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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes May 25, 2021 Page 10 12% of our community are veterans. That would be my recommendation or advocacy to geographically spread ourselves out, so we really represent the County more than just the people that are interested. It's hard getting people interested and wanting to serve. DCC Yoshimoto: Ok, so then sounds like it would be a combination of both. I'm looking at the code right now, membership with the committee shall include one representative from the American Legion, Big Island National Guard Retirees Association, Big Island Retired Military Association, Hawaii Island Veterans Memorial, VFW. Those seem to be my recollection, the more prominent organizations. Then, the idea would be the remaining at large seats would come from certain geographical areas. Is that the idea? Chair Doolittle: yeah, because a lot of these organizations, whether it's Purple heart, Combat Veterans or Korean War Veterans, those are really diminishing groups that really don't have a lot of membership and most of those members belong to the VFW or the American Legion. DCC Yoshimoto: I'll assist in the drafting, it's not hard to do. We could do it earlier in June if you want to, June 22" d sounds good to me though. Iyo: J, I had a quick question. I understand the geographical part, but my question is so were having members from particular organizations, how do we determine what, are we going to spell out what districts the at large members be from? If it's not all the districts, are we keeping it at 12 members? If we go all nine districts plus the six organizations, we already have, quorum would be huge. DCC Yoshimoto: Right, my thought is probably reduce the number to an odd number and include certain geographical districts. We wouldn't use Council districts because that's nine and that's too many. But we need to have something that's already codified so we can do that, the geographical... I can only think of is Judicial districts other than Council districts or State Senatorial districts. Lewis: Yeah, but J, I'm thinking why couldn't we just say that in combination, that is the guidance to try to get representation and then it will either be represented as part of the groups that are represented or part of the at large members. That's the consideration to try to get numbers rather than designate we've got the east rep as a separate entity or the west rep or however. DCC Yoshimoto: Deb, that's a good idea. We could do that understanding that that's not a requirement but a preference. Or that an effort be made to get representation from the entire island. Lewis: Yeah, and we track that.