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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-07-30 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 Friday, July 30, 2010 – 9:00 a.m. Department of Liquor Control Conference Room 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 230 Hilo, Hawai`i 96720 CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by W. Takaba at 9:00 a.m. MR. TAKABA: was asked to chair temporarily until we elect the officers. Can you go around the table and introduce yourselves. INTRODUCTION OF COMMISSIONERS Kenneth Armour Glen Matsuda Marilyn Nicholson Eileen O’Hara Patricia Provalenko Gloria Wong MR. TAKABA: Can you go around the table and introduce yourselves. I’m Bill Takaba with the County Mayor’s Office. MS. O’HARA: I’m Eileen O’Hara and I’m representing District 5, which corresponds to the Council member’s district that’s Emily Naeole-Beason’s district. I teach online graduate and undergraduate economics. I also worked for a bio-diesel company as business development specialist. I had previously worked for the County of Hawai‘i for five years and for the State of Hawai‘i. At the County, I was a planner and recycle coordinator. With the State, I was a contract manager. Prior to that I worked our local utility, electric utility, and several non-profits in town. MR. MATSUDA : My name is Glen Matsuda. I represent District 2, Donald Ikeda’s district. I currently work with the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. I’m an auditor and a supervisor there. I supervisor a bunch of people in both Hilo and Kona. I have been with the PTA statewide, the Jaycees, currently with the Lions Club. I enjoy doing work as an accountant, as an auditor, and I guess that’s my thing that I enjoy doing. Hawai‘i County is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer MS. WONG: My name is Gloria Wong. I am representing District 4, which is Waiakea to Keaukaha. My background is in strategic planning, marketing, recently grant writing and formerly real estate. MR. ARMOUR: My name is Ken Armour. We own an orchid nursery in Hakalau. I represent District 1. That’s Dominic’s district. We’ve lived here six years, and before that I was logistics manager for Philips Electronics. So, logistics background. MS. NICHOLSON: My name is Marilyn Nicholson. I am happily retired after a career of 20-year as an executive director of a couple of a non-profit organizations. I did serve on the Cost of Government Commission the last time around and most recently on the Hawai‘i County Board of Ethics. I did work for the State of Hawai‘i for awhile. MS. PROVALENKO: My name is Patricia Provalenko. I represent District 9. I own my own company. My company is called PATDI Incorporated. We do commercial leasing and management. I also served on the last Cost of Government Commission. Since that time I also served on the Salary Commission. Thank you. MS. ARRIOLA: I’m Sandy Arriola and I’m with the Mayor’s Office of Information. MS. CARVALHO: I’m Emarie Carvalho. I’m from the Corporation Counsel’s Office, and I’m going to be here helping today. MS. GARSON: Kathy Garson, I’m the Assistant Corporation Counsel, and I’ll be the attorney for the Cost of Government Commission. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC MR. TAKABA: Do we have any statements for the public? Did anybody sign up? MS. GARSON: No. a. Communication 2010-001: Transmittal from Kenneth G. Goodenow, County Clerk of Resolution 249-09. MR. TAKABA: Why don’t we move on to Communication 2010-001, which is the transmittal from Kenneth Goodenow, County Clerk. It transmits Resolution 249-09, which is in your packet just after the agenda. It basically speaks to sustainability and committing sustainability. So, you can take a look at it if you haven’t already. We need a motion to file if that’s appropriate. MOTION:MS. NICHOLSON: I move we accept and file Resolution 249-09. MS. PROVALENKO: I second. MR. TAKABA: Moved and seconded to file Resolution 249-09 along with this communication. Do we have any discussions? MS. WONG: I have a question. Currently who is on the Green Committee? 2 MS. GARSON: We can get that information. MR. TAKABA : The Green Team is basically County employees trying to promote sustainability within the County. MS. GARSON: There’s members from R&D, Department of Water Supply, and DEM, that I know of. MR. TAKABA: It’s County employees trying to promote sustainability within the County. So, the Green Team is mentioned in the resolution. We’ll get a copy of the names. Now we come to the good part. MS. GARSON: Actually, you do have a motion to accept and file, so if you just want to vote. So all those in favor. MR. TAKABA: All those in favor? ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MR. TAKABA: All those oppose? (None) Motion carried. ELECTION OF OFFICERS (Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson) MR. TAKABA: Election of Officers. We have two offices that need to be elected - the Chairperson and the Vice-Chair. Nominations are open for Chairperson. MOTION:MS. PROVALENKO: I’d like to nominate Marilyn Nicholson as chairperson. MS. O’HARA: I’ll second. MR. TAKABA: Moved and seconded to have Marilyn Nicholson nominated. Any other nominations? If not, will somebody move to close nominations. MOTION:MS. PROVALENKO: I move to close the nominations. MR. TAKABA: Move to second? MS. WONG: Second. MR. TAKABA: Moved and seconded to close nominations. All those in favor of Marilyn Nicholson to be chair of the Cost of Government Commission say aye. ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MR. TAKABA: All those oppose? (None) Motion carried. MR. TAKABA: So, Marilyn. 3 MS. NICHOLSON: I didn’t even get a chance to decline. MR. TAKABA: Does she continue from here or do you want me to do the Vice-Chair? MS. GARSON: It doesn’t matter. Marilyn, why don’t you just ask for nominations. MR. TAKABA: Why don’t we turn it over to Marilyn. MS. NICHOLSON: Nominations are now being accepted for Vice-Chair of the Cost of Government Commission. MOTION:MR. MATSUDA: I nominate Gloria Wong. MS. WONG: I would like to nominate … MS. O’HARA: I’ll second. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other nominations for Vice-Chair? MOTION:MS. WONG: I would like to nominate Patricia because she has been on the board before, on the commission. MR. ARMOUR: I second. MS. NICHOLSON: Oh, a contested election. Are there any other nominations for Vice-Chair? I’ve never been in a situation where there were two nominees. Do either of our nominees want to address their potential nominations? MS. WONG: I would just like to say that I’m willing. MS. PROVALENKO: If Gloria is willing, why don’t we just have Gloria be the Vice-Chair. MS. NICHOLSON: All those in favor of Gloria as Vice-Chair say aye. ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MS. NICHOLSON: Oppose? (None) Congratulations. PRESENTATION REGARDING COMMISSION FINANCES AND GENERAL OVERVIEW OF COUNTY FINANCES (by Deanna Sako, Deputy Director, Finance Department. Includes presentation on budget process, the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, and a question and answer session for Commission members on County finances.) MS. NICHOLSON: Now we are going on to Presentation Regarding Commission Finances and General Overview of County Finances. 4 MS. SAKO: Good morning everyone. I’m Deanna Sako. I’m the Deputy Director of Finance here at the County. I’m going to go over a couple of things today. I’ll be giving you a one-page handout entitled Boards and Commissions. This is basically what you as commissioners are entitled to. You can receive mileage from home to the place of the meeting, and we pay that at the IRS rate of 50 cents per mile. January, usually the rate changes and if it does then we’ll pay again the IRS rate.You’re entitled to per diem if you do travel inter island or out-of-state. Pretty much per diem is if you’re traveling off island overnight primarily. And also, it can be on the same island if you have to go to Kona. Or if you have an overnight meeting in Hilo, Kona members drive over or something like that. It does cover your meals, lodging, incidentals, while you’re on travel status. Cost can be claimed in addition to the per diem such as your airfare if you were going to Honolulu for a training session for example. But it has to be related to the conduct of official business. The hotel portion of the per diem is $50 for interisland and $85 for out-of-state. So, if there is anything in addition to that, you can also claim that as well, because it’s hard to find $50 hotel room on this island or Oahu actually. We computed in terms of quarter day periods starting from midnight, so if you leave at 7:00 a.m., that’s the part of day you’re in. Same day per diem just interisland travel is $20 and we do require original receipts. If you need to rent a car, the car rental shouldn’t exceed $75 a day, including the car rental expenses and parking. We do not allow people to take CDW or LDW because the county has a purchasing card that carries out insurance for us. And the rental has to be necessary and the cost reasonable and if people are traveling together, they should share a vehicle. If you eat a meal while on official business, we do need an itemized receipt for that. If you receive a per diem, then you cannot double dip and also get a meal reimbursement. We do not reimburse for alcohol purchases. Basically we do not purchase alcohol for any function, employee or board member. This is basically what you as commissioners are entitled to. I think Kathy, you have a budget set aside for them to cover any cost the commission might incur. Times are tight so don’t be too extravagant. MS. GARSON: I think our budget is only $3,000. I don’t think we’ll be taking any interisland trips. MS. SAKO: To kind of go over a little bit – the other thing you have is our Comprehensive Annual Finance Report which is basically our audited financial statements for last year, Fiscal Year 2009. We are on a June 30 fiscal year end, so fiscal year June 2010 just ended. I’m still waiting to hear who our new auditors are. The new CAFR won’t be out until December or so. But on page 54 in the CAFR, it does have kind of an outline of our annual budget process. Even though our fiscal year end is June 30, and our fiscal year starts on July 1, we actually start our budget process in September of each year, sometimes in August. And that’s kind of basically our budget kickoff meeting is to tell the departments what their goal is with their budget. Is it status quo like typically it is, or is it you need to reduce your budget like it’s been for the last few years because of the economy. The budget kick off meeting is really the Mayor’s opportunity to talk to his cabinet and the department, and let them know what their goal is. In a typical year, they would maintain a status quo budget. They would also be allowed inflationary increases. So if fuel prices are going up, we’d allow them to increase their fuel budget or if we knew there was a collective bargaining increase, then they would be allowed to put that in their budget. The last few years, they’ve been asked to reduce and reduce some more. Also as part of the budgeting process, they 5 also prepare their goals and objectives, and there’s a program budget that also goes along with the financial portion as well. We have two budgets, the Operating Budget, which is the basic financial obligations of the General Fund and our Special Revenue Funds. And then we have the Capital Budget which is basically our construction projects. The Budget Division is also part of the Finance Department so they’ll review each budget as it comes in, and then in January, they meet with each and every department to go over the numbers they submitted, why they need that amount, the reasons, if they have any suggestions or changes to recommend to them. Then the Finance Department meets with the Mayor who obviously has the final say in what to submit to Council. And the first draft to the budget goes to the Council on March 1. The Council then gets to review it and hold budget hearings with both the public and the departments. With the departments, it’s usually the last week of March. Then as we get additional information and our real property tax values have been certified, which doesn’t happen until April 19, then the May 5 budget goes in with the new amendments. Hopefully by then we also know any changes that the legislature may have made. So the May 5 budget is then submitted as the Mayor’s budget, that’s the final form, submit it to the Council. At that point, the County Council can start amending if they wish. The budget needs to be approved by the Council by mid-June so that it can be enacted into law before July 1. If for some reason action wasn’t taken, the Mayor’s budget would then be enacted on July 1. So, that’s kind of the quick and dirty process. At the same time the Operating Budget is being submitted to the Council, the Capital Budget is also being submitted. The Planning Department is responsible for compiling and submitting that information on behalf of the Mayor. One thing that’s different about the Capital Budget – it doesn’t have any funding sources that go in with it. So people can propose projects. And usually the source for funding is said to be bonds or fund balance or any general sources of revenue. That doesn’t mean we have money in place. So that project is just put on the budget and then as we do a bond ordinance or get additional financing, then that money is what we call allotted to each project and then they can start spending. Just because you have a capital project in the budget doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go and spend the money. Versus the Operating Budget, revenue and expenses have to balance. We must be in balance or we would be out of compliance with the Charter. So, that has funding sources. We have revenue sources listed, expenditures listed. They net out to zero, and so you are allowed to spend from the Operating Budget. As we go throughout the year, we also monitor the budget. We complete the monthly budget status report which list the expenditures and how they’re doing. It has the revenue, expenditures and the balance sheet the departments can look at. But now that we have our FRESH accounting system, it’s actually Financial Resource Enterprise System for Hawai‘i County, which is provided by Eden. Our software is purchased from a vendor called Eden. Basically the departments can go in run reports anytime they want to. It used to be on the Wang system, in-house system and finally in 2004, we were able to change over, and so now we have more of an interactive and live data base system. So, each department enters their invoices, it’s reviewed several times, several different levels before it’s paid. We usually cut checks once a week to each of 6 our vendors. Our departments also enter their timesheets, which are also reviewed and to make sure they are in compliance with the bargaining unit contracts. We pay twice a thth month on the 15 and the end of the month. You receive your current salary on the 15 and the end of the month, and then your overtime from one pay period previously. Today is payday for us. It would be difficult for us to pay the overtime that they just worked yesterday and let’s say today. So, that overtime that they worked from July 16 th to July 31 will be paid with their August 15 check. We do have eight bargaining units. Accounts Division is really the division within Finance that makes all the payments. They do the accounts payable checks, they do the payroll checks as well as all the record keeping and accounting. We also have the Treasury Division. That’s basically the division within Finance that all the money flows into. All the deposits are made there. The investments are taken care of there as well as the borrowing. The Treasurer is also very involved in the borrowing process and issuing bonds. We also review contracts for certification of funds. A recent thing is also the Expenditure Review Committee given that budgets are much tighter than they used to be. If you want to go, any out-of-state travel request, equipment purchases, professional services contracts over $25,000 that are not related to a construction project, and then all personnel request must come to this committee and be approved before they can go out and spend, just to make sure it’s well justified and needed, and so sometimes those things will be denied. Even after this Expenditure Review Committee reviews all the personnel requests, they still go to the Mayor and the Mayor must approve it before a department can hire someone. So, just as a way to scrutinize even closer the expenditures being made. Our CAFR is not a small document. With the addition of Gaspy 34, the financial statements are actually in kind of two pieces now. One is our Fund Financial Statements which is through government and County fund-by-fund, more on a budgetary basis, although there are definitely some accruals made. And there’s now, what’s called a government wide set of financial statements. This is to put it on a full accrual basis so that you can, it’s more comparable to for-profit business. You’re better able to tell if you’re making money or not. And in government, we try not to make money. Basically, on page 13, is the management’s discussion and analysis that goes along with the financial statements that you can peruse at your leisure. But at least it also explains some of the increases and decreases that happened during the year. The actual financial statements themselves start on page 26. The first two pages are the statement net assets. Some of you are probably more familiar with the terminology balance sheet. And that’s what this is. We list all of our assets including monetary assets, all our capital