2026-04-23 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board April 23, 2026 CHR. CABANAS: Okay, thank you. MS. TOKIHIRO: So, also, under Equal Opportunity and ADA, the County has been actively working to meet the requirements for accessibility for all things that are posted online. That was to have gone into effect on—today—oh, tomorrow, I’m sorry. But the Department of Justice has extended that deadline for a year because it is a big undertaking. It’s been something that we’ve been actively working on for more than a year and trying to help departments to get training—but then, also, to understand what the implications are. And so, we’ve been actively working on it, but it is a—it’s a big undertaking. So, looking forward to continuing to actively work on that, so that we can bring everything into compliance by the April 2027 deadline. CHR. CABANAS: For Classification and Pay, they reviewed and completed 58 intent to adopt new classes of work from other jurisdictions. Wow, that’s quite a bit. MS. TOKIHIRO: It is. And so, that—the challenge of our Classification and Pay Division is they are doing work for our departments, so assisting with these allocation—initial allocation of positions; we’re working with departments to create new classes of work as they have operational needs; they’re doing the re-allocations down for recruitment, so they’re doing that; looking at Position Descriptions. But also—yes, because we have equal pay for equal work across the State, they’re also reviewing anything that is changed by another jurisdiction. So, any new classes of work that are established by another jurisdiction, any changes to existing classes—they are reviewing all of that. They provide feedback, and then they also maintain a spreadsheet across all jurisdictions of which positions are equivalent. But, that review is actually a great tool for us to use with our own departments because they’re always involved in and are reviewing what’s happening across the State—what other jurisdictions are adopting or what new titles or how work is being done. And so, that becomes a great resource when meeting with departments, if they have a need, that they can say, “Oh, I think Maui may have had a class of work that might work for this particular situation.” So, it’s a great learning tool but it is very time-consuming. Classification and Pay is tasked with a very big and very important role. CHR. CABANAS: Okay. Are those new classes in public safety or clerical or just a whole range of positions? MS. TOKIHIRO: So, I don’t review the ones that come in from the other jurisdictions, but I’d be happy to ask—I can get that information for you for the next meeting, so that you folks can get an understanding of, kind of, where those new classes fall. CHR. CABANAS: Okay. Thank you. MS. TOKIHIRO: We are initiating a re-titling, so “Clerk” is, kind of, one of those titles that become a little outdated. And we were actually the last jurisdiction that still had the class title as “Clerk.” Page 16