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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMIN CHC 2009-11-06.tif2009 -2010 HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION 9th Session - Special Meeting Friday, November 6, 2009 County Council Chambers Ben Franklin Bldg. 2nd Floor 333 Kilauea Avenue, Hilo, Hawaii 96720 CALL TO ORDER: CHR. HAITSUKA: Good afternoon everyone. Today is November 6, 2009, the time is approximately 1:40 p.m. and I call this special meeting of the Hawaii County Charter Commission to order. We are at the County Council Room in the Ben Franklin Building. ATTENDANCE: Present: Mr. Ed Haitsuka, Chair Mr. David Fuertes, Commissioner Ms. Daphne Honma, Commissioner Ms. Casey Jarman, Commissioner Mr. Guy Kaulukukui, Commissioner Ms. Jamae Kawauchi, Commissioner Mr. Alapaki Nahale -a, Commissioner Ms. Susie Osborne, Commissioner Mr. Scott Unger, Commissioner Excused: Mr. Joseph Kealoha, Commissioner Mr. Todd Shumway, Commissioner Also Present: Mr. Bill Takaba, Managing Director Mr. Lincoln Ashida, Corporation Counsel Ms. Pat Nakamoto, Elections Program Administrator Ms. Nancy Crawford, Finance Director Ms. Charmaine Shigimura, Executive Assistant to Mayor Kenoi Ms. Amy Self, Deputy Corporation Counsel Ms. Charlene Iboshi, First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mr. Mitch Roth, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ms. Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, Director, Planning Department Mr. Randy Kurohara, Director, Department of Research and Development Ms. Margarita (Dayday) Hopkins, Economic Development Specialist Mr. Michael Ben, Director, Human Resources Mr. Kenneth Goodenow, County Clerk Mr. Levi Hookano, Legal Specialist Ms. Kristin Konan, Council Aide (videoconference, Kona) Ms. Manu Hanano, Council Aide (videoconference, Waimea) Ms. Karen Eoff, Secretary STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS CHR. HAITSUKA: Next up, we have statements from the public on agenda items. Before we start I would like to remind everyone that we have a three - minute rule per subject according to our rules, and because we have a pretty full agenda today, we are going to enforce that as best as we can. I'm going to ask every body to please limit your testimony per item on the agenda to three minutes. First we have Mr. Michael Ben from the Department of Human Resources. Good afternoon, Mr. Ben. MICHAEL BEN (At this time Michael Ben Department of Human Resources Director, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. BEN: Good afternoon, Chairman Haitsuka and members. For the record, I am Michael Ben, Director of Human Resources for the County. I wanted to comment - -you have my written testimony - -on two agenda items: CA -24, Boards and Commissions and then move on to CA -28, Civil Defense. With respect to CA -24, I just wanted to ask that the term, area specific board, be given a more definitive definition, if there is such a phrase. One definition of area specific is not necessarily geographical; it is activity or concept. So, technically, my Merit Appeals board, which is a five member board, the area specific activity is to hear appeals concerning civil service law. So, I think it fits that definition very easily, and I would not like to have nine council members trying to nominate five positions for that board. If the intent is something else, I would ask that you consider amending that particular proposal. With respect to the Civil Defense proposal, I want to preface my comments by saying that what I'm about to comment on, you folks really need to have "legal beagles" check it out. It is my interpretation of what I think the applicable laws are. I'll take the easy ones first. I think the provisions need the term "necessary staff' and something along with other duties as may be required. If you notice throughout all the Charter, there are provisions for that in every single agency and what not. So, a standard of interpretation is that if you leave something out, it was the intent to leave it out. In other words, you cannot have necessary staff and the only duties you can perform are what is very specific. That is just a general rule of interpretation, since you have it for everybody else. The next point I wanted to discuss is the requirement for appointment by the Mayor. Customarily and historically, it has always been the Mayor who has been doing the appointment. But, technically, under the law, it is who is appointed as the Deputy Director of Civil Defense; and it has been the Mayor usually, and therefore, the Mayor in turn has appointed our Civil Defense Administrator. So, I wanted to point that out to you and make appropriate amendments to the proposal to reflect the actual position that is doing the appointment. One last comment on that, because you use the term, "appointment and removal," when you have that terminology, you normally are speaking about an "at will" employee. In other words, that person could be removed for whatever reason the appointing authority may desire to remove the person. So, by law, that person is a civil service employee, so civil service provisions apply to the removal of that position; also to 2 appointment, appointment and removal. So, there are certain provisions that have to be followed. I would want to add that in order to clarify and make sure that everyone understands that the appointment and removal is subject to civil service law. Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any questions for Mr. Ben? Thank you, Mr. Ben. Next we have Mr. Del Pranke. DEL PRANKE (At this time Del Pranke came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. PRANKE: Good afternoon. Thank you all for the work you have done. I was off island for some time and I wasn't aware of how much work you had been doing. I sent to the Secretary, Communication 96, yesterday. I hope you will take a look at this. It seems that we are looking at a lot of little things, but we are missing some pretty big ones. Corporation Counsel, by the Charter, is required to be the chief legal counsel and legal advisor for all employees, officers and boards and commissions and any other county entity. When someone comes before, say, the Police Commission or the Ethics Board, the Corporation Counsel is giving advice to both the board and to that person, which would not be allowed in any other situation, legally. So we have a legal problem there with the way the Charter was written originally, it would seem to me. So I put that into issue #1. Issue #2 is defining what are boards, and what are commissions. They are two different things, and we have been somewhat liberal in the way we have named them. An Ethics Board, which we have, is sort of, I figure, patterned after the State Ethics Board. But what we actually have is a Commission. A Commission is a group of people who are nominated to a position or placed in a position and then allowed to operate independently pretty much. In other words, it is their job to investigate without being controlled by the appointing authority. Whereas, a board, such as the Water Board, is used to actually run things and make things work. The Ethics Board should be the Ethics Commission. Thank you. I have a couple of other things and I will put them in another Communication. Those two things, I think are the most important, about Communication 96. The other one other thing that I did put in there, that I want to discuss, is that it seems to me that lying should be a violation of the County Code of Ethics; and that can be remedied by a Charter change. Although the Code of Ethics is in the County Code, the minimum requirements for that are placed elsewhere. Thank you very much. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any questions for Mr. Pranke? Thank you, sir. Next we have Mr. Brent Norris. Good afternoon, sir. BRENT NORRIS (At this time Brent Norris came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. NORRIS: Good afternoon. Thanks for allowing me to speak today. Today I am representing myself. In the past I have testified on Resolution 731 -08 to further green jobs and green opportunities on the island. We have since provided research and a sustainable 3 living educational series. I've come to a few conclusions after talking to a lot of students, a lot of experts in the field and one of those is that for us to move forward with sustainability efforts, we will need a more open and transparent framework to work with them; and that includes leadership. So, I'm coming to you today to support multiple amendments to the Charter as they relate to an open and transparent government. I believe we are very fortunate that we don't have to do anything. We could sit and wait for a more open and transparent government. That is one very viable option; and we will make a lot less mistakes. However, if we begin to embrace some of the practices and principals that are outlined in some of the amendments, we can actually achieve sustainability much sooner than I think we even think is possible right now. Ultimately, the single truth is awareness, and if we look at sustainability as being aware of the challenge and aware of what it takes to overcome the challenge, then we know that we simply need to free the information. And that information is our key indicators; such as our water supply, our food supply, our energy supply, how well we do in a digital economy. All of these factors can be provided, and should be provided, as indicated in some of the amendments on line. The only thing that I think we should look at carefully is the way that we provide the information. Some of the amendments now call for websites to be created and maintained by the County. I would oppose that idea. I think any digital economic efforts should be given to a private business and the model that we should follow on the local County level should be the model that has been adopted at the Federal level by our Chief Technology Officer and Data.Gov. So rather than build websites and take responsibility for creating and maintaining those sites at the County level, I think we should make an effort to share the data in a standardized format that private business can then take and mash up the data and use it, and come up with new and exciting to approach sustainability. Thank you for your time. CHR. HAITSUKA: Does anybody have any questions? Thank you, Mr. Norris. Next we have Jacqui Hoover. JACQUI HOOVER (At this time Jacqui Hoover, representing Hawaii Leeward Planning Conference and Hawaii Economic Development Board, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. HOOVER: Good afternoon. I'm Jacqui Hoover, I represent both the Hawaii Leeward Planning Conference, a member -based organization with a history of 35 years of commitment to sound planning, wise use of our resources, and effective government process; and I am also the Director for the Hawaii Economic Development Board, another member - based organization who in its 25 -year history has committed to providing and promoting private sector support and expertise for balanced growth in Hawaii County in partnership with both pubic and private resources. I'm here to speak today on proposed Charter Amendment CA -21, which seeks to "ensure that the planning process is above reproach and to maintain the integrity of the Planning Commission and the Appeals Board by avoiding charges of the appearance of impropriety in the composition of these bodies, "... by excluding anyone "who: (1) receives or has during the previous two years received, a significant portion of the person's income directly or indirectly 12 from permit holders or applicants for approvals from the planning commission; or (2) has a fiduciary duty to an entity which has business before the planning commission or board of appeals." In reviewing this proposed amendment, there are several concerns that we have identified. First, what is, "substantial income ?" Two, what is the definition of "permit holders ?" Aside from development permits issued by the Planning Commission, this term could also include building, grading, grubbing permits, variances, etcetera, either from the building or subdivision codes. The Board of Appeals also handles appeals in addition to those from the Planning Director, those of the Director of Public Works. Third, is the proposed amendment intended to also exclude individuals such as realtors, contractors, subcontractors, mortgage providers, vendors? Fourth, does the exclusion to individuals who have "a fiduciary duty to an entity which as business before the planning commission or board of appeals" apply