimes it's just a matter of difficult times for families. I don't think people, and this may seem like repeating ourselves in a sense, but I don't know of people in general, understand the important relationship between the infrastructure that we were talking about earlier, the idea of transportation and so forth. How important that is to solve the homeless problem. I heard the mayor often talk about the idea that it's not just about fixing roads or building a mass transit system. It's really about the social policy behind people being able to move. Yes. And I think you're saying some of that. And part of the nicity of having a rail system is that you'll be able to build housing around the stations. It can ease the requirements for parking, for example, because people no longer need cars. Right. And we'll build up and they can get to work. And in the long run, it's going to really help create housing for our people. I think we need to be, it's not just about bricks and mortar. We're really talking ultimately about people. And you mentioned something that was really interesting to me, and I'm not sure if the audience really understands that, but you said something about global warming having an impact on our problems regarding the lack of adequate housing. And how's that? I don't know how to... Global warming is going to have an impact on how we settle the land period. Period. Period. What we do, a really, really good example is the Mapuna Puna area, which floods right now, and it floods more dramatically than it did just four or five years ago. Yes. I don't know if people really get that, that this is happening right now. That's not water that comes down from... I mean, part of it is that come out of the valleys, but it's really sea level rise that rises up, and the water table is just almost emerges off of the ground, or at least it's high enough that water can't seep through. So that's a major area of this island, and it's already becoming... I know for a fact that having just gone to Maju in the last year or so, that the water of the Marshall Islands is just overrunning a great part of the islands that they live on. In fact, I think it was in the afternoon that the entire airport would be on the runway, would be underwater. And so that's going to have an impact on people needing someplace to go. And as you pointed out, they may not have been as ready for moving here as the people may have thought, but it also tells us, you know, this perfect storm. You have the great recession. You have global warming. You have all of this happening. You know, also don't forget, there's been a little bit of schizophrenia about the city and housing. We no longer have a housing department. We did not ten years ago. Right. We built a lot of stock. Rental housing, most of it for lower AMI families. And we no longer do that. We got rid of the housing department under Jeremy's administration. Right. And so now when we have this need for more inventory, we don't have the capacity to do that. We don't have the capacity to build. So what we are doing is we're doing a lot more partnering with the state. We're doing more partnering with nonprofits. And we're also talking to private developers about stepping up and increasing their capacity. And how is that working? You know, there's a little bit of, you want to use a little bit of regulation and then a little bit of... The carrot and stick. Right. It's carrot and stick. And so we'd like to increase the requirements for building affordable housing. We're not there yet. We're having conversations. At the same time, we'd really like to see an easing of some of the regulations that limit the capacity of private developers. And we have a caller on the line. Hello? Okay. State your name, please. And where are you from? If you had enough money, you just get, buy, do whatever you have to do. And my question is, are we getting enough money from the federal government? Is there a way to get more money from the federal government, or ever it's being made to get more money from the federal government? And if we don't get money from the federal government, aren't we going to have to spend it out of our own pocket? So doesn't that mean an increase in real property taxes for this and other things? Great question. With money, we can solve the problem, right? Right. So, well, yeah, I guess with money, we can solve any problem. But the question, did you get the question? The question is that in order to really solve the homeless problem, or the lack of really housing stock money, aren't we going to need money? It's really a question of having more money. And if we had more money, we would be more effective with solving it. And is there more money available for us, or any way that there can be more money available for the city and county from the federal government? Will the federal government step up and do this? Well, there are some programs to assist various states and municipalities in dealing with the housing issue. It's certainly not enough. We need not just money, though. We also need land. And in an island like ours where there is a lack of land that's developable, it becomes even much more of a challenge. Oh, boy, that just opened up another door. You know, well, the last part of the call's question was, and if we don't get money from the federal government, does that mean that we're going to have to raise taxes? Well, hopefully not. What we're doing are certain things where we're trying to engage, for example, private homeowners by allowing them to build accessory dwelling units right on their own properties so that you can put up a granny home. And we'll approve it quite quickly now. We'll waive the various fees that you would normally have to pay the city, such as water hookup and sewer hookup and park dedication fees. We're waiving those for a couple of years. And hopefully that will help create inventory of affordable. So the state, the state has been helpful in all of this. I know it's a challenge to be the county government. It's as much a challenge for them as for us in getting funds. I mean, it's not for lack of trying that we're not getting as much. But they got land. They have land. And why can't they cough up some land? And we have been talking to HHFDC about doing exactly that. Yeah, instead of building all those multi-billion dollar condos, wouldn't it be fun if they actually gave up some land for affordable housing? I'm not going to be political today, I promise. But it seems like they could do a little bit more for giving land up for affordable housing. We think that more players have to step up in order to make affordable housing a reality. Because if the market just allows it, if we just allow the market to just function purely, what developer is going to build on the affordable side when they can make as much money as they can? As you can answer that. I mean, that's just common sense. So I've got to tell you though, Governor Ike seems to think that something can be done. And I know that he, I just heard him say that he and the mayor have been working on some kind of joint program. But the city, the state does have land, you know? Yes. And they do have land around our rail stations. And so they do have a group that's working to see how they can best utilize those lands. And make it available for housing? As housing and other. And other activities. Yes. So what's it like to be the county as opposed to the state? Well, having worked on both sides. Yeah, that's why I'm looking at you. I can tell you that being in the county is being the poor sister because you're constantly, you're a product of the state. You know, the state created the county governments and they treat the county governments like that. Like they created it? Yes. So you're often had in hand with that? Not a very good church. You're going. But there was a time when that was necessary because the counties didn't have the resources of the capacity, the expertise to get the job done. I think that's no longer the case. Well, I'll tell you what. Greatest sharing of responsibility. Given the fact that you happen to be the poor sister, you know, you both seem to be doing a great job. And I want to thank you so much for being willing to come under our program and to talk about things that are of interest to the people of Honolulu. We appreciate that. Well, we thank you for your leadership on the charter commission, for example. That's going to help us tremendously. Yeah, it helps. So at this point, when we get to be mutually, you know, that's like an admiration society. Thank you very much, everybody. We look forward to seeing you again with Talk Story, with John Wahe, two weeks from today. Aloha.