 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another episode of condo insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host for the show today. And we have a last minute cancellation and my guest, who is going to come on my show in the future, but this gives me an opportunity to get on my box. And I don't get an opportunity to do that too often. So, you know, I'm kind of glad I have this opportunity to talk to all of you guys that, you know, on an issue that's near and dear to my heart, and that's elections. You know, this is 2022. And we have a primary election on August 13, which is a Saturday. And we have a general election on the first Tuesday of November. And we have lots of candidates, lots of candidates for the state offices, and for governor, lieutenant governor and for Congress and for the city council. And, and you're saying, well, why are you talking about this on condo insider. And I will tell you why. One thing, you know, these guys, you know, in government who are elected to office, they make decisions that's what they do every day. They make decisions that affect everybody's lives, and especially people who live in condominiums because condominiums are governed by chapter 514 B. It's what they call, you know, a statutory remedy it's something that's made up by the legislature. It's not something that's that is based on common law, which is developed over hundreds of years, like contract law, or, you know, divorce law or things like that. But anyway, you know condominiums are based on statute of the laws that relate to condominiums are all developed by the state legislature, and to some extent by people in and the city and county of the county councils and in Oahu the city and county of Honolulu. And you know, I think it's important. I really, really think it's important for everyone, not only condo people to get involved in their elections, because, you know, the decisions that affect everybody's lives are made by basically strangers, unless you know who they are. And unless you and the way you get to know them is during a campaign season that like now, where the candidates are all over the place. And they would love to be invited into your home to meet you and your neighbors to find out about your concerns and you may think this is all she buy that they're only doing it to get votes and yes they are doing it to get votes. But you know, practically speaking, they also want to become your friends they want to become all your they want to represent your interest. And so you know this is a time for you to, you know, take the opportunity to meet these people, and to know what they stand for, and whether or not you agree with what they stand for, and whether or not you want to vote because you, you are the ones to make the decision, you decide whether these people get into office. And once they get into office, you're the ones who decide whether they stay in office. So you can always hold them accountable, because if they, you know, if they don't. If they don't perform to your satisfaction, your action is to go to the ballot box and vote them out of office. And so, you know, that's why it's so important for everybody to get involved in these elections that were that are coming up now. And you may think that oh well there's all these candidates and there's all these signs all over the place, and people sign waving on the streets and you're so confused and you don't know who they are. Yeah, you need to go on the internet, look on their website, see what you know because they will see what they stand for and what their issues are important to them. And you know for, for people who live in condominiums, it's really quite strange that I found that you know when people, the current legislators, and even once, you know, who are, you know, running for office. A lot of them don't live in condominiums. They don't know how condominiums work. They don't know about common interests. And to give you an example, there was a bill passed last year, last session about electric motor electric vehicle charging station. And, you know, I don't think any there is any dispute that we all know that electric vehicles are coming. The state and the federal government have have passed policies that say that you know by 2030 50% of the car soul are going to be electric vehicles. And, and in Hawaii I think the benchmark is in 2040, we're going to be up to 50% renewable energy efficient. And you know so so yeah, the whole thing is to, to get away to reduce our carbon footprint so to speak, and to use energy efficient in energy efficient technology, so that you know we don't affect the climate. And these are all of our natural resources, and these are all really, really good things. But you know, unless you know you have people in office, who are going to follow through with these, these policies, you know, we, we could have a disaster. And I, you know, everybody, you know should be involved in these elections and just to give you just to talk about what's going to happen. The primary election is August 13. And it's a Saturday, and most, and Hawaii isn't all male ballot state so that means that, even if you didn't apply for the absolute ballot you're going to get a male ballot, unless you want to vote in person. So there are certain people who, you know, who are concerned about, you know, voting by mail they don't trust that they think it's unsafe. But you know I think the Hawaii system has worked pretty good. And I've been voting by mail for, oh God I've been doing it for over 20 years mainly because I've been a poll worker. And if you ever work at the polls you, they don't let you vote. You know on election day you have to vote by absentee ballot. So I've been voting absentee ballot for over 20 years. And you know to me it's perfectly safe I don't see any concern with that but anyway, Hawaii is an all male ballot. Okay, but they are making they have provisions for on the same day voting, but that means that you need if you if you're not going to send in your mail ballot. That means that you need to find out where the voting places are. And you got to find out which are the ones that are closest to you, because I think you need to, you can't just show up at anyone. You need to. And there you should Google Office of Elections and all the information regarding both the primary and the general election are going to appear on the website. So you should look at that and see, you know what