assets, infrastructure, as well as our liabilities, both current and long term. Our net assets is what some people refer to as fund balance, but now we have newer language. So, for governmental – there’s two columns primarily – governmental activities, which is the basic operations of the County, as well as business type activities. And those are our proprietary funds that are meant to be more business like operations. We only have two and they both are housing projects – Kulaimano and Ouli Housing. So, it’s a relatively small portion of our operations. But governmental activities would be our General Fund which basically funds each of our basic 7 department – Police, Fire, Finance, Corporation Counsel, Planning, Prosecuting Attorney, Mass Transit, Parks and Recreation, Public Works – part of Public Works Administration, as well as the Environmental Management Administrative Offices. We also have several special revenue funds like the Highway Fund, which is funded by fuel tax. We account for that separately so that we can track that fuel tax and where it’s going. Sewer fund is another special revenue fund that’s tracked separately and is currently self sufficient. Their revenues aren’t really enough to cover the operations. Then we also have Solid Waste Fund, which is all the transfer stations, landfill, vehicle disposal fund, golf course fund, as well as our housing fund.Those are the major funds. There’s actually several more. But those all get rolled up into governmental activities fund. The next two pages are statement of activities which is more like an income statement. It breaks it up into functions or programs. In our governmental activities we have general government, public safety, highways and streets, health, education and welfare, which would be both housing and aging type of programs, parks and recreation, sanitation and interest on a long term debt which would be our bonds. The first column is expenses. Our revenues are actually broken up into three types. What we collect from charges for services, what we collect for operating grants and contributions as well as capital balance and contributions. At that level, we have a large negative. If you look over to the right and that expense, because way at the bottom are the general revenues which are primarily our property taxes that we receive as revenue as well as some public service company taxes. The utilities, our telephone companies, pay that instead of property taxes. We also have some franchise taxes and fuel taxes as well as some general grants primarily on the TAT, Transient Accommodation Tax that we get from the state. Any investment earnings are miscellaneous revenue. So for last fiscal year, FY-09, the change in assets was just about $12 million. This format also includes depreciation and other non-cash expenditures that were going out. The Department of Water Supply is a semi-autonomous department from the County, and so they’re considered a component unit within our financial statement. So, Water is just listed as a component unit on the side. Next page on page 30, is the balance sheet. This is more of the governmental accounting level so there is no depreciation included there. There’s also a reconciliation to get you between the components. Pages 32 and 33 are more of the typical income statement people are used to seeing. On page 36 is where you get a feel for actually what the original budget was, final budget and our actual expenses and any variances for the General Fund. So that just gives you an idea of how our department might have at the end of the year last year. After that our proprietary fund statements as well as the trust fund statements. Trust funds are those funds that we hold on behalf of others. One example would be the state motor vehicle weight tax. We collect all the vehicle registration fees. Part of that is for the state. 8 We have footnotes. And there’s a green divider tab. And any of the smaller funds are actually the list that’s starting on page 86. You can see what the funds are, highway funds, sewer funds, solid waste fund, cemetery funds, parking meter fund, vehicle disposal fund, workforce investment act fund, golf course fund, geothermal relocation and community benefits fund, which primarily benefits the district of Puna, beautification fund, housing agency, and park dedication fund, as well as our interest and bond redemption funds. So these are just a few of our special revenue funds. That was just a quick overview of our CAFR for those of you that enjoy reading financial statements. The Finance Department is more that willing to help throughout the course of your commission. So if you ever have any questions, any special reports run, we’ll do our best to accommodate those needs. And now if you have questions on anything related to what I talked about, or anything from the Finance Department, feel free to ask. MS. NICHOLSON: I have a question. So you said that there’s not a payroll lag. MS. SAKO: There is no lag. MS. NICHOLSON: In other words, if you worked yesterday, you’re going to get paid if today is payday? You worked yesterday, you’re going to get paid today? MS. SAKO: Yes, for your base salary. We are the only county that does not have a lag. And we are looking into it hopefully to help payroll operations run smoother. But right now it’s working out fine so we’re sticking with the way we do it. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other questions for Deanna Sako? MS. O’HARA: On the Special funds. I’m familiar with some of the funding sources but not all of them. Maybe you could just explain quickly where the funds come from so that we understand that. MR. ARMOUR: What page are you on? MS. O’HARA: Page 86. MS. SAKO: In think in terms of source of funds if you turn to page 90. It’s kind of statement of revenue, expenditures and changes in fund balance. But the fuel tax that the County collects when you buy gasoline at the gas stations goes completely to highway fund for them to maintain our roads. Part of that fuel tax money is also going to the capital project fund for repaving of roads as well. Another live source of revenue for the highway fund is the public utilities franchise tax such as HELCO would pay a percentage of the revenues. Licenses and permits as well. Then any time you see intergovernmental, that’s basically grants from either the federal or state government. Sewer Fund, their largest source of revenue is charges for services which would be sewer fees, the monthly bills that people on the sewer system have to pay. Same thing for Solid Waste Fund – they have $9.4 million from basically tipping fees or charges for services. They have some grant money as well. In their case, if you were to follow the Solid Waste fund column down on page 90, near the bottom, you would see that they actually have expenditures for greater than the revenue they bring in from their tipping 9 fees. And that’s because that transfer in of $19.1 million comes from the General Fund to help support their operations. So, that’s a significant source of revenue for them. We have three funds that we primarily consider to be subsidized, basically that are helped out by the General Fund. That’s Solid Waste, Golf Course and the Housing Plan. But Solid Waste is by far the largest of those. Cemetery fund has a few plot sales basically included in that. Parking meter fund – any money we collect from the parking meters which are getting fewer although they seem to be coming back. Vehicle disposal fund gets a portion of the motor vehicle registration fee that’s paid. Bikeway fund is from bike licenses. Workforce Investment Act is entirely a federal grant that helps put people back to work. Golf Course fund is primarily from green fees. The Geothermal Relocation and Community Benefits Fund is actually a percentage of revenues or royalty paid by Puna Geothermal. Beautification fund is also a fee paid with the vehicle registration fee. And the Housing Agency is almost, not quite, we did have to subsidize them now, but primarily federally funded by HUD for various programs. A big operation in the Housing Agency is the Section 8 Rental Assistance Program. So that under health, education and welfare, a big portion of that $15.5 million going out of Housing fund is really rental subsidy payments to help the public. Park dedication fund – that’s a fund not used much anymore. It used to be that as developers developed an area, they had to make a contribution to a park dedication fund. Now there’s something called Fair Share. And the debt service funds, all the money is transferred over from the General Fund to make our debt payments on the next page. Hopefully that answered your question. General Fund, our main fund is definitely real property taxes, the transient accommodation tax and then any other federal grants that we get, as well as some charges for services or fees. MS. WONG: I understand you to say that all of the grant is in the intergovernmental? MS. SAKO: Yes. MS. WONG: Transportation, transit, didn’t they get a big grant last year? MS. SAKO: They did. MS. WONG: Or is it not showing on this one? MS. SAKO: Transit is part of the General Fund, so it’s going to be combined unfortunately with all the other ones. Each of the departments have been getting several grants and what it comes down to is the year in which they expend it. So depending on when they bought the bus for example. But the General Fund last year received a total of $54.8 million MS. WONG: Which page or you on? MS. SAKO: Page 36. I’m on the revenue portion. The expenditures of those grants are kind of combined into the departments. But part of that $54.8 million of intergovernmental revenue were for transit and for buses. Page 36 in the actual column. There are several that are combined. 10 MS. WONG: And Office of Aging’s grants would be in there as well? MS. SAKO: Also in General Fund, yes. So, they are actually the first one like programs for the aged was like $1.4 million. And they have several from the state as well. We actually have several grants and now with the stimulus act and the RRA there’s actually even more federal grants. MS. WONG: And when grants are written, is it written through Finance or is written through the department? MS. SAKO: Each department is responsible for writing out their own grant applications. We just help them with the accounting and making sure it gets carried forward to the next year if appropriate. MS. WONG: Thank you. MS. SAKO: We do stick on them to make sure they’re supposed to be doing the recording and we try to help them as much as we can. But ultimately the department is responsible for carrying out the grant and all the related reporting. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other questions? We will have a chance of course if we choose, to further investigate the Finance Department, so we can ask more specific questions then, but do we have any other general questions now? Okay thank you very much. Thank you very much. Now if you don’t mind, we’re going to go to, actually it’s what’s up there on the screen right now – we’re going to skip Item 6, and we’re going to go to 7. We want to try to knock off the things that are not procedural so that some of the guests might be able to leave, then we can get into our more procedurals. So, if there are no objections we would like to go now to item 7, followed by item 9, and then we’ll go back and pick things up in order. Any objections to that change in the agenda? None. PRESENTATION REGARDING DUTIES OF COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION AND APPROACH TAKEN BY PREVIOUS COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION (by the Office of the Corporation Counsel) MS. GARSON: I thought you might want an introduction to basically why you are here, and what do you need to do, and how long do you have to do it. What I have up in the screen is the duties of the Cost of Government. This comes straight from the Charter. We put this in your binder so you have this Charter provision in your binder, but what the Cost of Government Commission is supposed to do is study and investigate the organizations and methods of operations of all departments, commissions, boards, offices and other instrumentalities of all branches of the County government and determine what changes if any may be desirable to accomplish the policies set forth therein. And that is contained in the County Charter under the Cost of Government. 11 What is the policy set forth? The County Charter also tells you what the policy of the County is. It is declared to be the policy of the county to promote economy, efficiency and improved service in the transaction of the public business in the legislative and executive branches of the county by: 1.Limiting expenditures to the lowest amount consistent with the efficient performance of essential services, activities, and functions. 2.Eliminating duplication of overlapping of services, activities, and functions. 3.Consolidating services, activities, and functions of a similar nature. 4.Abolishing services, activities, and functions that are not necessary to the efficient conduct of government. Now you have what you are set up to do. That is the policy. How does this commission go about doing it? As your chairwoman indicated, what the Cost of Government Commission is authorized to do is you can get directly, from any department, commission, board, office, other instrumentality of all branches, so that’s legislative, County Council, your administration, other County government or from any other individual officer or employee of the County, information, suggestions, estimates and statistics necessary to carry out the duties. So, what Ms. Nicholson said to Deanna when she was leaving was, the commission can have an opportunity to call her back if they have any questions, which is true. And it’s because of this County Charter section. So you are authorized to just basically ask any department to come aboard and answer questions that you might have. Subpoena power. What is your end product? You must submit a report of your findings and recommendations to the mayor, managing director and council not later than 11 months after its appointment. There is a little bit of ambiguity here as to after its appointment. What we’re going to do is we’re going to use today as your date of swearing in since you could have not done anything prior to today anyway. The provision in the Charter regarding the Cost of Government Commission that was first passed in the year 2000. So, it is a fairly new commission, not much history. First report was done in 2003. You also have a copy of this report in your binder. The first report, the commission could only finish analyzing 11 departments. If you went back you saw that what the Charter said was you should analyze all of the departments. The commission only got through their final report with 11 of them. I have them listed up on the screen, Aging, Corp Counsel, the County Clerk and Council, Finance, Fire Commission, Fire Department, Housing, Office of Management, which would be the Mayor’s Office, Mass Transit, Parks and Water Supply. In 2003, that commission also completed draft reports. They did draft reports on Environmental Management, Police Commission, Police Department, Planning and Public Works. It worked on six – Civil Defense, Civil Service, Data Systems, Liquor Control, Prosecutors, Research and Development. What I believe that first commission was struggling with, it’s a monumental task. You have 11 months. You’re supposed to look at basically all functions of County government. So, they basically, within that time frame they were able to do it. The second report was completed on January 9, 2007. What that commission did was saw input from all the commissions, all the departments, got the input, and based on the input, they chose to focus on certain departments although all of them are mentioned in the report. It really focused on Environmental Management, Police Department, 12 Planning and Public Works. And what I believe it was, was those were the basic departments that if you recall from 2003, there was draft and so the commission decided we’re just going to finish this off. So, with that, I’ll just remind you that report is due in 11 months. The report is going to get done in 11 months, however, and in whatever state that it is in, we’ll have to turn something in, in 11 months. And as I said, I’m using today as the date of the beginning of your 11 months. So you have until June 30. That was all I had for duties of Cost of Government approach taken. What I also brought, part of what the approach taken was the 2007 commission, what they had decided to do was send letters to all of the departments and boards and commissions. All I did was make copies of those letters, a sample of a letter for you. This was just the approach of what the 2007 commission did. Just so you have an idea. If you look at this letter, what it basically did was sort of outline, actually in the first three, it sort of mirrors what the suggestions were, what the mandate is in the Charter for what the Cost of Government had to come up with. And there are some other questions that the commission came up with that they wanted specific responses from all of the departments for. So, you can see one of the issues that they had come up with – privatization and modernization projects. So basically the communication was sent out sort of early on to get the department and commissions’ suggestions and analysis of their own department. The suggestions have come from within. So, that’s all I have regarding your duty, what you’re going to need to do of the last commission went about doing it. I can answer any questions, but I think the next item on your agenda, which the commission needs to decide is how are you going to approach this. How are you