MINUTES for 2019-11-26 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes November 26,2019 Page 11 Chair Doolittle: Well the Mayor can already read the minutes. Hanato: I think we should send him what's going on that's why our advisory committee supposed to let the Mayor know on a regular basis. So, when someone goes up to him and starts making noise, he has some answers. You understand what I'm saying? Chair Doolittle: Yes, I understand what you're saying, the minutes of our meeting are available for the Mayor to read. Whether or not he actually gets a copy of that I'm not sure. Whether or not Parks & Rec wants to include him in the distribution of the minutes we can do that. So, we don't have to include him in our meetings. Hanato: yeah, I think that should be pretty sufficient for do. Then kind of highlight the subjects that are really important for him to understand what's going on. Chair Doolittle: Our Counsel has some words to say about that. Yoshimoto: Michael, you can refresh my memory, you know when you went before the Council for the Code amendment. My recollection is that the Mayor and Council were very receptive, but they wanted to hear what this group had to say about issues that affected veterans, is that correct? Do you recall anything specific that they touched upon? Chair Doolittle: No, I don't really remember the Council asking any questions beyond our advocacy. Debra Lewis was with me when we attended those meetings. My initial letter was written on June 27th , 17 and I immediately took that over to the Council Chair, Valerie Poindexter at the same time and sat with her for about an hour and discussed how I thought we should modify this committee. It was instantly very well received by the Mayor and of course we had other issues in the County, we had the lava flow going on and we had some other things going on. I was very impressed that they made that happen from suggestion to passage in six months. We modified everything, statues and codes in six months. I don't recall anyone asking any questions during the hearings or anything about issues involving veterans. Sales: One that came up a while back, the Council talked about rescinding the property tax of service-connected veterans, they pay $100 or $200 a year for property tax, they wanted to rescind that. From what I saw in the newspaper, I didn't see any other veterans group giving input or wanted to speak on that. Chair Doolittle: I don't think any veterans' groups were even notified when that happened. Sales: I don't know how that gets monitored, so that the group can advocate for whatever they think they can change in terms of what can better the budget for the County. Wery: I spoke to Councilwoman Lee Loy about that. We tried to speak to the Mayor, but they wouldn't let us talk to him, so we spoke to her. Originally it was $200 a year.