 And welcome to another episode of Condo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura. I'm your host for the show today. And I'm going to be starting a series on candidates running for elected office who have condos in their district. And the reason I'm doing a series like this is because I've heard so many people grumble to me saying, how come we have this law? And what can we do about it? Or how come we can't get this law passed? And my recommendation to them is you got to get to know your elected officials. You got to get to know your candidates. And you got to become their best friend so that when you pick up the phone and say, Mr. So-and-so, I'm a constituent and I vote, they're going to listen to you. And so we're going to be doing a series of condo insiders. And I'm going to have, as my guests, candidates who are running for elected office. And they have condos in their district. And we're going to be talking about issues relating to condos. And hopefully, you will invite these people into your communities and get to know them. And like I said, if you want things done, you want to become their best friend. And so without further ado, I'd like to introduce Ron Menor. Hi, Ron. Hello, Jane. And I'm a disclaimer. I've known Ron Menor for what, over 20 years? That's correct. Yeah. I consider you one of my best friends, too. So that's why I support condo issues. Why don't we tell our viewers how we know each other? Well, we go back a ways, don't we? But I'm not going to specify the years because it's going to reveal, make me feel too old. But before serving on the city council, I served for many years in the state legislature. More specifically, I chaired the Senate and House Consumer Protection Committees. And way back then, Jane, you always impressed me with your energy and commitment to representing and advocating for the needs of condominiums. And it was in your capacity as an advocate that the two of us worked together on measures to improve our state condominium laws. So we go back a ways. And of course, when I served on the city council, we continued working on condo issues and so it's good to see you again and look forward to dialoguing with you this afternoon or today. Right. And I can remember some of those things. And we had some very contentious issues, especially with foreclosures. And we were fighting with the lenders about in a foreclosure who gets the money. And I have to say, we didn't always agree, but you always gave us a fair shake. And that's what counts. And so that's what I want to share with my viewers today is that you and I, we have this relationship. And it started off because we would come and testify before you as a legislator and you got to know what our issues were and you asked us hard questions. And I can remember you telling us, hey, you guys go outside in the hallway, you figure it out, you come back and let me know what you want to do. And I will get that, I will work with you to make sure that that happens. And a lot of times that's what we did. We went out on the hallway and we kind of beat each other up and we would come back. Because we knew if we didn't go back with an agreement that we weren't going to get anything. So it's better to get half of an agreement than nothing at all. And so I thank you for helping us way back when and those were issues relating to I-14B and to Leasehold for Leasehold. And so those were very hard issues way back then. And the issues don't stop. And now you're bringing your experience to the city council. So you're running for what? District H? That's correct, council district eight. Newly reapportioned council district eight. Okay. And what areas would that include? Well, that would include Mililani and Mililani Malka along with other central Liwotawa communities as part of the district eight. So the other communities would include Pro City, Whitefield Gentry, Crestview, Seaview, Waimalu, some of the Pro Ridge areas where all some of those communities would be in district eight. Okay. I live in I-A and I just know from working on recent issues with the city like the fire safety issue that coming into our area you're going to be picking up about 30, 35 condominium associations. And some of them are townhouses. And I know that in Mililani we have a townhouse associations and some high rise buildings. But so you must, you're going to have about 50 condos in your district. So that means you're going to be representing, you're going to have a lot of condominium constituents in your area. And I also want to add that I also live and own, I live in a townhouse and I own a townhouse. So I'm very sensitive from a personal standpoint or personal level with the issues impacting or affecting condominium. Right. And over the years I've been, when I've been speaking and I've been asked questions about, you know, meeting with elected officials I keep telling people, you know you got to become best friends with your elected officials with your city council person with your state legislators because you never know what you're going to need their help. And I said, and if you're a constituent and they know who you are and even if they don't know you who you are if you call and say, you know, I'm a constituent that office is going to help you. You know, because number one, they want your vote. They want, they don't want you to be mad at them because they want you to vote, you know for their elected official next election. And so, you know, I keep telling people, you know you've got to become best friends with the elected official so that they know what your