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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-12-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION c/o Office of the Corporation Counsel, 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 325, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 MINUTES –As Amended Wednesday, December 10, 2010 –10:00 a.m. Department of Liquor Control Conference Room 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230 Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 CALL TO ORDER MS. NICHOLSON: I’d like to call the meeting to order at 10:05. Present: Excused: Kenneth Armour Patricia Provalenko Glen Matsuda William Takaba, ex-officio Eileen O’Hara Guests: Marilyn Nicholson Gloria Wong Ron Takahashi Ian Takashiba Kathy Garson Shanell Sarsuelo Sandy Arriola STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC: MS. NICHOLSON: Do we have any statements from the public? No statements from the public. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: MS. NICHOLSON: I’d like to move on to Approval of Minutes from our November 17, 2010 meeting. Do I hear a move to approve? MOTION: MR. MATSUDA: So moved. MS. O’HARA: Second. MS. NICHOLSON: Any discussion? MS. O’HARA: I need to make some amendments. On page 10, perhaps I wasn’t picked up by the microphones. There’s some blanks in some of the recordation. And it Hawai‘i County is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer says, there’s a blank after, at the top of the page, O’Hara at the end of that line is a blank which I think can be simply removed. MS. GARSON: The blank is because there is something that’s inaudible. MS. O’HARA: That’s what I mean. MS. GARSON: And so if she is doing verbatim minutes, and there’s something that wasn’t audible, they would either leave it blank or put inaudible. But if you take it out, that’s something then it’s not obvious that something is missing. But if you prefer you can put inaudible in all of the blanks or we can just leave the blank. MS. O’HARA: You can leave the blank. There’s three of those instances and it’s fine. There was an incorrect, on page 21, at the bottom of the page –Elimination of homeowner’s exemption for unpermitted dwellings. It says Ms. O’Hara said she would would not vote to carry this forward. I vote to carry this forward. And as you can see from my comment on the following page. MS. NICHOLSON: So you want to strike the word not which is under page 21, item 2. And the first sentence under that. So you want to scratch the word not? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other discussion on the minutes? So, now because we’re amending them we need to have a motion to approve as amended. MOTION: MR. MATSUDA: So moved. MS. O’HARA: Second. MS. NICHOLSON: All in favor say aye. ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MS. NICHOLSON: Opposed? None. MS. NICHOLSON: The minutes are approved as amended DISCUSSION, AND QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WITH RON TAKAHASHI AND/OR REPRESENTATIVES FROM DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES: MS. NICHOLSON: Now since we have guests here, everyone agrees we’re going to skip over Item 4 on the agenda, the Correspondence, and move right into item 5 – Discussion, and question and answer session with Ron Takahashi and/or representatives from the Department of Human Resources. MR. TAKAHASHI: Good morning. Ron Takahashi, Director of Human Resources. I have with me Ian Takashiba. He is our Labor Relations Manager in my department. I brought him along as a safety net. I’m here to answer any questions that you have. 2 MS. NICHOLSON: We had put on the agenda -Topics will include, but not limited to: overview of union contracts and negotiations, possibilities of changes to hours of work and overtime provisions, what is involved in consolidation of divisions and movement of personnel between divisions, etc. Do you have any sort of overall remarks that you would like to, an overview that you’d like to provide us? MR. TAKAHASHI: The collective bargaining agreements or union contracts are generally done for two-year cycles on odd number years. We have contractsfor the blue collar, United Public Workers; white collar and blue collar supervisors, and white collar employee with the HGEA. We have the police and fire contracts. Those are the four major unions in collective bargaining that we deal with. Hawai‘i County is a small player, one of seven players in the collective bargaining system. The employer group is made up of the State, the governor, who heads that group. The DOE, the university also is part of, considered the state employer. And we have the four counties that are involved. What happens is the employer group acts as a whole in collective bargaining when negotiating contracts with the various unions. Where there are employees in bargaining units and I’m not going to go into all that, there are 13 bargaining units that are set up. Hawai‘i County has six of those bargaining units. Where there are employees from the counties in the bargaining unit, the governor, who essentially has six votes in collective bargaining needs to have one mayor or one county vote with the governor in order to get a proposal across to the union. So, Hawai‘i County couldn’t just go in and say I want to change this original contract. We would have to go and get essentially the governor to agree to get that proposal to even be put across to the union. So to change a provision in the contract is not quite that simple, let’s put it that way. We couldn’t just go in and change it or even ask to change it just because we wanted to. I would have to go in, or we would have to go in and at least convince the governor that we would want to do that. In general that’s the concept. And similar to like the governor, the governor couldn’t just want to implement the change. The governor would need one mayor to vote to get even that proposal to be put across the table. The process is collective bargaining as set up by the collective bargaining law in Chapter 89 of the Hawai‘i Revised Statutes which requires the parties, which is the employer group and the union to get together to negotiate wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment. That’s just the general overview. I guess you were talking about how to make changes to certain provisions on overtime. Again, we would have to submit a proposal to the employer group. The employer group would have to discuss it, essentially agree amongst themselves to pass that proposal on to the union. That’s just the general overview of the collective bargaining law. I know there are a whole lot of questions,I could take hours to discuss the whole thing, but I’m here to answer any specific questions you have. MS. NICHOLSON: Do you see any trends? Since all of the counties and the state as a whole are facing some financial challenges, do you see any trends or because we have a brand new governor, we don’t know what the trends may be in making changes to some of the contracts? MR. TAKAHASHI: As was, I guess you could read about it in the paper let’s put it that way. The trend over the last few years was to try maintain a status quo or even make take backs of the employee benefits. We have furloughs this year, which is the first 3 time I believe we have a take back on wages from employees. So, yes, given the state of the economy, the trend has been to look for areas where we could get take backs from the benefits that were provided to them through negotiations. One of the key components of collective bargaining is the parties not negotiate in the press. I’m not able to tell you what the proposals are for this round of negotiations exactly. That would kind of violate whatever terms of the principals of negotiating. But, yeah, it had been the trend to look for areas where we can take back from the employees. MS. NICHOLSON: I know we have a lot of questions. Does anybody else want to start onthe questions? MR. ARMOUR: Is it standard in government the two-year contracts? MR. TAKAHASHI: The law provides for two year contracts. The parties can agree to negotiate or redo contracts of longer periods. But it should be in two inaudible. The way the law is set up is that the odd number year shall begin July 1 of the odd number year and end June 30 of two years unless that parties agree to negotiate a longer contract. MS. NICHOLSON: I have sort of a general question. If the county is basically negotiating contracts parallel to the state and the other counties, I assume that there are a lot of fixed things like number of work hours. Things that are common in all contracts across the board. What would be the primary variables from one contract to another contract? In other words, what are you really negotiating on, because a lot of things must be common in sort of boiler plate in all the contracts. What are the primary things that you really are able to negotiate on? MR. TAKAHASHI: Like I said, it’s not only wages and hours. We also talk about terms and conditions of employment. Like the SHOPO, police agreement, deal with operation of things that apply just to police, like their 24-hour shifts. How we deal with that; if there are any premiums for working double shifts, and things of that nature. Firefighters have all kinds of premium for their 24-hour operations. United Public Workers in baseyards and central pickup points. There are numerous things that apply to operations for that specific group of employees. Other than that the wages, hours –I mean different wages for the different bargaining units, but the hours, you’re right, primarily the same. But we negotiate those special and unique situations for the various employee groups that we have. MS. NICHOLSON: So all counties would have, in say one collective bargaining unit, all the counties would have the same contract? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. We have what we call a master agreement. This is the police contract, so all four counties are parties to this master agreement with the police union. So, all terms and conditions of employment and negotiate as the employee group with the union in this one master agreement that’s applicable to all four jurisdictions, to all four counties. The law allows for each jurisdiction or employer, to negotiate supplemental agreements with the union which would apply only to a specific jurisdiction like ours. We have a master, and we are allowed to negotiate supplemental 4 agreements aside from the terms of the master agreement. That would apply only to our jurisdiction. MR. ARMOUR: So were the wages for each county, let’s say Administrative Assistant, the same wage for every county? Or is each county different? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. No, it’s the same. MS. O’HARA: But it could be a range, right? MR. TAKAHASHI: I’m sorry. I’m not sure if I understand your question as far as a range. MS. O’HARA: Aren’t the salaries set for each position at a range? MR. TAKAHASHI: Correct. And primarily where you fall on that range, the employee falls is primarily years of service. As you progress in your years of service, you get what they call step movements that progress further along the range. MS. O’HARA: But you can also be hired in at a range and not come in at the initial step? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. There are provisions that allow for that kind of opportunity, yes. MS. O’HARA: I have a simple question. Excuse my ignorance, but the firefighters are under which bargaining agreement? MR. TAKAHASHI: Bargaining Unit 11, Firefighters. MS. O’HARA: And it’s not SHOPO? MR. TAKAHASHI: No, they have their own union, Hawai‘i Firefighters Association. MS. O’HARA: Okay. That was the one I was missing. MR. TAKAHASHI: Okay. Sorry. MR. ARMOUR: So going back to wages, if you have identical employees with identical jobs in Honolulu, Maui, here and Kauai, they would all get the same pay? MR. TAKAHASHI: Primarily yes. MR. ARMOUR: And so there’s nothing like the cost of living being in Honolulu a lot more cost of living than here? MR. TAKAHASHI: No. All those factors are taken into consideration when we do negotiate. But primarily the police officer in Honolulu gets paid the same as the police officer in Hawai‘i County. 5 MR. MATSUDA: On the supplemental agreements, for the Big Island, and the Big Island only, what’s an example of a supplement agreement to this particular contract compared to the rest of the State. MR. TAKAHASHI: Police has, we have our own subsidized auto program where the police officers are, we use their personal vehicles for work but we provide for them a car allowance. Hawai‘i County has a supplemental agreement to negotiate that, the terms and conditions of that supplemental use. Those things are an example of a supplemental agreement. Whereas Maui has all fleet, all blue and white. Kauai has all fleet. So, yeah, they are different. That’s an example. Another example is like our Solid Waste Division has a 4-10 schedule. Their workers work four 10-hour days, and their schedules are based on that. So we have a supplement agreement for that type of condition of work. The Golf Course also hassupplemental agreements for their special schedules. We don’t have very many, but it’s primarily in those areas that we have special and unique hours of work that we need to try to address. Specific needs. MS. O’HARA: And does supplementalshave to go through that process of being inaudible. MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes, except it would be with just the one jurisdiction. MS. NICHOLSON: One of our correspondencesthat we got said that the city and county of Honolulu had experimented with the 4-10. How were they able to do that? Was that negotiated separately? Is it the city and county that did it? MR. TAKAHASHI: It was the State, I believe that implemented a pilot program for 4-10. MS. NICHOLSON: And so they tried it. Number one, it didn’t work. How were they able to negotiate something? MR. TAKAHASHI: Through negotiation with their union to say this is our proposal. There arecertain identified units of government or of the state that has that. And they did it. It would go into a 4-10 schedule. The terms and conditions of which would be negotiated with the union. They were able to reach agreement I believe,as the pilot program on how that was implemented. And you’re right. The program was terminated because they felt it wasn’t working. MS. NICHOLSON: Is it common in a state for all of the counties and the state government to have the same agreement and bargaining units? Or is this a little different in Hawai‘i? MR. TAKAHASHI: I believe it’s kind of unique to Hawai‘i, this type of collective bargaining where you have, especially when we’re on different islands, you have this kind of requirement where you have one master agreement for all the counties that are party to here. MS. NICHOLSON: And is this a good thing? 