2011-04-27 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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during the meetings. And also our staff time and staff work. But again, that’s my answer to the question if they could be combined. MR. MATSUDA: Currently, how many times do they meet? Do they meet once a month? MR. KUROHARA: Once a month. We still honor once a month. MS. O’HARA: Both? MR. KUROHARA: Both of them. But we’re kind of at the stage where it might turn to once every other month soon. So, that’s kind of like self-imposed cause we want that as well from our department stand point. But we got to a point where we’ve made a bunch of recommendations to the mayor and then from there, there’s some reassignment of some more work that needs to be done within the recommendations that have been put forth. But it could possibly go to every other month. Yes? MS. O’HARA: When you say recommendations have been put forth, we did hear from someone from the Ag committee, and they’re working on a comprehensive ag plan for the Big Island? MR. KUROHARA: Yes. MS. O’HARA: So what is the work product for the Energy Commission? MR. KUROHARA: What they were tasked to do was to put forth recommendations to the mayor in terms of transforming energy on this island to a more renewable, sustainable, and the mayor’s task to them was by, well, I guess the state has an initiative right now by 2030, we need to be by a certain level. The mayor wanted to do something, a bench mark sort of a shorter five year goal. So what they did was they looked over the last energy recommendations that was done by outside, a group study that was done. Had a bunch of recommendations that were made back a few years. So they looked at all of those and they kind of evaluated and ranked it and also thought of others. And then they kind of got it into sort of a maybe a top 10 or top 20 list which they put forth to the mayor just before the end of the year. One of those was to update this, to actually do what they feel is a real comprehensive energy plan for this island which is something that the mayor is looking at funding during this next current year’s budget, next year’s budget. So that’s one of the recommendations put forth. But there was a bunch that was put forth. MS. O’HARA: So will the commission actually be doing the study? MR. KUROHARA: You would hire someone to do something like that. MS. WONG: When this was first presented, the idea of combining those two commissions, I didn’t quite see the link and I was surprised about it. So I’ve been researching and hearing Pomeroy from the last meeting and hearing the rationale, it seems interesting to me and now makes sense to me. And I think Eileen, you were the one that brought it up initially. 3