to individuals for example such as the Executive Directors of the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, Public Land Trust, etcetera, whose business before the planning commission or board of appeals may be indirect such as our members having such business and or being related to advocacy for and /or opposition to proposals and concerns coming before these bodies? And finally, if as stated, it's to ensure the planning process, should not such exclusions also apply to any one who receives or has during the past two years received, a significant portion of said persons income directly or indirectly from individuals or entities who have opposed applications for approval from the planning commission, or likewise has a fiduciary duty to such an entity. I have submitted these comments in writing, thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Any questions for Ms. Hoover? Thank you, Ms. Hoover. Next, we have Nancy Crawford, Director of Finance. Good afternoon. NANCY CRAWFORD (At this time Nancy Crawford, Finance Director, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS.CRAWFORD: Good afternoon, thank you. I'm Nancy Crawford, Director of Finance, and I would like to speak on two of the proposed Charter Amendments that are before you. I also passed out written documentation, I'm not going to read this to you, I just thought that I would go through and mention the highlights to you. The first is regarding the 2% real property tax set -aside for land acquisition, and making that a part of our Charter. I have submitted a letter in opposition to this for a couple of reasons. One of which is that in general, we are opposed to having set - asides of revenue for any purpose. It is not opposition, in any way, to having funds available for open space land acquisition or easements or other ways to preserve open space and make it available for recreational uses and so forth. But, from a fiscal, budgetary standpoint, every time you earmark some percentage of your revenue, you pull it totally out of the budgetary process. That means that it has higher priority than any other thing that the County does. It gets its money first, and then everyone else will then compete through the budgetary process for funds; whether it be public safety, or even the funding to manage any of these lands that may be acquired with this funding. In addition, putting this into the Charter - -I mean there are obvious reasons why people would like to put this into the Charter, and my reasons for not wanting it there are similar. It is very 5 locked in there; you have absolutely given up flexibility. We know that part of the history of this coming to you now is that in the current system, we do have the flexibility and we took advantage of the flexibility in these extraordinary times to temporarily withhold funding this. While we continue to use the funds to go forth, but it allows us, in extraordinary times, to put the funds where we think they are most needed, to higher priorities. Thank you. My second message is on the Charter Amendment for budgetary independence for the Legislative Auditor. Again, this is very similar, in that I think the Legislative Auditor is a very important purpose, and certainly needs to be a funded activity. Setting aside a certain percentage of funds strictly for that, coming again, off the top, before any other items are considered in the budget, gives it another top priority. I think, for one thing, you start down a kind of slippery slope here, if you start doing a lot of these percentage set - asides. You keep whittling down what is available to meet your fixed costs, and any other budgets required for the operations. Also, in this, the percentage proposed to be set aside, which is .25 %, is larger than what some other cities have, and I believe you have that information available. The current budget of the Legislative Auditor is about $776,000. Had we had this in place, and followed it for this current year, they would have a budget of about $968,000, which is a considerable increase, particularly considering that all of our other departments have made cuts coming into this fiscal year due specifically to the circumstances that we are in. But, that's an example of where we do have to be flexible, and we do have to be able to move with the economic situation, and budgetary requirements. I feel that under the current system, the Legislative Auditor has been able to operate fairly independently, from our perspective, and that we set a bad precedent if we start setting aside percentages for different budgetary items. Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do we have any questions for Ms. Crawford? MR. KAULUKUKUI: Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Kaulukukui. MR. KAULUKUKUI: This is in regards to the first proposed budget amendment to which you testified against. I suppose - -and you kind of alluded to it - -the reason the amendment has come forward is the very reason that you oppose it. You want the flexibility and I think the public is asking not to have the flexibility; because when we faced a tight budget, or budget constraints, the administration chose to go ahead and raid this fund, rather than make other adjustments. Were there other adjustments that could have been considered? MS.CRAWFORD: Well, many other adjustments were made. This was not the first easy thing we did. And we did not raid the fund, in the sense of taking the funds that are there, and that are currently being used to continue to acquire property. We did ask to set aside- - and we were authorized by the Council - -those contributions for the two years that we perceive are a very difficult economic time. After having used many other items, we cut the entire budget by 4 %, and a lot of our costs are fixed; so actually, the departments - -the 0 flexible costs that they have, including salary and wages - -had to be cut more than 4% to achieve a 4% reduction in the budget. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Are there funded, vacant positions in the budget still? MS.CRAWFORD: There are, yes. At any given time you have funded, vacant positions. That money is not lost, or wasted, or squandered. Anything that is vacant this year, because we have been slowing down on filling vacancies that goes to help build a fund balance that will help fund next year's budget. It does not get transferred, as some have been concerned, that it becomes a slush -fund for various things. We report to the Council how it is transferred, and it has been extremely rare that we have made a transfer from salary and wages to any thing but other salary and wages. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Can you estimate the number of positions that are funded and vacant in the current budget? MS.CRAWFORD: I'm sorry. I don't have that information with me today. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Is it in the score of 10's, or 100's? MS.CRAWFORD: It is probably - - -We have a work force of like 2,600 people. So, I can imagine that at this point in time, particularly because we haven't been letting every one fill all of the vacancies, we are talking about 100's. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Okay, thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Unger. MR. UNGER: I have a question. What do you consider fixed costs? Your assistant was here last meeting and she referenced that, and I think she used 75% of your budget was fixed costs. So, what do you consider fixed costs? MS.CRAWFORD: I may not think of all of them, but some examples of fixed costs are debt service; we are mandated to take care of our debt service as a priority, when we go out for bonds. Our leases, in general, that are longer term commitments. The benefits, like our contributions to the Employee's Retirement System (ERS) and the Health Fund, which are large and do not just automatically change as - - -The ERS is now tied to our wages that we actually pay, but it is still a very large contribution, and if you have a small number of vacancies, it doesn't have a large impact. Actually, if you will allow me just a moment so that I - -- MR. UNGER: Is that 75% something that you agree with, that 75% of your budget is made up of these fixed costs? MS.CRAWFORD: Yes, it is as very high percentage, and I would agree with that number. She actually worked out the calculations, which I don't have here. But, I think that is 7 probably correct. I should be more definite than that because she did calculate it, and I would stand behind the number that she gave you. MR. LINGER: That's fine, that gives me a good idea. MS.CRAWFORD: I apologize for not thinking of other ones right now. The debt service and the fringe benefits are a very large portion of that number. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any other questions for Mr. Crawford? Mr. Nahale -a. MR. NAHALE -A: Yes, I have a question, and I'll ask you to kind of forgive my ignorance a little bit and work with me on the questions. My understanding is that the 2% set -aside currently exists, but there is a two -year moratorium, correct? MS.CRAWFORD: Right. MR. NAHALE -A: So, after the two years, it's going to be 2% again, right? MS.CRAWFORD: Yes. MR. NAHALE -A: I really understand your premise that having these set - asides are challenging, and then basically we could just have 100% set - asides in the budget, theoretically. For example, I don't support the set -aside for the Legislative Auditor's office. The difference for the Open Space proposal is obviously that the public spoke on it already. And so to me - -and I'm going to get to the question, I promise - -I'm trying to weigh the notion that every Council and every Mayor is going to look to these funds. We are giving permission, basically, that it's okay, and we can describe tough times any way we want. Let's face it, these are significantly different times, but if we lowered the percentage in this Charter Amendment to .5% like you proposed, wouldn't you be supportive of that change? MS.CRAWFORD: My first choice would be that it not be in the Charter, but if it is - -and that's how I end my written testimony - -then, yes, if it's going to be in the Charter, if that's the will of the people to have it in the Charter, then the next thing that I would say is that 2% is a very large amount, and we would request that you consider a lesser amount that is closer to what other counties in the State of Hawaii are using. MR. NAHALE -A: In practice, when we are crafting the budget, are there any other -- besides fixed costs - -that are set - asides? MS.CRAWFORD: No, we have certain special purpose funds, but that's different. The revenues that come in are for those funds, and they are raised by those funds. MR. NAHALE -A: Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any other questions? Thank you, Ms. Crawford. Next we have Cory Harden. Good afternoon. 0 CORY HARDEN (At this time Cory Harden came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. HARDEN: Thank you for your work on the Commission. I brought my same comments from October 9, 2009, and the first page is just summary and testimony; and the second two pages are specific on the amendments. I'll just summarize, I'm sure you know exactly where you have your old paper. On the Legislative Auditor, I support the change to have a set -aside from operations and special funds budgets because right now, my understanding is that the County Council decides how much money they get, but, the auditor might investigate the County Council which puts them in a bad position as a conflict of interest. So, that's why I support that. For re- districting, there are a lot of changes proposed which I hope will make it fairer. I know about five years ago, there was a re- districting effort, and some folks were so unhappy, that someone took a second mortgage on his house to file a law suit. So, there was a lot of controversy about that. I support having standing council committees. Hopefully, that would restrict things like the undoing and the redoing of the committees that just happened. I support four -year council terms to give council members time to learn their job, which is a complex job; but only if there is strong recall and impeachment options. I support having the 2% for the land fund in the Charter. There was tremendous public support for this. I was one of the people who helped with petitions, and it would take five minutes to get a signature. People really supported it. The fund also attracts matching funds, and I think you cannot get the matching funds unless you show that your county is committed and will have this 2% thing going all the time. It protects resources that are irreplaceable, our watersheds and so forth. I support having development approvals reviewed by community development plan action committees. I support clarifying procedures for amending the Charter. I support strong recall and impeachment provisions. I support having council members weigh in on the appointments to boards and commissions. Thank you for your work. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any questions? D MS. OSBORNE: I have a question. I'm just wondering, when you say you support having development approvals approved by the community development plan action committees, can you clarify that; I'm just concerned about the already slow process, and that these people don't necessarily have any expertise in this area. So, on what basis do you -- -could you elaborate on that a little bit more? MS. HARDEN: I would think that the people right in the community would have better, closer knowledge of what is happening. The Council has some idea, but I think the people right there in the community - - -I think it's important to hear their voice too. I won't pretend that I'm super - familiar with the subject, but that's my opinion. MS. KAWAUCHI: Question, Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Kawauchi. MS. KAWAUCHI: The question concerns your support of amendments relating to four -year council terms. So, your testimony right now, is that you support four -year council terms, but only if you have strong recall and impeachment provisions. So there is a chance that one or none of the proposed amendments that are on the table right now may be passed. You could get four -year council terms, but maybe some of the amendments related to recall and impeachment might not pass. So, would your testimony be different if the voters pass four - year council terms but not the amendments that are being proposed right now. MS. HARDEN: Well, I guess you might put that all in one amendment; the four -year and the recall /impeachment could go all in one amendment. MS. KAWAUCHI: Okay, I was just wondering. Thanks. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you, Ms. Harden. Next we have Mr. Tim Reese. TIM REES (At this time Tim Rees came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. BEES: Aloha, thank you all for your work. The first thing I wanted to speak on was Communication 79; and I thank you, Chairman Haitsuka, for bringing this forward. I certainly would hope that this Commission really looks at having more meetings, and if anything, my testimony on these items here today might show how hard it is for a member of the public to try to keep track of all this business you folks have been dealing with. Of course, you have met the minimum requirements; but as your memo stated, I think that was for Charter Amendments CA -1 through CA -9, where you have met the minimum. I also encourage the Commission to be very conservative that - -I guess I'm a constitutional conservative when it comes to that. We've got a pretty good document. I don't know that so many things even needs changing, even if it looks like they should be changed at this time, or they could be fine tuned. I look in favor of changing a lot of things by the County Code process, and not doing so much to our Charter. I do acknowledge that there are many areas that could be improved though. My concern is that it looks like, historically, that the general 10 public, rather than if they don't fully understand an issue, they vote positively for it on the ballot at election time. I think they figure you folks have done a good job, and you folks have already checked it out, and it's got to be a really good initiative if it's put on there. That gets a little bit scary, like I said, I don't think there needs to be so many changes. On Communication 81, I just wanted to say, on this one from Deputy Corporation Counsel Bill Brilhante, change the name of department of research and development to department of economic development. This is another one of these things that is very small and just seems to muddy the water and takes away from the importance of the more pressing issues that have to be dealt with with this Charter Commission. I would suggest that if you are even going to bother to have a Charter Amendment on that, just change the name to research and economic development. We're a university town, Hawaii, Hilo, let's emphasize research. Let's emphasize that good scientific research leads to good economic development. The Mayor has his green team looking at these same principals right now, so we cannot take two steps forward and one step back. Let's keep promoting the image that we are supposed to be a college and research town and community. On the Legislative Auditor, I don't agree with setting a percentage of the budget on this. I think it's very important for the Legislative Auditor's office to come forward and tell the community what they are planning on doing; go through the normal budget process that every other department has to. Now, we have so many remedies built into the system. For instance, if the Legislative Auditor's office puts out a report that is critical of a certain department, and a couple of council members that are routinely very supportive of that department seek to cut the funding the next time out, we have got our remedies for that. It's built into the system, I really don't think it's necessary to put a set percentage amount of the budget on that. I would hope that you don't do that. My main reason for speaking against that is so that it does encourage, not only the Legislative Auditor's department, but all of our county departments to come forward publically; let us know where they are planning to go, what they need to correct, procedures they may already have. But, with the Auditor's office, there are certain audits that are required, that are mandatory, so that stuff has got to be funded. It's going to be very obvious if someone is really trying to overtly use their political power to influence the power of the Legislative Auditor's office. The 2% Land Fund; I have one problem with this. I guess I'm in support of it being put into the Charter. My one real problem comes on the last page of this CA -15, that I got off the internet. Under Section (c) it says, "The council shall, by resolution, select the land or lands to be preserved and require the Director of Finance to enter into negotiations for the acquisition of these lands in the order of the prioritized list developed by the commission." Now, I just can see that if you have a crafty council, it looks like they are allowed to delete items, as long as they still go by the order. So, they could delete items one through five, as long as they still go six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. That might be problematic. My bigger problem is, are we trying the hands of the finance of our county administration to go after these lands? You might have someone come forward -- -The decision to sell land changes through time. So, even while the commission does their job of looking at the parameters of who is ready to sell, what is available, what is out there, what should be our first number one choice; it's not always going to always work out where you can get number one, number two or number three. You might get an excellent offer from a real community- minded owner on item number eight. On the Big Island you are talking 11 about a vast number of properties that are extremely desirable for preservation and for park lands and the way these monies get leveraged into increasing our tourism product and local experience, our happiness on this island. I want to give the Director of Finance as much opportunity as we possibly can, so that they can reasonably negotiate. Just imagine yourselves as trustees put in that position and having to go down a list, and receiving other opportunities that you cannot even go and address. So, I think it's too restrictive there. If it were in an ordinance, I wouldn't have any problem with it, because it could be changed when it seemed to be problematic. If this is going to go in the Charter like this, I have a concern with that. Most of these, I really just want to touch on briefly. I'll try to speed it up here in respect to everybody's time. Four year council terms, I do support. I echo Ms. Harden's sentiments on that. I only support it if it is together - -if you take the two Charter amendments that you have proposed here - -the one on making it easier to recall, and put that in with the four -year council terms. I have spoken to a lot of people in the community and I found that to be the general agreement in the population. We have seen so much stop and start in the Council, and this two -year term thing just doesn't seem to be working at all. On the other had, many people feel four years is too long if we don't have a legitimate and easy way to get the people out, should it be necessary. Office of Council Services, I don't know if I'm confusing this with another Charter Amendment that might have been on a month before. I just got off the web an hour and a half ago, but I'll speak to it the best that I can. I'm not really in favor of it. This seems to be setting up a separate - - -You know I get the conflict of interest argument about legal representation by the Corporation Counsel when he represents all the administrators of government, department heads, and county council. Sure there can be conflict. The problem I have is that there are situations where this could be so distracting to the government. We can have so many petty disputes that drag on and on and on. I see no reason why we can't address the conflict of interest problem in the current system, maybe in the ordinance, the Corporation Counsel could still be the head legal advisor, or representative of all the county departments and the council, but maybe there can be something put in by ordinance, that he needs to appoint somebody a little further down the line - -maybe the most senior deputy corporation counsel -- specifically to the County Council. County Council already has many attorneys under hire. I believe Mr. Hookano is actually titled a Legal Specialist. Oh, you are the one and only, so he's the best, guaranteed. But, the point is, I just don't want to see what looks like a well intended amendment create nothing but trouble down the road. In another vain, the more attorneys you get, the more arguments you are going to have; that's a guaranteed given, right there. People pretty much understand that, and I just hope that wouldn't get abused. I just have one last thing to say on the council service, if I still have any time left at all. City and County of Honolulu has their own council service. There are quite a few attorneys in that division, I understand. They authorized the passage of an ordinance in Honolulu- - imagine this- -you get pulled over by a police officer, the officer offers you a $10 off ticket. He says, "Well, you know, I could give you this ticket that costs $80, but we passed an ordinance that tells me that I'm supposed to offer you $10 off, and if you pay the money, it goes directly to City and County of Honolulu's coffers, and you are deemed never to have committed the offense. Now, imagine repeat speeders, high speed speeders and that. It 12 completely defeats a lot of highway safety issues. It is absolutely illegal, it's ridiculous, and it was wholeheartedly approved by the council services of City and County of Honolulu. I've called them out on this publicly, it's absolutely ridiculous, and judiciary agrees with me. They have, behind the scenes, told them, you better not even begin to try and implement that ordinance. So, it doesn't guarantee that we will get better legal representation necessarily. Standing Committees, I think it would probably be proper to put this into the Charter. There was one thing that I saw in there; I didn't see that it mandated that all Council business goes to a committee unless there is some legitimate reason such as receipt of Federal grants and funding, where it should be waived to the full Council. I think that's very important because you can put this into the Charter- -and again we're beginning to clutter up the Charter- - whether it's seen as needed or not by the majority of the voters, will it accomplish what you are trying to do, which is to get most of these issues before the standing committees and the business hashed out and resolved more or less at that level; and the Council meetings would go a little bit