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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing March 29, 2019 will allow money in the 2% fund to be used to pay for a dedicated staff position in the County Department of Finance. At present the person tasked with acquiring land is also given other duties in the Department of Finance. Her predecessor in that position was Ms. Alexandra Kelepolo who for ten years was PONC's Property Management Technician until she resigned in January of 2017. During her tenure, PONC became one of the most successful Open Space Programs in the State of Hawai `i. Ms. Kelepolo saved PONC a lot of money by getting grants and matching funds. Fourteen miles from where we are here now, in that direction, the County bought a wonderful ocean front property near Ocean View. Ms. Kelepolo was able to close on this property that had a purchase price of $2.6 million dollars, by spending only $764,745 of PONC funds. We are looking at buying $2.6 million with about three quarters of a million. Good deal. How you may ask? Well, the Federal Department of Fish and Wildlife contributed one million, two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars, and the State's Legacy Land Conservation Fund gave the County $621,245, the deal took six years of planning, negotiating, report writing, inspections, and generally jumping through hoops, but 3,128 acres were saved for posterity. The case of Kawa, another desirable ocean front property was similar. It is about 10 miles in that direction. There the sales price was nearly $4 million dollars. Again the Feds helped out with $507,000 and the State contributed $1 million five hundred thousand dollars. So the $4 million dollar property cost the County less than $2 million. This is the advantage of having a full-time person working and getting the best deals for the County. Now I would like to talk about what could happen if we don't have a full-time property technician. Some of you might have read about a State audit of the Legacy Land Conservation Fund in Honolulu. In January the State Auditor published a report listing deficiencies in this multi-million dollar program. These included paying salaries from the fund to DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) staff who were not working on fund business. The auditor also pointed out that the fund lost monies because the staff position was not filled for 13 months, and thus the correct paper work was not filed and so projects were not funded. I would hate to see all of this happen to PONC. We need a full-time employee who can maintain all the necessary paper work and meet all the obligations required by agencies that give funds to the County. I don't believe this can happen if the position is part-time. Acquiring lands is also about opportunity. When a desirable property comes up for sale, PONC and a full-time staff member should be able to immediately get on it before they can be outbid by other potential buyers. The staff member should also immediately apply for all the grants that are possible. This can be a time consuming process with long periods of waiting and interspersed with sudden bursts of activity when a potential grantor suddenly wants facts, figures, photos, or whatever... yesterday. A missed deadline is a lost opportunity for the County and for future generations. CA -18 is necessary to get funds to the invaluable volunteers that work on maintaining and husbanding PONC properties. I understand that there is $3 million dollars in the fund, yet money is not being awarded to non-profit groups Page 4