MIN COUNCIL 2025-02-19 2024-2026

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Hawaii County Council-7 February 19,2025 we have to lean in and speak up and stand as a community and an island and a state and a county, because we are stronger together and we have what they want. Unfortunately, right now, other than money, they don't really have what we want. So, I'll get off my soapbox. But I want to say that I'll support your nomination wholeheartedly. I am deeply grateful for you having already arranged for the meeting with the Administration to be able to move forward to talk about this really pivotal piece of legislation that has had lots of positive returns already in the Supreme Court decisions, and has the opportunity to provide resources and financial support for our County to mitigate what we already know are impacts of climate change to our infrastructure. I yield. CHR. INABA: Council Member Kagiwada. MS. KAGIWADA: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here, Administrator Acasio. I just want to kind of follow up, because I do have some of those concerns as well. And I hope you don't feel like these questions are out of line, because I think you know how important this job is. And we'd only be asking these if we all didn't—we think this is a very important job as well. So I want to give you the opportunity to just talk about how many vacancies are there in OSCER right now, and what kind of skills, especially if you feel like maybe those aren't your strengths, that you're looking for. Because, this was brought up in the testimony earlier, you know, what are the things that you're looking for to make your office strong in these hires. MS. ACASIO: Okay, so, and just to be clear that you recognize that in my appointment, as opposed to the other appointments, I haven't started. And so because there was another interim, it was very there was a lot of consideration taken in not overstepping relationships and also positioning, as well as the direction that the current team was taking from the previous administrator. And so a lot of the information is—well, a lot of the deepening of the skill sets my knowledge around the skill sets of the team that we actually have is limited because of that relationship where I have not started work with the County. MS. KAGIWADA: Sure. MS. ACASIO: That being said, I do know that we have at least three openings. One specifically has been posted and been out for recruiting on accounting and HR, which was brought up also in subtlety with Council Member Kimball's commentary about my relationship with County bureaucracy and those kinds of functions. So that position is going to be pivotal and critical for all of us. I have been in contact with folks at Finance, HR, Managing Director's office, in terms of Page 8