issues are and they will be there to help. You don't want to go to them only when you're in trouble or if you're mad. I mean, that just, you know, it's not very productive. But anyway, there's a lot of issues that the city council is involved in. And, you know, let me just go through, you know some of them, I mean, we have the issue of rubbish removal and real property taxes. And that's always a bonus contention because with single family homes they pay for property taxes and they get free rubbish removal, but condominiums we pay property taxes and we have to pay a private rubbish removal company to remove, you know to pay for the removal. And, you know, and a lot of times, you know condominiums say, hey, that's not fair, you know and how can we fix this? And let me just tell you years ago when Arnold Morgato, you know was in the city council for the pro-city area he lived at the Waimuna, which is a townhouse community and he arranged to get city pickup for the Waimuna. And I found out about it. And I went to him, I says, hey, you know there are other townhouse communities. You know, you got to share the wealth. You know, you got, if you get it for your community you got to get it for the others. And he did offer and there were condominiums in Oahu who were able to get city pickup for maybe, I mean with condominiums there's so many people that they have to, you know get pickup almost every day but if they could get two or three days and I think the city does two days, right for single family homes, if they could get two days that would reduce the cost of their rubbish removal. And I haven't, you know heard anything recently but you know, if you're elected is this something that you would talk to environmental services about doing? No question, you know you mentioned the fact that city government deals with critical issues. And there's no question that city government plays a very important role in dealing with the day-to-day issues that affect the quality of life or our residents and in particular condominium owners. I mean, we've got issues relating to real property taxes as you mentioned, police and fire protection, emergency services, building permits, the fire, the safety ordinance that I'm sure we're gonna be talking about shortly and of course trash collection and refuse pickup. So with respect to trash collection I just wanna start off by saying that I'm very sensitive to the concerns that have been expressed by condo owners that while they pay real property taxes, you know they're not getting the same free trash collection services that are available to other property owners. I'm concerned about that. I consider that to be an issue and I'd like to work on that. What you suggested is a very good proposal and definitely as a city council member I'd like to work on a proposal such as that. I just wanna bounce something off of you. What about there's another possibility come introducing a bill that provides some kind of real property tax relief for condo owners who don't get, you know refuse collection services. I think that would be, you know very helpful, you know and that would be a recognition that, you know that there, you know some kind of equity, you know trying to make it more equal because, you know I don't know if you remember but back when Jeremy Harris was the mayor he had, you know and he didn't want to I mean, this was during a time of inflation or recession or something like that. And he did this thing about revenue neutral property taxes and in other words he wasn't going to raise the taxes but, you know he was gonna do this revenue neutral thing and what it ended up is that the real property taxes per you know, per homeowner went up for condominiums but not for single family homes. It took us three years, you know of, you know very intensive lobbying to get him to to, you know change his mind and then it took the city I think six years to equalize it because they, you know for three, for the six for that three year period we were paying more taxes you know, per household than a single family home because of that revenue neutral business. So, you know we know not, you know whenever I hear something like that or a concept where people are trying to do that revenue neutral thing as I remind them about what Jeremy Harris did and it took us a while to, you know, straighten that out. And you know so those kinds of issues are very sensitive, you know and people have to understand that, you know people who live in condominiums townhouses or high rises I mean, we're homeowners too but sometimes we get treated differently from, you know single family homeowners and sometimes, you know that becomes, you know very hurtful and you get a lot of resentment, you know about how come we're different how come they treat us different? That's correct. So I agree with you that that situation is unfair. But the fact is that when real property taxes are a system condo owners they don't factor in the fact that condo owners are not being provided with trash collection services. Adjustments aren't being made through the property taxes to take that into account. So either we look at adjusting real property tax rates for condo owners to provide some property tax relief or we go with what you suggested which is providing a some level of service trash collection service to condo menus. Okay, you know but why don't we get to the fire safety issue because in fact, we just we have a permitted action group hearing yesterday on the fire sprinkler issue. Let me for background there, the Marco Polo fire happened in July of 2017 and