your, your, you know, what you have to do. And the good thing too about getting the ballot in the mail is then you will see who your candidates are. And you're going to have time, and you're going to get your ballot in the mail. I think we're getting it at the end of July. And that means that you're going to have your ballot, almost two weeks before the, the primary election. So you can look at the names, see because the, you know, most people don't realize that there are different districts. And, you know, for our Senate, for the State House, for your council member, like in my district, my council seat, my council member seat is open. It's an open seat, which means because my council member is term limited. I think there's eight people running, eight people running for that seat. And even in my Senate race, there's two people who are three people running for that seat. And I think for our representatives, there's like three or four seats. So, so, so you're going to get your ballot. You're going to find out the names of the people who are running. And you're going to have two weeks, basically, to figure out, you know, who they are, go on their website, check and see what their positions are. And if there's a candidate form in your area and everybody's having cabinet candidate forms, the, the, they had one at Lonokia for senior citizens, about 300 people showed up that was last week. And so candidate forms are happening all over the place. And in fact, my area. Well, we're in region five. And, but anyway, our area is having our candidates form in Blaisdale, Blaisdale Park on Saturday morning. So if you're anywhere in the pro city area, and you want to meet your candidates including the gubernatory, the people who are running for governor, they're, they're going to be around they're going to be in the park, walking around. And this is what I mean, you need, this is a time for you to go out and actually meet the candidates and ask them questions and listen to what they say, and and and see if you like their ideas and ask them questions that are, you know, important to you. And, and, and, and, you know, see, see how, you know, you know, see how they react. And you know, everybody, everybody. You know, especially people who live in condominiums, people who live in condominiums, you say, Well, you know, what am I going to talk to them about what, you know, what, what, how are they going to affect, you know, what happens to me. And one, one issue that is very, very important. All of you remember the condo collapse in Florida. Right. And that was because, I mean, there were issues about the board of directors and whether or not they did the repairs that were required. And the newspapers are saying, Oh, but the owners didn't want to make this didn't want to pay the special assessment. And so, you know, there was a dispute between the board and the owners, and because they couldn't come to a decision. The building collapsed. And when, when, when you read the news stories, it was because, you know, certain things, you know, we're not maintained, like most, most high rise buildings are made of concrete. And no matter where you live, whether you live in Florida or in Hawaii, concrete buildings are porous. The salt air will go in and they rust the iron rebars, the steel beams that that make up the building. And when those beams get rusty, the concrete just be literally falls off, falls off the side of the building. That's how spalling is. I mean, it's nobody's fault that spalling happened. I mean, if it, but you can, you can stop it. You can, if you maintain your building. I mean, when you paint your building, the people who go in and inspect the building before they put the paint on it. They will tell you, Oh, you got all these in your lawn eyes. And so you got to fix those are that leads to spalling. Okay. And so, you know, so so it's not like it happens overnight. And nobody knows about it. You can see it. Spalling happens very slowly. It happens with cracks in the concrete. And if you don't address it right away, you end up with a building in Florida like in Florida that collapses on you. And it killed people. And it resulted in millions of dollars of loss and the lawsuit is still going on, although I heard in the newspaper that there's a settlement. But, you know, all these insurance companies are, you know, paying the losses, you know, for the condos that were destroyed and for the lives that were lost. And you know that could have all been avoided. I had something called a reserve law. And that reserve law was put in place by Maisie he Ronald over 30 years ago, and Maisie was head of the House Consumer Protection Committee. And I can remember I mean that's how long I've been around. I can remember Maisie calling me up and saying, you know, Jane. I mean, my constituents call me, and they're moaning and groaning about condo board. I mean they just moved into a condominium. And six months ago they're getting assessed $10,000 for a row. How come. Why are they why do they have to pay the special assessment they've only been there six months. Don't you guys have reserves. And, and, you know, for and back then there was no such thing as reserve. Maisie, and this went on for like three years. She finally says to me, you know, Jane, I'm getting too many people, too many people who buy into a building. And then a year or two later, they get these huge assessments for repairs that somebody should have been sucking money away every year. I'm going to set up a reserve, you know, a reserve require all chai rice condominiums have a reserve so she amended 514. It was 514 a at the time, which is not 514 b, but it was 514 a, and she did, she did that. And she did it because people were calling her, her constituents were calling her, or even people who didn't live in her district were calling her and saying, you know, Maisie, I'm having this problem. How come this isn't fair. You know, I just moved into the condominium last year and I get assessed $10,000 that's not fair with reserves, but the reserve does a reserve study is something you know that where the you hire professional and they look at all the components of the building, everything that has to be that is not regular maintenance in other words, you put a roof on the building every 15 or 20 years. You don't do it every year. Okay, so that's a component. Okay, you have to repair the, you do the painting on the walls of the building. That happens