2018-02-01 Liquor Commission Minutes

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a formal understanding or does the Building people come to you and say, "You know, this guy shouldn't get their license extended." Is there any kind of overlap between the departments? Takase: Informally there is. It's coming up as part of our final inspection process. That's how this one came up. These things are not compliant. Greenwell: Gerald, let me re -phrase it. You hear people come in and say they have problems with Building, electrical, plumbing or this and that. You seem to be so pro- business and want to help them. Do the Building people come to you and say, "Hey, these guys aren't doing their job"? Why are you so pro-business and some of these others are not? Takase: I think a part of it is because of where I sat previously. As a former Assistant Corporation Counsel, I can see these problems coming up and can anticipate them. don't think their problems cannot necessarily be resolved. In my estimation, it's our responsibility to at least make sure that these places are safe. In a lot of these situations, it has nothing really to do with the safety, but rather you have to meet some Code requirements and a lot of the time, Code requirements keep changing on people. If they're working to get them resolved, we will help them get there because if we don't allow the business to continue, they're probably not going to have money to do the changes anyway. We're going to cause them to go out of business. The problem will never be taken care of, so I would like to give them a chance to rectify that. We look at the Licensees. If the Licensee's just refusing to do anything, we will not approve those, however, where the Licensee's trying to do everything within their power to bring themselves into compliance, those are the situations where we will help them from our position. I don't think our primary duty is to make sure that all of the Code requirements are in place. I think we should not be ignoring them, but we will help them get to a place where they can get things done. Overall, in the inventory of business spaces, we should all be working towards bringing them all into compliance. If the space is not going to be rented, then nothing is ever going to happen there. Hopefully, by having a business in there, things will get done to bring them into compliance. That's our philosophy of what we're doing. Greenwell: I understand, Gerald, but it seems that you allow people to do tents like in Pahoa and here these poor guys are trying to get through the hoops and the hurdles with the other side of the County. It's understandable that you want to keep them in business. Taniguchi: Any other questions? Very good question. There were no further questions from the Commissioners. Taniguchi: Since none, all those in favor signify by saying, "Aye." The Commissioners voted "Aye." FEBRUARY 1, 2018 -LIQUOR COMMISSION MINUTES 24