quicker, they could deal with more business. There are several things here that are sort of related; the boards and commissions, the electronic listing of items and items on the bulletin boards. I want to make a point on this. I don't know if - - -I'm not going to ask to do anything improper here, but I'll just throw it out as kind of a suggestion. If I were to ask this entire room if the people here know who serves on the County Housing Agency, that board. If all of the people here would know, or if a few of them would know. What I found out is that almost nobody knows, except the journalists and the people who work in the county. Who actually serves on that executive agency committee, is our County Council. And what I've also found, is that when people vote, nobody is aware of that. Out of about 20 personal friends that I've questioned on this, they are not even aware of it. So, the importance of that is that this is the actual agenda that gets posted, and on the cover page it doesn't even list the council members. It is important to have proper notice of all board meetings. I would possibly change my vote on whoever I vote for my district, based on their abilities to handle public housing issues; homeless issues, affordable housing. This is a very big thing in our community. I think the largest capital improvement investment we have gotten into is out in Waikoloa. It is a huge matter; enough said on that. Same thing with the boards and commissions web site. The more we can expand public participation, and the more meaningful, to give people time to look into the issues so they don't do what I'm doing right now. I'm not very well informed of these things that I'm speaking about. I may have mixed up the special counsel in CA -32 with the subject I spoke on earlier, but I think you know my meaning on that. That's about it. I guess CA -34, I might have mixed that also, the budgetary independence of the Legislative Auditor. The recall one, I support. I spoke on that earlier. Thank you very much. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you, Mr. Rees. We are going to take a speaker from Kona. Who is up first? 13 MS. KONAN: Goof afternoon, Mr. Chairman. We have Michael Reimer up first. He is representing himself, and he is speaking on Communication 83, CA -15 and CA -18, as well as an amendment for revenue distribution. CHR. HAITSUKA: Good afternoon, sir. MICHAEL REIMER (At this time Michael Reimer came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. REIMER: Good afternoon. I welcome the opportunity to testify before you. I have an advantage here, testifying after some of the Hilo testifiers. I want to say that I believe they have raised some very good points, and I believe the questions from the Commission are also very good. The one thing that confused me on CA -15, the 2% Land Fund, is that the administration is against setting against money for any purpose. But I was pleased to see that the Commission did pose some questions about the money that is seemingly set aside for the vacancies. I believe that number is closer to 200 or 250 than 100. But I certainly want to give high praise to the Commission for recognizing that. On CA -18, converting the terms of the County Council from two -year to four -year terms, I am not necessarily against that, but I would also like to see that if they are converted to that time frame, that they be specified as being full -time terms. You will probably get the argument that you hear so often, that they are not paid enough to be full time and therefore only the rich people will end up being Council members. I frankly don't believe that. This is something the Salary Commission can work on if they want to, but I certainly think the terms should be made full -time, particularly if they are going to go to four years. The other thing I wanted to mention is, from time to time, there is a great concern expressed about the unequal distribution of revenue collected into the districts from which it is collected. On this, I think there is a rather easy solution; but it is a difficult one, and I just pose it to you for your consideration. That is, 50% of the revenues collected from a district- - and I would not use the current districts, I would go back and use the historical districts, just to avoid the problems of re- districting -- should be used in the district from which it was collected, with the exception, of course, of things that are county -wide, such as bus service for example. I just put that out for your consideration. If you see this as a problem, here is a solution for it. Thank you very much for my being able to testify. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you very much Mr. Reimer. Do we have someone else in Kona? MS. KONAN: Yes, we have two more testifiers here. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, let's have the next one. MS. KONAN: Next up is Joel Gimpel, representing himself. He is here to support CA -26, 25, 31, 28, 19, 22, 23, 30, 24, 20, and 21. 14 CHR. HAITSUKA: Good afternoon, sir. JOEL GIMPEL (At this time Joel Gimpel came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. GIMPEL: Thank you. As a retired attorney, I know the meaning of the word brief, which is what I will be. I moved to Kona in May of 1996, and since I've lived here, I've been quite active, as some of you know, on a number of county -wide board and commissions including the first Cost of Government Commission, which I served as Chair. I was later on the Board of Ethics, and now, for the last two years, I've been the Chair of the Board of Appeals. I have reviewed a number of the proposed amendments, and all, I believe, clearly address some valid concerns. I know that there are possible corrections to the language that is incorporated to clarify some of the concerns that have been raised today, but I'm not going to take the time to go through each one of them and suggest what those corrections should be. Please don't construe my silence regarding any other of the suggested Charter Amendments as opposition to them. I believe that the amendments that I support are important because they protect natural resources, they emphasize the importance of the community development plans, they are needed to assure that conflicts of interest don't exist in our county government, and they protect citizens from disenfranchisement by the council majority that could otherwise limit committee membership; and they assure government accountability and openness, something that has been of much concern lately, and all at little or no additional cost. In any event, this is a democracy and you should, whether or not you agree with the concept of a specific amendment, allow the people to vote; unless the amendment that has been suggested is unnecessary, immoral, illegal, or unconstitutional. Absent that, please don't substitute your judgment for the voters. Thank you, I'll be happy to answer any questions. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you, Mr. Gimpel. Do we have any one else in Kona? MS. KONAN: Yes, we have Debbie Hecht speaking on Communication 80, CA -15, 16, 24, 27 and 35. DEBBIE HECHT (At this time Debbie Hecht came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. HECHT: Good afternoon, Commissioners. I was wondering, in past meetings we've been able to talk to you as you consider each of the Charter Amendments, and I was wondering if we could do that again. I have all these things I'd like to talk to you on, but I was wondering if I could just wait until you started discussing them to talk about them at that point. CHR. HAITSUKA: I think what we are going to do today, is we are going call people up if we believe their testimony will be helpful while we deliberate over the proposed amendments. So, if you want to hang around after giving your testimony, if we feel that you 15 have something that maybe you can add, perhaps one of the Commissioners can call you up to testify. MS. HECHT: Okay, that's fine then. I did want to speak mostly about the recall amendment that I submitted as Communication 80, I believe. What you have now as a Charter Amendment on recall, is good, except that it doesn't quite go far enough. It doesn't go far enough in that it allows only 30 days for people to collect signatures, which is near impossible. Also, it doesn't take into effect any of the problems in an initiative petition drive. Many of the additional provisions on this amendment were taken from the initiative and referendum that was written by the League of Women Voters in collaboration with the County Clerk and the Elections Office. We also took it around to all the Council members to have that approved. Voters approved the initiative and referendum Charter Amendment in 2008. What we found when we did the 2% petition - -and I know I'm jumping around a lot- - was that the process in the Charter was very poorly defined. What I learned from writing the initiative petition process was that things need to be pretty much tied down as to process and procedure. That's why I submitted this much more extensive re -write of the recall amendment, and I would ask that you consider it. For instance, there is no provision in the existing recall part of the Charter to form a petitioners committee and identify the persons who want to recall the elected official. There is no provision that the petitioners committee will work with the Clerk by receiving a sample petition. There is no provision that the committee's petition is legally reviewed. There is no provision for the committee to write their own petition in case the Clerk's petition is difficult. There is no provision for disclosure, in case there are paid circulators of the petition. And doing research, we found this had been a large problem in California. There is no process for proper notice. There is no process of how to collect signatures on the initial petition. There is no process or time - frames to collect signatures on a supplemental petition. There is no direction as to how the ballot question will be worded. There is no provision for a vote by mail election. And there is no provision on how to fill vacancies. Right now, vacancies are filled by the Managing Director in the case of a Mayor being recalled; the First Deputy fills the vacancy for the Prosecuting Attorney; and the Council appoints a new Council Member. In my recommendation, and in the vacancies part of the Charter, which is CA -27 that I proposed, if there are six months or less remaining in the term of the person being impeached, or if they die or resign or are recalled, then those provisions apply; meaning the Mayor is replaced by the Managing Director, the Prosecuting Attorney is replaced by the - - -Do I only have three minutes for this one thing, or - -- CHR. HAITSUKA: You have three minutes for each agenda item. MS. HECHT: Okay. So, should I just say when I'm going onto another item? CHR. HAITSUKA: Yes please, that would be helpful. MS. HECHT: Then I'll go from there into vacancies, and that is CA -27. This provides that if a term is less than six months, the County Council shall appoint a successor by vote. But, 16 it doesn't really say what would happen in the case of an elected official. If it was the Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, who would replace them, or who would replace the Mayor? So I think in CA -27, it needs to say that the Mayor would be replaced by the Managing Director, and the Prosecuting Attorney would be replaced by the First Deputy. Then it would go to a vote by mail. I think that's important. Those are pretty much my ideas on vacancies. On amending the Charter, that is CA- 12 - -and I believe you already had a recommendation on amending the Charter - -this took it a little bit farther. It was to delete the second part in the Charter which would be 15. l(b), and delete all that and just replace it with, `By petition, which shall be the same process as outlined in Article XI, Initiative and Referendum. My thought here would be that that would follow the same process and procedure as initiative and referendum. Going to boards and commissions, which is CA -24, what this would require would be that the Council Member for each district, in the case of a district - specific board - -and there was a recommendation, one of the testifiers said something about the area specific board, and possibly that should be changed to district specific - -and I thought that was a very good comment. This requires that the Council Member nominate one or two people, the Mayor goes through a background check and transmits a report of findings with recommendations