maybe every seven to 10 years. Okay, and then when you do before you do the painting you check for spalling. And then you fix the spalls before you paint the building, because if the building is cracking you don't want to paint it, because in the spalling is still there you got to fix the spa before you can put the pain on. And so, and these jobs are not cheap. In other words, the pain of building might, you know, the pain of building, or maybe 20 stories may run you $800 to a million, $800,000 to a million dollars. You know, you know, you can't just wait to say, Oh, we're going to paint the building next year. So we'll assess everybody in the building for the million dollars. You don't do it that way. You, you, you set up a schedule, and you say if we sock away a little bit of money every month from all the unit owners, then when it comes time to paint the building, we don't have to do a special assessment, because we got the money in the bank. The reserve is for and before it was voluntary until Macy made it mandatory back in the early 90s. And, you know, right now Hawaii has one of the strongest and best reserve laws in the country and we've made it even stronger, because after the condo collapse. Some changes are made to the law to say, you know, instead of doing the reserve study based on 20 year components, because guess what happened. One of your components, which means that if the repair doesn't take at least 20 years it's not in the reserve study. In other words, replacing your roof is in the reserve study because it doesn't you do it less than once, once every 20 years. So building, you know, repairing the swimming pool, replacing your patio furniture, or replacing the carpet throughout the building. You know, these happen less than every 20, what we found out in the last 10 years, unfortunately, is that pipes in the building do not last. You know, what they were supposed to mean we were all told that clay pipes last 75 years. It's what not true, because a lot of buildings, unfortunately, their pipes failed, and you've you that happened you know that you find that out because you have a lot of leaks. And finally you send in a mechanical engineer who's they got to replace all the pipes in the building. They're no good. You know, because the insurance companies, I mean after you have a bunch of leaks, after you keep having a lot of leaks, guess what, your insurance, well, the insurance company raises your deductible. My building, many years ago, our deductible was I think 5,000 worth of 50,000 because of the number of water leaks. Yeah. And so, you know, so, you know, so now replacement of pipes is going to be in the reserve say never was. And so when buildings got hit with the news from their mechanical and structural engineers but they got to replace their pipes. I mean, that's not a million dollar job that's like a $20 million job. Think of it. Think of it if you live in a high rise building, and you're told your pipes are defective. If you replace that means the pipes that go to your kitchen to your bathroom to your toilet to your bathtub. They all have to be pulled out of your building and replaced. And this can be done while you're still in the building. I'm told, and it's been and it's been done but it's, it's, it's a terribly terrific, the expensive job. Now, now, you know, because we know that pipes fail, they are included in reserve studies, and the legislature in 2022 amended the that reserve study law to say that it is now that the components are based on a 30 year lifetime. So, and, and every building is required to have a reserve study done by a licensed professional or by a professional, and they're supposed to have it done between, I think, I think three or four years. And there's a there's a specific time in there. And this was all, this all happened because of the floor, Florida collapse. And, you know, and, and, and the reason why this was done is because in Florida. There was a dispute between the owners and the board. And I'm told that in Florida. It's not mandatory. It's discretionary whether or not the board has got the authority to do these repairs. And that's like how come there was a dispute between the owners and the board, and they couldn't, you know, get together on, you know, Well, the owners didn't want to pay for because they said, Oh, this is a special assessment. And why should I pay $10,000. How come you guys didn't plan things better. And I could have paid $100 a year for a you know, a couple of for 10 years. And instead of making this huge assessment. And while they were fighting over the building collapses. Okay. In fact, in fact, the news said that the building collapse just when they were in the process of finally collecting money from the owners to do the repairs to address the spalling, which was a reason for the building collapse. So by that time is too late. But in Hawaii. It's mandatory. It's mandatory. The word shallows in the statute. And so the boards, you know, have to be aware, and the property managers are telling them that they have to be, you know, they have to do this. It's not discretionary. They can't just sweep it under the carpet. Oh, let's wait till next year. No. Now there are time limits. They have to do certain things. And they have to spend the money to keep the building safe. And another thing, another thing, I mean, there are a lot of pets and condos or dogs or animals and condos. And you know, I live in a no pets building we have a bylaw amendment this is no pets. But guess what, we got lots of dogs. And I have owners in my building who are grumbling and say how can we get all these dogs. And that's why we're no pet building is because, you know, of Americans. I mean, it's the fair housing says that, you know, you need to allow make reasonable accommodations if somebody claims they have a disability, and they need to have an animal. And, and so, I mean, we go to the legislature every year I mean we finally got the legislature to finally agree with us that you know those stupid little, you know, scars that says I'm a service animal that you can buy on the internet. But that's a no no. I don't know why I took the legislature so long to determine that. That was a no no. But, you know, they finally agreed with us that, you know, that was bogus. And, you know, you couldn't allow that so now it's now it's not allowed. This is another reason if you get enough people who complain, the legislators are responsive. And