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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing March 29, 2019 that steward the lands. Many applicants are turned down and the lucky ones must wait until September or so for the grants that they were awarded. In the meantime they are spending money from their own pockets. If the Department of Finance would... were to administer the maintenance grants, perhaps the process would be smoother and grants would be paid in January. Mahalo for giving me the opportunity to testify. I trust my testimony has not fallen on deaf ears. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. If I could ask Dennis Riordan please to come to the table. Great. Sir. JOHN REPLOGLE: Proposal No. CA -18 in support. MR. REPLOGLE: My name is John Replogle and I grew up here in Ka'u. I live in Ocean View now and thank you all for coming all the way out here to God's country. I am speaking... I didn't write it down because I didn't see it, but on CA -9, add staff to PONC. I would like to say that I would like this to be a somewhat of a... it would go into the Finance Department but that person would be strictly a PONC working director almost. And I think they should start out with that. Had we done this years ago, I think PONC wouldn't be having as much criticism as it may have gotten. I don't feel that staff should mean several employees because that is not going to do it. After a brief period of time, a year or so, if this PONC person in finance really needs help, then it should be within the Finance Department or the Mayor or whoever to provide it. On CA -18 regarding the maintenance fund, I have some concerns regarding the toilet facilities portion of that and it definitely needs to be addressed, but it is a... I think it is a fine line between "We need a toilet here." And "Oh, but you only have 40 people coming there a month", so that is where the director position and when 501(c)(3)'s are given the go ahead, you take care of this property, statistics and data needs to be collected by those people. This isn't a...just a handout. This is serious stuff. They are using taxpayer's money which is getting more scarce, but that the toilet facilities issue would require planning and should it be determined, the amount of people going to certain sites are large, then possibly out of the PONC fund, funding could be shifted to the County Park and Rec (Park and Recreation) Planning Department to do the plans for the facility. Locating it and I don't think we should be leaving that up to me or somebody like me, and I guess what I am saying is I like that there is a maintenance fund because it is needed, but that when it is doled out and issued, these 501(c)(3)'s need to respond with what happened, how did it go, where are we going, what are our goals, and be accountable for this funding. And so, in a sense it is almost like PONC would be starting all over again with this director. This director would turn PONC into what it could be or should have become. There's like a million people in the State and we have 10 million visitors and right now it may not seem like it, but at some point, everybody can't go to just one place and if these 501(c)(3)'s can get things off the ground, there is always the potential at some point to put some form of ecosystem services fee on these properties where you pay to use them and I know it sounds harsh but that is the reality I think taking place on the world today. We Page 5