2022-07-18 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board July 18, 2022 Equal Opportunity/ADA Division Update MR. LEOPOLDINO: So, the last item on my director's report is actually supporting what Chair Cabanas is saying. I didn't want our monthly meetings to just focus on recruitment even although it's a hot topic, I did want to include at least a presentation or an update from each of the functional areas. And so, that's why you see here our EO/ADA division update. I was going to—my proposal was to have one division per meeting, but I'd be happy to do a rundown of all eight, if that's what the Board prefers. But I, kind of, wanted to spend some time on the functional areas, so I could give you the opportunity to ask questions as well. So, for this meeting I wanted to highlight the EO and ADA Division. So I just wanted to do a quick recap of what that division has been doing. And, as you know, Danny is serving duo roles, right now, so he's been doing a great job with trying to keep up as well as serve as our Deputy. So, a brief overview of the EO/ADA Division. Our new Mass Transit Administrator is— there's—the sthere'sthe DOJ compliance ruling that our Mass Transit Administrator is trying to work with. And so, one of the ideas he had and he wanted to implement was the "mystery rider program" on the buses. And so, he's currently trying to recruit mystery riders to go along and just identify any areas that may be of concern. And so, in our EO/Deputy Director here, decided to jump on a route on both East and West Hawaii to get a feel of for what that would be like. So, I was very glad that Danny had an opportunity to do that. And so, he worked closely with John Andohis the Mass Transit Administrator—so he's working with both John and Tiffany Kai over there on doing that mystery ride for them. So, he did that. And then he will be providing a report to Mass Transit on his findings, so that Mass Transit can work on improvements, if needed, or beefing up anything that (inaudible). So, that was one of the programs that we participated in on our own. John did not ask us to do that. The Hawaii Department of Transportation had provided a week-long expert training on accessibility for pedestrian routes in Hawaii County for public rights-of-way. And so, Public Works is a big player in that. So, going forward, they'll make sure they're in compliance with anything new related to accessibilities for pedestrians in our County. So, Danny participated in the training to provide support, if needed, for Public Works. We also had awe revised our Reasonable Accommodations training. Throughout the COVID- 19 pandemic, we had to institute some changes to our reasonable accommodations request primarily focused on religious exemption, which we were not prepped for at the time we received them. Page 24