MINUTES for 2025-02-26 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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A Gaspar: is a Big Island Retired Military Association (BIRMA) lifetime member. Right now he represents: American Legion and Big Island National Guard Retirees Association on this committee. Would like to represent BIRMA on this committee. BIRMA Director advised A Gaspar organization is going to disband due to decreasing membership. A Gaspar has offered to keep BIRMA going and is requesting VAC not remove BIRMA from designated seat. Chair M Dolittle: Just to be clear, VAC does not have anything to do with survival of various designated organizations. The question is, is BIRMA entitled to a permanent representative seat on this committee. Is that a group that needs to be represented on this committee. Personal opinion is, better served if have members on the committee from each of the council districts. T Wojszynski: Having specific designations of organizations that are entitled to a seat, defeats the purpose of having a Big Island wide community of veterans. Think we should investigate striking all of the individually named organizations and having the VAC be a better representative of the veterans. Why designate a specific organization that must be represented. Only one thing I would encourage we retain is that the VAC have female representation. D Lewis: and veteran representation. T Wojszynski: Those are the two. D Lewis: We have a percentage of veterans that are on the committee. T Wojszynski: Maybe ensure if the VAC is a group of 12, half plus one must be veterans. Chair M Dolittle: I think we already have that. T Wojszynski: I agree. Looking at language in Hawaii County Code. If we're going to make a change, lets make the change for what we think it should represent. Chair M Dolittle: Thought we did make that change from VAC to Veterans Cemetery Committee. Thought that was part of initiative, representation of veterans. Vice -Chair M Brinkley: Didn't ask for that part of it to be copied but we do have a requirement that a certain number has to be veterans and also that the chair must be a veteran. Going back into history, before the VAC there was an earlier iteration and at that time those people were representative. They would go back to their groups and tell them what to do and what VAC decided. When we asked to have this re -written, we discarded that idea. We were just trying to make sure that VAC had some people that belonged to the larger groups to have a voice here so we would know what they were doing. T Wojszynski: So do we need to put a motion on the table that says what we want it to be? Vice -Chair M Brinkley: We should ask Cody how to make that happen.