to the Council within 45 days, and then the nomination would be placed on the Council agenda, and that would be the public hearing end of it. I think this is real important. I don't like the fact - -and I've been seeing it now for a few years - -that the Mayors appoint people to boards and commissions as political pay -back. I don't think that serves our County well. I don't think that the best people are tapped to be on these boards and commissions. It also requires that the County maintain a web site for each board and commission on which shall be posted the authorities and powers of the Commission; duties, terms of the office, and the qualification and criteria for selecting members. On my last amendment, which is the 2% amendment, CA -15, Nancy Crawford's testimony was to be expected, I suppose. The County doesn't want there to ever be any set -aside that they are not in control of. That is sort of like government versus citizens all the time. Again, the County had 420 jobs in the budget, and they cut 50 of them or something like that. I know there is a couple hundred jobs still in the budget they could have cut. Counties all around the Country have been doing that. As far as this being an emergency; yes, it might be an economic emergency. But there is a clause in the Charter that says that in the case of and emergency - -an emergency to me means like tsunami, earthquake, volcano, and things like that - -the Mayor can declare an emergency; but not a budgetary emergency. So, I ask you to support this. The other counties; Oahu, Kauai, Maui, all have Charter Amendments doing this. Yes, we asked for 2 %; yes, the people already approved it, and I think we do need 2 %. That is because there is so much land for sale here. Our County is bigger than all the other islands combined. So, I hope you approve that too. I will be here for questions later, unless you have questions now; and I thank you for your time. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you, Ms. Hecht. Do we have anybody in Waimea to testify? 17 MS. HANANO: Yes we do. We have a total of three, and my first testifier here this afternoon is Karen Clarkson. She has a total of eight items. The first one being Communication 80, she is speaking in support. The second item will be CA -15 and she is representing the 2% for Lands Steering Commission Mauka/Makai Access Committee. The remaining will be CA -14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35 and 12. Those will all be in support, and she is representing herself on those. CHR. HAITSUKA: Good afternoon. KAREN CLARKSON (At this time Karen Clarkson came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. CLARKSON: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for allowing us to speak, and thank you for your hard work coming to these meetings. I realize how many hours that you spend for a very good cause which is to make sure that what the people want is set in stone and not allowed to be changed at the whim of a few elected officials. Regarding Communication 80, I was also on the Save our Land Steering Committee and saw the difficulties of how to collect signatures and what signatures were allowed and I support making this system better. Regarding the 2% for the Land Fund, I found that - -oh, I'm representing myself and the mauka /makai access committee, which was a committee that developed out of the Hamakua agriculture plan where public access and open space was identified as one of the top concerns for the people of Hamakua- -when this County decided to set aside the 2% collection of funds, people felt very disillusioned with government. They thought that what they had voted for meant something. Even though 150 of us went and testified to not set aside those funds, set aside the ordinance, the county officials ignored us. This is the only way we can make sure that our intention in voting for that ordinance was to make a commitment. It would be like how you set aside funds for your children's education. It's a long term commitment, and it's a commitment to our children and grandchildren and future generations that I believe the public clearly voted to support that, and we should have an opportunity to vote again in a way that will be more permanent. I would also like to see Charter Amendments CA -12, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, and 35 be on the ballot so that people will have the opportunity to vote for them. I feel confident that you will look at them carefully and make them as clear as possible and as well structured as possible, so people can feel confident that if they support the intent of it that it will be effective. Thank you very much. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you very much. Our next speaker in Waimea - -- MS. HANANO: Thank you Mr. Chairman. The next testifier here is Kelly Pomeroy, and she will be speaking on Charter Amendment CA -15, 26, 35, 27, 20, 17 and 24, all in support. CHR. HAITSUKA: Good afternoon. IN KELLY POMEROY (At this time Kelly Pomeroy came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. POMEROY: Good afternoon. The proposed amendments that are the greatest interest to me are the ones that relate to the most precious and endangered aspects of our society, namely the environment and participatory democracy. Most important of these, I believe, is CA -15, relating to the Land Fund. This is a very personal issue tome because I spent many, many hours collecting signatures on the petitions that put that issue on the ballot. It was a source of great dismay to me to see the contributions to the fund suspended. I believe there were a number of other, more acceptable ways to cut the budget, and their effects would be temporary; whereas open lands lost to development are gone forever. Also, this is a time when land prices are down, so it's a good time for us not to cut back on those funds. I do agree with the earlier speaker who said that there perhaps should be more flexibility in negotiating for some of these lands, and I would urge you to take another look at that and make sure that the County is not hamstrung in making the best deals they can at any given time, given the circumstances. CA -26 expresses similar sentiments in calling for acknowledgement of a public trust function for the government, and should be put on the ballot. Many of the other proposed amendments relate to making government more responsive and transparent. All of the amendments that expand notification requirements and provide for information availability on -line seem useful and perhaps could be combined into one ballot issue. CA -35, which would make recall a more realistic option, is clearly in the public interest I believe. CA -20, which would allow each district to be represented more fairly on each of the standing committees, is also in the public interest. On all of the propositions that give citizens more effective representation and lead to greater transparency, I urge you to let the voters decide. I agree with Mr. Gimpel when he said to err on the side of letting the public decide. I think that one of the most important issues is fair redistricting; I urge you to accept CA -17, which would tighten up redistricting rules. Beyond that I have long felt that the power of one person to make appointments to important boards and commissions, which can lead over time to a pronounced imbalance that sometimes continues even beyond the appointer's tenure, is un- democratic. The Planning Commissions, for example, can be quite powerful in an area that is at the heart of Big Island politics. CA -24 attempts to remedy this, but I think could be formulated to better serve representational democracy. Having the Council as a whole make the selection of Planning Commission members, would not be as democratic as either making the positions elective or allowing the Council member from the district to make the appointment from that district when the seat is open, and leaving the at -large positions to the whole Council or even to the Mayor. Similarly, proposal CA -27, dealing with Council vacancies would make for more democratic representation. I believe that Section 6- 7.5(c) also needs to be changed because it contains a potentially enormous loophole. A developer, who seeks approval of a project that is unpopular with appropriate Planning Commission, may be able to gerrymander the outlines 19 of the project to extend a small portion of it into the jurisdiction of the other Planning Commission, if it that commission was more favorable to the project. Such a developer may be able to muster the votes to ram the project down the throats of the people who would bear the brunt of the impacts even if most of their Planning Commissioners were on their side. The majority that approves the project that straddles both jurisdictions should have to include a majority of each Planning Commission. I don't see a proposed amendment to address this, but it would be very simple to insert language to accomplish this, and I urge you to put such a measure on the ballot. Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you very much. MS. HANANO: Mr. Chairman, the next testifier here is Terri Markovich. She is speaking on CA -15, in support. TERRI MARKOVICH (At this time Terri Markovich came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. MARKOVICH: Aloha, and mahalo for all your work on the Commission. I am on the Open Space and Public Access and Natural Resource Preservation Commission. There are all these other issues that are all very important, but this one has been a very important issue to me, and one of the main reasons why I live here on the Big Island. I lived on Maui and Kauai, I have been in Hawaii since 1973, and I have chosen the Big Island. One of the big reasons is because it is open space, and we have access. I believe that is one of our greatest attractions. By putting this into a Charter Amendment, we make a statement, we make a stand. We say we want to preserve our open space and our land and keep if for generations, in perpetuity. We are always going to have budget emergencies; that just goes with government. I believe that we really need to make a commitment to keeping open space, especially at this time since land prices are a little more affordable at this time, and hopefully we will be able to acquire more properties. We try, as Commissioners we try to make the best choices and the most important. We also have all these matching funds; with our County making these commitments to this 2% of our budget, then other entities look at us and go, "That County is serious about preserving their land." So I believe this is really important to have this be a priority; like Nancy Crawford said a high priority. Land is a high priority for us, and development has to have its place, but we also need the open space to balance the development. In accepting more development, I believe we need the balance of the open space just to keep our island desirable for generations, and for our people, and give us all a place to go and for our citizens to have a reason to be proud of a County that values open space and natural land resource preservation. Thank you for this opportunity. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you very much. Next we have Mr. Rob Tucker. Good afternoon, sir. ROB TUCKER (At this time Rob Tucker came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) 20 MR. TUCKER: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, it's good to see you all again. The Board of Directors of Friends of Puna's Future has authorized me to speak on behalf of our membership. I would first like to speak to CA -15, on the 2% Fund. I'm going to be a little improvisational here, reacting to the Director of Finance's statements. I really am not convinced that 75% of the County's budget is fixed costs, unless it is including the Highway Fund and the Capital Improvement Funds and some very major multi - million dollar funds that are out there and are subject to ebbs and flows. I don't think the fixed costs are anywhere near 75 %. But as Ms. Crawford, that the County has taken advantage of the flexibility in these funds, I would say that relieves the administration of making some very hard choices in so far as Capital Improvement Funds and as for Highway Funds. We have been the beneficiary now of LAO (Legislative Auditor's Office) reports showing some very general and persistent mismanagement and lack of control over these budgets. We are talking about budgets involving hundreds of millions of dollars. To have the easy fruit out there, with a dedicated fund like the 2% to be tapped alleviates the need to roll up the sleeves and squeeze some of the excess out of these systems that we've been operating, as the LAO has been describing. I also feel that in taking two years of funding from the people's initiative, that it's really going to be a four -year process of recouping from all of that; because while these two years of funds are diverted, it's going to take another two years to recoup and get back on track. I was very disappointed that the administration did not, at least, take the stance of treating this as a borrowing, rather than as a taking, which would have led some credence to the 2% initiative and its ability to find matching funds down the road and show some consistency of intent. While we do not see that consistency of intent there now, I would like to see, and our membership would like to see, the voters to have an opportunity to express this intent again. Guy Enriques, for example, has expressed the fact that, "Well it passed then, I don't know if it would pass now." Let's please find out. It deserves to find out. We are in a four -year process now, with the 2% fund, and the hard work has not been done by the administration in dealing with some really serious and heavy financial issues in the County. So, we are in support of the 2% initiative. Moving on to the vacancies and recall, I have to be enthusiastic about an earlier proposal; and I don't know if it's possible within your commission to take the four -year term - -which we can be rationally supportive of for good reasons - -and combine it with the recall language. They really do support each other, and they make good sense, and I think they will translate well to the public. They will understand the issues that are involved with two -years versus four - years, and alleviating the recall. In some earlier testimony on an earlier date, there was a question about the ease with which a lower percentage of requirements could be obtained. I would really like to stress the fact that there is a substantial difference between a secret ballot on election day, and a publicly signed petition with your name and your address on it. Those are very different moments taking place. I do not really envision recalls being easily acceptable even with the improved language. People think three times before they go signing a recall petition. They will walk into an election booth and vote privately for whoever they feel, very calmly and quickly. That finishes my talk on CA -35. 21 On CA -27, regarding the vacancies, we think it is practical, and we support CA -27 as a practical mechanism to fill vacancies in the event of untimely deaths, or people who resign or are recalled or impeached. To have a six month window trip wire as far as whether it would go to an election or not, I think is practical. So, we are supportive of CA -27. I am going to skip through some of these because you have dealt with a lot of them and I would be repeating support. Generally, we are in support of CA -16, 14, 20, and 17. What I really want to talk about now as I start the clock again, if I may, is on CA -25, which is the Community Development Plan (CDP). At an earlier testimony we had some discussion here about the issue of how much participation was gained in developing the Community Developing Plan. I would like to point out that this was a system of community development planning that was launched by the County. Millions of dollars have been spent on it, thousands of people have participated, and we would really like to see it codified and protected in the Charter. I have brought a visual aide; it doesn't travel well from its easel, but we have been to numerous meetings around our communities trying to talk to people and explain the CDP to them. I'll just try to hold this up for you. This is our description of the CDP to our people in Puna. Up here we have these little dots representing 130 small group meetings. These were attended by well over 1,000 people. That's not a small thing. It took place over a period of time. The information from those groups was carefully collated and is available up on the Planning Department's CDP web sites. They have the demographics of who appeared at these meetings, and they have the input from all of these people. All of that data was carried down into the ten working groups. I participated in one of these little dots up here, and later on I came to the meetings to form the working groups and I participated on the Land Use working group, myself. It was comprised of about 25 people on that working group. These ten working groups worked for a year or more, and then brought their work in to the Steering Committee, working in conjunction with the consultant, Plan Pacific, and the County Planning Department. This developed the Puna Community Development Plan, which came to the Council last year. I thought this might help to give a little of the scale and scope of the investment on the community's part. I offer that as a validation as to why we think these plans should be codified in the Charter. We should be able to ask the citizens, do we want to keep these plans as part of our working documents and our working methodology into the future. Asking for every ten years to revise our Community Development Plan, does not dissuade us from the fact that we continue to and want to have more community participation in the CDP's. With our CDP for Puna now having an Action Committee established, we will be making proposals to them soon regarding our mana`o on how to bring more people forward into this living process. We have some very firm and good recommendations intended for our CDP that we think will even bring more people out of our communities. As these issues filter down from a district -wide plan into the neighborhoods, believe me, more people do get interested and they want to get their hands on it. And we want all the fingerprints on these plans that we can get. We like the fingerprints, and we have always had the doors open. So we are in support of CA -25, and we would ask you to let the voters decide. Thank you very much. 22 CHR. HAITSUKA: Next we have Margaret Wille. Good afternoon. MARGARET WILLE (At this time Margaret Wille came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. WILLE: Greetings. Margaret Wille, Waimea. I would like to start with CA -26. The purpose of this amendment is to memorialize the County's responsibility under the State Constitution to ensure that development of the natural resources of the County are done in a manner consistent with their conservation and to add cultural resources to this responsibility. I just hope that you all look at yourselves assort of the far - sighted entity of the County. The Mayor, the Council are all working on a day -to -day level, week -to -week level, month -to- month. But, who is there looking how do we - -you don't meet again, you meet every ten years basically, whether it's you or whoever is in your place - -go through all of this I encourage you to keep that perspective that you are the one group that really has the kuleana to promote a vision that looks towards not just today or tomorrow, not just this generation, but future generations and the future of this island, the survival of this island. This is one, probably for me - -and this is really the whole Public Trust Doctrine - -you get into something that us lawyers talk about. So it's trying to bring it down to the level of the dirt and the ground, but that's really what it is all about, looking out for the island and the natural resources and the cultural resources. This was really clarified in 2006, when the Hawaii Supreme Court made a determination that it's not just the State's responsibility to preserve and protect natural resources, it is also the County's. It was the County that was fighting this and saying that it should really be left to the State. I encourage you -- -What it basically does is encourage a more far - sighted decision - making process. It isn't anything that says you have to decide one way or another; it just says we want you to also look at how this will impact future generations in your decisions that effect cultural and natural resources. So, I appreciate that and I hope that you will support it. If you have any questions about it, I think Commissioner Jarman is good, and I would be happy to answer any questions myself. The next one is really on the Community Development Plan. What Tim Rees brought up, that some of these may be appropriate to ordinances, and some may be appropriate to the Charter; I've been trying to keep that in mind and look at which ones, where is it really important that this is the place that they should be located. The Charter sets forth the importance of the General Plan. The Community Development Plans are like the second stage of that plan, and so what you are doing is really recognizing that, and recognizing what was spoken to the people; that this would be important, that it would be an ordinance, and that it would be law. The big problem in South Kohala was that no one wanted to do this because they all said, "This is just going to be the same old story, the old guiding principles, it's advisory." And it really took a lot to get - -at least in South Kohala, working with all those little small groups of people - -to have trust. This is what this is all about. I see it as trust. I do want to address Commissioner Osborne's question, and that is with the specific provision of the Action Committee reviewing the permits. It is basically giving that group a voice. It doesn't say you have to listen to what they said. It says that they shall forward it to the Planning Director in a timely manner. I am a co -chair on the Waimea Planning and Design Review Committee. If we don't get it in on the date, it's like it doesn't happen. So it is 23 given to us, you have a meeting; people get to have their voice and speak. It is to encourage, basically, more informed decision - making. I see many examples where that wasn't done. Like, the Waimea Post Office wouldn't be facing towards the wind today. It just gives more voice to people allowed to participate in decisions that are very important. When you have developers coming in and basically creating towns, 750 acres of commercial district, a residential district, it says okay you are also part of this process. So that's what this is about, and we fought in South Kohala to sort of say that we could have the authority to review the applications. Again, it's allowing for a voice, it's not being the decision - maker. In terms of the 2% Land Fund, I think it was Commissioner Unger bringing it up. Let me just say, I don't agree with having the Legislative Auditor having a fixed funding based on a set percentage, whether it's of the fixed budget or the other budget. But I do feel that there is a big difference between that - -and maybe that could be in a ordinance - -and the 2% Land Fund, which was basically where the people had to rise up and say, "This is something we really want." The years that were put in to accomplish this, it is recognizing that voice. This was the first thing that was raided or used to deal with the budget. If you don't say, in your day to day decisions, sometimes we have to have college funds and we have to have this. The one place in Hawaii the people feel is to preserve some of this land. We don't have any cultural resources. This island is just like -- compared to any of the other islands - -has so little; the only women's heiau on this island is located in Waimea. Nobody knows where it is, it is not protected, it is not preserved. So, I want to differentiate what should be in the Charter. I see this as a matter of trust, let it be voted on. The one thing I would do perhaps is on provision 5 on this; it says make this start December. In other words, make it after a certain date. The Mayor said this is set; we want this money for two years. If that budget isn't up, here is says, 2% of the funds shall be deposited, starting on December 30, 2010, or however you want to do it. So he has already considered this money that is not being deposited as part or his current budget - -if you want to clarify when this starts. When Mayor Kenoi spoke to the Council here, he said, when asked what about after these two years, he said we'll see about that. In other words, this is just like a good place to grab. Now, there are many places I see, without cutting jobs, without cutting programs, where funds could be raised. I certainly see many, many grants and monies that are -- -There is so much that is not being accomplished in many