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asked if there were other areas, and Mr. Sumada said the illegal structures, on the <br />building side. But the primary area is in traffic safety. They should not wait until there <br />are complaints or an accident. They should be able to go around and find the bad places <br />and take action to prevent accidents. But again, it comes down to money. <br />Ms. Cushnie suggested a monthly focus where they could solicit input from citizens in <br />different areas. She lives in Waimea, and hears from both Hilo and Kona people, and <br />each side perceives different treatment. <br />Mr. Sakaguchi told Mr. Sumada that he was very happy he came back from the private <br />sector to work for the County. It restores his confidence in government. He has a <br />general feeling that the government is not working well at the national, state, and county <br />levels. The last few people the COGC interviewed restored his confidence. He wants to <br />help these employees, to keep them with the County. They have ideas and the will. The <br />County needs to solve the problem of how to keep and support them. <br />Mr. Joseph said he appreciated Mr. Sumada's report, as well as his candid remarks, <br />which were very helpful. <br />Mr. Sumada wanted to make a statement: <br />There are a lot of great people in the County. In every department and every <br />division, we have several really outstanding people that would make the private <br />sector would contribute to the private sector tremendously. I have to think <br />about it more. How can you make the system different, make sure you don't lose <br />them? I actually, in one of the comments I had towards the end, it talks about <br />human resource development. I brought a handout with me that I'd like to share. <br />It's a presentation I made as part of a training class I made within our <br />department, the Department of Public Works, when I was here the last time. This <br />reflects what I learned. In any organization you have this pyramid of people that <br />their level of performance the high performers are the stars and the other <br />extreme are the poor performers, who may have good reason to perform poorly. <br />The whole bunch of people in the middle, that's the majority. The star <br />performers, no matter who the mayor is or who is their boss, they are going to <br />work as hard as they can. That's just their nature. The poor performers also, on <br />the other extreme, no matter how you try to motivate them, they have something <br />that's going on that keeps them there. They could have been a star before, but <br />something happened and they shifted to the dark side. The majority of people in <br />the middle, in my experience, they put in a six -hour day. If I can get six hours out <br />of them —the other two are personal phone calls, coffee breaks, talking to friends, <br />warming up in the morning, whatever ifI can get six hours out of everybody, I'm <br />happy. My challenge is where this square is. When there's a bad decision made, <br />or politics, or preferential treatment, they get upset and start leaning to the dark <br />side and their production goes down. And then now I'm dealing with an attitude. <br />If something good happens and they're motivated, then they start going back to <br />the light side. Your question, Mr. Sakaguchi, regarding how to keep good <br />people my answer is, in my experience, deals with training. I'm a firm believer <br />in that. We all came from whatever family we grew up into whatever work ethic <br />we have. It's all different. We're all trying to weave into abroad diverse group of <br />15 <br />