If a bill requiring older residential towers to install sprinklers becomes law, the city could offer no-interest loans to condominium owners who might need help to pay their share, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said last week.

But Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, said that while the offer to help is appreciated, she still doesn’t think forcing condominium owners to install sprinklers is feasible.

On Wednesday the City Council voted 9-0 to give the first of three necessary approvals to Bill 69, which mandates all existing residential high-rise buildings (more than 75 feet in height) to have automatic sprinkler systems installed within five years.

The bill was introduced on behalf of Caldwell days after a fire at the Marco Polo left three people dead and damaged about a third of the building’s 568 units. A 1974 bill required sprinklers in all new residential towers. The Marco Polo was completed in 1971 and is one of about 350 Oahu towers without sprinklers.

Caldwell told Council members Wednesday that low- or fixed-income condominium owners required to pay for a sprinkler retrofit may be able to apply for zero-interest loans under the city’s home rehabilitation loan program offered through the Department of Community Services.

Qualifying borrowers need to be owner-occupants making no more than 80 percent of Oahu median income as determined by federal guidelines annually.

“You have to pay back the loan over time, but you don’t pay any interest whatsoever,” Caldwell said.

The city’s homeowners’ loan webpage says the rehabilitation program “can be used to repair and correct deteriorated and hazardous conditions on the property, such as damage caused by termites or wood rot, leaky roof and drain pipes, peeling paint, faulty electrical wiring and plumbing.” Also eligible are installations of solar water heating or photovoltaic systems and accessibility improvements to assist those with disabilities.

Advisory committee needed

Peter Biggs, the city’s deputy budget and fiscal services director, said Friday that the city has not actually made any loans for sprinkler systems, but that they would be eligible. The details of a sprinkler project loan program are still being worked out and would involve lending to eligible owner-occupants after their respective property management associations detail to them how much their share would cost, Biggs said.

Opponents to the mandatory sprinkler proposal grouse that condo associations would find it difficult to get more than half of the owners to agree to a special assessment for sprinklers. Many owners aren’t in Hawaii and are difficult to locate; many are immigrants who have difficulty understanding the issue; others would simply oppose it.

But Caldwell told Council members that the state Condominium Property Act grants condo associations the ability to impose a special assessment in emergency situations, or a “high-risk component,” without the approval of a majority of owners.

“I believe this is an emergency,” he said.

Sugimura said she’s not sure the installation of sprinklers would fall under the definition of an emergency, especially if the law were to say a condominium association would have five years to finish the retrofit.

“The emergency has to be something that you didn’t know about when you were planning your budget for that year,” she said.

Overall, Sugimura doesn’t like the idea of legislating sprinklers for residential towers. “To me it’s up to each building because each building is different,” she said.

Sugimura said she agrees with Caldwell’s assessment that it would be difficult for all 300 affected condominium complexes to install sprinkler systems in a short time frame since there would not be enough installation companies available locally to get it done.

From a financial standpoint, many condominium associations “don’t have a whole lot of extra money mainly because the unit owners don’t want to pay and provide that big cushion,” Sugimura said. “They’d rather have that money in their own pocket.”

Many condo associations are pressed to keep maintenance fees as low as possible rather than looking at the big picture of their buildings’ upkeep. “They have this mentality of, ‘We don’t want to raise maintenance fees because everybody’s going to be mad at us,’” she said.

Meanwhile, she said, shared costs such as water, electricity and wastewater fees are going up without corresponding increases. “Your association fees have to go up, and people have to expect that,” she said.

Sugimura urged that the bill be deferred until a Fire Code advisory committee can convene and make its recommendations on different ways of making homes safer. The Council on Wednesday approved Resolution 17-195, urging Caldwell to reconvene the commission. Both Caldwell and Fire Chief Manuel Neves supported the resolution.

Seeking economic feasibility

Council members Ann Kobayashi and Carol Fukunaga, who represent the districts with the most condominiums, said they worry about how mandatory sprinklers would affect elderly residents and their ability to stay in their units.

Several condominium owners who testified Wednesday noted that they’ve been hit with special assessments by their condo associations for other repairs or renovations associated with older buildings, including the fixing of roofs and pipes.

Councilman Trevor Ozawa, a strong supporter of mandating sprinklers, said he also understands the plight of those on fixed incomes. Different options need to be explored, he said. One might involve just requiring sprinklers to be installed in hallways and requiring installation in units to occur only after they’ve been sold.

Allowing some buildings — such as those where sprinklers are not critical — to go without sprinklers for a longer period of time, possibly 10 or 20 years, could also help ease the burden, Ozawa said.

“I think we need to come up with something that is sophisticated, thoughtful and economically feasible over a long period of time,” he said.

While he generally disdains measures that intrude into people’s daily lives, Ozawa said he is approaching this bill differently. “It’s government’s role to take care of the safety, health and welfare of the public,” he said.