6 MR. TAKAHASHI: My personal opinion is it has its pluses and minuses, but it allows for continuity of one master of how everything runs. But you do also have the flexibility to do supplemental agreements which is the good thing about it. It’s the way the law is set up, and that’s just the way where we operate under, good or bad. My personal opinion is it has its pluses and minuses. Otherwise we’d be competing with each other for workers. They city could go negotiate higher wages because they could afford higher. And all the workers would run to Oahu to work I believe. Whereas, if we couldn’t match their wages here, we would not get the top quality workers. That again, a minus to that. Or a plus, depending on how you look at it. It would create that kind of situation if we did have individual bargaining within the county. That’s just one example, and I guess that would have affected a lot of areas. MS. NICHOLSON: So when the furlough program went into effect, it had to go into effect for all counties and the state? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Because it was negotiated. MR. TAKAHASHI: The furlough program was negotiated, it had some dynamics to it where the terms were the jurisdiction could furlough its employees from zero up to 24days per fiscal year. So that left the flexibility up to each jurisdiction. So the master agreement says you can furlough zero to 24 days. The jurisdictions all went and negotiated separate supplemental agreements on how they were going to implement that. Maui for an example, I believe is one day. That state went 24 days for both fiscal years. The County of Hawai‘i went 24 days for the second fiscal year. Went zero for the initial fiscal year. That was different variations to that negotiations, but the master agreement allowed for flexibility from zero to 24 days. MR. MATSUDA: Although it’s specific, I’m speaking about the supplemental agreements, because it’s specific to a particular jurisdiction, are the qualifications to have this supplemental agreement approved, is it the same process as a regular negotiation? MR. TAKAHASHI: Good question. The answer is no. Supplemental agreements do not require the ratification per se of the membership. However, I would go as far as to say I don’t think the union is going to agree to something that they’re members are not in favor of. So we don’t need ratification. A master agreement needs to be ratified by its members. Supplemental agreements don’t have to be ratified. The commonality though is any cost item must be approved by the appropriate legislative body. So, I cannot go and negotiate cost items for supplemental agreements. I have to go to Council to get any cost item, increase in cost I should say, to be approved by the Council. MS. WONG: I got a few questions. Looking back at our notes from the last meeting and one of the reasons that we called you in, you see on the agenda, but to further build it out, some of the things that were added were how does overtime work? I think you’ve sort of addressed that. Combining personnel or moving positions from one department to another. Considering the union rules, is that doable or is that a long term process in 7 order to move positions from one department to another or combining positions, or combining departments? MR. TAKAHASHI: I would say it’s not a long term process. It’s a process that needs to involve the unions in consultation. We don’t have to have agreement per se, with the unions to do so. We need to consult with them to provide them an opportunity to provide feedback. So long as we’re not changing the hours and working conditions of the employee, we don’t need to negotiate. If we’re going to tell somebody we’re going to move you from Parks to Public Works, and oh by the way you now have to work midnight. That’s something that would need to be negotiated. But a 7:45 to 4:30 job, moving from one department to the other and restructuring that, would be a matter of consultation. But that would be able to take place. It’s a process I would believe is not long term, but it would be a three to six month process. MS. WONG: And who from HGEA is, who do you interact with now that Ian’s on this side? The reason I ask is I see that there’s an ad in the paper, they’re hiring. And I thought, is the position open? Do you have people to talk with? MR. TAKAHASHI: Oh yeah. HGEA’s Hawai‘i division director is Ann Ebesuno. She heads the HGEA office here on the Big Island. We would direct our inquiries of consultation matters to her. Sometimes we have to involve the Honolulu office, Mr.Randy Perreira who is the executive director of HGEA. MS. WONG: And one of the other notes in here is who is covered by union contracts in the county? Is it basically everyone except appointed positions? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. Primarily the law provides for,employees shall be included in collective bargain except your elected, appointed, the legal people from that office, secretaries, department heads, deputy department heads, and anyone who works and deals with personal and confidential nature in their job as far as that would involve collective bargaining matters. Those people are excluded from collective bargaining per se, and not part of the union contracts. MR. MATSUDA: Would it also include probationary people too? They’re not with the union yet. MR. TAKAHASHI: Probationary period people are in the union. They’re included. Their terms and conditions are governed by the union contracts. They pay union dues from day one. MS. WONG: Two other questions –I think one specifically to Ian –now that you’ve come over to this side, and you know the temperament in all government agencies, I think, because of the furloughs and economic downturn, the stress in all the government agencies, are there a lot of cases that the employees are asking HGEA to intercede for them that you’re addressing on this side, are there a lot of cases or is it pretty much mellow for Hawai‘i County? MR. TAKASHIBA: I won’t answer for HGEA but based on my seven months here in the county, I don’t see a significant increase in the number of cases that we have 8 received. Our employees have sort of adjusted. You have to deal with the decrease in pay, but they’ve made adjustments. MR. TAKAHASHI: If I can comment. To my surprise actually, we have had minimum if not zero grievances from the employees which is surprising given the economic, the furloughs and all of that, to having to do more with less, having less time to do your work. I think it’s a credit to the departments, the department heads, the mayor and his administration and how they went about doing the furloughs. I expected a whole lot of more complaints per se, which we aren’t getting. MS. WONG: And I remember that coming up when we met with you separately, and I reported that to the group, cause that was, I was surprised about that. One last question, we had received a document from Council member Yagong dated May 12, 2009, just a copy. He had asked the employees for input. One of the first things, bullets in it says the County Council should consider declaring the Big Island insolvent which would then allow you to cancel all union contracts and start fresh to demand accountability from county employees and supervisors. That was item one, and I thought wow, that’s a big thing. Is that even possible? MR. TAKAHASHI: To me, not without a change in the law that says Hawai‘i County is excluded from collective bargaining. But right now all counties are included under the law in this collective bargaining process. It would take a law change, in my opinion, to exclude us from these union contracts. MS. WONG: I just wanted to confirm that. I didn’t think it was possible so I thought I’d just ask. Thank you. MS. NICHOLSON: I have another question, has there been a change over the years in reducing benefits for new hires? In other words, if you’re being hired today versus you were hired five years ago, you accrue vacation time at a lesser rate? Or have there been any of those kinds of reductions in benefits that would apply not retroactively to people that were already part of the county, but for newer hires? MR. TAKAHASHI: The employer group has attempted to make those changes. We were able to, a few years ago to get some reduction in a graduated scale for vacation and sick leave benefits. That only was temporary. It lasted probably two years and it got replaced back into the contract the following negotiations. The law has changed as far as retirement benefits, although that’s at the backend, but it has been reduced somewhat where you have to work 25 years now to get free medical. And if you started after 2001, you cannot include your spouse as part of that medical package. Whereas, if you were hired prior to ’96 you get free medical with 10 years of service when you retire to include your spouse. Those benefits on the backend have changed, but that, as a result of law changes. But as far as the benefits right now, we haven’t seen a take back. Well, I take that back –comp time, over time, CTO. We were able to get a cap for employees. As the contractual provision before, there was no cap. The employees could accumulate 1,000 hours of comp time off. We were able now to go back and use the FLSA caps on that for most of the employees. There are still a group out there that has no cap on it. If you want to consider that a benefit, we were able to negotiate that kind of reduction. 9 MR. MATSUDA: So on the comp time situation where you have a cap, is it you’re going to be either you use it or you lose it, or just cash it out? MR. TAKAHASHI: Employees aren’t able to elect comp time off if they’re at the cap. They would have to receive payment at the time. MR. MATSUDA: Paying cashed out? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Has there been any discussion about going to paid time off versus separate vacation and sick leave, even personal time off? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. Hawai‘i Health Systems is taking the forefront in that in trying to negotiate those types ofprovisions with its nurses. We have looked into that type of 8-hour leave or whatever you want to call that. We’re looking into it as trying to open doors to get that type instead of the current vacation/sick leave situation. We’re still at the very beginning stages of that though and I don’t believe it’s going to happen over night. It’s going to take some time for both sides to understand how that works. But it is something that’s in the works, I guess. That is in the discussion stages. MS. NICHOLSON: It kind of sounds like you guys are between a rock and a hard place. And it actually sounds like we kind of are too, because there is so little flexibility. Is that just my perception? MR. TAKAHASHI: That’s correct. We are. It’s difficult to get something that’s already in stone in the contracts to be change. It’s very difficult. MS. O’HARA: You said the trend in union contracts is towards your take backs at this point. For the upcoming two-year contract, is that under negotiation already or no? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yeah. But I cannot discuss it. MS. O’HARA: I know you can’t discuss it. But I’m just curious with the furloughs, is this something that is likely to be carried on to forward contracts or, I know the economic situation with the county doesn’t look like it’s improving quickly. So is that likely to continue in that manner or are you going to look at different ways to deal with that? MR. TAKAHASHI: I couldn’t say. But we are looking into ways as how to address our counties economic needs and what we need to do. Again, I cannot discuss specifics but we are considering all options at this point. MS. O’HARA: Okay. MR. MATSUDA: Well, I’m glad the county, you didn’t realize very many if not zero complaints regarding the furlough situation, but I think maybe partly it was because the state was already on furlough. 10 MR. TAKAHASHI: Yeah. We could see what mistakes or whatever happened and we were able to proceed accordingly. MS. O’HARA: I have another question. You mentioned that Maui County only furloughed one day? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. One day a month. MS. O’HARA: Is that due to better economic conditions with the county, or they dealt with it a different way? