2018-02-21 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board February 21, 2018 CHR. TULANG: Thank you, Lincoln. We now have the handsome Director, Duane Kanuha. MR. KANUHA: Good morning, everybody. My name is Duane Kanuha. I've had the pleasure and the honor of serving as either Planning Director or Deputy Planning Director for 3 different administrations. So, I've been familiar with HR directors and 3 different administrations. And, Hilo is a small town. You, kind of, get to know everybody. I never really met Bill until I joined the Kenoi Administration in 2000—in June of 2013. And he was assigned to the Planning Department. And we hit it off really, really well. When you are in a position like we are and you spend a lot of time with your staff, with your advisors, like, people like Bill—either travelling to Kona early in the morning and coming back late at night—and all the prep. discussions for the different issues that come up and so on and so forth. And Lincoln is very on point. I had a deputy and at that time, Mayor Kenoi wanted equality in both East Hawaii and West Hawaii. So, I had a deputy that was working out of West Hawaii even though most of the administrative work and a lot of things that going on, happened out of Hilo—well, I really didn't need a deputy all the time because I had Bill. Okay. What I wanted to mention to you because it's really specific to what he's being considered for—is that inI think it was May of 2014. The Mayor convened a Cabinet retreat up at the Volcano. And the whole purpose of that retreat was to try and find a way to make the permit processing process more efficient, more accountable, and just an overall improvement to that system. Well, little did I know that at that meeting after the discussion went around the table, the Mayor says, "Okay, you know what, this is what we're going to do. We're going to take all of the permit processing from Public Works and give it to Planning." Bill wasn't there. I was and I'm going, "This is going be fun." So, for the next maybe two -and -a -half years, that was one of our big tasks. And, of course, you know merging functions of two departments together there's a tremendous amount of logistical issues but, certainly, paramount to all of that is a lot of human resource issues. Okay. And there was also—when something like that happens, there's a lot of anxiety among the staff—"What's going to happen to me? Where am I going to go? I've been here so many times. I'm comfortable" that kind of thing. So, throughout that process Bill and I became even closer and it was during that time that I was able to really, clearly recognize his affinity for dealing with people and employees and their different considerations their different concerns. He's been everything. I mean, he's been rank and file, he's been an EM, he's been an appointee. And throughout that process, I could see that there was a lot of value to him having been in all of those different employee/employer situations. Okay. Page 4