going to approach your task? How are you going to get the information that you need to get? Is there information that I can get for you? If you’re talking about documentation, reports, that’s something that our office can provide to you. Those are the things that you are going to need to discuss and come up with for Agenda 9. Are there any questions about what your task is? Okay, that’s all I have for item 7. MS. NICHOLSON: Thank you for dropping that wonderful bomb on us. We obviously have a lot of work to do. Actually, I would like to hear from Mr. Takaba first, to see if you have any thoughts to send us on our way before we get into some real discussion here. MR. TAKABA: As Kathy was going through the roles and responsibilities of this commission, it made me think about the core responsibilities of the County government – what are they? You hear a lot about people say you have to look at core County government services and just fund those programs that belong within this core. But we never heard anyone go beyond that and really identify what the core County services should be. We can look at the Charter. I think that’s the best place to begin, and look at what departments are created within the Charter, and I think we start to focus on those responsibilities. That’s what County government should be. Just focusing on what the Charter tells us we need to focus on. And through the creation of certain departments like Public Works, Police, Fire, Water, we kind of get a sense of what we’re supposed to be doing. Along the way we started to shift our focus, and we started to get into state responsibilities. I think when that happens, we start shifting our resources to the wrong place. From my perspective, I think we should really look at what core 13 County services are. If you look at number 1 on the Cost of Government Commission when we set the commission up, if you look at the Charter, the section where it says Charter, number 1 talks about limiting expenditures to the lowest amount consistent with the efficient performance of essential services, activities, and functions. Unless we really define what they are, it’s hard to determine how we limit our expenditures, how we look at consolidating, overlapping services, and what services we really don’t need to get into. Number 4, it talks about abolishing services that are not necessary. And I think to get to number 4, we need to define what services are necessary – public safety, Public Works. How far do we go with health care? How far do we go into education? These are what we consider state functions. If the commission can come up with a real strong statement on what core County services are, that I think would be farther than any commission has every gone. What they’ve done is start from the middle rather than the beginning. I think the beginning is really identifying what the core services are. Then it makes our work at lot easier. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, let’s open it up for general discussion and try to get some thoughts with those. Thank you very much for those thoughts on how we might proceed, because we need to just get running here right away since we only have 11 months. And as you saw in previous reports, there were always complaints about 11 months is not sufficient to cover this much ground, so we’ll get as far as we can. Suggestions on how we might proceed? MS. GARSON: So, we’re moving on to Agenda Item 9? MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. DISCUSSION/ACTION REGARDING APPROACH TO TAKE TO TIMELY ACCOMPLISH MANDATE OF THE COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION Includes discussion/action on the methodology and sequence of analyzing the departments/boards/commissions to determine what information is needed and how to gain that information. MS. WONG: When we say 11 months, in fact shouldn’t we get something out before March 1, because March 1 is the first draft of the budget, so we should have some commentary to the Mayor before he is devising his budget. MS. NICHOLSON: We can certainly do that if we want. I’m not sure that any of the suggestions that have been previously made have been taken terribly seriously. Hopefully we will. So we can set a deadline for ourselves before that to get something, a draft out. MS. WONG: I was trying to look at when the previous commissions sent in their report, and I see one is in February. I didn’t get as far as to look at when the other one was done. MS. NICHOLSON: I think those were because of when the first meetings were held. We’re starting late, quite a bit later than we should have been. I believe that we were supposed to start January 1. 14 MS. GARSON: Normally within one year after the mayor is appointed, either December or January. It would have been January of this year or December. MS. NICHOLSON: So that’s why we’re starting a little late. That makes our challenge even harder in trying to get some input in to the next budget cycle. MS. WONG: And less than nine members. MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. MS. O’HARA: I have a question for Mr. Takaba. You mentioned that the County Charter has more explicit language about the essential County government services that are identified for this County. We only have the small section of it. MS. GARSON: I’ll get you a copy of the full Charter. It’s also available on the County’s website. I think what you’re referring to is just the departments set forth in Charter and their mandate. MR. TAKABA: The Charter created the departments. The framers of the Charter had in mind what county government should be doing. They put those departments to carry out these functions within the Charter. I think the Charter would be good to have so that you can look at it and get a grasp of how we differ from the state or federal government and what our responsibility should be. I mentioned that example before where I talked about health, education and welfare. It would be more of a state function. It’s listed in the constitution that way. Parks and Recreation, recreational activities would be a county function. And that’s listed in the Charter. There is a separation. There may be some overlap but there still is a separation between what the County government should be doing and what state government should be doing. Transportation might be an example like the county does with our Mass Transit Agency. The state, they’re doing more airports in their transportation system. They’re doing airports and connecting counties to different counties. The county do more roads and highways that connect areas within a town. I think we need to really define where we separate county and state, as well as the federal responsibilities. If you look at the Charter, you’ll get a better idea of what county government should be doing. MS. NICHOLSON: I do have a question about that. How much of what the county does is driven by the funds that may be available? MR. TAKABA: I used to work for the Office of Aging. The federal government sets up a mechanism to get federal funds down to the county, the lowest level of government, to the counties, communities. A lot of times we’re driven by money, what’s available and how we can add to the communities. We start to question, and there have been questions about why is county government doing aging services. Isn’t it a state responsibility? There’s a State Executive Office of Aging. Is it really a health care issue? Is it more recreation? So, a lot of it depends on how we deliver a service. If we are delivering recreational programs, and that’s how Aging started on the Big Island. It was more of a recreational program. And that fit in with Parks and Recreation. And that’s why it’s housed at the Department of Parks and Recreation. And as federal funds 15 grew, became available, the federal government started to define how services would be delivered and what kind of services they’re going to fund. So, they said the counties must set up this certain type of system in order to get the funds through the counties. And if you don’t, then we’re not going to give you any federal funds. That was like either you restructure or you lose the federal funds. And that’s the kind of questions that we’re going to be faced with as a commission to decide. There’s a huge amount of resources from the county that’s been put into these programs that service matching funds for federal programs. The question you can ask is should we be dedicating so much of our resources to match the federal funds that come down, but shouldn’t be the county’s responsibility to provide? That’s just some fundamental questions, is it worth putting up all, because if you look, Deanna talked about how much goes into Aging. From my experience we had like one-third federal, one-third state, and one-third county. So we put in just about the same amount as the two other branches of government. These are philosophical questions. Aging is not in the Charter. It’s created by County Code. Did the framers of the Charter have that in mind? MS. GARSON: Mass Transit also is Code, right? MR. TAKABA: Mass Transit is also a Code. MS. WONG: The two reports that were done before, can we get a summary of what was acted upon and their recommendations, or if anything was acted upon or it was just submitted? MR. TAKABA: It was submitted. MS. GARSON: I think that in 2007, that you did go back and ask all the departments on what the recommendation was, which were implemented. MS. NICHOLSON: From the prior report. MR. TAKABA: The reports came up. I think we have to look at the timing of the reports. Remember when the reports came out, the county was flushed with money. We had a lot of money to spend. So, the priority at that time was not so much what we’re gong to cut, but more like what we’re going to fund. I think we’re in a different period right now. There’s going to be a lot of attention given to report that comes out of this commission because I, myself, would be curious too, as we face another shortfall next year, what the commission recommends because that’s going to be very important. What kind of programs to abolish. It’s not going to get any better next year that we see this year. We’re looking at actually having to go in there and possibly cut programs. And that’s why this question that I bring up is very important to you because as we look into next year’s budget, and when I say next year I mean next fiscal year. When we propose next fiscal year’s budget we’ll probably face looking at what kind of programs that we eliminate. And that’s why this is important. That’s going to come up. MS. NICHOLSON: Yes? MS. O’HARA: Regarding the difference between agency and being in the County Charter, for instance take the Office of Aging, could some of the functions of that, could 16 it be more flexible? Could there be an interagency structured that would allow you to maintain programs for which there are funding, such as federal funds and state funds that are coming down without eliminating the office entirely, since it’s been established by Code? MR. TAKABA: The reason why it got into the Code was it started of as the Committee on Aging. It was just a committee, like the Committee on Disabled Persons. It started out as a committee and then when the funds came available, then this committee was endowed with these huge grants and they had to start this program, so it came not by choice, but that’s the way we were set up. If you’re going to continue in that direction, you should be put in the Charter, and that could be a recommendation for the commission to make if you’re going to commit to something like that. As far as the interagency, where you’re talking about state versus county, within MS. O’HARA: No, I’m talking about within the county. MR. TAKABA: Because right now, Parks and Recreation has Elderly Activities Program. They do all the services. Office of Aging, which is a non-Charter organization provides funds to run these programs. So, in a sense there is an interagency thing going on where one agency is funding another with all this federal funds that they’re getting. But the law that allows them to get this money says the guys who fund programs should not run the programs because if not, then there’s going to be a conflict to have just build, build, build the programs, and not look outside at what kind of existing agencies there are providing similar services. If you look at the grants from the Office of Aging, we give grants to the Elderly Activities as well as other organizations like Department of Health, Legal Aid Society and all these other nonprofits – HCEOC, all these nonprofit organizations. That’s because they don’t want to have the duplication that some places have when they receive the grants. They just build county programs up and pretty soon we have this big program that would be better served by another organization like Legal Aid Society. It makes sense for us to give legal services to the Legal Aid Society rather than do it in-house because we don’t have the resources to do all our own programs. But the tendency will be let’s build our own. Let’s hire our own attorney and do a legal program within the county. But that’s not the way we should be doing it. We should look at the agencies throughout the county and putting it out to bid. Somebody can do a better job and more efficient job, then give it to the one who can do it most efficiently. But we did keep certain services within the county that we thought was core county responsibilities, like transportation. We give a lot of funding by, Office of Aging provided a lot of funds to the Elderly Activities Division to run the transportation program. We give funds for recreation programs. The kind of services that made sense to contract with the counting, another agency within the county, and we did that. But services that didn’t make sense if it was an educational program or something like that, we give the money to University of Hawai‘i, Office of Continuing Education. So, there is that interdepartmental relationships going on with granting the funding. But, I think it goes back to what kind of services or programs will the county maintain. If it’s within that core, I think it makes sense for us to do it and give ourselves the money or run it ourselves. If it’s not we should give it to another organization. MS. O’HARA: So, how large is our Office of Aging? 17 MR. TAKABA: When I was there they had seven. Now I think it’s grown to about 10. MS. O’HARA: Would it be possible to have an agency that handles simply grants for different purposes? Would we still be able to receive federal funding for instance if we didn’t have an Office of Aging, if it was allocated to the same activities? MR. TAKABA: The way that the Older Americans Act is set up – see, they have this network throughout the nation, about 700 agencies like the ARC doing the same thing. But some of them are not in county government. Some are privately run with a non-profit and they do the same thing as the Office of Aging does. So that is something that could be considered. MS. NICHOLSON: I think rather than getting sort of focused on one department, I think our main task is to figure out how we are going to proceed, and then we can get into specific departments of which your question I think will apply about the federal funds. I think we sort of have a suggestion on the table that we, rather than look at individual departments, we sort of focus on core departments that are listed in the County Charter. I feel a little uncomfortable discussing them without knowing what those departments are that are in the County Charter. Is it easy to get? Could we take a quick break and get a copy of what those are unless someone knows right of the bat which ones – Oh you got it. MS. GARSON: Sure. I have my Charter here. As far as departments are concerned. MS. NICHOLSON: Or core functions. MS. GARSON: It doesn’t really read that way as far as setting up core functions. This is like the constitution for the county. So, it would set up the County Council as the legislative branch. The Office of the Mayor, Office of the Managing Director. Say as an example there is the County Reapportionment Commission. Are you only interested in the departments as opposed to commission? MS. NICHOLSON: I’m more, giving a little bit more to the point about what Mr. Takaba said about health, education, transportation are not MR. TAKABA: They are not listed. There’s no county agency in the county that does health programs. MS. NICHOLSON: So, when you say listed are you talking about something that is specifically in the Charter or kind of get MR. TAKABA: Well, I think we should look at what’s listed as departments. MS. GARSON: Okay. So we have a Data Systems department. That’s in the Charter. Department of Public Works, Department of Parks and Recreation, Fire Department, Corporation Counsel, Department of Finance, Planning Department, Department of Research and Development, Department of Environmental Management, Department of Human Resourses, Police Department, Department of Liquor Control, Department of Water Supply, Prosecuting Attorney. And that’s all. And Emarie just pointed out, let me 18 see. There is a list of some things also in your annual report, but those aren’t necessarily limited to Charter. MR. TAKABA: I just want to clarify, I’m not saying that all we’re taking is the Charter start. What I’m saying is that that’s the start to look at what’s in there. There might be others in the County Code that you feel should be core services – as I said, Aging, Mass Transit, which I think is. We shouldn’t limit our discussion to just these core services because if we want to eliminate anything, we need to find out whether that’s, cause they may be rightfully eliminated if that’s what we want to do. If we don’t discuss it, it’s like it’s still going to exist, it’s going