2025-12-22 Salary Commission Minutes

Home

Salary Commission December 22, 2025 MS. NAMAHOE: —to approve both the Facts and Finding and the salary raises, as proposed. MR. NELSON: This is Commissioner Nelson, I’ll second. CHR. PAVAO: Okay. So, there’s a motion to approve the Findings of Fact and the attached salary schedule—the proposed salary schedule—and a second. Discussion? th MS. NAMAHOE: Okay, thank you. So, last month on the 17 was an excellent meeting. We didn’t have a lot of testimony, but all of the testimony was stellar. We had representation—you, Ms. Otsuka—but we also had two others. One who was the very first person whoever testified in front of us in the Summer of 2023. This Board did not come together until the Summer of 2023. It sat dormant—it fell off of— what’s that word—it fell out of “quorum” since 2017. So, in the last ten years, we’ve had ten mayors. We’ve had—the last ten years we’ve had four mayors. They each had four-year terms. It was the final term for Billy Kenoi; we had four years under Harry Kim; we had four years under Mitch Roth; and now we’re in the first term of Kimo Alameda. Billy Kenoi was the last one to bring together the Salary Commission. We are volunteers and what is tasked in front of us is to be able to provide the salaries—the equity that they had not seen since 2017. Their last raise was Jan—was effective January 2018. The math that we were then tasked to do—because all of us come here with math backgrounds. If they were hired, at a st theoretical, $100,000.00 for effective January 1, 2018—it was $77,000.00 back where inflation was in 2023. So, we had to do a few unpopular things. One of it was we had to figure out what “equity” was; two, we had to keep it within the parameters of the County Charter. That means we cannot make merit-based decisions, and I think, for me, as I’ve heard it repeatedly—there is this assumption of “merit” as applied or relative to salary. That merit is done at the ballot both. That is what you, me, and all of us get to do. So, as volunteers we, kind of, got thrown under the bus because we had to come to this Board after it was dormant for several years. Today is the last day that both Chair and I sit on this Commission. The one interesting thing that I will say about this body is from 2023 until now, we’ve had to build all the areas of the entire gamut of expertise of what a “Salary Commission” should bring because we’ve also had to come up with and correct, when we goofed it—the salary for a whole new board—or a new department, which was OSCER. There is no other area of expertise that a salary commission needs to have, and where I get a little bit animated about this is, we’ve now had in the past year—we haven’t had any new nominations. This Board is going to go dormant, again. If in the next 90 days nobody is brought on—that means all this expertise that remains, they’re going to lose it until the next forensic opportunity, which is what we were faced with in 2023. Page 9