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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission — Public Hearing April 4, 2019 SMILEY BURROWS: remove. I think that we should possibly be looking at all of our MQ's (Minimum qualifications) the minimum requirements that they have for any position. I have been privileged to serve on many search committees both in private sector as well as public sector and the major contrast that I noticed in that experience is in the private sector when we start to look at all the resumes, we realize my goodness, there are some really great candidates here but none of them have X. None of them have you know, gone to that other level of education or that many years of experience or something, and in private industry there is the ability to maybe go back to a board of directors or an HR (Human Resource) Department and say "can we modify this?" and it can happen fairly simply. In government, we probably have to wait for you to reconvene or some other kind of a commission and in the meantime possibly very good candidates say "you know what, I don't want to work with that kind of situation" and we as the citizens end up losing out on a really qualified employee who would love to work in public service, but because we lack flexibility, we lose out and so I really support CA -26 and I thank you for your time. And again, I do genuinely apologize for maybe being a little late to the game on some of these subjects. Thank you. CHR. ADAMS: Thank you. Appreciate it. Ms. Burrows. Proposal No. CA -17, commenting. MS. BURROWS: Aloha. Good afternoon. My name is Smiley Burrows and I am from Kapoho Crater and live in Leilani. We actually lost three of our homes but we had not sold our Leilani property so I am in Puna and working to the best of my ability with a coalition that we have formed in lower Puna to follow the money that is going to be used in the eruption and to specifically make sure that our Puna area actually gets the funding needed specifically for the disaster. Prior to the eruption, we had a hurricane and I actually met several... I recognize a lot of you guys because you were all very involved with that and were incredible to help guide us with disaster and disaster preparedness and sustainability so after the hurricane, we actually... a group of us in Kapoho at Green Mountain with the help of Civil Defense, started a Disaster Relief Center. Primarily at that time we had more concerns with flooding and tsunamis so a lot of these possible tsunamis, we would be up on the top of Green Mountain and open our gates for the community to see what was going on, and luckily we all kind of were able to get though those without any bad effects but the hurricane really kicked our butt and we established a community garden. We really started focusing on the fact that we might get completely blocked off from the rest of the County and it was a real issue so it actually created a lot of positive energy on focusing on disaster and preparedness, connectivity is absolutely number one for the sake of the whole island. In discussing some mapping the other day with some of the eruption recovery people, we were with the geologist from Hawai`i Tracker that is very understanding of the geology of this whole entire island specifically regarding Ocean View in the fact that they might be the next ones or you know, we don't Page 9