2006-07-20 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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Mr. Joseph asked who writes the grants for Highway Maintenance, and Mr. Nakasone said they have engineers in Public Works who do this. Mr. Joseph asked whether Mr. Nakasone lobbies or puts in a request for the maintenance of more roads, and Mr. Nakasone said he puts in a CIP request and it goes to Engineering. Each division has projects. Mr. Joseph asked whether it would be more efficient to consolidate the State highways with the County than to lobby and try for grants. Mr. Nakasone said he believes in home rule and that it should come under the County. Mr. Sakaguchi asked how many miles of roadway the State has here, and Mr. Nakasone answered 330. The Chair asked whether it would be helpful to the Highway Division to have a grant writer, someone specific to help the engineers, and mentioned that other departments brought up the issue of having in -house grant writers, or hiring out someone designated to write grants. Mr. Nakasone said that a grant can only be requested during a certain window of time. He said that in his opinion, you cannot be just a grant writer, because what would you do the rest of the time? Would you just sit and wait for the deadlines on the grants to see if you get them or not? He felt they shouldn't specifically have a grant writer, but possibly a specialist. He would like to believe that an engineer could do this. He used to work closely with some engineers, who are now retired, who used to do grant writing and engineering. The Chair said that the Solid Waste Division had a strong request for a grant writer and said that not all grants have a timeline. He said they were looking at having a grant writer for the County itself, for all the departments, and they just wondered whether Mr. Nakasone concurred with the other departments about having an in -house grant writer. Mr. Sakaguchi said there was a concern that the County may need someone to research getting money from sources which the County would otherwise not know about. Mr. Nakasone said that in his opinion, the County would be better off contracting out the grant writing, because if the writer didn't do a good job, the County could use someone else rather than be stuck with an inefficient employee. The Chair commented that a lot of people blame the County for the potholes in the roads, when some of the holes are in State roads. Mr. Nakasone said that the resurfacing program is helping out his division greatly. The Chair mentioned that there have been many meetings all around the island regarding "roads in limbo" and that while he sympathizes with people living on those roads, they also brought their property knowing the condition of the roads. He asked Mr. Nakasone how, if the County has to take over those roads, it would be worked into their budget. Mr. Nakasone said that they met with realtors several years ago about the problem with people buying homes and then asking the County to fix the road. The Highway Division 31