2018-09-19 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board September 19, 2018 we’re going to give you a bonus. And private sector you can. You can recognize and you can show your good workers or you can show them appreciation. I think oftentimes what we fail to do as a government entity is we fail to show our employees that we care for them outside of financial remuneration-type scenario. And so, I thought Blue Zones was a great way where we can engage with a third party entity, bring them in, open it up to our employees, allow them/afford them the permission to partake in the program. And some of that is—okay, several times a day you go out and you’ll do a 15- minute walk, you walk during your lunchtime, we’ll do whatever the activities may be within your office to promote moving, to promote better eating, to promote a healthier lifestyle. And the gain from that is that our employees get a better quality of life. CHR. NAHUINA: Oh, yeah. MR. BRILHANTE: They might not have more money in their pocket, but they may live longer, the exposure to debilitating diseases may be reduced. So, that’s the tradeoff. And for us, it doesn’t count us—it doesn’t cost us anything because all we’re doing is giving time. We’re giving time and support. And that’s why we had a big kickoff this past Monday here, next door at our Aupuni Center—a Countywide kickoff. We had a lot of people who attended. It was great, received well, a lot of involvement. The Mayor came over, he participated. I went there earlier. I had a Salary Commission meeting, but there are a lot of fun activities. We brought outside vendors to come in and— MALE: Awesome. MR. BRILHANTE: —to give information as to what they provide. We had the YMCA who was offering—because a lot of our members are HMSA participants, they got reduced rates— they came out with a special rate for HMSA members to participate in their monthly—use their facilities, membership, and stuff like that. So, I think it was well-received. I got a lot of good feedback from that, so I thank HMSA for that. The other thing I wanted to talk about was on EOC. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but we play a pretty—our office plays a pretty prevalent role of the—when we have these disaster or emergency type declarations. We’re, primarily, responsible for maintaining the Emergency Call Center staffing. So, EOC they have 6 people on staff, but when an event occurs all of a sudden there’s thousands of phone calls. For example, during the Hurricane Lane, at the height of the flooding, there were requests for 5,000 sandbags to be delivered. That’s how many calls just in one 24-hour period. We delivered 5,000 sandbags. And there’s no way the EOC staff can—could handle something like that. So, it’s incumbent upon our department—we manage the Call Center. So, we have go to up— we have to respond to the EOC, the Civil Defense. We have to schedule call takers, make sure Page 11