then in 2018 I don't know who introduced it but it was the mayors there was the administration bill. Kirk Caldwell introduced a mandate for fire sprinklers in all high rise buildings and the city council and you were very instrumental in setting up the task force. The, you know and I was a member of the task force along with, you know there were engineers and different city agencies and the real estate commission and you know so we were given a seat at the table so to speak and so we were able to modify the ordinance to say well it's not a straight mandatory you shall every building shall have fire sprinklers we were given we asked for an alternative and the alternative that everybody agreed on was a life safety valuation. In other words if you don't do this of fire sprinklers you have to pass this life safety valuation and do the repairs and do whatever you have to do to make the building safer and then you don't have to do the sprinklers. And at that time, you know it was something brand new and we were told that Chicago had a similar law but you know there was no big push to do the you know enforcement now that in Honolulu they're starting to do the enforcement a lot of buildings are coming forward and including the design professionals who are doing the life safety valuation they're coming forward and the consensus that we reached at you know at the pig meeting yesterday there's not enough time you have 300 over 300 buildings in Honolulu it took the Marco Polo four years to put in their fire sprinklers and in the three years since the bill has been in effect the fire department has reported about 210 buildings have finished their life safety valuation. Of the 210 approximate buildings that have finished only 12 have gotten past these fours. Okay? So anybody can do the math. You know you've got and there's 143 buildings who haven't even done the life safety valuation and do you know what we found out in the pig meeting? From, and there were there was the representatives from Hawaii management and associate and touchstone they reported that some of their associations think that the law is going to be repealed. They think the law is going to be repealed because there have been changes and yes, there have been changes because we've gone to the council and said hey, we need more time, right? First of all, the pandemic hit. Who knew, I mean the law was passed before the pandemic and then the pandemic hit and nobody could even get access to the buildings to do the life safety valuation. So there was no way the original deadline, the three year deadline would have been 2020 and we couldn't because of the pandemic they had to extend it and they had to extend some other deadlines and there were some changes made. And so what we heard from the association you know, management people, oh, our association, they think it's going to be repealed and my answer to that is really are they talking to their council members? Are the council members are their phones ringing off the hook? Because if it's not, it's not going to happen and that's the purpose of my show today is if people want to repeal this law they're going to have to talk to their candidates and see if their candidates want to repeal the law and if enough people I guess step up and say, hey, this is not working, it's too expensive I need more time and we got to fix our pipes you know, our pipes, the building is old we have money for spalling we have to, we need $20 million to replace all of our pipes and now we get hit with fire sprinklers. So, you know, so a lot of issues came up and so, you know, this is something that, you know I think you're going to have to deal with as a candidate and so, you know, people are going to ask you, well, if, you know, what are you going to do about it? Right. Don't let me raise issues, it's a critical issue it's an issue that we worked on previously as you mentioned when I was in the council. So thank you for allowing me to share my perspectives. Well, anyway, as you indicated, you know, the council when I was a member of the council worked together with you and other stakeholders in the development and crafting of our fire safety ordinance or ordinance 19-4 and you know, the intent behind the ordinance was to try to balance the goal of improved fire safety with the clear need to mitigate the cost of retrofitting condominium buildings on condo owners. And I was very, very concerned about the potential cost impact on condominium owners because I knew that the costs of installing fire safety equipment and fire sprinkler systems can be hugely expensive and in enacting ordinance 19-4 council members, including myself, our intent was that the implementation of the law needed to be closely monitored. And if this law resulted in negative impacts and consequences, then the council needed to reevaluate the law and make any necessary amendments. Well, as you've indicated, based on your discussion with the pig and the discussions that you've had with other staple holders over the past few months, the implementation of law, the law has resulted in negative impacts and unintended consequences. You've already pointed out that a large, significant number of condo owners, condominiums have been unable to pass the life safety evaluations required under the law. And they face these condominiums face significant obstacles. They will face significant obstacles in trying to install the necessary fire safety equipment and fire sprinkler systems by the applicable compliance deadlines. For example, a large number of condor buildings are gonna have to obtain