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. I guess the way they looked at things with their budget that they only needed to have one day to balance their budget. MS. NICHOLSON: On a slightly different topic, and this is going back to the thing from Council member Yagong that Gloria referred to –I’m just going to quote a comment that we got here, because we got several comments when we asked for input from county employees. So this actually just reflects some of those other comments that we got. And this was from the county employee and it says –“I love my job and I know everyone needs a job, but you need to check out how overstaff we are at Solid Waste. There is so much wasted time because there is not enough to do with the amount of people that we have on staff. They practically have to invent things to keep everyone looking busy. Come see and you will be surprised.” So when you get comments like this, I have no idea if this is true or if it was resolved or what it is. But when you get these kinds of comments, what is the procedure in dealing with these kindsof complaints of this person is not being very productive. Something like this. What happens? MR. TAKAHASHI: I for one didn’t receive that. But anyway, if one were to be brought to my attention, I would immediately go discuss the matter with the department head and bring it to their attention too, and recommend to them that they take a real good look at it, if they don’t already know what the picture is. I mean, that would be the start and it would depend upon what the department head would want to do. MS. NICHOLSON: So there are complaints. How do they get to you or to the department head? I can understand how an employee might not want to complain to their department head about something like that. How do you solicit input from employees to help you identify problem areas? MR. TAKAHASHI: In general I don’t, I’m not closed to having employees come directly to our office or to me. I would prefer they go through their department. Again if they are in a situation where they are not wanting to complain about their department, what the tendencies have been is they go to the union and have the union represent them to present a complaint or a grievance against the situation. Or have the union at least call the department to say, hey, we got this situation. Can you look into it? We’re not actually out there soliciting these comments, but again, I don’t turn anybody away if they do want to come. I believe the employees know that they have their unions to go to. And that’s the way the system I guess is set up to be. Not to say that we want the 11 unions to file complaints but we believe in amicable relationship with the union where we can talk to them to resolve issues. MS. O’HARA: More a comment and for your benefit –what we’re referring to is a e-mail that Council member Yagong sent out to all county employees asking for their suggestions on cost savings. And so he got back many, many responses. And we asked for a copy of it. And I can understand this was never directed to your attention so, this is what we’re referring to, these suggestions. MS. WONG: It’s 15 pages. MS. O’HARA: With many, many suggestions. Some were very interesting. MS. NICHOLSON: Which is in addition to the suggestions that we solicited as the Cost of Government Commission because we also got quite a few comments from employees. And some of them expressed the same sort of feeling of there are some people in my department that really aren’t doing much. There’re definitely some people that the county could let go. So we solicited that kind of input and we want to know how to make best use of that kind of input. And so what do you suggest? MR. TAKAHASHI: Work with the department heads. We can assist them in providing an evaluation of their operations. I consider ourselves a service agency. We don’t want to go there and tell you go to do this, you got to do that. That’s not our style. But if they want our help to come in to look at their operations, to look at the structural set up is, we’ll be glad to help. That’s just what it takes is to go in there and evaluate what you’re doing and see if you can do it better and what it will take. I have very good people in my department that’s able to help people in these areas, to include Ian. We just don’t want to force ourselves onto other departments to tell them how to run their show. We’re just here to assist them to do what they want or what they need. I would recommend you go through the departments to ask if you want to MS. NICHOLSON: Well a fair number of the suggestions we got would apply to the union contracts. Like people saying we should reduce the number of holidays. If someone wants that holiday off, they could take it as a vacation day off or something. So, those kinds of things are really sort of more broad and general. And I don’t know if you’ve heard those kinds of comments from people. MR. TAKAHASHI: Those types, yes we’ve heard. But again like I said, we can’t just go in and tell the union we want to take this out there. MS. NICHOLSON: I understand. MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. Too much vacation. Too much sick leave. Too many holidays. Yes, those types we’ve heard. MS. NICHOLSON: But when push comes to shove, when you try to negotiate with the unions, they’re saying no. MR. TAKAHASHI: Obviously yes. There hasn’t been any changes over the years. 12 MS. WONG: In this letter from the councilman, there are some specific points for HR department. So it might be worthwhile for you to get a copy of this communication. Could you request then to get a copy of this? MR. TAKAHASHI: Sure. MS. NICHOLSON: It is a public document. Perhaps just the, it was addressed to the members of the County Council so they’re probably the ones that got them. MS. GARSON: We’ll forward it over. (Copy given to Mr. Takahashi.) MS. O’HARA: I just want to clarify, I think Gloria asked the question about the flexibility we have within HR to switch employees around to other departments. One of our recommendations were to be to create a new department or division, and it may require new positions, and it may also require shifting positions from other departments. That would be something that could be accomplished without changing union contract, provided the hours were essentially the same and so on? MR. TAKAHASHI: From that perspective as far as the employees are concerned, yes, that could happen. However, if we’re going to change the structure of the county that is set up already by the Charter, like right now the Charter says there shall be a Department of Public Works, and all that or anything that’s providing for or required by the Charter, that would require a Charter change. But as far as the backend of the employees side, yeah, so long as we’re not changing a persons hours, terms of his conditions of employment, and just shifting them from one place to another, that is not a problematic area as far as with the unions are concerned. There are other areas that could be considered if you’re going to be that kind of big changes. MS. O’HARA: And am I correct, the Charter change requires a vote by the general public? MR. TAKAHASHI: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other questions? No? All right. Thank you very much for coming and answering some of our questions. MR. TAKAHASHI: You’re welcome. And thank you for allowing me to clarify some things. MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s take a five minute break. BREAK –10:50-10:55. CORRESPONDENCE: MS. NICHOLSON: Are we ready to reconvene? We are going to discuss, we’re back to Agenda Item 4, Correspondence, Letter Comm. 2010-144 from Dominic Yagong, Council Member. How would you like to tackle this? Would you like to go –they are 13 not in any kind of order. They’re not grouped by like comments. So, first we need to accept the communication and we can go into the discussion. Do I have a move to accept this communication? MOTION: MR. ARMOUR: So moved. MS. NICHOLSON: And a second? MS. O’HARA: Second. MS. NICHOLSON: Now we’re going to discuss this. MS. GARSON: File. MS. NICHOLSON: Move to accept and file. So now we’re into discussion. How would you like to tackle this? There are definitely some interesting items here that I think we do want to discuss. Any suggestions on how to do it in a logical manner? We can go item by item and decide if there’s things that we feel are worthy for further consideration. Things that we might just say we want to figure out some wording so that we can stick that into our draft report? There’s some things we may just want to drop off of this. MR. MATSUDA: Going item by item is fine with me. Do we want to even maybe possibly identify what committees they may possibly be applicable to? MS. O’HARA: Good suggestion. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Let’s start. We’ve got 14 pages to go through. Let’s start on the first one, which is actually one that Gloria already brought up. And so we’ll decide number one if we want any discussion on that, I wish they were numbered, but if we want to have a discussion on that particular item, and if so we want to just send it over to one of subcommittees. If we want to, we could choose to move it right into our draft just to hold it in draft. We could choose to just move over it. Or we can go and say, jeez, there’s something really similar on page 6, so we can cover more than one at once. Does that work for people? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: So, first item. MS. O’HARA: My question is to counsel. Is this even a legal possibility? Can the county claim insolvency? MS. GARSON: I don’t know the answer to that. If you would like me to research it I can. I mean, you’ve read in the news there are some government entities that have declared bankruptcies so I don’t think it would be out of the question. I don’t think that we’re there yet from what I know on county plan situations. 14 MR. ARMOUR: I think that he said that it all has to be negotiated, so even if you try to void it, it sounds like it’s a statewide contract, and so the whole state would have to do it. My suggestion is we skip this one. MS. O’HARA: Well, the underlying question is whether the county can declare insolvency. It’s beyond bankruptcy actually. Isn’t it? Or is it just the same as bankruptcy? MS. GARSON: I honestly don’t know. However whether or not it could declare bankruptcy, but if you could, there’s Bankruptcy Court laws about being able to choose which contracts you want to keep and which you want to ignore, and that would be all bankruptcy laws, so I don’t think that. MS. O’HARA: Personally, chair, I don’t think we want to keep this one. MS. NICHOLSON: Yes, we don’t feel like it’s a liable suggestion. Is that what I’m hearing? So we can pass over this one. MR. ARMOUR: Not for this commission. MS. NICHOLSON: Second one has to do with pay cut to an index that would restore original pay rate when the economy is recovered. What do we think of that? Is it something worth keeping? MR. ARMOUR: I think there are several suggestions in here that relate to similar things about hours of pay. And if we’re going to do anything on it, we probably should just lump them all together. MS. NICHOLSON: Maybe we should just say let’s mark in our copies with a P or an A or something so as we go through anything that we found falls in that category we can say, okay, that’s the same as such and such. So, let’s just call that a P? MS. O’HARA: Let’s just stick to an alpha system. MS. NICHOLSON: A Okay. A one? Oh. . Sorry. MS. WONG: I’d like to ask a question. When this was sent in, was there a cover letter or just this? MS. NICHOLSON: This was it. And there is no page 15. So, should we go through and identify all the A’s just as we go through them, and come back and we can talk about all of the A’s together and any other categories we end up with. MS. O’HARA: As we go through them. MS. NICHOLSON: The next suggestion about job-related driving is certainly something that we’ve seen before. We saw it insome of the other suggestions that we got. About reimbursement for mileage and about use of county vehicles. 15 MS. O’HARA: And there’s further comments within the document are valid too. MS. NICHOLSON: So, should we MS. O’HARA: B Give it a . MS. NICHOLSON: Give this one a B, which is vehicle related. We are now down to County workers at higher levels have a larger percentage cuts or furloughs. Do we A want to put this into our category? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Services provide by the county can be more efficiently provided by private parties on a bid basis. I think that’s the only one that was in this document like that related to bids. MS. O’HARA: C Let’s just give it a and see if there’s more about outside services. MS. NICHOLSON: C is outside services. On page 2, council members are supposed to agree to the negotiated union contracts, it’s about time for the council to participate in these contracts. What I heard today, council really has no choice in these contracts. MS. O’HARA: I don’t really follow the meaning of this comment in terms of cost savings. MS. NICHOLSON: Shall we toss this one out? MS. O’HARA: Yeah. I’d recommend that we toss it aside. MS. NICHOLSON: Jobs that have been vacant for one year or more should be A eliminated. category? Hamakua lands. First of all, is this the kind of thing we want to deal with? If so, is it something that fits into one of our subcommittees? Is it now kind of irrelevant? Or is it relevant to go from the commission? MR. ARMOUR: I suggest we pass on this one. MS. NICHOLSON: Agree? We toss that one out? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Get away from manning and ramping up county operations based on best case scenario. Should we toss that one out? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: A Four day work week. That’s an , I would say. MS. O’HARA: Yes. 16 MS. NICHOLSON: Inventory controls, purchasing. We certainly had some conversations about purchasing. Is there a way this fits in with our other conversations from prior meetings that we want to retain this? Do we feel there are not inventory controls already in place? Is it an issue we want to address for this committee? MS. O’HARA: It’s a cost containment issue. MS. NICHOLSON: So does that fit into a subcommittee? MS. O’HARA: Yes. Operations. MS. NICHOLSON: Operations subcommittee. MS. O’HARA: D So should we put a beside this? This seems to be a new topic. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. And do we want to direct the operations subcommittee to just add it to their list of things? Operations subcommittee, what do you thing about it? Does it fit in your committee? Isn’t that Glen and Gloria? Can we just delegate it to your subcommittee to look at and decide what to do with it? MR. MATSUDA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. We’re at the bottom of page 2, how man hours are allocated. MR. ARMOUR: A It would be wouldn’t it? MS. NICHOLSON: A It’s an . Helicopters. MR. ARMOUR: Delete. MS. NICHOLSON: The next one is also about helicopters. Delete? MS. O’HARA: I guess. I, quite honestly am not that familiar with our helicopter inventory and all of that too, to make comment. MS. NICHOLSON: The next one seems like it’s definitely an A. Maybe not. We’ve had several on the bus here. Should we make that a new category? MR. ARMOUR: E . MS. O’HARA: And that seems to go with the revenue enhancement subcommittee. MS. NICHOLSON: Should we pass that to Revenue Enhancement? Ken? MR. ARMOUR: All right. MS. NICHOLSON: Which means we’re not going to discuss it further now cause you’re going to consider it. Allowing DWS and DEM to temporarily alter their fee structures. 17 MR. ARMOUR: Delete. MS. NICHOLSON: Is it delete or is it a good revenue enhancement? I’m not sure what this actually is about? MR. MATSUDA: Alter? Yeah. MR. ARMOUR: What are the two departments that they’re referring to? MR. MATSUDA: Water Supply and Environmental Management. MS. NICHOLSON: Do we know what this means well enough to do something with it? MS. O’HARA: Yeah. If I could explain. The Department of Water Supply is self funded with its fees. But DEM has fee structures that are set by Code. And no one can waive those except the mayor as I understand that fee process. MS. GARSON: It’s set by Code. The Department of Water Supply has a rate study and through that rate study they set their fees according to what they need for operations and to pay back their debt. MS. O’HARA: So, it would seem that you would be opening yourself up to all kinds of legal ramifications if you gave the option to temporarily adjust those fees. MS. GARSON: There are already laws in place about how to adjust and set the fees. MS. NICHOLSON: Can we delete this one? MS. O’HARA: Off that one. MS. NICHOLSON: Selling the golf course. Is this a Revenue Enhancement? Ken your committee? MR. ARMOUR: E An. MS. O’HARA: We’re going to give it an E? Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: Justification for the phone and auto usage numbers. I didn’t know what this one meant at all. MS. O’HARA: I have no idea either. MS. NICHOLSON: So let’s just take it out. MS. O’HARA: Yeah. MS. NICHOLSON: Retirement, encourage people. We have another one that was A about early retirement. So this goes in . 18 I think the next one probably, maybe we should take this one out. MR. ARMOUR: I think it would be A –personnel. MS. O’HARA: Well, I’m not sure that you can do anything about because of union. MR. ARMOUR: Well, I took it as it’s what we were just talking about, moving people from one area to another area, but don’t cut the teachers. MS. O’HARA: A Okay. . MS. NICHOLSON: Government gas cards, and government cars to take home. MS. O’HARA: B Well, , vehicle related. MS. NICHOLSON: County employees picking up trash. I guess this would be an A. Come on, we’ve got to keep moving through. MS. O’HARA: I don’t see this as -an out. MS. NICHOLSON: Out. I think that this one would probably be an A. This is the one with security cameras. MS. O’HARA: Chair that could also have something to do with the technology committee as well. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, do you want to just move that to our committee? MS. O’HARA: I think we could. MS. NICHOLSON: F Okay. So that is , Technology. Shall we just toss out the last one on page 3? MS. O’HARA: Well, it’s a B. It’s about vehicles. MS. NICHOLSON: I don’t know if it’s about vehicles. MR. ARMOUR: I think it’s more about people not doing their jobs. MS. O’HARA: Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: I don’t know. I think we should just take it out. MS. O’HARA: Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: AA Four day work week. This is an . Is the second one also an ? MS. O’HARA: It is. 19 MS. NICHOLSON: The third one. Does the county still print the county newsletter rather than send out electronic copies or post on the intranet site? MS. GARSON: I don’t think so. We stopped. MS. NICHOLSON: They stopped. So, let’s take that one out. The next one is A definitely . Okay, we’ve got some on taxes here. Are we on to G? We’ve got several in this category, G. MR. ARMOUR: Would it be that or would it be on our subcommittee? MS. NICHOLSON: Oh, I’d love to put it to your subcommittee. That’s right. You are, which code are you? MR. ARMOUR: E. MS. NICHOLSON: E Okay, let’s give that to . Next one, charge fee for transit. That’s E also . The next one is also I would say E, operational costs for rescues. MS. GARSON: There is a Code section about this already. The county has the authority to collect for rescue costs under certain circumstances. So the law already exists. MS. O’HARA: Do we do so? MS. GARSON: I have worked for the county for approximately 10 years and we have not. And one of the issues is you want sort of a blatant disregard of putting themselves in danger and that just hasn’t really happened. Another consideration is you want people to call for help when they really need it. If you actively are enforcing something like this perhaps people in danger won’t call for emergency services. So that’s the philosophy. The law already exists. MS. NICHOLSON: So if we’re going to pass it to a subcommittee, it seems to me that it might be E. Again that we would want to consider. MR. ARMOUR: I think we should pass on it. MS. O’HARA: I think we should pas on it. It’s already addressed as she says. MS. NICHOLSON: Pass on it. Okay. Saddle Road toll fee. MS. O’HARA: It’s a state road. MS. NICHOLSON: It is a State highway. So, I guess we can’t do anything about that. Taxing products bought on the internet is also a state issue. Lights after games and parties. We saw this also with some other employee suggestions. Is it not E, Revenue Enhancement? MS. O’HARA: I think it is more operations. 20 MS. NICHOLSON: Operations? MR. ARMOUR: I think it’s a Green Committee? MS. NICHOLSON: It could be no particular subcommittee. It could be something we want to discuss as a whole. So what would you like to do with this one? I think there’s another like the same thing in here somewhere. Are we a G? It’s actually energy use. So what do we decide? Is it a G because it’s an energy use and a new category? MR. ARMOUR: G for green. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Last one on this page. MR. ARMOUR: That’s another green. MS. NICHOLSON: Either that or this is just sort of what we’re arguing. What would we do with this one? MS. O’HARA: It’s more of a comment than a suggestion. MS. NICHOLSON: A So, I think it comes out. The first one on page 5 is an again. The E second one is the Revenue Enhancement committee which is . MS. O’HARA: Is this something that is also covered by statute, excessive false fire alarms? MS. GARSON: No,the statute I was thinking of was for the response. There is probably a criminal act on the false alarm and whether or not there is any sort of restitution as part of a criminal complaint, I’m not sure. MS. NICHOLSON: We can always keep it in and then when we do provide our draft to the departments we can find out their response for this. Is that a reasonable way to handle this one? MR. ARMOUR: Yeah, I think you also have to find out if there’s even an issue. This person thinks it is, but does Long’s Drug set of their alarm two times a week and the Fire Department will respond or did it happen once? MS. NICHOLSON: Well, I think we either would need to assign it to a subcommittee to ask the Fire Department or the Police Department if this is an issue at all, or leave it in the draft and let them respond to it when we send the draft out and say this isn’t an issue for us. Or we already do this. So what’s your pleasure on how we want to handle it? Or we drop it. MS. O’HARA: I’m actually for dropping it. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. I think this is one of those comments again and not a suggestion. Shall we drop it? 21 MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Precinct equipment. MS. O’HARA: This is an operational issue. MS. NICHOLSON: I think it would be operational. What code do we give the operations committee? A? MS. GARSON: D I think it’s . MS. NICHOLSON: The next one I would say is an A and actually this is about A removing holidays and the next one, vacation and sick leave would be . Remove disability exemption from all property. MS. NICHOLSON: E That was on , right? That was MS. GARSON: No, E was the Revenue. MS. O’HARA: Ken’s committee. MR. ARMOUR: Which one are we on? MS. NICHOLSON: We’re on remove the disability exemption from property. So this property tax issues are all into your subcommittee, Ken. MR. ARMOUR: I’m not sure what this one means but MS. NICHOLSON: Well, you can wrestle with it. MS. O’HARA: It appears that we have a disability exemption on properties but they’re saying it should go with the primary residence property of the disabled and not their investment properties. There’s been an argument to remain there. MS. NICHOLSON: E Okay, so the next one will also be to subcommittee. I would say the next one is also Revenue MR. ARMOUR: That’s a state issue. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s state. That’s out. Would the one on the bottom of the page A be an issue? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: E We’re up to page 6. This is another issue. Next one down is an E issue. Pay for services provided by the County –Out, the one that’s referred to as my opinion. Is an out? Leave that out? 22 MR. ARMOUR: Yeah, I think so. MS. NICHOLSON: Yes? Do we know anything about this funding, the Hawai‘i County Cultural Resources Commission? Was it funded? What would you like to do with this since we don’t know if we’ve got this commission? MS. O’HARA: The commissioners have not been appointed to that commission? MS. NICHOLSON: It wasn’t among the boards and commissions that we sent anything to. MS. GARSON: I’m sorry. And I don’t know. The only thing I can, you know, as far as any commission, you will have staff person who takes minutes and the mileage reimbursement, so it’s something for all the commissions. MS. NICHOLSON: This would fall under Bobby Jean, right? MS. GARSON: I don’t really see that it’s something that we want to deal with. MS. NICHOLSON: Unless we’re going to have a more general discussion as we had talked about that boards and commissions, and so it would sort of fall into that category. MS. O’HARA: The commission was voted on by the public. It was created. It hasn’t taken form yet. And I don’t know that we have, I just don’t know. MS. NICHOLSON: Should we just take it off then? MS. O’HARA: I feel like taking it off. MS. NICHOLSON: The next one is probably, is it Technology? MS. O’HARA: I agree. MS. NICHOLSON: What is the code for ours? MS. O’HARA: F . MS. NICHOLSON: The next one take off? This is really ancient history at this point. Can we just remove the Machine Room vehicle? MR. ARMOUR: Delete. MS. NICHOLSON: The next one I think is so general, let’s take that one off. Mileage BB reimbursements, under vehicle –. And the next one is also a . Next one per diem is A an. MS. O’HARA: It’s also a union contract issue there. MS. NICHOLSON: Raise the fuel tax. Is this the state? 23 MS. O’HARA: The counties do get a fuel tax. MR. ARMOUR: I think the state sets it, don’t they? MS. O’HARA: No, it’s done by resolution to the County Council. Am I right? MS. GARSON: Yeah. MS. NICHOLSON: So we have two issues here. He has transportation and we have fuel tax. The fuel tax would go to Ken’s committee. The other I think we already have EGA covered under . This one is a , green, energy savings. Overtime would be . Shall we take this one out? Everyone agree we take out that one? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: A I guess this is an , this is if we don’t want to fire people. What about the next one? MS. O’HARA: This is about collections. It’s not very specific. MS. NICHOLSON: A Let’s take it out. Early retirement would be . One day leave per A month is . Is this an E, charging fee for copies? Is that revenue, or what is this? MR. ARMOUR: We can throw it into E. MS. GARSON: There already is a charge for copies that is set by Code. I don’t think that that’s what this is about. MS. O’HARA: This is addressing an operational issue. MS. NICHOLSON: So it would go to the operation subcommittee, which is MS. O’HARA: D as in dog. MS. NICHOLSON: The last one on page 7. MS. O’HARA: This is about some contracting procedures. MS. GARSON: Procurement code is a state statute. MS. NICHOLSON: And does the county have the ability to implement its own rules MS. O’HARA: Professional services? No. MS. GARSON: No, if they are even consistent with what the state law is. MS. NICHOLSON: So we take this one out? 24 MS. GARSON: We can’t act on it really. MS. NICHOLSON: What would you like to do with the first one on page 8, liquidated damages clauses? MS. O’HARA: That’s a good question, whether that’s actually a savings or not. It costs to go after those things. MS. NICHOLSON: Is it something we want to address? No, so we’re going to take it out. Fee for all rental vehicles, is this something the county can do? MS. O’HARA: Possibly. I don’t know. Is that possible? MS. GARSON: I don’t know the answer to that. MS. NICHOLSON: Do we want to keep it in or, if we keep it in, I would say it probably goes to Revenue Enhancement. But do we want to keep it in at all? MS. O’HARA: It’s a complex thing to implement. MR. ARMOUR: I know Maui does it. I don’t know if this island does. MS. NICHOLSON: E Do you want to take it on to your committee, which is .? MR. ARMOUR: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, the next one we’re going to take out, the toll road. This is an A , the one about mileage claims, meals, per diem. Car allowances are B, right? MR. ARMOUR: A It should be more I would think. Cause that’s part of the contracts. MS. O’HARA: It’s a union contract issue. MS. NICHOLSON: B Ithink we need to toss this one out. County use vehicles is a , right? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: AA Overtime is an . Mileage, this is a union thing again, so an ? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Cell phones should be taken away –toss this one? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Cut 25 MS. O’HARA: Why are we paying for certain repairs I guess is the comment. We would only be doing that because they are overloaded or not capable of performing the services. MS. NICHOLSON:B Is there anything here we want to keep or toss? Buses again is . I guess the next one is also MR. ARMOUR: B It’s a . MS. NICHOLSON: B Okay. Car pool, that’s . Intranet abuse. It seems to me that Council Yagong did a big study about internet and intranet stuff, which might have come out with him getting this. MS. O’HARA: I think this is meant to say internet, but I don’t know about intranet abuse. MR. ARMOUR: Could be both. MS. NICHOLSON: Surfing the net on County time. MS. GARSON: What would this commission, what would you make as a recommendation? MS. NICHOLSON: Probably that the county study internet access and internet use by employees. But it seems to me that that just did happen last year. There was a study. I remember reading about it in the paper. MS. GARSON: The report is there. You have the ability to generate the report. MS. O’HARA: It’s an operational issue in terms of supervisors supervising their employees. MS. NICHOLSON: So we can just include it that the county continue to enforce its internet policy. MS. O’HARA: Okay. Should this go to operations though? MS. NICHOLSON: We can give it to operations and they can do that. Or we can just say let’s just put that in our recommendations -that the county continue to enforce and update its internet use policy. And that way it’s taken care of. Is that what we want to do–just move it forward into the draft report as that is the recommendation, and then we’ll figure out where to put it later on. MS. O’HARA: Okay, that’s a good recommendation. MS. GARSON: Okay, so let me make sure we get this wording right. So, the recommendation that is going to be put on the draft report is – 26 MS. NICHOLSON: That the county continue to update and enforce its internet use policy for all county employees. MS. WONG: What is the policy? Are they reprimanded or what happens if they are caught abusing it? MS. GARSON: There is disciplinary action. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah, somebody did get disciplined over it. MS. WONG: So, if the mayor is working 24-hours a day for five days a week. His daughter calls him and says, daddy I want to find this, and he goes on his computer and searches something for his daughter. Wouldn’t that not be an abuse? He’s using personal use. MS. GARSON: There’s probably a de minimis use. I mean there’s a variety of different things. You’re using county equipment for personal gain or purposes. There’s that. And there’s also people who may be on E-bay all day and not doing their work, which would be a disciplinary action. I forgot what your question was, but that would likely not be a violation of the policy because it’s a de minimis type of use. MS. WONG: My point in that kind of flippant example is,people use it and hopefully they don’t abuse it. People will sneak. I caught people playing bingo at work time, and they had no embarrassment in hiding those kind of things. But I agree that they should not be doing that, but what kind of time involved in monitoring, how effective is that, and the reprimand? MR. MATSUDA: All we’re doing is recommending that the county continues its policy. MS. NICHOLSON: Continue to update. MS. WONG: I understand, but I was just pointing out a different way. MS. NICHOLSON: But we just don’t know what that policy is, but I guess I trust that the policy is reasonable. MR. MATSUDA: Correct. MS. NICHOLSON: But if you would like, we could put it to your committee as an operational thing, and you could take a look at the policy. MS. WONG: Don’t want to. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. MR. MATSUDA: So, do we just make the recommendation, that’s all? MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. So we’ll just do that into our draft report and we can look at it again. 27 MR. MATSUDA: Okay. Very good. MS. NICHOLSON: G This is a ,energy thing, the lights. The CDP cost $500,000. MR. ARMOUR: I think that’s in the Charter that they have to do it. MS. NICHOLSON: Toss this one out? MS. GARSON: Doing the Community Development Plan is a legal requirement. It doesn’t mean you can’t change the law but it’s there. MS. O’HARA: It’s a requirement. MS. NICHOLSON: AG Solid Waste Supervisors is being . Street lights is another . GE Yano Hall lights is a . This is an , real property tax revenues. Is that an E? MR. ARMOUR: Could be a personnel issue too. MS. O’HARA: Yeah, it sounds like there are real concerns about training. MS. NICHOLSON: Where do we want to put this on? This is the last one on page 9. MR. ARMOUR: Would it be under A? MS. O’HARA: I don’t know it’s under A so much as operations. MS. NICHOLSON: Training? MS. O’HARA: Yeah it’s a training issue. Perhaps it’s a hiring issue. Who knows? MR. MATSUDA: I could be revenue too. MS. O’HARA: Yeah it’s a crossover to many. MS. NICHOLSON: It ultimately goes to revenue generating. Let’s put it in E. It’s a B barrier to rather than generation. This is a . Jet ski. I don’t know what to do with this one. We could put it in a draft report something along the order of that the Fire Department investigate the cost and use and effectiveness of using jet skies, and then see how they come back to that recommendation? Other suggestions on what we can do with this one including tossing it out or MR. MATSUDA: Along with Ocean Safety Division because they have a, I’m sure they have a program already out there. I think yes, asking the Fire Department as to how beneficial the implementing of a jet ski program would be inassisting them in their function of providing assistance to the public. MS. O’HARA: Operation? 28 MS. NICHOLSON: No, I think we’re talking about just putting in right in the draft report rather than putting it to the committee. MR. MATSUDA: Yes, correct. MS. GARSON: You know if they’ve explored it or MS. NICHOLSON: Well, I think we’re suggesting that they explore the possibility and the effectiveness, the cost effectiveness of implementing the use of jet skies in the Ocean Safety Division. MR. MATSUDA: They don’t have jet skies, do they? MS. GARSON: See, I don’t know if between May 2009 and now if they have jet skies. MR. MATSUDA: Yeah. Right, 2009 and now. MS. NICHOLSON: So, if we put it in the draft which we’re going to send to the departments, then maybe we’ll get a response back saying we have it already or we already studied it, and then we’ll take it out. MS. O’HARA: Okay. I like the idea. MS. GARSON: So, what’s going in the draft report is have the Ocean Safety Division, the Fire Department MS. O’HARA: Have the Fire Department investigate implementing a jet ski program with our Ocean Safety Division. MS. NICHOLSON: And investigate including the effectiveness and including cost effectiveness implementing a jet ski program or something like that. (Have the Fire Department investigate implementing a jet ski program with our Ocean Safety Division, including the cost effectiveness of implementing a jet ski program.) Okay, the next one we take out, the county newsletter. MR. ARMOUR: E The next two are ’s. MS. NICHOLSON: E We’re on the top of page 11 now. It’s also an . And the next one E is an . The affordable rental program. MS. O’HARA: Is that a county program or a state program? MS. GARSON: No, there’s an affordable rental. MS. NICHOLSON: E Okay. Is this also an ? Or is this a whole separate, is this totally separate from the RealProperty Tax Division? So it’s a separate program? MS. O’HARA: I don’t know. 29 MS. GARSON: No. That’s part of the real property tax. If you own a rental property and you charge rent under a certain amount depending on the area, you get a tax break. MS. O’HARA: E Okay, so it goes to . MS. NICHOLSON: Oh boy, Ken, you’re certainly picking up all kinds of things. Next EE one is an . And the next one is an . Moving on to page 12 now. MS. O’HARA: I assume they’re talking about property taxes? MS. NICHOLSON: I kind of think that it might have been already covered in one of the other or several of the other issues. MR. ARMOUR: I don’t think it is property taxes. MS. NICHOLSON: I do believe it’s aproperty tax issue. I would be in favor of tossing this out. I think we’re going to cover in another way. MS. O’HARA: I’m not sure I understand it either. MS. NICHOLSON: AB Next on is . County owned vehicles would be . The internet one A we already covered. So let’s take that one out. Next on is . The first one on page 13 AE is an . Then we go back to , Hele-on. MS. WONG: This is a comment. It was on page 5, it’s a repeat. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah. Seems like it’s a repeat of 5. Okay. I think the next one is probably, well the next one is the moratorium on the land fund. MS. O’HARA: Already voted on. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah. Let’s take that one off. Is there anything in the next one or should we take it off? MS. O’HARA: I’d take it off. I think it’s kind of focusing with the Green Team. MS. NICHOLSON: A Yeah. The next one would be an , employee related. The next AA one is an , the furlough, pay cut. Next one is an . Audit, should we take this one out? MS. GARSON: There is the Office of the Legislative Auditor whose function it is to do the audit. MS. O’HARA: And they have audited some of these programs mentioned. MS. NICHOLSON: So, we take that one out? 30 MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: A Pay cut. That would be . Increase the gasoline tax, but not the E real property tax. That’s an . Okay that’s the easy part. Now, what do we want to do with all of our A’s, which are all personnel related? It kind of goes along, it actually kind of blends into the agenda item, how we’re going to proceed. Because it seems to me we probably ought to pull out the personnel related items, some of which are redundant and could be exactly the same person who made the comment that we got from our employee solicitations and perhaps there’s even some from the department heads. If we’re going to be looking at personnel issues we should do it all in a bundle. How would you like to do it? As a group? I don’t think we need another subcommittee. MR. ARMOUR: Well we have this suggestion. We have 144 other documents and there’s a lot of same type of suggestions in there. So if you’re going to do something with these, we should include them all together. MS. NICHOLSON: Right because ultimately what we want to do is look at all of those suggestions, decide which ones might be viable. Put it in our draft. Send it to HR, or the Police Department, Fire Department, whichever one it’s relevant to, and get their comments back on those suggestions. So, I think we’re going to do it as a group. And then the question is how do we get all of those A category things from everything we’ve gotten so far including this, together in one cohesive whole, that we can go, okay that’s the same as that, that’s the same as that, that doesn’t make any sense. How would you like to go about it? Do you guys have any suggestions? Seems like we need to go through all of those suggestions that we got from the employees again and from the departments again. Should we talk about this now or is it, or is it how we’re how we’re moving forward? MS. GARSON: You still want to inaudible suggestions. MS. NICHOLSON: Well it’s generated from this, but it’s really how we’re dealing with all suggestions. MS. O’HARA: I think it would behoove us to look collectively at all A’s and all related comments that we’ve received previously, and formulate that into a couple of paragraphs that describe all the issues that are presented because there are so much commonality between these comments. MS. GARSON: You really could start again like how you have done. Say using a goal, the draft. At the top of my head, there have been at least in here, two or three on four 10-hour work days. And that was something that went into the draft report, it inaudible going to the four 10-hour work day. As you’re going through these, then you could say we already put it in there. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. How about, I’m willing to go through all of that stuff again. And I’m not willing to retype all of this stuff again, but to just sort of summarize the suggestions and then we can talk about all of those various personnel things. So I will 31 do the personnel stuff, what we’re calling A’s in this document. But I’ll also go through the department suggestions and the individual employee suggestions and try to summarize the main or common suggestions, and then we can discuss how we want to word them for the draft, if we want to do that. I don’t know when I’ll do that, but I will do that and I’ll let you know at that point, hopefully by the beginning of February. Okay. So that’s how we’ll handle the A’s. Someone else want to volunteer to handle the B’s which is basically mostly vehicle use, mileage reimbursement? Eileen will do that. I think we only had one C which was outside services. Maybe that’s really an A. MR. ARMOUR: We could probably put it in with A. MS. NICHOLSON: I think it’s probably an A. D. We’ve already delegated D to the Operations subcommittee. E to Revenue Enhancement. F to the Tech subcommittee. So then we’re on to the G’s which are the energy savings items. And that’s as far as we got was G. Would someone like to volunteer to look at the various energy savings suggestions that we got? MS. O’HARA: Patricia’s not here. MR. ARMOUR: She’s on the E’s. I think the E’s have a lot of things to look at. MS. NICHOLSON: I think E’s,we just gave a whole lot of stuff to the E’s. So, you got a big thing with property tax. I don’t know that there’s a lot of this energy saving stuff. A lot of it did in the Tech. MS. O’HARA: Okay. Let’s consolidate itwith the Tech. MS. NICHOLSON: And we’ll put that into F. So all the G’s are going to now go into the F committee. MS. O’HARA: Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other discussion on Comm. 2010-144? So we have moved to accept and file. So are we done with this? MS. GARSON: Now that you’ve taken care of everything, you just vote on the motion to file. MS. NICHOLSON: All in favor of the motion to file? ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MS. NICHOLSON: Any opposed? Abstained? None. MS. NICHOLSON: All right. Comm. 2010-144 has been accepted and filed. 32 REPORTS FROM SUBCOMMITTEES: MS. NICHOLSON: Report from subcommittees. I think this is not going to take too long to go over reports from subcommittees. Do we have a report from the Operations, Budget and Consolidation subcommittee? Gloria and Glen. MR. MATSUDA: None. MS. NICHOLSON: No report. Okay. Do we have a report from the Revenue Enhancement and Collection subcommittee? MR. ARMOUR: No, we haven’t. I was gone the last meeting and Patricia is gone this meeting. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Do we have a report from the Technology Recommendations and Adoption subcommittee? MS. O’HARA: I do have something to report. We are awaiting written recommendations from Data Systems per our November 3 subcommittee meeting, and I came to understand this morning that a couple of the e-mails that I had sent did not get received by them. So they weren’t aware of the deadline that we were trying to impose upon them. They will try to get something to us before the end of this calendar year. MS. NICHOLSON: So, do we want to –we’ll think about that when we talk about the future agenda whether to put on the agenda. DISCUSSION REGARDING ITEMS PREVIOUSLY RECOMMENDED TO BE PLACED IN DRAFT REPORT: MS. NICHOLSON: Moving on to Agenda 7, Discussion regarding items previously recommended to be placed in the draft report. So my understanding is this is a summary or what we have already stated goes into the draft report. We added another two or three items today. What do we want to do with this? MS. GARSON: In some of these things here, we did pull from things that were discussed, but you didn’t officially say, yes I want this in the draft report. It just wasn’t worded that way, but we picked them up from the minutes that seemed the consensus of the commission to move those forward. So if you just want to go ahead and review them and make sure that we got it all correct and captured. MS. NICHOLSON: So what we have here, this is like a one line summary of those? Or is this it? Is this all that will be in the draft report? It’s like for A, is that one line? MS. GARSON: That is what the commission said, so if you would like to expand on it please feel free to. 33 MS. O’HARA: May I make a recommendation? Perhaps we should go over each of these and just make sure that the wording that has been provided is what we want to receive in the report. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Does that work for everybody? MS. O’HARA: For instance in item A, I’m not sure that monitor is the operative word. I would say we would ask them to review their process for qualifying agricultural property tax exemptions and consider including financial documentation. That would be more the recommendation that I would put forth. MS. NICHOLSON: But at the same time, Ken’s subcommittee is still working at this issue and so how we want to express it in afinal form to me is still going to come out probably of that subcommittee and probably more detailed than what we see here. MR. ARMOUR: There is a lot more that we’re looking at then just that one line. MS. NICHOLSON: So, I agree with you. What you had just suggested. I think monitor is probably not the right word for this. MS. O’HARA: And it sounds like it may be a little too early to finalize the actual language that we want to appear in the report, if I’m understanding you correctly. MS. NICHOLSON: So what we can do is go through these and fine tune what we have in front of us, but realize that we’re going probably add some explanation. We’re going to figure out how we’re going to categorize these once we see more of them. So shall we go through them one-by-one and just fine tune any wording we have at the moment? And we’ll just continue to carry them forward and we can add to them, rearrange them as go forward. So for A. We have some suggested different wording. MS. O’HARA: Hopefully somebody took that down. MS. NICHOLSON: What do we have? Review the process for qualifying agricultural property tax exemptions and consider including financial documentation to show agricultural activity. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, B. Implement software solutions –we’re fine with the way this is currently worded? MS. O’HARA: No, it’s toogeneral. Number one, this is a specific recommendation to a department, the Department of Environmental Management. And the recommendation is to implement software solutions to coordinate collection of tipping fees at the scale house and insure accounting systems are able to read the data. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Let’s have that. Can we move on? C. Regulating septic and grease haulers. 34 MS. O’HARA: That was a question that came up for the deputy director. He was unsure of the situation. I can report back that there is a requirement for septic and grease haulers to register with the county. I still think it would be a recommendation to charge a fee for regulating the services. MS. NICHOLSON: As I recall, the discussion was about the fee and he didn’t know what the fee was. So, do we want to fine tune this recommendation and suggest a fee? And if so, I don’t have a clue what that would be. Eileen do you have MS. O’HARA: A dollar amount? I have no idea. MS. NICHOLSON: So, how do we want to word it? MR. MATSUDA: Can we just say charging a fee? MS. NICHOLSON: Actually part of that was an annual fee versus a one time fee, was it not? So it was an annual fee. Do we want to say something about some range or leave it wide open? MS. O’HARA: Commensurate with what other counties are charging. Perhaps we could put it in that type of language. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. So we have that an annual fee. MS. GARSON: Okay, so what is it that you want to? MS. O’HARA: Recommend the Department of Environmental Management investigate charging a MS. NICHOLSON: Not investigate. Just charge an annual fee. MS. O’HARA: Okay. Department of Environmental Management charge –well number one. Department of Environmental Management regulate septic and grease haulers and collect an annual fee for registration commensurate with fees of other counties in Hawai‘i. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. On to D, explore annual renewal fee for solid waste haulers and require all haulers to be current on solid waste bills to reduce delinquencies. Any fine tuning to that language? None. E, consolidate enforcement. A lot of fine tuning on that one I think. MS. GARSON: This is from the MS. NICHOLSON: Mr. Leonard’s information. MS. GARSON: Yes, his information. MS. NICHOLSON: And he specifically said what enforcement areas could be consolidated. And can we not just pull that out of the minutes? 35 MS. O’HARA: We can, but we also had a broader discussion on this item about the need for the county to consider looking at this, establishing a new enforcement division and how that would work, and what other departments would be involved, personnel trading and so on. And we talked about having a task force to set that up. MS. NICHOLSON: So it was actually formation of a compliance division which would span MS. GARSON: Do you want me to read the various paragraphs. Paragraph 6 – consolidate enforcement. I recommend that the enforcement responsibilities of the Planning Department, Building Department, Real Property Tax, Environmental Management and Department of Health (as a contracted effort from the state to the county, since this is a state function) be consolidated into an enforcement division of the Police Department. And then he goes on about the benefits. MS. NICHOLSON: I think we agreed that it was going to be called compliance for one thing. And that I think we need some explanation of why we’re recommending this one because it’s basically a whole new department. So, I think we need to explain what we’re trying to achieve by this consolidation. And having read the minutes again in the last couple of days, it’s really so that there’s one compliance officer that goes to a property. So I think that’s what we want to capture in this item. Comments? I think we need to summarize what we’re trying to achieve here. MS. O’HARA: Iagree with you. MS. NICHOLSON: Would someone be willing to just draft like three sentences about or a paragraph of what it is we’re talking about here so that it’s a little bit more. MS. O’HARA: I would consider doing it. I don’t know that I can have it done by our next meeting. But I will attempt to. MS. NICHOLSON: So when you get it done, then we will just, it’s still an item we’re carrying forward so it’s just new wording for E. So we don’t have to separately agendize it, so when you get it done and we can just put it in. So, when she gets it done, can she submit it to you so when we get the next version, set language is just there? MS. GARSON: Sure. MS. O’HARA: And then we can discuss it. MS. NICHOLSON: We’re on to F. Ken do you want to do anything with this one now or leave it as is until you get all of your recommendations? MR. ARMOUR: Well, it will eventually be combined all into one. So I’d say leave it for now. MS. NICHOLSON: Mandatory bus trade-in program. This was both for county vehicles and for tour operators? 36 MS. O’HARA: All buses. MS. NICHOLSON: So, is it something like required that all commercial, would that include school buses? I guess. They’re Roberts or something. All commercial buses purchased for use in the County of Hawai‘i come with a mandatory trade-in provision. MS. O’HARA: The problem with that is that the term bus is very general. You could be talking handicapped van versus a 66-passenger school bus. So, I think it needs a little better definition then just bus. MS. NICHOLSON: So would it be commercial passenger, commercial vehicles designed to accommodate 15 people or more or something like that? Because it seems to me the smallest vans that most of tour companies use are 15-passenger van. MS. O’HARA: They have the 24-passenger bus. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah, but the smallest one is 15. And I’m not even sure that this was really what he was talking about, those smaller vans. It’s the big ones. So the big ones are 40, aren’t they? If we’re talking about defining, now is the time we can define. Again this is the draft so we can fine tune it. So if we want to say MS. O’HARA: Buses that accommodate more than 40 passengers. MS. NICHOLSON: 40 passengers or more for use in the County of Hawai‘i? MS. O’HARA: When registered for use in the County of Hawai‘i must demonstrate they have a MS. NICHOLSON: Trade in provision? MS. O’HARA: But this is something, excuse me, discussion wise, this is something that would need to be a change in code? MS. GARSON: It would likely. And again, I’m not sure that your commission necessarily has to be concerned with those types of details rather than big policy idea. MS. O’HARA: I’m not really sure who we are making the recommendation to just generally making the recommendation to the County Council. MS. GARSON: Your report will go to the County Council and to the Mayor and be published. So if it requires a Code change, it would be the County Council. MS. O’HARA: But it’s not specific to the department of motor vehicle? MS. NICHOLSON: Well, it wouldn’t be our responsibility to figure out who is going to do it. It’s more like how we want to present it. Are we presenting it when we’re saying these are things for the Real Property Tax Division or these are just general? 37 MS. O’HARA: So this is under the general category. That’s what I’m asking cause I’m not sure that it’s a particular department. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah, I don’t think we have enough to start categorizing. So do we have the, did you capture the MS. GARSON: Where you stopped I think. I’m kind of surprised. Require that all commercial buses that accommodate 40 passengers or more when registered in the County of Hawai‘i for use are MS. O’HARA: Are required to demonstrate that they comply with a trade-in program. MS. NICHOLSON: Once we see it we may fine tune it. Auto Salvage Fee. Let me just throw something out here. That all vehicles when initially registered in the County of Hawai‘i be charged an auto salvage fee of at least $100 per vehicle? MR. MATSUDA: We’re talking about new vehicles, aren’t we? MS. NICHOLSON: When he talked about it he said or the first time it’s registered. You may go buy a car in Oahu and bring it over here to register so the salvage fee applies to this county. But it’s not retroactive if you have your existing car. It’s whenever you first register a vehicle on this island. So, it’s a one time fee. MR. ARMOUR: Maybe you shouldn’t put in the dollar amount. MR. MATSUDA: Yeah. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. We can do that. MR. MATSUDA: But then let the council decide the amount. MS. NICHOLSON: He was recommending $150. MS. O’HARA: $150 is a standard fee. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, do you want to put a standard fee in there or just leave it open? MR. MATSUDA: Well, by putting in the $150 MS. NICHOLSON: We could just say auto salvage fee to cover the cost of disposal. MS. O’HARA: So, we recommend that the first time a vehicle is registered in the county an auto salvage fee is assessed? MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. MS. O’HARA: That’s our recommendation. 38 MS. NICHOLSON: I–County code review/update schedule. MS. O’HARA: We recommend the county establish a schedule for reviewing and updating the County Code. MS. NICHOLSON: Does that work for everybody? J –Permanent Deputy Director positions. Actually I have some mixed feelings about this one. The recommendation was that the deputy directors of departments not be appointed but be regular county employees. Civil service employees. How do you feel about this one? MS. O’HARA: I personally am not in favor of including that one. MS. NICHOLSON: I’m not. I feel like there’s probably another side of the story that I would like to hear before I’d like to include it, but how do you guys feel. MR. ARMOUR: I don’t have enough information on it. MS. NICHOLSON: Again, we could include it in the draft. We could see what kind of feedback we get in it. We could choose to study it a little bit more and maybe talk to some other people and get some more feedback. We can leave it as is. We can elaborate on it. We can take it out. What’s your feeling? I would like to take that out personally. MR. MATSUDA: I’m sort of leaning towards that. The idea of having a permanent deputy director is, well it was explained. But you want a director who can work with the deputy director also. Again, like everybody else, at this point, I have mixed feelings on this, but it would be good. The idea is good to have the continuity as far as the department is concerned as to what’s going on cause you have the deputy director who is already working there. But what if he can’t work with the director? MS. NICHOLSON: We could phrase it so that we encourage the county to explore the merits of making the deputy directors civil service positions. And so we’re at least saying there might be some merit in this. Take a look at it. MR. MATSUDA: Yeah. Then if the person, the director who is coming in will already know who is the deputy director, so he’ll already know whether he can work with that person. MS. NICHOLSON: Gloria? MS. WONG: No preference. MS. NICHOLSON: Ken? Well how about we rephrase to recommending that the county explore the merits of making the deputy director positions a regular civil service position. MR. MATSUDA: And they can take it from there. 39 MS. GARSON: I don’t want to complicate this, but you do have to probably add in or similar ranking position because not all second in commands are called deputy directors. At Water Supply it’s a manager. I’m the assistant. MS. O’HARA: I would actually prefer removing it, personally. MR. MATSUDA: Yeah. To me we should maybe remove it. MS. NICHOLSON: Do we have a consensus? I don’t know if we actually voted on this, but. MS. O’HARA: Did we have to vote on removing it? MS. GARSON: No. You put it in so you can just take it out. It’s just a draft. It’s not the final. MR. MATSUDA: I think we should just remove it. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Is that okay? J is gone. Create Type II housing. Again I think it needs a lot more explanation of what Type II housing is. And I think we have a good explanation in the minutes when he explained it to us. MS. GARSON: It’s in the letter. You discussed it. I think, what exactly the commission, how the commission wants to word it, it may be good to hear from the commission. MS. NICHOLSON: Do we want to look back to the minutes and just figure that out right now. MR. MATSUDA: Do we need to do the definition or the wording now, or we can do it anytime? MS. NICHOLSON: We can do it any time. MS. GARSON: Sure. My intention is to, I’m going to carry this item continually forward on all of your agendas so you can tweek it better on all future meetings. MS. NICHOLSON: Does anyone know the number of that communication of Scott Leonard? MR. MATSUDA: It’s on the last one. MS. NICHOLSON: Actually I’m looking at the minutes where he described it. And it starts on page 14. It’s like the middle of the page is when he actually talks about minimum square footage, 120 square foot. But it doesn’t really summarize because he’s talking about allowing things like composting toilets, water catchment, so I think we might have to say what some of the elements of this would be. I would rather just try to get it done right now and not go like to the next one. Now we still need to look at this. 40 The things I would pick up from here would be a water catchment system, allowing catchment, composting toilets, MR. MATSUDA: Do we want to be that specific or just have it MS. NICHOLSON: Well, we could put it –a home that meets minimum health and safety requirements, but not restricted to the current building standards. That’s pretty much a quote from the minutes, which might include minimum square footage. Composting toilets, water catchments and could be added to on a modular basis. And another key concept for that housing was that it already be approved so people don’t have to go get the architect stamp. So it would be standardized modular housing that meets minimum health and safety requirements and may include things like composting toilets and water catchments. MS. O’HARA: Sounds good. MS. GARSON: So is it for the Building Department to allow? Is it for the county to allow standardized MS. NICHOLSON: I think it’s got to come from the county down. MS. O’HARA: The Building Code has to be changed. MS. GARSON: standardized dwelling? Is it home? Or housing? Do I keep housing? The County of Hawai‘i allow standardized housing that meets minimal health and safety requirements but not currently compliant with the Building Code. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, I don’t think we need to add that in because it’s not standard building code compliant, but I think it needs to be standardized modular housing that meets the minimum health and safety requirements and may include such things as minimum square footage, composting toilets and water catchments. He didn’t really talk about electric. I don’t know if we want to make that. MS. O’HARA: Professionally wired. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, I think they would figure out what that is. I don’t think we need to get into professionally wired and stuff like that. Is that okay for now? Okay. L – Beneficial suggestion program. Did we like this? I can’t remember that we actually,I think we removed beneficial suggestion program. MR. MATSUDA: Yeah. I think we removed this. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, we can decide now. Do we want to remove the beneficial suggestion program? Yes? L is out. Anything else with Agenda item 7? Again we’ll continue to fine tune this. Eileen you were going to do something? MS. O’HARA: E. MS. NICHOLSON: You were going to draft up some wording for E. 41 DISCUSSION REGARDING ITEMS TO BE ADDED TO THE LIST OF RECOMMENDATIONS TO BE PLACED ON DRAFT REPORT: MS. NICHOLSON: Okay we’re on to item 8. We have a half an hour left to go because Eileen has to leave at 1:00. So can we keep moving through this so we can get to our agenda. Isn’t item 8 really quite similar to item 7? These are things that we already agreed that we wanted to move forward. MS. GARSON: These were the items that were contained in the report that you discussed. But there wasn’t any definitive direction from the commission as to whether or not these were going in the draft report or not. They were just sort of put out there. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. So let’s decide if we want these items in. We’ll go one-by-one to also go into our draft report. Okay item A -Laserfiche, video conferencing, multimedia communications –should we leave that in for now? Any objections? Okay, B –Boards and commissions evaluate scheduling of their meeting – do you want to leave that in for now? Okay C –Departmental resource pool –two Economic Development Specialists II. Gloria, this is one that you had advocated for. Do you have any comments, fine tuning to this recommendation? MS. WONG: The way this is worded, it was an excerpt, and I don’t have a copy of the report. I think it was like would be simpler into a one liner. The intent was to have someone focus on health and education industry. I forget how the wording went. MS. NICHOLSON: I can tell you in a flash how the wording went. MS. WONG: Since you’re on the committee, do you have it? MS. NICHOLSON: Health and education industries be reviewed by the commission as possible focus within R&D departments two Economic Development Specialists II positions. Okay, is that one that we want to keep in our draft report for now? MS. O’HARA: What wording are we keeping in? The wording from the report? MS. NICHOLSON: We’re actually rewording it to say health and education industries to be adopted as focus positions within Research and Development department, Economic Development Specialists II MS. O’HARA: Can we reword that? It’s a little awkward. We recommend having two Economic Development Specialists II in R&D focused on health and education. MS. WONG: I don’t know if there needs to be two, but there are two positions. That’s why I put the two positions in. It could be one person doing the two industries. MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s try to get at least some draft wording here. MS. WONG: A person 42 MS. O’HARA: So, One Economic Development Specialist position be created in R&D focusing on health and education MS. WONG: Let me just clarify. I’ve tried going around and asking, should it be in R&D? Should that be in Finance? Should it be the Mayor’s Executive Assistant or something? I’m not sure where it should be. I’m just trying to get someone in to focus on education and health care industries. But I put that in that one because that’s who we met with that week. MS. O’HARA: Was that R&D? MS. WONG: Yes. MS. O’HARA: And were they receptive to that idea? MS. WONG: No, not really. MS. NICHOLSON: I think what we need to do is if you can work on the wording that you think is better, we should go ahead and carry this forward and we’ll see it again next time. And maybe next time you can recommend more appropriate wording to this? MS. WONG: Well, you’ve been doing really good on wordings. MS. GARSON: Recommend creating a position dedicated to focusing on health care and education industries. MS. NICHOLSON: Would it be an Economic Development Specialist? MS. O’HARA: Not necessarily. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. So we have new wording for that one. MS. WONG: It’s simple and kind of clear. MS. GARSON: And you’re not telling them where to create the position. You’re not telling them what the position is going to be called. You’re just saying you’re recommending creating a position. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. D –Consider grants as revenue enhancement for programs potentially within R&D, Finance or Mayor’s office. MS. O’HARA: Chair. Just point of order. Before we move on, I think in making that recommendation, Gloria, can we understand how it’s going to benefit the Cost of Government enhanced revenuesor something like that? MS. WONG: From the first meeting with Bill Takaba, he said, what are the primary functions, essential functions of the county? And so we reviewed and I brought in that report about these particular functions. The two that were not addressed were health care and education. 