MIN CHARTER 2019-04-04 (2018-2020) - Public Hearing

Home

Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing April 4, 2019 CORY HARDEN: Proposal Nos. CA -1, CA -2, CA -4, CA -5, CA -6, CA -9, CA -12, CA -14, CA -15, CA -17, and CA -18 in support and Proposal No. CA -8 in opposition. MS. HARDEN: Good evening and thank you for all of your work on the Commission. I will just run through various measures. I support CA -2 for equal amount of Council meetings in East and West Hawai`i but you might want to allow for the possibility there is an odd number of meeting dates for some reason and what happens then. CA -4 I support adding to Office of Research and Development Environmental Community Economics Sustainability and Resilience issues. I am very happy to see those added. I opposed CA -8 about lengthening Council terms to four years. I remember Brenda Ford and Russel Ruderman both came and spoke against it and Russel talked about Council members really needing to listen to their constituents and the two years helps focus them. If someone is good they will get reelected for another two years. I think we want to work against concentration of power. This is a democracy. You kind of want to spread the power around. I support CA -9 for money from the 2% Land Fund to pay a staff person. We have talked about how it is just very difficult with kind of part-time staff working on that. I think we need to really strengthen the 2% program. At the various meetings I haven't heard... maybe there was someone, but I haven't heard anyone come say "oh, we need to weaken the program and get less land." I haven't heard that from the public but I have heard a lot of the public saying "we need a good strong program." And since the taxpayer dollars are going in, I would like to see us get the program really working and get the benefits from the program. And I would like to see the wording that Debbie Hecht has suggested, so there will be one full-time staff person dedicated to administering the program in addition to the PONC staff person for that group. I support CA -17 for a Disaster and Emergency Fund. I have seen time lapse maps of how Pele has paved and repaved Puna for the past 1000 years and scientists thinking... saying that is going to continue with climate change. Hurricanes are getting worse and we need to plan for disasters. I support CA -18 about the 2% Land's maintenance fund language. I support having it in the Finance Department, allowing building of restrooms, small structures, trails, and paths, and paying people who work on the land so they won't burn out on doing their volunteer work and generate some jobs in rural areas. Page 6