ways. Even in the impact fees; we paid $4 million dollars we paid for Costco's intersection. There are many things where if you just say we want you to think hard, because we want to preserve this land. The next one is CA -21, the one where in terms of membership on commissions and boards, Planning Commission and Board of Appeals. I see this as really important, on the Planning Commission. The basic principal, regardless of how you word it, is that there are regulators and the regulated; those who regulate, and who they regulate should not be the same. It is to allow for a review, an objective review. So, whatever the wording is, that is the intent. I think if, where Jacqui brought up, there is some room for interpretation. Maybe you could start looking at who has this duty, and who is one of these people. It could be clarification by definitions of what some of this means. I would say it would be helpful to define this more clearly. I would just say that I consider, if you look around the country in terms of levels of ethics and conflicts of interest, there is a progression of those who say you can't be a 24 regulator here if it has to do with what is in your family and who is making money in your family. The next level is sort of who your boss is. If I am the attorney, if I'm working directly for a developer, and my friend, Mr. Harris, is sitting here and he is working on his development, and I know I am coming in here soon, I don't see how I can be dutiful to my employer, or the person I am representing, if the person similarly situated is before me? So, I think there could be some clarification in terms of definition, so that one doesn't start getting in to who exactly this should apply to. I think that's very important, and I think trust on this island is very important, and that's what all of this goes to; also, expanding the voices. If you look at the Planning Commission right now - -I consider Planning Commissions should be relatively diverse in terms of environmental, cultural and economical, particularly long -term economic prosperity interests - - -it is all weighed very heavily on one side. The side it is weighted heavily on is not environmental or social interest. So, I think that is important; it could use some clarification. In terms of selection of boards and commissioners - -and this is to have it be that the Council member be the appointee, rather than the Mayor. I actually disagree with this. I would prefer that it say something like that the members shall be appointed by the Mayor in consultation with the corresponding Council member and Community Development Plan Action Committee. I think it's getting the opinion in there. I think we are moving from the Mayor, a single person appointing or making the first pick, to another single person making the pick. In South Kohala when they did the Steering Committee, Yvonne Lindsey, and a lot of other community people all got together and went through a lengthy process and recommended people to the Mayor. They were sort of like the beginning level of the Community Development Steering Committee, the people who selected the people on the Steering Committee. If it's the Mayor, he should be in consultation with the Council member of members and the Community Development Action Committee. Again, it doesn't say anybody has to chose them, but it forces people to think about who is available, and coming up with a diverse group. On the four -year terms, I want to just echo what has been said here. I haven't testified on this provision before. I have no trouble with the four years, but I do think there is a balance. If you are going to change it, then you should balance it. I feel a lot of the transparency and conflicts of interest provisions that you are also looking at, and making sure that the Community Development Plan is in place in there and the selection. All of these things having to do with accountability and transparency help to keep things from being like people are just in there, and where this little tiny hui makes the decisions. Again, I think that when you are looking at these, and you are looking at the four year one, that if you are going to support the four years, then you will also give the notice and more accountability and work on the transparency and some of these other issues that Debbie Hecht has brought up, so there is a balance there. People worked very hard to change it from four years to two years, very hard. So I think there has to be recognition, why was there so much effort to do that, and have some balance. The rest I think are pretty quick. In terms of the redistricting change, I think that that is a pretty obvious one and that should go into the Charter. In creating the standing committees and putting that in, I think that is critical to go in there. This again assures a voice for each 25 district. It's not really just for the Council member; it's for the voice for the people in that district. Otherwise, what has happened in other counties in Hawaii and in other places is there is a certain progression, and the first thing is to reduce the number of committees and get them so that they are under your majority people, whoever they are, whatever the majority is. The next step is that the chairmen of those committees have to approve any bill that comes before it. I ask you to also look at this as not just important in terms of - - -It ensures that everyone from every district will be represented in each of these important areas that are discussed; whether it is Planning, or Finance, or Public Works. Just to clarify, as I see it, it is really on the committee level that everything is hashed out; the negotiating, and working, that where a lot of the thinking takes place. When it gets to the Council vote, it is more of a refining and final decision - making. So, the real deliberations happen on that level, so I would really encourage you to support that. On CA -19, which is Office of Council Services, I feel strongly about this, and I would encourage you to say the Council "shall" establish an Office of Council Services, rather than "may." When it gets into "may," then it's arguing, and should it happen in this case, and how much of a conflict will we see there, and how much finances. If you just set it up so it's separate and this is the person responsible, it works. Maybe this is from anthropology where structure helps to formulate good decision - making. I really see - -Tim Rees and I really agree on a lot, but I think this one he felt the other way - -that you are not really going to spend that much more. I see it that this means that you are going to have more input on decision making. You are going to have the Council members feeling that they have somebody loyal to them, thinking first in terms of legislation. If I was hired to represent the Council--just take the impact fee bills that have come up - -I would give them very different advice than if I was representing the Planning Director and going to court with Judge Ibarra. If I was representing the County in the Leslie case, where the Planning Director argued the word "shall" really is sort of discretionary, "may," and I just think let's keep things out of court. I just really believe in how can we structure things to prevent it from going way beyond by getting more input in decisions. I support this; I would encourage it just to say "shall." Maui does it, it means there is a commitment here to people. There is a different approach to legislation than there is to the executive branch. I know if I was working for the Mayor and we had to keep it all under our umbrella and everybody together, but I think it really hurts us. It certainly hurts when you look at the Hokulia case. I'd love to see how much money was spent there; and that case should never have happened. On the proposals for the energy and agriculture and the one for civil defense, I support these conceptually. What all of this is saying is that these are very important and haven't been treated the way it should be treated. Maybe by making this change it will bring this County up a century. I feel I very much like the director of research and development, and if he is able to convince you that they are going to make that level of commitment without making the change, I don't think any one would have a problem. What is our level of commitment? I'm on the Waimea Community Association board and I did a program last night for what is Waimea's emergency preparedness, and being more sustainable. We had 100 people and department heads from most every department, and business people and all of the non - profit organizations. We had 35 people speak who are working on this issue. It really became clear to me through all of this that the way for us to be more secure, more prepared and more 26 handle disasters, is, number one, be more agriculturally and energy sustaining and self sufficient and independent. How do we make it clear that that is where we are committed? If all of us from this island spent 10% less on imported food, I think it said - -or maybe it was a mistake - -we would put an extra $500 million dollars into the economy, and we would have all this more food available if suddenly we were in need in terms of some disaster. I think Waimea is looked at as a potential host community if there were a disaster; it's the food basket, this whole island is, Hamakua is. So again, looking at these things far - sighted, how do you all see that we can create that leap in commitment that we need, and also just in terms of getting grants? There is a lot of money here, and we are missing out. The change in the name of the department of research and development to economic development, I find this is one of those that I agree with Tim Rees. If you put this for the first one, people are going to say, "Why are you bringing this to us, why is this so important to have ?" I don't really disagree with it, but it just doesn't seem like something to be spending the time where you are going out and asking the public which name we should have for this department. We should be looking at prosperity, which is economic, environmental and cultural. Research and development, the whole idea is that it is far - sighted and it's not just about how to keep the economy going on a day to day level, but long term. I have just a couple of final ones. On CA -32, that was the one having to do with whether to retain special counsel where there are situations where the corporation counsel has been disqualified. I'm not even sure that has ever happened, and going through, I prefer the one I discussed earlier, which really just sets it up and not where we have to argue and who should be disqualified. I really look at what has happened over the past few months with the reorganization as a great example of why it should just be set up that way. Right now, the Corporation Counsel, if he is disqualified as having a conflict of interest, you can get outside counsel anyways. Obviously the notice ones, which you had several that are overlapping, encourage that notice is important. Those provisions are important to be in the Charter. The Charter is about our different entities of the government and the public, and the relationship to the public. Having the web site and having the notice be on- line - - -I think it was just last week there was a really good statement. Our National Information Officer spoke and he said that we are in a transformation, and the revolution right now is the importance for this nation to have the information on -line, in time. That is how we can move forward and progress, getting more raw data out, and not be where everything is filtered and you get it too late. You are always reported to what happened back when and you can't do anything about it. So, getting more voice, and allowing the public to have their say. Thank you very much. