2014-11-06 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

Home

interviewed Tiffany Kai and will follow up with her as it is possible that a bus line is in the works. Ms. Kelly agrees with the bus line being added as there will be the new university serving 700 students that may or may not have vehicles, may or may not have dorms or housing close by and if the students are not taken cared of, there will be a lot of hitch hikers on the side of the road. Ms. Maddox noted this is a very specific recommendation and it would be helpful for the feedback from Mass Transit. Ms. Kelly indicated that she comes from a different county where they have bus terminals in a spread of 50 or 75 miles, one every 25 miles and maybe there are four buses that keeps going between the terminals and the bus rider gets a transit or connection ticket to go to the next location. She thinks the County needs to have a system that would allow bus terminals. These bus terminals could have bathrooms and offer coffee and could support itself it with a consignment person or vendor to be in charge of taking care of the facility; it would be a social community help. Ms. Kelly noted right now there isn’t much in West Hawai‘i connecting to Waimea, to Kohala, to Waikoloa, to Kona, but if the County was to integrate a bus terminal, you’re looking at a whole community developing to make things easier for the west side and then it could be copies for the east side to service Hāmākua to Hilo. She suggested having a bus terminal every 20 miles, going around 20 minutes to get people to transit from one section to another. Mr. Perry stated they have the same issue in Puna, there is one bus line that drives to three large subdivisions and it takes hours to get from Kapoho to Hilo. Ms. Maddox commented that bus lines are an invaluable service to a community. She will carry this recommendation forward until Ms. Kierkiewicz can speak with Ms. Kai. Ms. Garson noted the recommendation says Hawai‘i County Civic Center but will change it to West Hawai‘i Civic Center. All Commissioners agreed. E. Implementation of jet ski program within the Ocean Safety Division of the Hawai‘i County Fire Department. Ms. Maddox said this came from the Fire Chief who had done a pretty thorough cost analysis and justification. Mr. Espejo, Ms. Kelly and Mr. Mitchell all agreed. Motion and Vote : Ms. Kierkiewicz moved to include this recommendation into the draft report subject to additional language consideration. The motion was seconded by Mr. Perry and all commissioners present voted aye. Ms. Kiewkiewicz asked to have Chief Rosario’s financial analysis be included as an appendix to the report. Ms. Maddox hopes that all Commissioners could agree that the letters and responses from the various departments be included as part of the appendices and to be able to refer to them in the body or the introduction of the report. Those letters contained a lot of information and the Commission gave them an opportunity to tell them what had happened from previous recommendations from the previous reports. 12