MIN CHARTER 2019-06-07 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -12 June 7, 2019 staff person. You must delineate a single staff person paid for out of the PONC Maintenance Fund. Staff can be used in the plural and while we can always go back to the record and prove that they can only use one, we would have to take on the County in a lawsuit, when they try to hire more than one person and then use them for other financial department work. So it must be changed to include just one staff person. The original wording is correct and it needs to be dedicated to the PONC Fund, the maintenance fund, the purchase of land, the acquisition of matching funds, and assorted other things. So I support CA -9. CA -19 I support. Allowing board members, employees, and officers, I think is what it says to be paid for their work. Sometimes all you have is a board and nobody else and they are the only ones that are going to be doing the work. And it is... most of the time it is hard physical work and they deserve to be paid. I would like to suggest that you make an amendment to CA -19 and add volunteers. A lot of organizations that are non-profit have volunteers. They are not employees, they are not board members, they are not officers, they are volunteers, but they work just as hard in that hot sun, moving rocks, cutting grass, and brush. We need to add the word volunteers and it needs to be defined as volunteers to the non-profit, not that they are going to volunteer their hard physical labor. You have got to get this right the first time. But we need to add the non-profit volunteers can also be paid. Then I would want to talk about CA -18. This is moving the entire PONC process into the finance department and this amendment needs to go back on. I noticed that the Chair has written a communication on this and I appreciate that. I hope that the Chair will explain what this communication means. Does this mean that CA -18 is going to come back before the Commission for another discussion and a vote? I pray that that is what is going to happen. Then CA -22, Chairman Adams I want to commend you for doing this amendment, removing the last four digits of the social security numbers. You're the only person that I am aware of that has been willing to deal with cyber theft and ID (identification) theft, and security. Thank you for this amendment. I would like to say that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and the price of living in Hawai`i is eternal vigilance because every time we turn around we have to fight for our PONC fund again. This is coming up on the fourth time and frankly we are all tired of it. We want you people to stop trying to strip our funds out of the PONC and hand it over to our Mayor who has now one billion dollars behind in funding our employee benefits and medical payments and he is not the only one, it is everybody before him got us into this mess. I just read about it in the paper. A billion dollars behind and we are not funding the budget stabilization fund adequately. Should be two to five million, and the disaster and emergency fund also needs two to five million dollars. Please work on the things that will help us and not hurt us. Thank you for your time. Page 3