1999-06-23 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 8 of 12 YOSHIYAMA: And then you talked about performance view or review of contract so I’m just wondering the Charter talks about the program review every four years, mandatory. TOWLE: Right, that’s right. YOSHIYAMA: But, I don’t know if you’re talking about that or auditing the private contracts that the County has. TOWLE: Well, I think why I’m bringing the subject up because I know that if you have to have the contract every four years and then you get an outside auditor, this is going to cost a tremendous amount so there has to be some way to do this but the individual program should be reviewed before contracts go out. The performance type of review because we have a big mess going here now. One example, and I won’t go on and on which people know I can, but there is a straying law that says if your dog strays, it’s $25 fine for the first offense, $50 for the second, $75 for the third. There were 186 dogs redeemed. That means they ended in the shelter. They were straying. They gave 9 citations. Well, there should have been one for every single dog for straying plus there is supposed to be one for no license so consequently, I have had so many complaints and so forth, I decided that as long as I was getting this, I might as well go for it and ask for the contract for West Hawaii back again so it’s the Mayor is in a quandary as to what to do because Harry Takahashi only wants one contract and that is not serving the county well. So it’s a mess. RAY: Ms. Irvine. IRVINE: I’m quite ignorant of what the situation is. I’m from Hilo and I guess you’re saying that you are not the Humane Society here? Or that - TOWLE: West Hawaii Humane Society, the shelter out in Kona, was built. Alice Greenwell got it built in the ‘70's and we had it until 1990 and Barry Mizuna took over as Finance Director and anyone that knows me knows that I talk and talk and talk. If I kept my mouth shut, it would be all right but I didn’t. He asked me what my program was. I told him I keep some animals a long time. He immediately said ‘Oh, you’re going to have to kill them, minimum time, on and on.’ And I said ‘Do you care who’s eating the food?’ ‘Well no, you’re going to have to kill them 48 hours of the 7 days, so forth’ and I was working full time as a badged officer, no salary, and we had just finished spending $50,000 of Humane Society funds improving the county facility, 12 runs, etc., etc. so I flatly refused to kill in that length of time and he said I could pay him $2.50 a day for every animal I kept past the 48 hours of the 7 days. Well, we didn’t have the money for that so we bowed out and did education only and Hawaii Island Humane Society took over. And that - RAY: I think we’re getting a little astray of the issue here. We’re - TOWLE: Yes, okay. That’s fine. YOSHIYAMA: I still don’t understand. file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-23-99.html7/1/2011