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Hawai`i County Council - 2 December 18, 2002 ACTING CHR. TYLER: Thank you, Mr. Arakaki. Mr. Chung. Oh, I'm sorry-- yes. MR. SOON: May I just---Chair Arakaki, I would like to add that if you weren't at that first meeting, I think we would have had questions as to how far we could go in working with the Administration. But I think that your presence was instrumental in making it clear that this is a complete County effort to work with DHHL—and I appreciated you being there. I also would like to add—for us, this is the first. And we expect to take this Agreement to the other counties. And, clearly, the—the Agreement's will differ, depending on the circumstances of each County. I think that O`ahu will be the most difficult because of the extended numbers of services that they provide. But this is an important first-step model that we will take to the other counties. And it has been your leadership—the combined leadership. ACTING CHR. TYLER: Thank you. Mr. Chung. MR. CHUNG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ray, as you know, the district that I'm very fortunate to represent includes two very large Hawaiian Homestead areas— the Keaukaha area and the Pana`ewa area. And this issue has been of great interest to me. As you know, I would say the precursors to this specific measure that we have today--I---I voted against. And those were really on philosophical bases. I don't, really, want to go into them now because they're on record and I explained my position on—on various occasions. But, today, I will be voting in favor of this and I'll tell you why. I'm trying to put aside all of my philosophical disagreements with this and try to look at the bigger picture. I've always felt that the reason why we have some problems with the implementation of—or why we have jurisdictional problems between the County' and the State as they pertain to Hawaiian Home Lands—is because of some Y ambiguity on the part of the Act,as well as—and I don't want to put anybody down—but it's maybe inaction on the part of the Legislature to really define what the roles are of the various entities involved in all of this. I'll just give you an example—and this is like really, really silly. But, prior to Mayor Kim coming on board, I would have situations in the Hawaiian Home areas where residents would call me saying that a street—those street lamps were constructed and installed but they have not been on for months, maybe even years. And it was so silly because the reason that those things weren't energized was because of the jurisdictional problems between the County and the State. And who's getting caught right in the middle? The guys getting caught would he the residents and the people who supposed to be benefiting from all of this. And it was really silly. Page 45