MIN CHARTER 2019-08-08 (2018-2020)

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -14 August 8, 2019 MR. RUEDY: Hi Chair. Yes, do have Maile David and Karen Eoff that would like to testify. CHR. ADAMS: Okay. I would invite them to the table to indeed testify. KAREN EOFF: Communication No. 35.51 in support. MS. EOFF: Okay. Aloha, good morning Commissioners. CHR. ADAMS: It...I am so sorry. It is very light. I am not sure what we can do about the volume but it is hard to hear you. MS. EOFF: Okay, let me try to speak louder. I have a soft voice I guess. Is that better? MR. RUEDY: Now try. MS. EOFF: Is this any better? CHR. ADAMS: Yes. MS. EOFF: Well, good morning Commissioners, good morning Chair, and thank you for this opportunity today and thank you to all the testifiers who have articulated some of the issues here with this proposed alternate language. I personally really appreciate the work that you have done not just on this Public Access, Open Space, proposals, but all of your proposals. I understand what kind of work goes into bringing Charter language forward and so that... and this process, I do still trust in government. I am part of the government and I think this is a great example of the democratic process at work. We have this opportunity for taking another look at a proposal that I think was brought to you and instigated a lot of debate and it seemed like one of the... this approach that our Council has adopted, is looking at the idea of compensation but from a different approach. It would still not allow salaries which I think was part of the problematic language in the original ask for you to put something in this section. So we understand that paying salaries would create additional issues. So to avoid that, we took another look and decided that we would want to leave that in there so nobody would still be allowed a salary, but we do want to appreciate that there are specific skills and specialized areas that we would like to see compensation, so that these jobs can get done. Each of these parcels is so unique and different and they require a lot of creative efforts to propose and then carryout a project through the grant process. So in order to achieve the goals that I think we have heard today, and that we all know for maintaining, stewarding, and enhancing these parcels for whatever their unique purpose is, does require a lot of devotion and we can garner up lots of volunteers, but there still needs to be people in Page 10