MIN CHARTER 2019-03-29 (2018-2020) - Public Hearing

Home

Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing March 29, 2019 The other thing is my only reservation about CA -18 is the language has been taken out for the requirement to have it ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), any facility should be accessible to the people with disabilities. I am... I teach children with disabilities, so I strongly believe that when people put forth their grant applications, they need to allow for you know, explain how they are going to make the site accessible to people with disabilities whether it is the elderly or children in wheelchairs okay, so I am opposed to that language. And for number 27, I think that as Kumu said before me, that the language is already there. They don't need to put restrictions on the, on the process you know, when you have a grant application process, the way it works is you put out a request for proposals, you... in that request you say what is allowed and what is not allowed for that particular grant. And so there doesn't need to be any cumbersome additional restrictions in writing. Thank you. Thank you very much for all of your time. I appreciate it. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you so much. If I could ask Tomislav Gralanin, Gracanin, please to come to the table. Sir. MR. VOSE: Aloha. CHR. ADAMS: Aloha. JOHN VOSE: Proposal No. CA -9 and CA -18 in support and Proposal No. CA -8 in opposition. MR. VOSE: My name is John Vose. I live in Ocean View. I am strongly opposed to CA -8, I am firmly convinced that a Council member that face re- election every two -years is far more likely to stay in touch with the needs of his or her constituents than one who faces re-election only once every eight years. We need Council members who work for us and report back to us regularly. I support CA -9 as I think that a multi-million dollar program which PONC is, needs the full and undivided attention of at least, at least one full-time staff person. The duties are far too important to be done in between other tasks. The staff person needs to be focused on one very important job. Millions of dollars we are talking. In order to do it to a high standard. I support CA -18. I believe that the PONC land maintenance program should be administered by Finance, not Parks and Recreation. Parks and Recreation's track record is not up to standard. The department appears to lack the expertise to manage the maintenance grants. In a perfect world the grant monies would be awarded to the applicants in January so that they have the entire year to implement their stewardship and management plan for the properties. When they submit their budget and timeline to the County it is based on a calendar year but when they get their monies in September fiscal year as happens that only leaves four months which is definitely not enough time to accomplish a year's worth of tasks. These delays have caused frustrations among groups of volunteers. I hope Page 10