2006-05-18 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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DEM is trying to recruit. These are being paid at a higher salary and belong to a different union, which causes a problem with other employees doing the same work for less pay. He said he understands that they can't have extra employees on board, but there should be a way to have redundancy so that when there is a vacancy, they can move quickly to fill it. He said this may not be a County -wide problem, but it is a very big problem for his department. Mr. Dworsky explained that the Solid Waste Division employs transfer station attendants and equipment operators. An equipment operator needs to have a Commercial Driver's License (CDL). They also have a hard time keeping the positions in Kona filled, due to the cost of living in Kona as well as better pay in the private sector. As a result, they have Hilo employees driving to Kona every day, to drive the trucks in Kona. The mileage expense to the County as a result is not efficient. There is, however, no housing system to lodge the workers in Kona. They are trying to set up a training system to train transfer station attendants, who could move up to be equipment operators. There is only one authorized trainer, and it takes time to train someone. Employees can only be trained one at a time. They need more people to train employees so they can be used. There are lots of problems and no answers. On the procurement side, it takes an inordinate amount of time to get a contract through. They have to follow the State Procurement Code, which does not lend itself to getting work done quickly. It takes about a month after a contract is prepared to get all the necessary signatures. People need to study contracts before they sign. The Solid Waste Division deals with many contracts, including contracts with recycling facilities at transfer stations, the greenwaste people in Kona and Hilo, scrap metal, and tires. These are all separate contracts. There is another contract for Margaret Pahio, who manages Business Services, Inc., which does the roll -on, roll -off recycling. Contracts are usually set up for six -month or one -year terms, which is not efficient. It would be good to have multi -year contracts. Because of the current short terms, they do not get competitive rates when contracts go up for bid, because the companies with the existing contracts are already geared up to do it. The procurement process hinders getting good competition. Having to deal with these contracts takes up a lot of his time and keeps him from doing other tasks. The contracts have to be kept track of and kept moving, and payment has to be timely. Also, there are State - related grant funds, but the County cannot commit to a multi -year contract if it is uncertain whether the State money will be coming down. Mr. Dworsky said the current system is not very efficient, but they have to live with the laws and rules they have. This does not make the best use of their time and does not result in the best quality or product, because there is not enough competition. There is not enough business on the island for people to compete with roll -on and roll -offs, but if they were able to do a multi -year contract, another company could possibly gear up for it. 3