to continue. We should take a broader look and decide which ones we feel should be addressed or discussed. I’m just looking at what the responsibilities are. It talks about eliminating expenditures to be consistent with the efficient performance of the central service activities and functions. Until we define what they are it’s hard to say eliminate or cut off stuff. And that’s all I’m saying. MS. NICHOLSON: So, is there a statement in the Charter of what the really core functions of County government are? MS. GARSON: No. MR. MATSUDA: In the beginning I think Bill, what you mentioned is that I guess what you wanted to get from this commission is if anything is to define what the County core services are, and how we’re going to attain that is going to be another situation. With the bleak economic situation coming up, I think that’s where you’re coming from. Because with all these departments involved, to me every department is essential, but what I heard from you was that you wanted to get an idea or at least some kind of recommendation from us as to what do we feel are the core County services. Am I correct? MR. TAKABA: Yes. To guide us. We’ve talked about core services. We’ve talked about it very loosely. Somebody say what do you mean by core services? You’re going to say well, it could be public safety. It’s real generic. I don’t know if that’s enough as we look at, you know we’re kind of an elimination mode, cost cutting mode. If you think about it, you have to make sure that what you’re doing is there’s a purpose to what you’re doing. MR. MATSUDA : Right. And just to continue on, I was looking at this here, is this done annually? The Notice to All Employees? I saw this from Barbara Bell. MS. GARSON: No, it was just an attached letter that was sent out by the last Cost of Government Commission. MR. MATSUDA : So, it’s not done annually, like everybody gets this and everybody throws it out and says okay, whatever, what their opinions are, this department or what did this department need. MS. GARSON: No. 19 MS. NICHOLSON: So, what I’m hearing is there’s maybe sort of two and maybe even more than two approaches on the table. One could be to go directly to the departments, the commissions, basically what the approach was taken last time, and ask them how they feel they might experience some savings or cost cuttings or ideas. Or to take a larger more global approach is look over all of the county and first focus on what really the county should be doing and maybe do some prioritization of those kinds of things. Is that what I’m hearing? MS. O’HARA: I think so. I think you’re on track with those two approaches. I think they can be done simultaneously. I don’t think it’s one or the other. It sounds like what we need to begin with given those suggestions about defining what are the essential core services that this county is focused on would be to do a review of the County Charter and perhaps the code that list the agencies that had been created, and extrapolate from that what we perceive is what the county is going to intend in those services. So what are the core essential services, prioritizing them would be really good in terms of further evaluating savings to government. I think we’re still going to have to go through a department review to what extent we want to do that. Do we want to limit the number of departments or how we want to approach that is up to the commission. But I think we’re still going to have to do some focus on departments, perhaps take a look at those that are fully funded by General Fund, look at those that have some revenue sources that are partially or fully funded independent from the General Fund. How we want to prioritize what departments we look at is something that we should probably decide as well. But, I also note, I saw this letter to the employees and I was wondering did they get any feedback that last commission that sent this out as a broadcast Notice to all Employees? And what is that feedback incorporated in the commission’s work. MS. NICHOLSON: There was not a whole lot of feedback from individual employees. It varied with department, from department to department because I think the encouragement came from their supervisors to what extent that they should participate. And I would say some departments were more open to that than others. MS. PROVALENKO: Yes, exactly what I remembered. But we really didn’t get a lot of feedback from the employees within the department. It generally just came back with the supervisor. MR. ARMOUR: Was there much feedback from the supervisors? Because I glanced through this and there was a lot that said no recommendations and was that just that a summary of what they said? MS. NICHOLSON: It was that the department, if we had someone appear before us, the department’s supervisor, whoever it was who represented the department be it the director, the deputy director, in some cases gave us an overview of how the department works. But we didn’t really come up with any suggestions from them. So, it wasn’t that they didn’t respond, but that we just didn’t see any place we could really go, and we wanted to spend time on the ones we felt we could use our time. 20 MS. PROVALENKO: And as Mr. Takaba said, at that time we had money, so this is a whole new animal going in here now. So, it’s more like how can we make it more efficient. Efficiency was probably the main focus at that point in time. MS. NICHOLSON: Rather than cost cutting it was efficiency. I think this is a whole new world. MS. O’HARA: Efficiency is cost cutting. MR. TAKABA: We also interviewed the departments. We had the departments come up. It was helpful. MS. NICHOLSON: It was very interesting. It was very helpful for us to understand how various departments worked. But all and all, I’m not sure that we did get, we didn’t go too far down because there’s so much ground to cover. So, I guess I’m trying to figure out a way where we can actually get some substance done here. MS. O’HARA: I like the format of this formal letter, but I think it can be improved upon. If we do something like this to the departments and just make it more specific. Every question here is very open ended. Do you see any ways to consolidate services? Please give us two ways that your department can consolidate and be real specific on the questions. I think we might get better information back if we’re a little more demanding on our approach and clear in what we want then to provide. I think it would also, something missing from all of these questions - is there anyway to enhance revenues? A lot of these departments have external sources of revenue whether it be from fees collected, grants. Revenue enhancement is part of the picture that I’d really like to hear from the departments on ways that that could be accomplished. Those are some things we could add into a letter to the departments. MR. MATSUDA : Yeah, that is good because they’re the ones that are running the so called departments. They would have ideas or as far as suggestions of where we can cut or we can elaborate on. But bottom line as she says here is just getting the idea of the focus on where, because they’re doing it every single day, where they can say okay, I don’t see you with this, or we can cut down or curtail on this. Then at least it’s a start for us, then we can start the ball rolling from them and continue from there. At least it will give us an idea where to start. Because the bottom line is how we are going to start for each and every department. And by having something like that, I think it will be beneficial, however it’s their response that’s going to be given to us if any kind of response like Ken said here, there was no response or whatever. I think that’s the focus on what needs to be done or what we need to accept. Once we receive it then the ball’s in our court. At least, I think that’s a starting pint. MS. WONG: I think if we send out a letter similar to this or a survey before our next meeting and we can get those responses that will give us at least some data to take the next step towards how to approach. And from that information we can maybe look at the core government responsibilities along with the Charter. And part of the reason that I was asking about the grants, which departments have grants, when I looked at the departments I felt why is Parks and Recreation handling things that I thought Office of Aging should have. Any maybe some things could be privatized and some things 21 cannot, and I thought well, there’s some things you just cannot touch. And those are the core government responsibilities. But we have to have a lot of data in order to see which we can eliminate to even consider privatizing or cannot touch. So, I’m going to leave that alone. I was also wondering, does the Mayor have regular monthly meetings with his department heads that he would be asking the questions that we might want to ask and we already have the answers? MR. TAKABA: He has monthly meeting, cabinet meetings, but its usually pretty short. He doesn’t go into real details. MS. WONG: Is it mostly them reporting to him? MR. TAKABA: No. It’s more like, there are some of that going on but it’s mostly like he’s giving us some of the things that are going on and giving us directions on what he sees what we should be doing about it, giving his thoughts, setting some policies as to what we’re going to be doing over the next few months. MS. WONG: On Oahu, Jeremy Harris, I used to attend his monthly meetings and at every meeting, and I’m marketing background so I appreciate his marketing stance, but he would ask at every meeting, each department head had to come in with what piece of paper procedure can you eliminate from your department, and what thing did you do to improve customer service in your department. So every department head had to report on those two things. If that kind of mentality started from the Mayor’s meetings, what we might be suggesting or asking we could collect quickly from those meetings. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other comments? I have something I’d like to throw out. What role do we feel the public might have especially in helping us get a handle on those core services? Now if we start to invite the general public in, we will be here forever. But on the other hand, it is the public who is very much affected by those core services. And the last two reports have not really involved the public. Do we feel that there is a role for the public to have some sort of input in helping us have that discussion about core services in particular? MS. WONG: I for one am very much in favor of community participation. Whether we accept it, but I think they have a right to contribute. And another aspect is if we were even thinking of maybe suggesting changes especially if there are employees involved, the union will have to be invited to speak on it. MS. NICHOLSON: Did you have a comment? MS. O’HARA: I think it’s very important too, to get public feedback, but I think once we come up with some potential recommendations. What we need to do initially I feel is evaluate what is on the books and how the county is currently operating through the County Code and Charter to establish the essential services and the other types of services that they’re providing. I think we need to evaluate where the county is at now before we can move forward with those recommendation which will include the feedback from departments as well as input from the public. It’s a lot to accomplish in 11 months. 22 MS. PROVALENKO: I think we need to figure out, we need to consolidate and come up with our version of what is the core from the Charter, and then take it out to the public. I think it needs to be done that way first. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. So, I’m kind of hearing a two-pronged approach. Number 1 is we all need to have a copy of and study the Charter and then maybe individually before our next meeting because we cannot communicate with each other. And we will be hearing about the Sunshine Law later, so we can communicate through Katherine, right? MS. GARSON: Or you communicate at the meeting. MS. NICHOLSON: So, we can go through the Charter and make our own personal recommendations about what we feel some of those, we’re not really looking at core departments, we’re looking at core services, because really the department is not so relevant, it’s the service that needs to be provided to the public. So, it seems like that’s one thing we want to tackle right away. And the other is getting some sort of communication out to, I’m not sure if I’ve heard this clearly, to the departments or to all the employees asking for some quick input. MS. WONG: I would say the department heads at this point. MS. PROVALENKO: This notice is to all employees. I’m wondering if a supervisor or the department head can’t put this out and then take a consensus from all the employees in that department and put something up to us. MS. O’HARA: The way that it was done previously was it was sent with a letter to the department head and the last paragraph says we’ve also enclosed this notice, if you can place within your department. Again it comes down to whether or not the supervisor promotes this or not. But that seems a good approach if we want to hear back from the employees. MR. ARMOUR: I think the employees should go directly back to us versus going to their supervisor because I’ve had experiences with supervisors. Things that they don’t want, they filter out, and so it never comes forward. MS. PROVALENKO: The only problem is how many employees do we have in our County government, and how many pieces of paper will we use. MR. ARMOUR: And how many will actually respond. MS. O’HARA: Not many. MR. TAKABA: You could do it through e-mail. MS. O’HARA: That’s how it’s done here, either mail in or e-mail. 23 MS. NICHOLSON: Is there a way that we as Cost of Government Commission could send something out to all the employees by e-mail. I don’t know how you could communicate with some. MR. TAKABA: Well, somebody has. Is it H.R? MS. GARSON: It can be done but you wouldn’t reach all the employees because not all of them has e-mail address. MR. TAKABA: You could put something in with their pay stubs. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. MR. TAKABA: Directing them to who to send, like the chair of the Cost of Government Commission. MS. O’HARA: Could we put this form, a letter like this, a form somewhere they can real it? MS. GARSON: On your website. I think you can. MS. O’HARA: Where they can reach it and then do a notice on the payroll? MS. NICHOLSON: And then ask them to view the website and respond? MR. TAKABA: Or just in an e-mail. MS. O’HARA: We don’t want to make it entirely electronic because a lot of county workers don’t have access to a computer, and aren’t necessarily that literate on the computer. MS. PROVALENKO: I like the idea of in the paycheck. MS. GARSON: That’s fine. That’s approximately 2300 employees. MR. MATSUDA : Very brief questions. MS. GARSON: And the communication back can be, you can mail by using our address mail, fax, or e-mail to the board secretary. That should be fine. MS. NICHOLSON: Any more discussion on how we want to proceed? That’s in general terms. We have some homework we want to do. You’re looking doubtful. MS. GARSON: No. I don’t want the Charter to be a mystery to you. I think what you’re going to find is, just an example – I looked up Department of Water Supply. And if you’re looking at what is the core service, obviously it’s providing water. All this says is talking about the Water Board, it says they shall manage, control, and operate the water works of the County and all property thereof. So, you’re going to look at this and you’re not going to get too many answers as to what are core services. Cause what you don’t 24 know at the Department of Water Supply is that they have a person there who goes and does outreach to schools and to the public and education about water resources, and conservation. So, this isn’t going to tell you all of the services that this department provides. So if you’re looking for what’s the core thing, you’re going to look at this, you’re going to see Department of Water Supply. You can pull out from there provision of potable water. I think you’re going to need to talk to the departments. You’re going to need a little bit more information about how they function in order to pull out what services are they doing, and how deep do you go. MR. TAKABA: I think that’s where the questionnaire would help. When we send the questionnaire out, they should spell out the activities. Because that’s part of this whole Cost of Government Commission’s responsibility. You’re talking about essential services, activities and functions. Kathy’s talking about activities like the outreach, education. That’s the kind of things you’re going to have to get from the department. MS. NICHOLSON: That is not currently available? Like each department head, don’t they do an annual report? MS. GARSON: There’s an annual report which I have given to you. There is the County’s annual report. It’s not all in one place. MS. O’HARA: Does each department have a mission statement? MS. GARSON: I don’t know if each department does. MS. WONG: And the reports that came back in here, they are different in content. MS. NICHOLSON: My fear is that if we send something out to the departments asking them to say list what their core activities are and then all their other activities, some will respond in a timely manner. Some may not respond at all. Some will give us a lot of detail. Some will be very brief. So, we’re not going to be looking at the same kind of response because they’re all overworked and they don’t have a lot of time to necessarily focus on yet another request for more information. MS. WONG: But if we ask them to send out this survey or letter or whatever you want to call them, and say these are the questions we would like for you to present, then they at least have it written when they come and present this for us. MS. O’HARA: Can you elaborate – these are the questions we’d like you to present? MS. WONG: Yes. And we’d ask them to come and present so that we could ask some more questions based on what they responded to us. MS. PROVALENKO: That was similar to what we did last time. MS. NICHOLSON: And some did respond, some didn’t respond, and some had good suggestions, and some submitted their report that they’d done for some other purpose. 