building permits. And as we know, applicants for building permits have encountered significant delays in the department of planning and permitting. Right. Over, you mentioned the pandemic. Well, condominiums are going to possibly be negatively impacted by supply chain and labor market issues that will drive up the costs of the equipment and supplies and make it more difficult for condominiums to be able to obtain them. And I've also heard complaints that the law has been applied unevenly. And furthermore, an unintended consequence is that insurance costs have been going way up rather than the enactment of our fire safety ordinance. So given these concerns, I am willing, if I'm elected to the council, I am willing to introduce a bill to enact whatever amendments are necessary, okay, to address these concerns, including extending the compliance deadlines. And if additional amendments don't work and the law proves to be unfeasible and impractical, then yeah, I mean, the council should consider possibly repealing the law. I also know that there's another bill that's being considered by the council at present to address these concerns, Bill 44, which would establish a fund to provide funds to AOAOs to help them pay for the costs of retrofitting their apartment buildings. And it's my understanding that other jurisdictions have established similar programs to provide financial assistance to condominiums in the form of grants or low-cost loans. So I also know that the budget committee held a hearing on Bill 44 last Wednesday and decided to postpone decision-making. I'm hoping that the council will approve Bill 44 this year, but if it does not, then I am prepared to support Bill 44 as a member of the council in 2023. And then finally, you mentioned the permitted interaction group that was established created by the city council. Very important group and you've been a member of that. You contributed a lot of great things to that committee in terms of your ideas, insights and proposals. And so I know that you are continuing your dialogue and discussions about ways to evaluate and improve the law. And as a council member, I would be very supportive of continuing that process. So we've worked together over the many years on condo issues. And this is one of the issues that I'd like to continue to work together with you and other representatives of condominium associations. They try to come up with solutions. Well, that's good to hear. Thank you so much. But you know, the one of the unintended consequences you mentioned insurance. And in fact, we are going to be meeting with the insurance commissioner at Aaron Johansson and the state, you know, legislature who does, he's had a consumer protection. We went to him with our concern and he's setting up a meeting with the insurance commissioner and CAI will be involved as well as Hawaii council and Susavio will be there. And we've invited other condominium stakeholders. But what's happening is the insurance companies are raising the insurance if for buildings who don't have sprinklers. And to give you an example, my building is 23 stories, 300 units. The insurance went up 30%, $44,000 in 2022. And under the fire safety ordinance, the ordinance expressly states that buildings under 10 stories and who have open exterior corridors are exempt from putting in fire sprinklers, except I know two buildings in Waikiki who have open exterior corridors and their insurance went up because they have no sprinklers. But the ordinance expressly exempts them from doing, you know, so that's why we're meeting with the insurance commissioner to find out why is this happening and how come you have an ordinance that says you don't have to do it but an insurance, you know, the companies can come in and say, hey, you don't have a sprinkler? We don't care what the ordinance says. Your insurance is going to go up and it's happening. It's happening all around Oahu 2022. Everybody's insurance is going up if you don't have a sprinkler. That's a concern. And we need to address that. It's an unintended consequence. Yeah, and it is not unintended consequence because, you know, I think if everybody, if we all knew that on the task force, we might have done things differently and it just doesn't make sense and it doesn't seem fair. If you've got an ordinance that exempts certain buildings from putting in the fire sprinklers, but then you have the insurance company coming to say, we don't care what the ordinance says, your insurance is going up because you don't have a fire sprinkler. And, you know, so, they're caught between a rock and a hard spot, basically. Look at sort of about the status of bill 44, you know, are you hopeful that it will get passed this year? Well, I think, I think, in fact, in fact, at that meeting, we brought up the meeting with the insurance commissioner and the chair of the budget committee, Calvin say, asked that he and caroful kunaga council member caroful kunaga be included on the call. So I've included, I've notified representative Johansson to include them in the call with the insurance commissioner. So, you know, so they will be involved because they're also very concerned. I mean, in fact, I have a, I have a chart of the council districts in the number of buildings that are affected. And council member says district has 220 structures that are affected by the ordinance. So he is very, very concerned. And Carol council member caroful kunaga, she's got 176 structures that are subject to the ordinance. And, you know, so, so, you know, it's, condominiums make up a good part of the, you know, the