2011-04-27 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MR. KENOI: You talk about enhancements, right, pay for our transits. Pay for our roads. But if something is that glaring, that’s a call on us in government. You guys, Hawai‘i County is getting only 8 cents a gallon. Other counties getting 15, 18, 20 cents a gallon? So what’s the problem. We have to drive farther. We have to put more gas. I’m not trying to hurt nobody, but what I’m saying is if you guys see examples of revenue,equity, fairness, then no scared, throw it in. MS. O’HARA: We will. MR. KENOI: Yeah. That’s going to be helpful. But you got me thinking, yeah, we have to do better enforcement, collections. We have to do a better job. MS. O’HARA: So in that line, we may be making some recommendations to not create necessarily new positions, maybe one or two in grant writing because that would bring in a lot of revenues that we’re missing, but an enforcement department that incorporates all the different enforcement elements of the different departments that we have now. MR. KENOI: In one place? MS. O’HARA: In one place to streamline. You know you have the situation where a building inspector goes out and cites a problem but then they have to call in Planning Department, you know so all these different people have go out and visit the same site. If it could be consolidated it would be much more efficient. MR. KENOI: Yeah. That’s a good idea. We were tossing that around one time. People get MR. TAKABA: Scott gave a presentation. He presented that. MR. KENOI: Oh, he did. Scott, yeah. Compliance office. He’s on it. He went all over, and he jumped over heads. Hey, hey, hold on Scott. He kind of like, why you holding me back for. You cannot go jumping over all your department heads. But he’s intent was good and his thoughts are good. I was trying to get Mitch Roth from the Prosecutors, hey Mitch, why don’t you come. We’re talking like an Ombudsman. You know that same person, like because that came with the permitting like zoning inspection. You have a case, a challenge, you know the kind of call, Planning send their guy, write him up, he get mad, how come nothing happen, and he call the building, zoning, Public Works, they go, he calling me F that nobody helping me. I sent Hunter, go down and just mad cause all these different people coming and nobody, I mean it’s an extreme case. But if you had one office, one group, cause then I think people wouldn’t feel like they’re being bounced all over the place. And somebody would have some institutional memory of the complaint. People just feel like they getting the runaround from government. That should be a good recommendation. That gives us some reason to, and like you said, maybe not hire but MS. O’HARA: Not necessarily 18