25 K. GARSON: The other thing is the minutes are available from the last meeting too, so you did invite all of the departments in there. I think those are on the website, all of the past minutes. You can take a look at those if anybody needs it printed, I can have them for you too. MS. O’HARA: Did everyone that was invited to come speak in terms of their department, or were some departments a no show? MS. GARSON: I think everybody came. MS. NICHOLSON: They all came. We had to reschedule some times because there were conflicts. MS. O’HARA: It says in this letter dated April 10 to the Director of DEM, Thank you for attending the Cost of Government meeting, so I assume this was a follow-up questionnaire after a presentation to that commission? And I think just because we have such short time would it not be better to get at least some information up front before they come before us? And I think again if we make our survey a lot more explicit, fill in the blank kind of thing, list and prioritize the three most important core services that your department provides. Things like that where we start to get some of the concepts that we’re looking for up front. And then have them come and do a longer presentation. It might make more sense for us in terms of the work we’re doing. MS. PROVALENKO: That’s what we did the last time. We got the feedback from them first, and then we reviewed it. MR. MATSUDA : That can be in the minutes. MR. TAKABA: So, if they don’t submit anything, when they come, at least they’ll come with something to say. A lot of times if they don’t have to show up, they may not even send in anything. And I think that’s where we have some void because some departments will not send in. But if they’re all scheduled to show up to present whether it’s 15 minutes or 20 minutes, they’re going to have to prepare something. Hopefully we can get it in advance. They may turn it in the same day they present it. MS. PROVALENKO: I think we asked them to present it to us in advance, cause when we would get the agenda, it was generally attached to the agenda so we would have time to review it. MR. TAKABA: There are 22 departments and agencies including the County Council. I think its 19 administrative, three Council. MS. NICHOLSON: Plus the boards and commissions. MS. GARSON: Clerk, Council, Leg Auditor. MR. TAKABA: So, that’s the review and we have to divide depending on how many hours we want to dedicate to interviews. If you’re going to talk to everybody, you need to divide it by departments, the amount of time you’re going to spend. 26 MS. NICHOLSON: I quite frankly don’t think we’re going to have time to talk to everyone and compose the report. MR. TAKABA: Maybe a smaller department we can make sure they submit something, but not necessarily to interview them unless we have questions. MS. NICHOLSON: So, if we are trying to identify core services, then perhaps we really want to focus on those departments that provide those core services first. MR. TAKABA: It would probably be the larger departments. MS. NICHOLSON: But then there are some core services which you said like Data Systems which is MR. TAKABA: We have to separate the staff departments from the line departments. It’s the line departments that provide the services to the public. I think these are the ones that be identified with a services. But internal ones like Corporation Counsel, Finance, and there are parts of Finance that deal directly with the public, like Auto Registration. But the ones you really want to focus on in terms of services to the public like, Police, Fire, Public Works, Planning, Aging, things like that. The ones that provide services to other departments like Data Systems, they still need to be interviewed to determine how they can cut their operation and make more efficient about spending. But you look at it a little differently. We still need the operation. Like Finance, you’re still going to need Finance, but is there anything within Finance that we could make better serving the county operations. Because I think it talks about operations a well as the public. MS. NICHOLSON: Does anyone need to take a break or do you just want to plow ahead here? MS. GARSON: Break. MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s take a maximum ten minute break and reconvene at ten to 11 so everyone can ponder some of these questions that we want to compose. Break started at 10:40 Meeting reconvened at 10:50. MS. NICHOLSON: We’re all here so I’d like to call the meeting back to order. Are we ready to actually start working on some questions, specific questions? MS. WONG: I have a couple comments on the approach. Two of the things I want to bring up. Because we’re short on people on the commission, I’m wondering if we could perhaps bring in an outside, someone not from the district, say someone from the university, to help us look at either from Political Science or Management or something, the schools at the university, to help us look at some of these departments just cause we are short handed or we could get a whole commission. And the other things that we talked about, giving the public input, would we have a workshop? How were you 27 thinking about getting public input? Or were you thinking about a means of getting public input? MS. NICHOLSON: I wasn’t specifically thinking about a means. I was just like if we’re talking about core services the public is perhaps an entity that we should involve, but I don’t believe has been involved before in this. MS. WONG: And with those two questions, I thought maybe we might have the public forum or workshop where we could bring in outside people to make suggestions after we get responses in-house. MS. NICHOLSON: So, we would have a draft of something that we would be asking for input on? MS. WONG: Not only a draft of what we think but to gather other suggestions from people in the community. They would know just as much as we would, but they might not have the resources that we have, but they might have some other ideas. Or maybe people that were employees before, that they’re furloughed off, let’s say what should have gone on. There might be some people with good ideas that are in the public that we wouldn’t know. I don’t know if we would want to take that much time, and I realize that we don’t have much time, but if we want to get public input, how were we going to do that? MS. NICHOLSON: I think we can do it anyway we want to. We can structure this however way we choose. So, if we want to have a forum or perhaps do a press release and ask for written input from the general public, I think any method that we choose to gather information is open to us. MS. WONG: Let’s tweet. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s correct, right? We can ask for input anyway we want. MS. GARSON: Basically, yes. All your meetings are public. I’d probably say that as long as we’ll funnel the response back to one person. You mentioned tweeting. According to Sunshine Law, what wouldn’t be appropriate would be all of you were on some messaging board and all of the comments were coming in. You can’t do that because of Sunshine Law. But you can put it out there and the comments can go somewhere or you can put it out there and comments go to one person, then that person collects them and brings them. Those are the only types of restrictions. That and your budget of $3,275 which includes your reimbursement for mileage. So those are sort of the constraints. MS. NICHOLSON: I think we can do that now. Could you elaborate a little further on the university connection. MS. WONG: I just chose the university just to name someone, but I’m feeling a little under the gun on time and a little amount of people, and I’m sure that we could do it. It just might take away from some other priorities that we might have. But to bring in other people that have enough knowledge to say, maybe this should be done here or this 28 shouldn’t be a core responsibility of the county, and that might be political science people that would know. And organizationally it would be better if you put this under this. Like the Parks and Recreation, some of the programs should go under Office of Aging and shuffle those around. MR. MATSUDA : Gloria, you’re not suggesting that we have another commission member, setup that person to assist? MS. WONG: Right. Assist us, yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Is there anyone in the university who does study county government? Not necessarily just to critic county government. MS. WONG: And in today’s newspaper, there was an article about how I think it was some students from College of Business and they teamed up with some students from Kam School and did a study in strategic plan for Hawai‘i Island gourmet products. And that was all for free, and they did that as an internship. And I was looking, thinking more along the line of some professor level, legal rather than some student level, as a community service. MS. GARSON: You can communicate. The commission can send a communication to the political science department head, I don’t know who that is, and make a request, be on a volunteer basis. And maybe put it out there, and it could be a supervised project. There’s nothing wrong with you sending communication making a request. MS. O’HARA: I think it would be nice to get input from the departments at the university, the relevant departments being political science and geography. They do a lot of urban planning with geography. And also the College of Business and Economics and send them up to the Deans of those departments and see if they can incorporate into this next semester as you get some feedback, and then I think we can strategize on a letter that we could send out to those two departments. MS. NICHOLSON: But the university is not in session yet. But it will be the end of August. Let’s focus on our letter that we want to send to the department heads. And who else might we want to send this letter to? Because our, who else, the boards and commissions. MS. GARSON: It’s all branches of government. So you’re also dealing with County Council and Clerk’s Office. MS. NICHOLSON: So, how inclusive do we want to be with this draft letter? MR. ARMOUR: I’d like to add some – coming from a business point of view, if I were to task this as a business owner, I’d look at, where’s my biggest income, and where’s my biggest expenditures, and focus on those items. Cause in the budget it had, I use an example, the cemetery, we get $7,000 of income and no expenditures, so that one you wouldn’t even want to bother with. The Department of Transportation or something that has $50 million, and that’s 10% or 20% of the budget, that’s probably a good one to focus on. So maybe the top departments gets the most focus and the top income gets 29 the most focus, and the ones that have very little impact, you know if you could change our budget by 50% by eliminating waste or increasing revenue, it’s not going to affect the overall thing very much at all. Or if you could affect a different budget by 5% you’re going to save a lot of money. MS. WONG: So, you’re saying to put something like that in the letter? MR. ARMOUR: No. Putting our focus to the biggest departments and the biggest revenue generating, and the biggest expenditures, and the ones that are minor, and I haven’t looked at the departments to see how many are major, how many are minor, but that would be also a different approach since we are limited on time and people. MS. NICHOLSON: However if we’re looking at core services, some of those ones with minor budgets might be the ones that we might think could or should be eliminated. So, we probably, I would take a more broad based approach, and just see what kind of response we get. But then when we start to say who do we actually want to talk to, we may be wanting to talk to those larger departments first. Is that, I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth. MR. ARMOUR: Like the thing that came up last year was eliminate the County band, and they said the County band was one-half of one percent of the total budget. And everybody was focusing on eliminating the County band to save all this money. Is that something we want to look at, not the County band, but something that has minor income or impact versus something that has major impact? I’m just putting that from a business point of view. MS. NICHOLSON: How do you feel about it? You’re suggesting that we would send the letter to the larger departments and not at this point K. AMOUR: I would send it to everybody, but unless somebody came in and said, hey, this department, our employees came to work and played cards all day. We don’t need this department. Unless you see something glaring come out of their recommendations or investigations, focus on the big ones because the six people and we have 11 months, are we going to get bogged down looking at too many items and not enough time. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other comments? So, I think we want to focus on the letter now that we’re going to send out because it really is rather urgent that we get the letter out and in the process for who we choose. Also, part of that would be the core services and the size of the budget besides that department. So that would be one of those factors. MS. PROVALENKO: I think once we get the responses back we’ll have a better feel as to the direction we’ll be going in as far as who we interview, what the process of interviewing is. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, shall we look at a letter that we’ll send out. And we could either start by looking at the one from last time and find, two, or maybe we can start from scratch and ask some of those more important questions that was suggested earlier. 30 MR. ARMOUR: One question about the letter, this letter that looks like it went out after you had a meeting here which you said earlier, you said preliminary … MS. NICHOLSON: Generally yeah, I’m not sure. I think generally we did send that out first. I’m not sure why this example happens to be someone who came in early. MS. GARSON: No, and if I recall it was the letter went out fairly early on but because of the time constraint I think that the departments were invited like the very next meeting. And it just so happens that Environmental Management must have been one of the departments that had come in first. But I think that the commission had decided they wanted to talk to all of them, so they were just immediately scheduled. But I think the vast majority came after the letters went out. MS. NICHOLSON: But I think these are the same questions that we ask all of the departments. And so perhaps Barbara Bell came in, that was the first meeting or something. And we hadn’t gotten response back, and so we still wanted to get the same information back. Shall we just start crafting what we want to ask? And as pointed out these are fairly general. We actually, intentionally I believe, wanted them to be fairly open-ended, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it that way this time. Maybe we do want to be quite specific given the fact that we are totally in a different situation now. So, I’m open to suggestions, someone who is good at crafting things. Do we want to have several sort of general, a start with sort of a more general open-ended questions and then ask more specific questions. I really like what you had said about give us two examples, what did you say? MS. O’HARA: Well, as you get down to the questions, I would ask them to list and prioritize and things like that rather than keep it open-ended, but we need a nice intro. Perhaps if we are going to, if one of our focus as a commission is to answer the questions, what are the core and essential services that the County of Hawai‘i should be offering? Maybe we need to include that in our lead sentence so that they know that we’re focusing on that introduction to the various directors. MS. NICHOLSON: So we’re asking the supervisor or whoever responds to this to tell us what they feel the core services are in the County government? MS. O’HARA: We will in the questions, but I think we need an introductory sentence. Thank you for attending, etc. I think we’re introducing ourselves as a newly formed commission and the task at hand includes what we have identified as important things that this commission is going to focus on are, I wouldn’t say defining what the core services of the county should be, but sort of almost revisiting and evaluating what the cores services of the County of Hawai‘i should include. So if they know that we’re really looking at it from that perspective. I’m not good at crafting. I’m not the literary person. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s why we have this excellent secretary here who will have all this verbatim and we can use that language. MS. O’HARA: I can if I had the computer in front of me. 31 MS. WONG: As a matter of conduct, can we ask one of the members to draft something and then e-mail it, or is that not allowed? MS. GARSON: It’s not allowed. You can have them draft it and come back at the next meeting or just give them the authority to draft and give them perimeters. For example, you want to come up with an introductory paragraph that has the direction you’re going to go in. So you say, okay, well, Eileen, would you be willing to draft the letter. The way we want it to look is the first paragraph going to be an intro. And actually probably should specify the questions since that’s the meat of it. Then you give her the authority to draft it and print it out and have the chairperson sign. MS. O’HARA: We just talk about the content and then get down to the grammar? MS. GARSON: Right. You probably wouldn’t see that. In that case you’re not going to see the final until after it goes out. But as a board you’ve decided to give the authority to draft it to somebody else. MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s lead right into the question, shall we? And then we’ll come back to the mechanics of how we’re going to get this thing out given the fact that I am leaving the country next week. So, do we want to start out with some more general questions? I think we want to ask the department what their functions and activities, to outline what their functions and activities are so that we better understand them before we talk to them. Is this? MR. TAKABA: That could be one of the questions you ask. MS. NICHOLSON: And do we want to ask them to respond in a say, give us a paragraph or, we don’t want to be overwhelmed with data here, but we want them to put some thought into this. So, how do we want to indicate how we would like them to respond in terms of amount of response, or do we want to leave it open and it’s up to them? MS. O’HARA: It seems this is an initial contact so we don’t want to go after too much information at once. They are going to be asked to come before us and elaborate so let’s try and keep it, limit what we’re asking for. I think we’ll get better responses that way. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. MS. O’HARA : For instance, the first question could be Please list the primary functions and services your department provides. Try to prioritize those in terms of core services that are essential to the county and let them just list. We’ll be getting more detail as they come forward. MS. WONG: There can always be section of any other comments that they can add. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, so that’s our lead question and our secretary has gotten that question. What do we want to ask for next? 32 MS. O’HARA: Are you planning to consolidate any services within your department? MS. GARSON: In the next fiscal year? MS. O’HARA: In the next fiscal year, are you planning to consolidate any services or activities within your own department or working in tangent with other county departments? MS. NICHOLSON: What exactly are you looking for? MS. O’HARA: I’m looking to see if, okay, there’s certain services that go across various departments. For instance, Public Works cleans up garbage off the street, not Solid Waste. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some consolidation of services? So, it would be nice to know if they have any planned consolidation of services or do they see any that would be advantageous to their departments. I mean, I just threw that out as an example. But there’s plenty of cross agency actions like that where we’re talking about eliminating duplicating services and things like that. Or would it be more efficient if it were all under one department? M. NICHOLSON : I think, my concern would be if we’re asking, are they planning to, versus can they see of any ways because we’re going to be running into civil service issues and all kinds of things, so they might see something but not be planning to do everything because it could be quite complex to do. So, I think that might be better to phrase a question like that asking if there is some opportunities they might see in consolidating. MS. O’HARA: So - Provide us with at least three opportunities that you see where you could consolidate services within your department or combine services with other departments. MR. ARMOUR: I like that better than planning because in planning, I would take that if I had the questionnaire, I’m already got it on the books, I’m going to be doing that versus and that’s something we’re thoroughly going to do we shouldn’t be looking at. MS. O’HARA: So, this is more visionary? MR. ARMOUR: Right. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, any other? We can just ask two questions. We can ask 10 questions, however many we want in terms of getting it. The one that we did last time is one about privatization was specifically because at that point, the County was talking about privatizing the police fleet vehicles. That’s where that one came from, so that was very specific at that time. But our specificity of this time is really the budget crunch. MS. PROVALENKO: Efficiency. MS. NICHOLSON: Is there something that we want to bring up that would address the need to conserve resources or look for other revenue sources. 33 MR. ARMOUR: I think something about revenue sources and, I don’t know how to state this, enforcement of the revenue that they were already supposed to be getting. Like an example, you look on line at property for sale, and they’ll say this is ag land, $100 taxes. You drive by it, it’s overgrown forest and they’re paying $100 in taxes. So more efficient way and enforcement of what people should be paying. I don’t know how to state that in a question. MS. NICHOLSON: And I’m not quite getting what. MR. ARMOUR: If everybody is supposed to pay $10 to walk on the sidewalks in Hilo, and there is no way of collecting that money and you voluntarily put it in a little bucket, you’re losing out on revenue. So, I’m saying that revenues they’re entitled to, but they’re not collecting. MS. NICHOLSON: So, posing that question to a department – MR. ARMOUR: Will be enhancing the revenue – is there any ideas on how to enhance your revenue you’re entitled to, or more efficient ways of collecting your revenue? MS. NICHOLSON: I think that’s two different questions. Efficient ways of collecting revenue. MR. ARMOUR: More in the direction of going – like Department of Ag, they’ll send you a bill and it’s due in six months, so they can change the terms and make it due upon receipt or due in 30 days. So, you’re getting your revenue sooner and more efficiently. MS. PROVALENKO: But that really doesn’t pertain to all departments though. MR. ARMOUR: No. MS. PROVALENKO: That’s a question that would be more to property taxes and stuff like that. MS. O’HARA: I disagree. I mean Building collects building fees, Planning collects fees. All these departments collect fees. MS. PROVALENKO: But not like Data entry and stuff like that. MS. GARSON: Not all of them. MS. PROVALENKO: Yeah, that’s what I’m driving at. MR. ARMOUR: If this applies, how do you see enhancing revenues or better collections? MS. O’HARA: How about - Identify some ways to enhance revenue and revenue collections within your department. And then you can just put after it, if applicable. 34 MR. ARMOUR: Is this letter looking at how to cut expenses and the other side is how to increase revenue or be more efficient? Like they say they talked about the payroll, they delayed overtime by one pay period. Another way of doing it is like the other thth counties do is you work through the 15 but you don’t get paid till the 25. It hurts employees the first time through, but that’s a way of delaying expenditures. So the opt of it is collect the money sooner or be more efficient at it and collect all the revenue you’re entitled to. MS. NICHOLSON: Anybody have any suggestive wording to capture that thought? MS. PROVALENKO: I see what Eileen had said was pretty good. Could you repeat that please? MS. O’HARA: Identify ways to enhance revenues and revenue collections in your department and then just put if applicable after the sentence. Cause there are departments that don’t collect any revenues, but many do. Many have user fees in Parks and Recreation and permit fees in Planning and Public Works. So many do. And enforcement is an issue. It’s almost a separate question that I think that requires more elaboration perhaps with the director. An example being building permits which are allowed to remain open virtually indefinitely I believe. Do they ever expire? In other counties if you don’t work through on your building permit in such a period of time, a year or two years, you have to go get a new one. So, there’s things like that need to be looked at. MS. NICHOLSON: I wonder if we could prompt a more specific response if we said for example, enforcement or other examples. I can’t think of anything at the top of my head. Just so they would think more broadly. Cause I’d like to encourage them to be creative and not necessarily think through all the practicalities of dealing with Civil Service and dealing with regulations, but say in an ideal world, are there specific ways that you can see to enhance the revenues or the revenue stream for – what was the other half of that? MS. O’HARA: Revenue collections in your department. MS. NICHOLSON: Revenue collections in your department. Any other comments on that? Hopefully we’ve got enough to start forming a question. MS. GARSON: I think so. MS. NICHOLSON: Other issues that we would like to talk about? We want to talk about technology, do we want to talk about human resources kinds of issues in any of our questions? MS. O’HARA: I think we should ask them to describe any technology that would improve operations in the department. But I think what we also want to know about that is what would be the implementation cost, an estimate on the implementation cost. And if they are recommending any tracking system, like Planning for instance. I’m sure that they’ve done some investigation into different ways that this would work for them. And 35 they can come up with an estimate on how much it might cost. Maybe not, but they might be able to. MS. PROVALENKO: And also what the savings would be to that department. MS. O’HARA: And what the savings would be. Some of these things I know they’re looking at, but they just haven’t been able to afford to do that. But it’s good to know in the long term because some times we have to focus on a short term just to get by and it may cost us a lot more in the long term. So we need to look at that. MS. NICHOLSON: Comments, reactions to that suggestion? MR. ARMOUR: It’s similar to question five, so just maybe elaborate a little more on question five as far as naming projects, the cost and savings. MS. NICHOLSON: So question five currently reads, Can you suggest any modernization projects that might streamline operations in lieu of privatizing functions? So, instead of the privatizing functions, we would say, the initial cost and projected savings. MS. O’HARA: Personally, I don’t like the term modernization projects. I’d rather use technology or technology operational systems. Yeah, basically the same thing. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Operational systems? MS. GARSON: I’m sorry, I think that’s going to be really hard for the departments to answer the question about the cost and the savings only because, unless it’s something that they’re already looking at. I’m not sure they’re going to be able to go that far with the cost. They will have to follow procurement, go out to bid. Unless it’s already something that’s planned, they’re not going to be able to do that. MS. O’HARA: Let’s just say - if you have investigated this option, do you have any information on cost savings? MS. NICHOLSON: Or just, if possible, provide cost estimates and savings over time, or something like that. MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: I personally would like to keep question number six in, even though we may refine it a little bit, because that’s what people can be as creative. MS. O’HARA: That’s someplace where I would limit that number so that they really focus on what are the most important to them – like just say - Provide three operational measures that you would like to implement to make your operations more efficient, so they can kind of just put their wish list down. MS. NICHOLSON: I like that. Say that again. 36 MS. O’HARA: Provide three operational measures that you would like to implement to make your operations more efficient. MS. NICHOLSON: What is an operational measure versus an idea? MS. O’HARA: Well, an operational measure may be restructuring your department so that people were focused on task more clearly. You’re using your resources more efficiently. Allegation of Human Resources – could be something like that. It could be how you have your office set up. The county is strung all over town still even with the opening of the new county building. So, there’s gotta be some issues that they might be able to identify that. Or it may be how they order their fleet trucks or something else.I don’t know. I don’t have an idea what it may be. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. I’m not sure how many questions we’ve ended up with. But I’m guessing it’s fivish? Any other issues that MS. O’HARA: We haven’t asked the elimination question. Do we want to? That’s number three. MS. NICHOLSON: I’m trying to think back. Of course no department head really wants to eliminate functions. They may want to shift it to another department, but I’m not sure they particularly want to eliminate anything that they’re not doing and the consequences that that would mean. I don’t know how productive that question might be. Any feelings on that? We can ask it. MR. MATSUDA : In the light of the furloughs and what’s going on now, you’re probably going to have a negative response on all of them. They’re just going to say no. No, cause I need everybody I need, cause I’m working extra hard now. Maybe instead of the terminology eliminated, you might say curtailed or something less MS. NICHOLSON: Lower priority? MR. MATSUDA : Yeah. I mean all we’re doing is trying to get some ideas, right? MS. NICHOLSON: Right. MR. MATSUDA : So, maybe if it’s something that is on a low priority scale for them, then it’s something maybe we might be able to elaborate further on. But if you’re talking about elimination, we’re talking about complete eliminating the job function, therefore it may not be something they would even think of answering. So, I’m just thinking about maybe we might want to restructure it that way. MR. ARMOUR: So, what you’re saying is like are there any services, activities or functions that could be changed to become more efficient conduct of government or something? MR. MATSUDA : Something similar. 37 MR. ARMOUR: You’re not saying eliminate it but change, and maybe somebody will come up with … MR. MATSUDA : Some idea in their department, how they can change or better how they’re department operates. MS. NICHOLSON: So, are we working towards phrasing a question there? MR. ARMOUR: Something like, Are there any services, activities or functions that could be changed to make your department more efficient or official contact within the government. MS. O’HARA: That’s kind of the same as we just crafted for six. MR. ARMOUR: Yeah. I guess it is. MS. O’HARA: I think we need to reference directly the furlough situation. I think that that will probably invite a response. Let us know how your department has been affected by the furloughs. What services have been directly impacted? What County services to the public have been directly impacted by the implementation of furloughs? MS. NICHOLSON: What is that going to do to help us with our work getting an answer to that? MS. O’HARA: Okay, one will identify what services have been curtailed, and can we live with that. I mean we’re answering the question or suggesting that we answer the question, what are the true core essential services of the County of Hawai‘i. What should we be focusing on? And if we learn what has been curtailed, can they live with that? Can the department heads live with it? Can we live with it as county citizens? I mean, that’s one of the first questions you have to ask is, is it acceptable for our quality of life here? MS. NICHOLSON: So if we were going to say in light of the current budget situation and resulting furloughs, are there, how has your department MS. O’HARA: Curtail services. MS. NICHOLSON: Curtail services and what are we really trying to get out there? MS. O’HARA: Has there been a negative impact on the public? MS. NICHOLSON: Well, don’t you think that it will? MS. O’HARA: Yeah, we know, but. MS. GARSON: I guess my suggestion would be, maybe you want to ask that question in a few months. We’ve had two furlough days. Next week will be our third, so I’m not sure that they’re going to know the answer to that question. 38 MR. MATSUDA : That’s right, County just started. MS. GARSON: Maybe keep it on the back burner and let a few months go by. MS. O’HARA: That’s true. When they come forward to talk about it. It’s a good question though. I think we should be cognizant of it. MS. NICHOLSON: It is. I think we should capture that, cause we might want to address the impact of the furloughs in our final report. MS. O’HARA: Yeah. I think so. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other questions? Is it possible for the secretary to give us some clues of what our questions are that we’ve already come up with so we can hear them back again. MS. CARVALHO: I didn’t quite catch everything for the first one, but I have: Please list primary services that your department provides. And then you’re going to have them prioritize it. Provide us with at least three opportunities you can see that you can consolidate within your department or in tangent with other departments. Identify ways to enhance revenue and revenue collections in your department, if applicable. Can you suggest, well this one I wasn’t too sure but I had – Can you suggest any technology that might streamline department operations, implementation costs and what the savings will be. MS. O’HARA: That one would need to be broken up. If you’ve investigated it, please provide implementation costs and cost savings. E. Carvalho: So, Can you suggest any technology that might streamline department operations. If you’ve investigated it, please provide implementation costs and what the savings will be. Is that correct? MS. O’HARA: Yes. E. CARVALHO: Provide three operational measurements that you would like to implement to make your operation more efficient. MS. O’HARA: Operational measures. E. CARVALHO: And that’s all the questions. MS. NICHOLSON: We were going to include something similar to number six. MS. O’HARA: That was it. 39 MS. CARVALHO: Which is a total of five. MS. NICHOLSON: All right. We need to set the time when they need to respond and who they’re going to respond to. MS. GARSON: The response will be to the commission and we’ll have them either send, fax, or e-mail the secretary. MS. NICHOLSON: So I think trying to get a response before our next meeting is really pushing it because this needs to go out, they need to do their response. We need to get it back and hopefully we would get responses as they come in, so not handed out at the meeting. So what kind of deadline do we want to give them? 30 days? MS. O’HARA: This was less than 30 days. MS. NICHOLSON: But we didn’t get many responses within the timeframe. MS. PROVALENKO: They dragged in. MS. NICHOLSON: The came in over time. And I’m not sure what the turnaround time is to get this out to the department heads. In the next few days? MS. GARSON: Yeah. Unless you’re talking about a furlough week. MS. O’HARA: Well it says here because we have only 11 months to fulfill the Charter mandate we would gratefully appreciate a response by – perhaps we could say we would greatly appreciate a timely response and no later than, so that maybe they can send it in earlier. It would be nice if we could get something to consider at our last meeting. MS. PROVALENKO: As I recall last time we ended up going back through from those departments we did not get a response from, and resending it. MS. NICHOLSON: Which is fine, because at least we had something to work on. Shall we give it 30 days? MS. O’HARA: Okay, we won’t have any response for our next meeting. MR. MATSUDA : 30 days is going to be after our meeting. Our meeting is going to be th on the 25. MR. TAKABA: Are we going to be asking, basing our whole interview based on the questions that they respond to? MS. NICHOLSON: No. MR. TAKABA: So, if we send something out to the departments and you know we are going to interview them anyway, can we just set up the interview at the same time as we 40 ask the questions so we don’t have to send two separate mailings? So if there’s like a process – we’re going to interview the Department of Finance, we schedule them and you can just say, prior to your, or you can set the date that you wanted this back by so that we can prepare for the interview or the presentation by the office. MS. NICHOLSON: We could do it that way so we would be sending these out two months before we schedule something. MR. TAKABA: Is that too soon? They might forget about it. MS. NICHOLSON: I have a feeling they would slide that way. I would rather see a response because it might help us decide who it is that we want to talk to. MR. TAKABA: That’s why I was asking, if we were going to use this to determine MS. O’HARA: Not solely but it may influence our discussion. MS. NICHOLSON: It might factor in. MR. TAKABA: That’s fine. Let’s do it in two separate, you can do a schedule after that and send everybody the full schedule. MS. PROVALENKO: And those same questions would be put out on a notice like this to the employees? MS. NICHOLSON: I don’t think we’ve gotten quite that far yet. Do we want to ask the employees for input too? MR. TAKABA: I think number one would be a good employee question. The departments, that first question, the department went through that many times with us, but they never went down to the employees. MR. MATSUDA : That can go on the pay stub, question number one? That question number one can go on the pay stub, a very brief question. MR. TAKABA: Yeah, along with an explanation. I think maybe that’s all you want to ask the employees. MS. NICHOLSON: Just the first question? MS. GARSON: The first question is the primary functions? MS. PROVALENKO: No, not that one. MR. TAKABA: No, I’m sorry. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah, maybe we want to ask the employees something different. MS. O’HARA: Yeah, I’m not sure we want to ask them the same questions. 41 MR. TAKABA: Like the open-ended question after that. It would say, if there’s any other ways MS. O’HARA: Their suggestion. MR. MATSUDA : Or any other ways. MR. TAKABA: That’s easy enough to do. It’s not a long list of questions. MS. PROVALENKO: And that’s one of the questions that we have a question similar, don’t we? MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s kind of wrap up what we’re sending to department heads first. Then get into how we want to address employees. Seems like we want to address employees. We’re still on trying to figure out what a logical response time might be. MR. TAKABA: I guess before the first meeting. MS. O’HARA: Yeah. If this goes out in a week, 30 days would be sometime into September. MS. GARSON: August 30. MS. O’HARA: September 1. And that’s after our next meeting. MR. MATSUDA : Can it be done, well I’m sure every department head has an e-mail. Can it be done by e-mail? MS. GARSON: Yes. MR. MATSUDA : Then we might have a quicker response, hopefully. MS. GARSON: No later than September 1. MS. NICHOLSON: September 1. Let’s do that and make sure that we ask them to respond either in writing or fax or e-mail to the Office of Corporation Counsel. MS. GARSON: It would be the board secretary care of our office. MS. WONG: So we won’t have any interviews at the next meeting? MS. O’HARA: No. MS. NICHOLSON: No, we’ll get to the agenda a little bit later on. MS. WONG: And is this letter going only to department heads or is it also going to commission, boards, offices and other instrumentalities of the branches. 42 MS. NICHOLSON: At this point we said department heads. MS. GARSON: Shall I send it to each Council member? MS. WONG: Why can’t we send this letter to all on this list of who our commission is supposed to be addressing instead of just department heads. MS. NICHOLSON: We certainly can. I’m thinking that we might want to do something a little different for the elected Council members, cause they have a broader, a much broader scope. MS. O’HARA: Also if we do send this same request to the boards and commissions, we need to provide a longer response time. Most of them only meet once a month, once a quarter. It needs to be a longer response time. MS. NICHOLSON: And from our past experience most of them didn’t respond anyway because they’re all volunteer board. So, for boards and commissions, which would include like the Police Commission, Fire Commission, we’re giving them a longer response time. Is that correct? Maybe give them two months to respond. MS. WONG: Depending on how often they meet. MS. NICHOLSON: Do they all meet at least once a month? Some are quarterly? MR. MATSUDA : Fire meets quarterly. MS. GARSON: And I know some may just meet if there is something to do. MS. PROVALENKO: Like Salary only meets if there is something to do. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, we can still ask for response in two months and just see what we get. MS. GARSON: Okay, so for boards no later than October? MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. October 1. What about County Council? MR. MATSUDA : Are we going to draft a different letter? Although we’re setting a date now, the content of the letter, is it going to change? MS. NICHOLSON: It just seems to me they have a much broader scope. We might have some different questions to address the County Council, but maybe not. Maybe the ones we’ve already drafted will do. What’s your feeling? MS. O’HARA: I think it has to be different. These questions are really directed at department heads. MR. TAKABA: So you’re asking them to give us information on the county itself or just the Council budget? 43 MS. NICHOLSON: I think we want to get their input on the way they think the county can operate. MR. TAKABA: I just wanted to clarify. MS. WONG: Maybe both. MS. GARSON: You may want to go back just to your Charter mandate and the four things the report is supposed to focus on. You might want to just toss that out to each individual Council member and see what they have to say. MR. MATSUDA : Then we’ll have the information to put in our report. MS. GARSON: Because it will be very varied and my suggestion, you’re going to send it to each individual Council member, it won’t be something that they’ll have to discuss at a Council meeting. They’ll just individually be responding back to you. Perhaps if you rephrase, it’s in section 5 3 1 about limiting expenditures to lowest amount consistent with - you can just ask them, do you have any suggestions as to how and then just go through and see what you get back. Sorry, it’s just a suggestion. MS. NICHOLSON: Well, but I’m also thinking we might want to ask the Council what they feel some of those core services are that the county should be focusing on. I agree these four that we need to include in our report is actually very good questions already. Do we want to ask them from their perspective, what the core services are that the county should be focusing on? MS. GARSON: So, if we mirror this language, we can go, services, activities, functions, what are the essential services? What do you consider the essential services, activities, and functions of the county? MS. NICHOLSON: Do we want to ask them to do any prioritizing? MR. MATSUDA : Very good. MS. NICHOLSON: So we could ask them to respond in priority order? MS. O’HARA: Priority order. I like it. MR. MATSUDA : They may all be the same. Then we know where who is prioritizing which way. MS. O’HARA: So, we’re doing this before the election? MS. GARSON: So, it’s, Pease provide your response in priority order from most important to least important. MS. NICHOLSON: And what kind of response time do we want to give the Council members? 44 MR. MATSUDA : We can give this say like two months. MS. PROVALENKO: I think sooner. I think 30 days. G. MATSUDA: That’s right. They meet often. MS. GARSON: But again they’re going to be doing this individually. MR. MATSUDA : Yes, that’s true. 30 days. MS. NICHOLSON: We want them to do it individually. MS. O’HARA: So, we’re going to be putting these four directives into kind of a question format? MS. NICHOLSON: Yes. MS. O’HARA: How can you eliminate expenses, expenditures? MS. GARSON: If you have an exact – you just want me to formulate into a question? MS. O’HARA: I think they kind of lend themselves to it easily. How would, words like that. MS. GARSON: Or do you have any suggestions as to? MS. O’HARA: Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, moving on to a notice we want to put in the employees pay stubs. Do we just want to ask that one question, which is essentially question one from this document. MS. GARSON: That’s a good question. MR. TAKABA: And a second question, if they have any other ideas of how government can function more efficiently. Just an open-ended question. If they have other ideas but it’s not part of the question. This one is only about their department. They may have some questions about, some comments about procurement or something about Corporation Counsel services or something. MS. NICHOLSON: So you’re saying question one and two, or one and six? MR. TAKABA: No, I’m saying that you can use question one but also do a question two that allows them to comment about anything. MS. O’HARA: Do you have any ideas on how we could make County government more efficient? 45 MR. TAKABA: Yeah. Something like that. MS. O’HARA: Yeah, just open-ended. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other ideas of how County government could function more efficiently? MS. PROVALENKO: So, essentially that’s one and six. MR. MATSUDA : Bill, on the pay stub itself, how would, as far as the response now, now the question is out there, so, how would the mechanism being used to have them, okay, now the questions is out there so MR. TAKABA: Yeah so it will have to be almost like in a form that gives some background and explains to them what it’s being used for - we evaluate, the Cost of Government Commission is evaluating, and as part of its work we want to get some feedback from you. MS. O’HARA: I think it’s important to introduce it too as the Cost of Government Commission comprised of volunteers from the public. They may know about it and may think we’re some government function and stuff. MR. TAKABA: It will be almost like a letter attached to the pay stub. The letter would include the question and a space for them to fill out. MR. MATSUDA : Oh, it’s like an attachment to the pay stub? MR. TAKABA: Yes. MR. MATSUDA : It’s not like a pay stub and you just rip off? That’s what I was thinking. MR. TAKABA: It will be an insert, like a clip on MS. GARSON: Enclosure. MR. MATSUDA : Okay. MS. NICHOLSON: So essentially that’s sort of the preamble that’s in this except that we want to add that the Cost of Government is an all volunteer commission convened every five years to, something like that? MS. O’HARA: Is it every five years? MR. MATSUDA : Is it every five years? MS. GARSON: One year after each mayor. Yeah. MR. MATSUDA : Well you don’t have to put that in. 46 MS. O’HARA: Also at the bottom it says your response may be made anonymously. I think we have to insure that it is anonymous, cause if they respond by e-mail, you got their e-mail address. MR. TAKABA: One year after the beginning of the term. MS. GARSON: Right. Does it not make it five years till the next one? I guess so. MS. O’HARA: They need to be assured that their responses are kept anonymous. So if they send it in by e-mail, that’s not anonymous. MS. GARSON: Then they can choose not to send it by e-mail. MR. MATSUDA : They can have the option. MS. GARSON: Comprised of volunteers from your community. MS. O’HARA: Just so they know it’s not, that we’re not civil servants. MS. GARSON: And use the same preamble, but just Cost of Government Commission comprised of volunteers from your community was recently convened. Just have the same intro? MS. O’HARA: Yes. That’s perfect. MR. MATSUDA : Yes. MS. NICHOLSON: And so because today is payday, the next pay stub will be two weeks from now so we don’t want to just give them two weeks. We want to give them a little bit longer to respond. MS. O’HARA: I’d say sixty days for responses from employees. MS. NICHOLSON: So, it’s like the middle of September since they won’t get another pay stub until two weeks from now? MS. GARSON: We can do October 1. MR. TAKABA: 30 days. MS. NICHOLSON: October 1? So, they’ll have six weeks to respond? Actually six weeks is too long. If they want to vent, they’ll do it right away. So, let’s do the middle of September. I don’t know when the pay stubs are due. MS. WONG: Just one insert or are you going to continue the inserts? MR. TAKABA: Just one. MS. NICHOLSON: One. 47 MS. WONG: It’s a short time. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah, September 15 is good. MS. O’HARA: I think you’re right. If they have something to say, you’re going to hear it immediately. MR. ARMOUR: The cost of printing the inserts and stuffing them, does that come out of our budget for this commission? MS. GARSON: There probably isn’t a cost assessed. We can print it. MR. TAKABA: We just send it to the Machine Room. MS. GARSON: Did somebody say September 13? MS. NICHOLSON: The middle of September. th MS. GARSON: the 13 is a Monday. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s fine. Okay, are we still on the same agenda item? Have we finished that agenda item yet? The agenda item was Discussion/action regarding approach to take to timely accomplish mandate of the Cost of Government Commission. Methodology, sequence of analyzing the departments/boards/commissions to determine what information is needed and how to gain that information. Do we feel that we have now completed that agenda item of does anyone have additional discussion on that item? If not, we’re going to jump back to Item 6. We’ll be talking about our agenda for the next meeting so, what have been talking about will actually continue to come up because we’ll talk about process at every meeting. PRESENTATION ON SUNSHINE LAW, PROTOCOL (by the Office of the Corporation Counsel) MS. NICHOLSON: Now, back to item 6, Presentation on Sunshine Law. MS. GARSON: I know it’s getting close to lunch time. This is an insert that’s done by the Office of Information Practices. At the Office of Information Practice, a state agency that’s in charge of overseeing Sunshine Law, basically the open governments law, Open Records Law. This should be in your binders. This is a pamphlet that they put out sort of like a question and answer, very easy to understand. The Sunshine Law is found in the State Statute. Kathy Garson gave a training on the Sunshine Law. MS. GARSON: If you need more information this is the OIP website. They have the question and answer. It has all the rules. It has all the laws. It’s pretty easy to navigate. You can always call me if you have any Sunshine Law questions. It’s 48 probably better if you don’t talk about board business with anyone on the board. Watch your communications and e-mails and telephone conversations. Any questions? MR. MATSUDA : Kathy, I have a question that you discussed earlier. Just out of curiosity, say if I’m talking to sombody in Planning about something, you said that as long as the same person talks to her in Planning about a different subject, its okay? MS. GARSON: Yes. No problem. It’s really about the communications between board members. You can talk to people in the general public about board business, and that certainly is not an issue. It’s just that different members of the board can’t communicate with each other. You can talk about what you’re doing on the Cost of Government to anybody you want on the outside. Not a problem. The issue is with the department head of which a commission oversees. The issue is a little bit different. MR. MATSUDA : Let’s say if I’m talking to the department head of Planning. MS. GARSON: Not a problem. But you can’t take three of them with you. MR. MATSUDA : Oh, no, no. Say I was thinking, I had it in my mind that I can talk about something, but that same department head can talk to her about something else which would still be okay. But what if he decides to talk to her about what he talked to me about, is that still good? He’s the one that’s talking to me about this and now he’s the one talking to her about the same question. MS. GARSON: And that would be okay as long as you’re not using him as a conduit. Then it would be an OIP violation. If it just so happens to be that way that’s okay, but not as a conduit. You couldn’t say, can you tell Gloria and Ken this? You’re using me. That still wouldn’t be good. That would still be a violation. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, any other questions about the Sunshine Law? Thank you very much. DISCUSSION OF ANY PROPOSED AMENDMENTS TO RULES OF THE HAWAI‘I COUNTY COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION MS. NICHOLSON: Let’s go on to item number 8 – Discussion of proposed amendments to the rules and the rules are in our notebook so if you can flip to that. MS. GARSON: Let me say this about the rules. I don’t think you really need rules. A lot of the things that are in the rules are things that are either in the Statute, in the Charter. You don’t need any of these rules. What I would probably suggest out of all of this what you need is it would be nice if you could specify when your regular meeting date would be. You could probably do that by just a motion. I think it’s good for the public to know in general when your meeting dates are ahead of time. If you want to change it you can change it. But if you set that as a policy. I’ll leave that to you. MS. NICHOLSON: Anyone have any comments on the rules? My only comment would be item number 4a which does specify meetings would be held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. Could we just strike that rule so it won’t be there in the 49 future, but we can decide now when we want to meet? Or should we just go ahead and decide and amend the rule, since it is a written rule. Yeah, we’re violating it now. The next meeting is set for Wednesday any way. MS. GARSON: Right, because you couldn’t get together. Do you want to decide first when you’re going to meet? Can you make a regular schedule? MS. NICHOLSON: I don’t know until we discuss it. MS. WONG: I’m fine with meeting first and third Thursdays each month. MS. NICHOLSON: I can’t meet on Thursday. That’s the one day of the week that doesn’t work for me. Let’s do it this way. I’m just going to go through the days of the week. Does anyone have a problem with Monday? (K. Armour and P. Provalenko) MS. NICHOLSON: Tuesday? (K. Armour) MS. NICHOLSON: Wednesday? (G. Wong) MS. NICHOLSON: Thursday? (M. Nicholson, K. Armour) MS. NICHOLSON: Fridays. Because of Furlough Friday. MS. GARSON: Or you don’t pick the first and third. MS. NICHOLSON: It looks like our options are Tuesday, but you’d prefer not Tuesday. Or Friday’s, but it would have to be second and fourth cause we meet twice a month. MS. GARSON: That’s not set in stone. You don’t have to meet twice a month. That’s just what past commissions had done. MS. PROVALENKO: I don’t think we did last time, did we? MS. GARSON: Didn’t you have the same problems with that small group? MS. PROVALENKO: Yeah. It was having a quorum. MS. NICHOLSON: Looks like we have to have twice a month to have our business done or have very long meetings once a month. What is the preference? Would you rather have a very long day or two short days? MR. ARMOUR: I could meet on Tuesday if it’s a little later. We have our shipment on Mondays and Tuesdays. If Tuesday, we could start at 10, which I don’t know how it affects others, I could probably do that. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay. Back to the question, would you rather meet once a month for a longer meeting or twice a month? 50 MS. O’HARA: I think twice a month would be more accommodating if we are going to have people come in to do presentations. Once a month is very limiting in terms of scheduling. MR. MATSUDA : If we have it for twice a month, is it going to be twice a month every single month or can it fluctuate? MS. O’HARA: It may be because we may not be able to get quorum every time. MS. NICHOLSON: We can set up sort of what our ideal will be and we’ll have to see if we have a quorum so some meetings might be cancelled. Do you want to make a motion for twice a month? This will be our first real motion. MOTION:MS. O’HARA: I move that we have regular meeting of the commission on the second and fourth Friday’s of each month. MR. MATSUDA : I second. MS. NICHOLSON: Fridays work for people? Discussion? Cause we also said maybe Tuesdays. Second and fourth Friday of every month? MR. ARMOUR: Friday is okay with me. MS. WONG: This is starting in September? MS. NICHOLSON: Right now our meeting is already scheduled for Wednesday, August 25. So, yes, we would start in September. Okay, we have a motion on the floor and we have a second. Any other discussion? I’ll call for vote. All in favor? ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye . MS. NICHOLSON: Oppose? None. MS. NICHOLSON: So now do we need to amend the rule? MS. GARSON: Let me look at that and if we do, I’ll just take care of it. But you would need another meeting anyway. If there wouldn’t be any other changes, let me see if we have go ahead and amend the rules just for this scheduling change. And if so, we can take action at the next meeting. ITEMS TO BE PLACED ON NEXT AGENDA MS. NICHOLSON: Any other discussion on the rules? If so we are now looking at Items to be Placed on the Agenda for the next meeting, which I will not be at, so Gloria will be conducting that meeting. And that will be held on August 25, at 9:00 a.m. Oh you know what, we didn’t decide what time. Should we decide on time since we decided on dates? So we’re going to go back. So what time works best for that second and fourth Friday’s for our meetings? 51 MS. O’HARA: Nine would be good. MS. PROVALENKO: I’d like it a little bit later. MR. MATSUDA : I’ll go for 10:00. MS. PROVALENKO: 10:00 will work well for me. MS. NICHOLSON: Do we need to have a motion? K. GARSON: No, that’s fine. So, 10:00. MS. NICHOLSON: So, back to Items on the Agenda for the next meeting. We want to study the Charter. Did you say it’s available on the website? MS. GARSON: Does everyone want a hard copy? It’s not a problem. We’ll make hard copies of the Charter to you, but it is available on the County’s website, and we’ll send it to you as soon as we can. MS. NICHOLSON: So we had talk about at the next meeting each individually looking at the Charter and coming up with our thoughts on what we felt the core services of the county should provide. MS. GARSON: So the agenda item would be - Discussion regarding County core services. MS. O’HARA: And that would not be restricted to looking at the Charter, but that would be a good starting point. MS. NICHOLSON: We also might want to look at prioritizing departments that we want to talk to. We won’t have any feedbacks yet but it could be a start to prioritizing the departments. MS. O’HARA: We do have this document to look at in terms of giving consideration to various departments, so that would be helpful. MS. NICHOLSON: So far we have a fairly light agenda. We could actually invite a department to the next meeting if you want to try that. MS. PROVALENKO: I think we should get the feedback first. MS. NICHOLSON: Any other items? MS. GARSON: Should we have nine be a standing item? MS. NICHOLSON: I think it probably is going be a standing item. MS. GARSON: I’ll just keep moving it forward. 52 MR. TAKABA: When the departments come in, what are we going to ask them? Are we going to go over the same questions we asked them in the questionnaire? MS. NICHOLSON: I would say not necessarily. I think we’ll have a response but we may respond to what they have to tell us. MS. WONG: And after we see what they say, we may have other questions. MR. TAKABA: At some point, so they can prepare, they should be able to know what their presentation would be about. As an agenda item maybe we can try to decide what we’re going to ask them, what they’ll be presenting to us, if generally talking about the department or are they going to be talking about the questionnaire we sent them. MS. NICHOLSON: That’s a good point because we don’t necessarily need them to just read what they’ve already sent us since we’ll have a hard copy. MR. TAKABA: Or is it, are they just going to just show up and we’re going to ask them questions? MR. MATSUDA : I think that’s probably what’s going to happen, because we’re going to be reading the responses we got from them, and if from that we have any questions we can ask them. MS. O’HARA: I have a question that maybe Finance can provide some additional information. As presented in this Budget report we don’t really have a breakdown on the General Fund budgeting of each department. Like what percentage of the County budget goes to Public Works, what goes to different departments, you don’t have that information here. MR. TAKABA: It changes every year. MS. O’HARA: Yes, I’m sure it does. But it might be helpful for us to know the magnitude of cost situated with each department in terms of deciding what department we’re going to investigate more thoroughly. MS. NICHOLSON: One other thing I would like to put on the agenda maybe not on the next meeting but, is we got this communication about the Mayor’s Green Team which is not a department in and of itself. It’s sort of a cross departmental thing, and we didn’t talk about sending a letter to them, but I would like to talk about trying to get some input from the Green Team which is also sort of interdepartmental. MS. O’HARA: Perhaps we could get a presentation from them. I don’t know if Alex Frost is still chairing that. I’m sure somebody can do a presentation. I’m a little familiar about it. MS. GARSON: What we can do is put it on the agenda, and I’ll make contact with people on the Green Team and make sure someone can attend, and if someone can, have them do a presentation and what recommendations they can do for the County. 53 MS. O’HARA: They have come up with some recommendations already. MS. GARSON: So it will be, Presentation by the Green Team. MS. NICHOLSON: Anything else for the next agenda? MS. GARSON: While you’re discussing this, this is another thing, what goes on the next agenda, any board member could go ahead and e-mail the secretaries and say can you place this item on the agenda. That would be okay. Some boards will say that only the chair can decide what goes on the agenda. I don’t know how this board wants to do that. But let’s say one of you is looking at the annual report and something comes up and you want it on the agenda. What is the board’s decision on the protocol? Just plunk everything on the agenda? MR. MATSUDA : I’m okay with e-mail as far as adding something on to the agenda. MS. GARSON: Because what will happen is I won’t let you talk about it at that meeting if it’s not on the agenda. You can bring it up and say, for the next agenda I’d like this item to be on the agenda, but that’s one meeting later. You can also get an unwieldy agenda. MS. O’HARA: I think what you’re asking is often the chair has to approve the agenda or have it open to whoever wants to send in an item. MS. GARSON: Not often, but that’s one way to do it. MR. MATSUDA : Actually being that situation, because we’re going to have our agenda mailed to us, if anything, should that happen any time between this meeting to the mailing of the next agenda, just by a suggestion, could you put this on the agenda, then when the rest of the commission has the mailed agenda then it’s going to be on there and at least they’ll be notified. Unless there is any kind of conflict as to what we’re doing. I think as long as it gets to the person here, to put it on the agenda and mail it out to everybody, I think that’s still okay, and everybody is still going to be on the same page, and we’ll be notified at one time. MS. GARSON: And you can also try that, but if it starts getting unwieldy we can rein it back in. MS. NICHOLSON: We can always defer something if we’re just not prepared to talk about something. Could it be deferred and put on the agenda for the next meeting? MS. GARSON: Sure not a problem. MS. O’HARA: I don’t want to over task the staff but if they could send in the draft agenda like two weeks out and if anyone sees something they want to add, they can. MS. GARSON: No problem. If somebody asks me to put something on the agenda, we’ll work with you on the wording so it’s not too much information. 54 MS. NICHOLSON: It seems to me, since we are meeting every two weeks that generally we can talk about something two weeks before and put it on the agenda unless it’s really pressing. I guess my concern is more about how we can make sure we have a quorum for meetings. Are you going to send out something to say who is coming so we all don’t get here and find out there is no quorum and we can’t take any action. MS. GARSON: What they’ll do is survey all of you before hand. Because they have to post the agenda six days ahead of time, so there is only the one intervening week. If we post an agenda and if there is no quorum, they have to cancel the meeting, and do all sorts of things, so they’ll poll you before they’ll post that agenda. So if there’s no quorum there is no meeting. And we’ll notify you that there is no meeting. MS. WONG: Do I understand correctly that the Council people were asked to recommend someone from their areas? And they did not? MS. GARSON: Yes. The ones that are remaining, to my knowledge have not put forth any names. MS. WONG: I would like suggest that a letter go from the Commission to the three remaining empty Council members, now that we’re here, we would like for them to recommend a representative from their area. MS. GARSON: Ultimately it is the Mayor’s decision who gets appointed and it’s really the Mayor’s Office. We can send that communication, but I would also recommend you send it to the Mayor. Just because the council person suggests someone doesn’t mean the Mayor is going to approve them. MS. WONG: Do I need to make a motion on that? MOTION:MS. NICHOLSON: You would need to make a motion if we’re going to actually authorize sending such a letter. MS. WONG: So moved. MR. MATSUDA : Second. MS. NICHOLSON: It’s been moved and seconded. Any discussion? MS. GARSON: Those council members who have no appointees and the Mayor, requesting that the vacant positions be filled. MS. NICHOLSON: That the vacant positions be filled. MR. MATSUDA : Is it that the vacant positions be filled or that a recommendation be made? MS. NICHOLSON: The Council people will put in a recommendation to the Mayor. Any other discussion? All in favor? 55 ACTION ON MOTION: All: Ayes. MS. NICHOLSON: Oppose? None MS. GARSON: We’ll draft the letter and have the chair person sign it and get it out. It will be very simple. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC MS. NICHOLSON: Moving on. We don’t have any Statements From the Public. ANNOUNCEMENTS MS. NICHOLSON: Our next meeting is set for 9 a.m. Has that notice already gone out or could we still change it to 10 if people want 10 instead? MS. GARSON: If you want to change that 10 now you can change that. MS. NICHOLSON: What’s your preference? We’ll keep it for August 25, which is Wednesday. Would you like to keep at 9 or would you rather change it to 10? Unanimous 10:00 . MS. NICHOLSON: And since it’s not friendly, we don’t have to make a motion on that? We can just change it to 10? MS. GARSON: That’s fine. Just verbally announce the next meeting at 10 now, and you’ll be okay. MS. NICHOLSON: Okay, there being no other business on our agenda. MS. GARSON: Actually could you just read the announcement. MS. NICHOLSON: The next meeting of the Cost of Government Commission will be held on August 25, 2010, at 10:00 a.m., at the Office of Corporation Counsel, 101 Aupuni Street,,Suite 325, Hilo, Hawaii. May I hear a motion to adjourn? ADJOURNMENT MR. MATSUDA : Question. Because they’re going to be drafting a letter that’s going to go to the Council members and you have to sign, my only question for you, when the letter is drafted, can it actually be faxed to her, she can sign it and fax it back, and it goes out to the Council member, or does she have to come here personally and sign it? I mean it much easier if it could be done that way. Assuming that she has a fax machine. 56 MS. GARSON: For something like that, I don’t think it matters if you wanted to give us a faxed signature. It’s not a legal document, it’s just a letter. That’s fine. Our office does electronic signatures. MR. MATSUDA : She’s going to be going on a leave soon. MS. O’HARA: Vice Chair can sign. MS. NICHOLSON: Gloria can sign MS. WONG: And I’m close. MOTION:MS. NICHOLSON: Can I hear a motion to adjourn MR. MATSUDA : So moved. MS. PROVALENKO: Second. ACTION ON MOTION: All: Aye. MS. NICHOLSON: Anyone oppose? (None) Motion carried. Meeting adjourned. The meeting was adjourned at 3:45 p.m. Respectfully submitted, ________________________ Sandy Arriola 57