housing, you know, inventory on the island of Oahu. So there's a lot of people living condos. And, you know, so I think we got to start speaking with a bigger voice, which is a reason why I'm doing these shows because I would like to introduce them to candidates like you who are going to be working for them. And I appreciate the opportunity. And as I indicated, you know, I really am seriously interested. If I'm elected to office, if a bill is not introduced this year to, to extend the compliance deadlines to get a bill like that introduced, you, do you think a bill like that is being, is it being discussed right now at the city council? Yeah, it is. And, you know, and I think, you know, we, we do have a council member, Calvin says ear and he was very supportive when he was in the state legislature as well. So he understands. And so, you know, I'm very grateful that he's on the budget committee because it's not like we have to, you know, reeducate him because he already knows what the issues are. And, you know, so, so it was, it was a very, I think it was very positive experience when we testified and I think he's open, you know, to pushing it out some way. It's just a matter of how, how we fund it. I think it is the issue that's left. Right. And of course, you know, when I was on the council, as we were considering the fire safety issue, a critical player or stakeholder, of course, was the mayor's office, the city administration. And so if I'm elected to the council, one of the first issues that I will bring up with the mayor is my concern about the impact of our fire safety ordinance on our condominiums to try to get the mayor, mayor's take on that and to see if he'd be willing to work together with the council to make further amendments to our fire safety ordinance. The original ordinance was, as you mentioned, originally advocated for by the Colville administration. Right. They were the impetus and they really pushed it. They really pushed it. But at the end of the day, we finally got them on board, you know, in regards to the amendments that we made that made the, the legislation or the ordinance more balanced. And so the mayor's office, his administration, it's also going to be a key player in regards to coming up with fashioning solutions to the kinds of concerns that we just discussed. So I just want to tell you that as a council member, I plan to meet with the mayor, I would meet with the mayor and raise the condo issue is one of the significant issues that the city needs to tackle in the future. Okay, well, that's good to hear. And, you know, Douglas Burr, who was head of Douglas engineering, who's one of the licensed professionals, he, he was saying that he thinks that, you know, the framework is still in the ordinance. You know, he to, you know, to, you know, move forward with one of the purposes is to make the building safe. And he thinks that that is, you know, he, and he, he said point blank. He says you don't need fire sprinklers to make the building safe from fire. There are other things. And, and he went through a whole list of them. And he was saying so, so, so to say that the, the installation of fire sprinklers is a be all and the end all is not true. There are other ways to make building safe. And that don't, you know, don't require the, the installation of fire sprinklers. And you know, so that's why he thinks that the bill is still workable if we have an alternative. In other words, you know, not to mandate the, the, the, the sprinklers, but to allow other ways to make the building safe. And I think I don't think the, the buildings disagree. And I don't think any of the viewers who are listening disagree. They, they want their buildings to be safe. And I think they're willing to spend the money to make the building safe, except that, you know, it, most of them can't do fire sprinklers, especially not in the timeframe that the ordinance gives them. If you give us 20, 30 years, that gives us time to build up a reserve. I mean, but you, you tell us that it's got to be done in 10 years. It's not going to happen. And, you know, and, and, and I, I think, you know, hearing that you're willing to work with us. I mean, to me, that is a very positive thing to hear. And so I'm very glad that you were here, you know, as my first guest in my series of interviewing candidates. And we've run out of time. And so I wish you luck in your campaign. Thank you. And, and, and I want to thank you for being on my show today. Well, I appreciate the opportunity, you know, I guess I've enjoyed dialoguing with you so much about this issue or just having this very important discussion. The time went by so quickly. I can't believe there was no commercial interruption as well. But don't thank you so much. And I wish you my best. And I look forward to maintaining a positive working relationship with you and the representatives of the condo associations in my district throughout the island. Thank you very much for being here. And for the, for the people who are missing. Thank you for joining me. And the, the, the, the next episode, I'm going to have another candidate and hopefully it will be for, for, for a council district. Six who is Carol. Right now it's council member Carol, who is term limited. So there's a bunch of people who are running for that seat in, in this year's election. So please tune in and get to meet your candidates because if, if you really care about what's going to happen to your building, you got to be best friends with your elected officials. Thank you for joining me for this program. Aloha and Mahalo.