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Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing March 25, 2019
<br />via email, is pay for salary, wages, and benefits for one full-time staff member
<br />employed by the Department of Finance, dedicated only to administering the
<br />activities contained within this section of the Charter and section 10-16 of the
<br />Charter. This is in addition to a staff member as provided in section 2-2.15 of the
<br />Hawai `i County Code.
<br />Right now the 2% Land Fund pays only for land acquisitions. We want this
<br />language because the current proposition that was proposed by Commissioner
<br />Hopkins is somewhat ambiguous. It says to pay "staff", now staff could be one or
<br />10 people. The term is ambiguous. It can be singular, it can be plural, and we
<br />don't... we figured out that about, for salary, wages, and benefits, one staff person
<br />could mean as much as $100,000 that would be deducted from the fund, so you
<br />can see that if there was more than one staff person it would reduce the
<br />purchasing power of the fund. So, one reason, I mean two reasons that the staff
<br />person should work only on the fund is real estate deals are time sensitive and
<br />require willing sellers as we learned about condemnation. Willing sellers want to
<br />be paid as soon as possible because the taxes keep mounting up on property and
<br />they may have a use for the money. It also takes time... staff time to apply for
<br />matching funds, get appraisals, do surveys, and all the due diligence required for
<br />property purchased by government.
<br />The maintenance fund grants over the years, the six years it has been in existence,
<br />since 2013 have only been granted to six organizations and only nine percent of
<br />all of the money put into the maintenance fund has gone out to the non -profits.
<br />When Brenda Ford and I submitted this legislation, our goals were to get the non-
<br />profits, empower the non -profits with some money to do, to pay them, and you
<br />know, to keep their good works going. So that is why we need one staff person to
<br />work only on the 2% Land Fund full-time so we are going to be proposing that
<br />language via email for you all to look at.
<br />The other changes that are important, is for the maintenance fund, and so far we
<br />have come a long way. I mean we decided, you all decided last time to approve
<br />of building toilet facilities, small structures, and create trails or paths. Somewhere
<br />along the line we defaulted back to what is originally now... well, existing now in
<br />the Charter, where we can't pay people to... the non -profits can't pay people, and
<br />this is really important because this is something I have heard over the last six
<br />years from every single non-profit, the six non -profits that have gotten grants.
<br />They need to be able to pay people because volunteers burn out, I don't know if
<br />you heard, we were all in Kona, we couldn't hear very well, but a non-profit in
<br />Kali was talking about, that they had lua's in the parking lot and then people
<br />would walk down to the ocean, go for a swim, have to go to the bathroom on the
<br />way back up... I didn't hear it, my hearing may be isn't that good, but anyway, so
<br />they are asking volunteers to go pick up feces and toilet paper. Well, you are
<br />going to burn out volunteers pretty quick doing something like that. If you pay
<br />people to help with the land, it is very important so there can be volunteer
<br />coordinators, school education programs, which I know the groups in Ka`u are
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