2019-04-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board April 24, 2019 Yesterday was a great example with Kuawa Park. The council asked the parks and recreation director to come in and give specific responses and answer questions as to why Kuawa Park— the issues were there. CHR. NAMAHOE: That’s the baseball field? MR. BRILHANTE: Yeah. Down— CHR. NAMAHOE: Okay. MR. BRILHANTE: And when I looked at it, I said, “Why didn’t the councilperson just call the director and ask those exact same questions?” So, that’s how I want to do it—that’s the type of relationships I want to formulate with council is—you have a question or there’s a problem or something you don’t understand and you want additional clarification—call me. Just pick up the phone, call me up—I’ll be happy to explain it to you. And so, that’s why I think open, continuous communication, formulating good relationships is real important. I think we get better traction and we get a lot more done as it relates to (inaudible). So, going along—so, I’ll be continuing to monitor even my supplemental budget submittal. So far nobody has raised any concerns—like I said, it was well-received—but, at the end of the day, we’ll see what happens. It’s a decision that’s out of my control. One of the questions I was asked during the budget review process was—related to the County’s internship program. And I just wanted to explain to you—and just one of the discussion we had earlier is that the County does have a formal internship program. It’s called our CVE student internships. And, right now, we’re in agreement with Hawaiʻi Community College. We have about 15 positions—paid positions that students currently attending Hawaiʻi Community College and are in the business arena can come in and they fill various intern positions within the County. Those are college students. And, right now, I’d say we have 15—we’ll always have a smaller amount of applicants than we do departments that want help. So, what we’re doing is we’re in the process of—and this started about a year ago—we’ve started the process of meeting with UH Hilo. UH Hilo has a business major—major in business and economics—University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. So, we’re engaged with them and we’re looking to expand the CVE process to include the UH Hilo students, currently, in that area of study. So, that’s ongoing. And then, each department has the ability to start and effectuate their own internship program. And what I mentioned to council was that when we were at Corp. Counsel—J knows this—we have a summer law clerk program which is a paid internship program for current law students— various law students whether it be at UH or schools on the mainland—and I think they hire about two interns each summer and those are, again, paid positions. So, each department—and we would be more than happy to assist in creating those type of internship program. So, that’s what we’re looking at. Page 11