43 MS. O’HARA: So, back to that over arching idea that we need to look at the critical and essential services of government, this is a recommendation that we’ll put forth when we give our review of the County of Hawai‘i as addressing what we consider the essential services of government. MS. NICHOLSON: I think so. How we reflect that in the report. MS. O’HARA: In that section of the report. Okay. I wanted to see where it fit into the report. In my mind I was trying to build a report in mind. MS. NICHOLSON: Anything else on C? We’ll move to D -Consider grants as revenue enhancement for programs potentially within R&D, Finance or Mayor’s office. I’m not really clear on what this is saying. MS. WONG: I’ve been encouraging the idea of getting grants for the county, the county pursuing more grants. And the departments are, some are, some are not. We’ve met with different departments. I’ve asked where it should be, could be? Are you folks going after these grants? And I haven’t had a solid answer on where it should be. R&D does not go for grants. I think we’ve talked about this before. So, I don’t want to recommend that it go to R&D if they’re not inclined to where it’s at. When I asked Finance if it should go in there, they said it could. But when I mentioned that I thought the best place that it would be would be in the Mayor’s Office so the mayor would have an overview of any grant programs. And Finance said they thought that would be the better option. Right now grants are written by whoever has time and has the incentive or desire to do it. There’s no real pro-active move towards going for grants. And I think there are grant monies available besides R&D just notifying the departments that there are grants. MS. O’HARA: So this mirrors the previous recommendation in that I think what I’m hearing is that you’re recommending that a grant specialist position be created to work with all departments in the county. MS. NICHOLSON: It’s like consolidating the county’s grant writing, centralizing and consolidating them and if we want to say under the Mayor’s Office, we can say under the Mayor’s Office. If that seems like the logical place. MS. O’HARA: It does seem like the logical place. MS. NICHOLSON: So, it’s consolidating all grant writing activities –or is it are we really recommending hiring a grant writer? MS. O’HARA: We are recommending creating a position I think. And the language should mirror that other creating the specialist. MS. WONG: And one of the reasons I hesitated in saying that in particular –I don’t know if one of the executive assistants already has that ability and can do it, and so it doesn’t have to be created. But the sentiment is that 44 MS. O’HARA: I don’t know if it’s a matter of ability. A lot of people in the county has the ability to write grants. It’s a matter of resources and not having time. They have other jobs to do. And I think that is one of the reasons that we do not pursue as many grants as we could possibly be doing, is not having that dedicated position. MS. NICHOLSON: So what do we have now? What is our wording now? Cause we wanted to mirror what we had on the previous one. MS. GARSON: Recommend creating a grant specialist position? MS. WONG: Do we want to put in, in the Mayor’s Office? MS. O’HARA: To work with all departments in the county. MS. NICHOLSON: Consolidating grant writing efforts or centralizing grant writing efforts. MS. O’HARA: Centralize grant writing efforts by creating a Grant Specialist position to work with all departments in the county to improve the county’s ability to receive funds from various sources. MS. NICHOLSON: And then we can add if we want that we recommend that this be considered a position in the Mayor’s Office? MS. O’HARA: That may be. I don’t think we even have to go that far. Cause that could be a discussion. MS. NICHOLSON: We can. We can leave it in or now and then we can look at it again. MS. WONG: It could be administratively placed. MS. NICHOLSON: We’ll leave off where it’s going to be placed. MS. O’HARA: Yeah. I think that’s enough. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. E –Implement a county-wide technology management plan. MS. O’HARA: I’d like to carry this forward until we receive the report from Data. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Anything else on Agenda 8? DISCUSSION REGARDING CONSOLIDATION OF BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS: MS. NICHOLSON: Agenda item 9 –Discussion regarding consolidation of boards and commissions. MS. GARSON: May I recommend that you defer this to the next meeting or until when Mr.Takaba is here. 45 MS. NICHOLSON: Because we thought he was essential. Okay, so we’ll just carry item 9 over. DISCUSSION REGARDING APPROACH TO TAKE TO TIMELY ACCOMPLISH MANDATE OF THE COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION: MS. NICHOLSON: Item 10, Discussion regarding approach to take to timely accomplish mandate of the Cost of Government Commission. Have we resolved all of our problems? Are we moving on all right to everyone’s satisfaction? Okay. Fine on 10.We’ll just continue to carry that item forward. DISCUSSION REGARDING FUTURE MEETING DATES MS. NICHOLSON: Discussion regarding future meeting dates. We actually have gone into March. Do we need to move forward from March, or are we okay? We’ve got coming up, January 14. We have here. We got January 28, which we know that Ken will not be here for that one. We’ve got February 11 and February 25. We’ve got March 11 and the one that we have for March 25 we have moved forward to Wednesday, March 23. And do we go to April 8? And then for April 22 we moved to April 20. Do we need to keep going? Are we okay through April 20? MR. MATSUDA: Yeah, that’s enough. MS. WONG: If I remember correctly, there were two meetings that we knew someone was not going to be there. I forgot which ones. But I think we were trying to stick to either Wednesday or Friday, for consistency. If we know someone is not going to there, can we not just choose another day? MS. NICHOLSON: We can. I know that I will not be there for April 20. MS. O’HARA: The date in question right now is January 28 when we know Ken is not going to be here. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah. But I think we can start with January 28 just knowing that Ken won’t be here. MS. WONG: But that’s what I’m saying. Can we change that option now just because if someone else gets sick or something, then we have to cancel. If we choose one that we sort of know that everyone is okay. MR. ARMOUR: Well, that meeting, if you’re depending on me, you would have to move it February 2 or 4, but then you would have back to back meetings. MS. WONG: So you’re gone for a long period? th th MR. ARMOUR: I’m gone from the 16to the 30. MS. NICHOLSON: I think we should stick to where we are now knowing that someone will be missing. So anything else on the future meeting dates? 46 ITEMS TO BE PLACED ON THE NEXT AGENDA: MS. NICHOLSON: Items to be placed on our next agenda, which is our January meeting. MS. GARSON: May I just ask the commission’s preference –at this point, my intention again is to leave item 7, which is Items Previously Recommended to be Placed in Draft Report. And in the new wording from what you did today, we will move the items in 8 up and for all future agendas we’re going to have that running list. They’re going to get longer and longer so that you can see the big picture. And you can discuss all of those things at every meeting and fine tune it. Is that okay with everyone? MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. MS. GARSON: And rather than waiting for committee reports which takes two meetings, we could always add an agenda item that will have a specific recommendation that you can discuss at the meeting. If the committee meets and you have the wording for a recommendation and you want to discuss it at the next meeting, we can put it on the agenda if you just let the secretary know to put it on. Then that way everyone can discuss it. You won’t have a chance to discuss it inaudible before it goes on the agenda. It just gets put on the agenda. MS. NICHOLSON: A So, if I go through all those items, all those personnel items, I’m not sure I’ll have a recommendation, but I will have a list of things. MS. GARSON: And what I’m saying is would you just like that to be, you know it’s like discussion regarding the following items as potential items to be put in a recommendations to be put in the draft report, and then list it, all of them. MS. O’HARA: Or we could have a discussion on the summary that Marilyn is going to put together of all of the A which were having to do with personnel. Is that not specific enough? MS. GARSON: I really don’t think that it is. And one of my concerns, the committees are supposed to help and expedite things. And I’m almost feeling like, in some instances it’s slowing us down when you’re coming up with a report. So, therefore if we can just put it on the agenda, you can discuss it right then and there. MS. NICHOLSON: So, if I come up with actual recommendations on MS. GARSON: But let’s say, you don’t even have to word it. As long as it’s sufficiently enough indetail, so if a member of the public happens to be interested in it they would comment off of your opinion. That’s fine for agenda purposes. MS. O’HARA: So for instance, she could say, she could submit a summary of all recommendations received from county employees addressing cost savings through adjustments in working hours, pay scale, that sort of thing? 47 MS. GARSON: Tell me what you envision doing. Maybe I’m looking too sophistically. I’m really thinking that you’re going to go through all of it and you see that there are five suggestions for four 10-hour work days. And all that would be on the agenda is discussion of four 10-hour work days. MS. NICHOLSON: Can we have communications from, say could I put it in the form of a document that then would become a communication that you would list as a communication. MS. GARSON: No. MS. NICHOLSON: So we couldn’t discuss it that way. I don’t know what this is going to look at quite frankly. I’m going to look at all of it and probably categorize it, but I think really that we need to make the recommendations as the commission rather than me making recommendations as an individual on the committee. I would rather that we go through and go, well, do you think this is viable? Or not viable? MS. GARSON: No. And that’s what you’ll do. It’s just a matter of how you –I’m just listing that as a possibility and then you can discuss it. MS. O’HARA: So I’m taking on the vehicle recommendations and so I would submit discussion on recommendations received from county employees regarding use of personal vehicles in lieu of county vehicles, and just do a short bullet of list of the recommendations that I’m summarizing. That’s what I’m understanding you to mean. MR. MATSUDA: That she needs to put recommendations, it was that, or is what she just said sufficient? MS. O’HARA: Then we can discuss it in here as to how we’re going to word it as a recommendation or if we want to drop it or whatever. I feel my assignment was to summarize all of the B’s, and do a bulleted list that kind of captures all of the recommendations cause many of them were similar regarding use of vehicles and how that can be a cost savings. And then if it’s on the agenda we can then discuss it and refine it into a recommendation. I think that’s what Kathy is saying. MS. GARSON: Right. That is what I’m saying. So if she gives us her summarized thing, those 15 summarized items, it can go on the agenda and you can talk about it and work with it, X them out. Do whatever you want. But it would be possible to do so. MS. NICHOLSON: So, it would actually be listed. So, under mine, an item might be four 10-hour days. MS. GARSON: Correct. You could just say, anything having to do with four 10-hour days. MS. O’HARA: Adjusting overtime. MS. NICHOLSON: I’ll try to do that. And I’ll try to do it in time to get it out for the agenda for the January meeting. 48 MS. GARSON: Right. All I’m saying is when you get to that point, the best thing to do is get it to us so that we can put it in the agenda and that way we can expeditiously move forward. Right now we’ve got, we’ve assigned certain things back to the subcommittee. So the next time the subcommittee is going look at that, the next time they come forward, it’s a report. Now you can’t discuss it at that meeting. You’re going to have to wait. MS. NICHOLSON: So I couldn’t even provide a handout for people that havea little more detail of what’s on the agenda? Cause we couldn’t discuss that. MS. GARSON: You can if it’s already on the agenda. MS. O’HARA: Okay. So that deals with A and B, but the other three were assigned to the subcommittees. So how are we going to handle that? The technology issues, the Dissues and the E issues. Are they going to come forward with a report in January on these and then it’s another meeting before we can actually discuss them? MS. NICHOLSON: That’s okay. MS. GARSON: You can just get us what you’ve got by the agenda deadline and we can just place it on. And of course, call the chair,is that okay if we’re just going to place things on the agenda as they come in. MS. NICHOLSON: And they are things that we will be expecting because of the reports that we know are coming in. We just don’t know when. Like Ken’s committee has a challenging time. MR. ARMOUR: What’s the deadline to get it on the next agenda? The seventh? MS. GARSON: You will need to get it to us I would say by January 5. Then that gives her the sixth and the seventh, the seventh is a furlough day. That gives us one day to put the agenda together if you get it to us on the fifth. Maybe it would be better on the fourth. The sooner the better. The very latest,the fifth because it has to be posted on the sixth because the seventh is a furlough day. MS. O’HARA: Speaking to agenda items, can we have an item to discuss the written recommendations from Data Systems as an item even though MS. GARSON: The recommendationsthat are coming from the outside from Data, we can put it on as a communication. MS. O’HARA: Okay. So it will be on there. MS. NICHOLSON: So as long as they get it MS. O’HARA: By the fourth or fifth. MS. GARSON: That they get it to Sandy. 49 MS. O’HARA: That will be okay. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other items for the next agenda? At this point we have no presenters. Do we feel a need to have anyone come and give us some additional information? No? ANNOUNCEMENTS: MS. NICHOLSON: Then we’re on to announcements. The next meeting of the Cost of Government Commission will be held on Friday, January 14, 2011, at 10:00 a.m., at the Liquor Control Conference Room, Hilo Lagoon Centre, 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230, Hilo, HI 96720. ADJOURNMENT: MS. NICHOLSON: With that the meeting is adjourned. Meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m. Respectfully submitted. Sandra Arriola 50