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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing April 4, 2019 something about. I am finally going to speak up about tonight and then I will keep it brief. The... for many years private citizens particularly people who were supporters of private property rights said "look government, if you don't want me to build here, if you don't want me to develop that, if you don't want me to bulldoze that, then you buy it. If you think it is for all the people, then all the people should pay for it." Thus the PONC fund was born out of that. The PONC fund, I am a supporter of it. I think it is a good idea that if something is good for all the people, then all the people should pay for it and I frequently testify on many subjects on that basis, that we shouldn't have special funds that only special... some people pay for. So taking something out of a general fund is a reasonable thought, but I think that it needs to be tempered with the whole big picture of our community and when we face something like we have faced in the past year, we need our funds for other things. The woman who just testified spoke of a very real and needy situation that we can't address because we don't have the money. Okay maybe a disaster fund would have helped it but how are we going to fund the disaster fund? I think that the PONC fund really needs to be something that has more flexibility to it. I think that it is... I appreciate the idea of them having a dedicated staff person because having volunteers on an advisory board comes and goes, ebbs and flows, it is difficult to have a consistent pattern of behavior possibly. But I just think that we need to have more flexibility. I am concerned about the monies being allowed to be used for the installation of bath facilities, bathroom facilities... because now we are taking what was conservation land, land that was purchased for the purpose of conservation is now becoming a public park. Might be a great idea, that parcel of land that area maybe is just begging for a public park, but how is that all going to get decided and who... when do we say "okay, no you can't have a bathroom there." Or "you can have a bigger bathroom over here." It just... for the PONC fund to now be encompassing all of that, just causes me to hesitate and I ask you to do the same. I forgot to cite the numbers of these things, but I think you probably know them by heart. The... CA -8, the terms of the Council. I am a supporter of the four-year term. I have worked for, I have helped a number of people on their campaigns from everything from County, to State, to Federal level and watched those people who were really volunteers when they were running for office, they weren't getting paid when they ran for office, and then they get in office and they get this usually kind of small paycheck relative to the amount of time that comes out of their life and their family's lives to serve all of us and the idea that people with a two-year cycle, they have barely been elected and know what they are doing before they gotta start running again. And I think that while some people feel that that makes them accountable to their constituents, I think sometimes that accountability gets twisted into some sort of beholden and that is not really democracy in my opinion. Last but not least, CA -26, the removing of the PE (Professional Engineer) requirement for the Public Works Director. I think that that is really important to Page 8