even we consider that a small victory. The the I am I'm a service animal shirt and scarves and things that you buy on the internet and the certificate, there is no federal certificate for service animal. And so those things that these people that the people were buying on the internet showing their al al's you know we're all bogus. And so now the state of Hawaii has agreed said oh yeah it's bogus. We're not going to allow you to accept that. And so you know yes it's getting more strict. But you know if you care about animals and buildings, and you should become friends with your legislators. Another issue, smoking and condos. If my father's you, I'd be talking to my, you know, candidates, and trying to see if I can, you know, figure out some way to stop it. And you know, if you live in a building where there's a combo war, where a bunch of owners are fighting with the board, and your maintenance fees are going up because you're paying for attorneys. And if I was you, you know, I would try to find some way to stop that and there are. I mean there is mandatory mediation subsidized by the state of Hawaii, and some boards don't even know about it. But in the statute. And if they, maybe they don't want to use it maybe they want to keep fighting. And, but you know, it's there. And this, like I was started off at the beginning of this session. We were talking about EV chargers. And that was, there was a bill introduced about putting an EV charger in every parking stall in a high rise building. And we stopped that because you know those legislators who, I mean, yes. You know, this is kind of a nice, I mean, right now, if you want to put on, if you have an electric vehicle you want to put a charger in your stall. Nothing is there to stop you except you pay for the association doesn't pay for it. This bill would have made the association pay for. So that means that if you lived in a condominium, your maintenance fees would have been used to pay for chargers and every parking stall. When you really don't need a charger in every parking stock is right now they got charging stations that will charge more than one vehicle. Right. And, and, and if you don't have, if you don't have 100% of electric vehicle ownership, then why would you want a park charging station and every stock was just kind of stupid. But you know suddenly we were able to stop that law, because you know the legislators thought they were doing a good thing. But they just didn't understand condominiums that you know the whenever you do a retrofit, which means that you're putting stuff into an existing condominium, without giving us money to do it. That the owners have to pay for it. And if you don't have 100% of the people in the building with electric vehicles, why should we pay to have a charging station every stall, which is which makes absolutely no sense. But anyway, we were able to stop that. So, my, my, my last issue is a fire safety ordinance in the city and county of Honolulu. I've had people contact me email me for me, and they don't like it. And I have one word. I tell everybody, call your council member. If enough people call their council member on that fire safety ordinance and they really hate it. I know there's people out there who really hate it. And with condominiums, it's costing them a ton of money to now comply with this law, which wasn't the intent back when the law was passed in 2018. It was not the intent. It was, it was to make the building safer. And it was, and, and, and it was supposed to do it at minimal cost to the association. Now it's turning out to be a big deal. And, and, and this is a brand new law. And what you should understand is there are other municipalities in the United States, who have mandates to do sprinklers like this fire safety. The ordinance in Honolulu says I'll shout, you will install a fire sprinkler unless. And the big unless is if you do a life safety evaluation and comply with that. Okay. Honolulu is by far the largest municipality in the country that has such a law. And, and we're in the process now of trying to implement it. And we're finding all kinds of issues, especially it's costing condominiums a ton of money, it's costing condominiums a ton of money. Guess what, it all goes down to the owners, because now they're going to be paying for more to comply with this law. And for everybody who contacts me I tell them, this is your council member call them. And I have council members who have told me if I you know people call us will repeal the law. I hope a lot of a lot of people listening to this will do that. If you're mad about the fire safety ordinance, call your council member, because we have people who are willing to introduce a law to repeal the fire safety ordinance, but it's going to take people like you, who live in condominiums to call, pick up the phone, call your council member, and say we want you to repeal the fire safety ordinance. That's what it's going to take. And if you guys don't want to do that. It's not going to happen. And you know so that's one of the beauties of our democracy is that you know if you don't like something you got to tell people you got to tell the decision makers. In this case it's your elected officials. And guess what. Now they're all running for office they want your vote, they want your ear, they want to, they want you to vote for them. I suggest you become their best friend, you invite them to your clubhouse to your cabanas to meet with your neighbors and to let them, you know, to tell people why you should vote for them to represent you in their district. And I've kind of run out of time so I'm going to get off my soapbox. And the next next time I will be back on the 28 with State House Speaker Scott psyche, who's been a good friend to condos. And he lives in Cacaco and he lives in a condo. And so it's not like he doesn't know what he's talking about. But anyway, I look forward to that. And so if you want to hear and you and you can, you know, call in or email in question. So it'll be speaker Scott psyche will be on my show on July 26. So but anyway, you should tune in next week for an interesting show with Richard Emory, and he will be here next week Thursday. And I hope you'll join him in another episode of condo cider and mark the calendar for July 28. And me and speaker psyche will be talking about condo issues. Thank you. And Mahalo. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening to me. I'll see you next week.