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you Ms. Wille. We'll take a ten minute break. RECESS: At 3:30 p.m., the Chair called for a 10- minute recess. RECONVENE: The meeting was reconvened at 4:43 p.m. 27 CHR. HAITSUKA: Next up, we have Barbara Kahn - Langer to testify. Good afternoon. BARBARA KAHN - LANGER (At this time Barbara Kahn - Langer came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. KAHN - LANGER: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you, and I've been here once before. Specifically, my name is Barbara Kahn - Langer, I live in Hawaiian Paradise Park. I am a member of Friends of Puna's future. I am testifying here today specifically on CA -25. All of the other comments that I wanted to make, Rob Tucker has amply taken care of them, so I have no need to go and further talk about those. Chairman Haitsuka, and Charter Commissioners, my comments address CA -25, the amendment proposal to incorporate Community Development Plans (CDP's) in the County Charter. I was one of the initial members of the Puna Community Development Plan effort in Hawaiian Paradise Park, one of the first homes that people came to as part of the initial process of getting people involved in the CDP. We opened up our home to people as well. We have been involved in it for a long time. I am pleased that the County Council approved Mayor Kenoi's selection of the nine - member Puna Community Development Plan Action Committee. The appointment of Barbara Bell to that committee illustrates the need for an Action Committee to be appointed in a timely fashion, and functioning within six months. From the time of Barbara's initial application to her selection and subsequent approval by the council, she and her husband embarked on a road trip through the mainland and according to the coconut wireless, will be next traveling to Australia. I see Bobby Jean is here, and you may want to check on that. MS.LEITHEAD -TODD: They are back. MS. KAHN- LANGER: That's great, thank you. My second comment underscores Bett Bidleman's testimony of November 3, 2009. To keep Community Development Plans comfortably open and broadly representative of the community, a mechanism is needed to foster participation by ordinary citizens who must live daily with the end results of community planning. Puna is a word of mouth community. It doesn't fit a generic communication and decision - making model. Whatever mechanism is created, it needs to keep interaction flowing between the action committees and the people they represent, and it needs to have language that fosters that interaction. Mahalo, for your consideration. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you very much. Next we have Brenda Ford. Good afternoon. BRENDA FORD (At this time Brenda Ford came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. FORD: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you for holding another meeting that allows us great latitude in speaking to you on several different issues. I am going to talk on most of these items, and I will be very brief on most of them, so you won't be here for days listening to me. I'm sure that is not your intent. W First of all, I would like to request that almost everything, if not everything, that is before you, and that has been placed on previous agendas as Charter Amendments be placed on the ballot. The reason for that is this Commission, your Commission, operates every ten years. Many of the things, if not most of these things, should have been corrected on the last Commission. Some of them should have been corrected 20 years ago. If you don't get them on the ballot for the people to decide, it's going to be another 10 years of us struggling through trying to get things to work a little more efficiently. So, I do ask you to get as much of this on the ballot as possible. People on this island are very intelligent and they will understand what is on here. If they don't, they will ask their neighbors. We are a community who talks to each other. We talk story, and I implore you to get these things on the ballot. Let me start out by talking about CA -14. This is for the Legislative Auditor to retain independent legal counsel. This is extremely important, and you are going to hear about legal counsel on more than one of these items. It is important that the Auditor have independent legal counsel, because the Auditor - -who happens to be a woman at this point in time, but it makes no difference - -needs to be able to get an opinion that is not biased in favor of the administration, or the Council. It needs to be independent, and for that reason they do need to have a counsel that is specialized in auditing law. We don't have that among our Corporation Counsel and we certainly don't have it in the County Council. So, when you are looking, as an Auditor, for a legal representative, a specialist, you need a very specific type of specialty in law. That is why I encourage you to pass CA -14 and get it on the ballot. Regarding CA -15, the Land Fund; the people spoke on the last ballot and they said, "We want to preserve our treasured lands." The Mayor and the majority of our County Council said, "We don't care what you said, we are going to stop the funding." To me, when initiative takes up to 10,000 signatures to get something on the ballot, and then the people approve it, that is a mandate. That is a mandate, we work for the people; they don't work for us. When the people say this is the way we want it to be, that should be sacred to all the people in government. Unfortunately, it's not, so I encourage you to put CA -15 on the ballot, and you watch; it will pass. On CA -16, the Initiation of Charter Amendments and Revisions, I urge you to pass this and put it on the ballot. We changed the initiative and referendum process to make it easier for people's signatures to qualify. Not on the ballot, just to get their signatures authorized. They have to sign their name, they have to print it, and it has to bear some reasonable facsimile to what is on their registration affidavit, and the last four digits of their social security number and their birth month and birth day. That is all that it takes to recognize that it is me signing something. Rather than Brenda J. Ford, Brenda Ford should be sufficient, it's close enough. My address hasn't changed in 15 years. We need to make it easy for people to engage in the process. All a petition does is say to put it on the ballot for the people to decide, so we shouldn't make the petitioning process onerous. We need to change several sections of the code to make them all identical and make it very easy for people to sign a petition, easy for us to process it and understand it to get something on the ballot. We shouldn't make people jump through hoops to try to participate in their government. 29 CA -17, Reapportionment to Redistricting; as I mentioned before, I won't go into great detail. I wish you would have put more criteria in there because the United States Supreme Court has many, many cases of law, that are now the law throughout the Country, on things that we should be looking at. But, at the very least, you did a good j ob on getting the four criteria mandated. We are going into a census year next year. I hope that we will start that commission early, even though it will start before this amendment gets on the ballot and hopefully will pass. The most important thing that we do, besides voting, is to have our redistricting done legally and properly and not wind up in another court of law, or going to the United States Supreme Court, which I had to do. Four -year council terms; I'm probably the only council member who will be opposed to these. I think it's important that the public be able to easily deal with a council member who is not doing what they promised to do. That doesn't mean that every council member is going to vote 100% of the time the way 100% of their constituents want. But, it should not be on the public's back to do a recall petition, unless something is so horribly wrong. Or an impeachment; if something is so horribly wrong that they have to start impeaching somebody after six months, they have to go through the process. I believe that a two -year term is absolutely onerous for the person running the campaign. None of us like campaigning, none of us like raising money; that's just too bad, that's our job. It shouldn't be the public that suffers a four -year term of somebody that is not being as responsible as they should be. It should be the public that gets the advantage. I am a firm believer in giving the public the advantage whenever possible. On CA -19, Office of Council Services, establishing a legal office separate from Corporation Counsel if it chooses; I wish it also said "shall, shall establish a legal office." I think it's important to have somebody who speaks for the Council that absolutely is paid by the Council and is on their side. If I went to an attorney, or if any of you went to an outside attorney and said, "Well, you can choose attorney A, but we are going to rely on attorney B," none of you would do that. You would always say, "I want an attorney that is absolutely on my side; that is what I am paying that attorney for." As professional as our attorneys are in Corporation Counsel, and they are professional, I still believe there is an inherent conflict of interest and it needs to change. CA -20, Council Standing Committees; please remember that I hope each one of you represents a single district. I don't know if there is more than one district represented dually here, but council standing committees is where the bulk of work is done on the County Council. You will be protecting your council member's ability to have input to a huge amount of legislation, and the right to vote on that legislation by passing this particular amendment. Council members, as Ms. Wille described it, are at risk in every election if they are not in the majority, of loosing their right to participate. The council rules can be changed, unfortunately a lot of our council rules aren't even followed, with every new incoming council; that's legal; there is nothing wrong with it. But, to disenfranchise a particular district, because that district is in the minority; not allow them to have input and represent the interest of their district at the committee level is an abomination. So, I beg you to pass this one. Also, this allows the council members the right to vote on every committee. Just 30 allowing them to sit on the committee is one thing, but if they cannot vote, it doesn't really matter. On CA -21, the Planning Commission and Board of Appeals Membership, I'll just say t hat I concur with this. On CA -22, the Filing of the Council Agenda, it's no surprise to anyone on this Commission or the public that there has been a lot of controversy over this issue. The controversy needs to stop, and the way you stop it is to put into the Charter exactly what needs to be done. And again, we serve the public, they don't serve us. If the law says six calendar days, and I believe it should be 4:30 p.m. on the sixth calendar day at a very minimum; that's when we should be filing, at the deadline or before, and posting. And not just posting on a single bulletin board over at 25 Aupuni Street. We need to put in on an electronic web page, so everybody can go in at 4:31 p.m. and say, "Oh, that's what is happening six days from now." They can get together their testimony or whatever they are going to do. To disadvantage the public is wrong. In every single instance, it is wrong. The filing of the council agendas needs to be no later than 4:30 p.m. on the sixth day before the meeting. CA -24, I support this, but I have a recommended change. If you will look at CA -24, where it says that each council member will recommend a minimum of one nominee, I suggest that you change that to two, a minimum of two. The whole purpose is not to have a discussion between the Mayor and the Council Members, because you might have a discussion and if you don't agree, what good is the discussion, you haven't gotten any place. The purpose of this is to get some place. Council people know the people in their district better than any Mayor, I don't care who the Mayor is; it makes no difference at all. My recommendation is to change that to a minimum of two. The Council member needs to do their job. Let these people choose appropriate people, then send the nomination from the Council member to the Mayor. The Mayor then does the background checks, and the Mayor selects which one of the two or three, or whatever. That's what this amendment says. It doesn't say that we are taking something away from the Mayor; it says to let the people closest to their constituents make a selection. Send that selection to the Mayor, have the Mayor choose whichever one the Mayor wants, and then send it back to the Council for the final vote. There is nothing wrong with that. But, to just go on with an endless discussion, that could go on for years, on whether or not the Mayor is going to accept these two nominations, or have the Council members say they are not supporting these people, and have a big knock -down at the council meeting, which is embarrassing for everybody; it's not efficient. We need to improve the efficiency, and give the Mayor a decent selection of candidates from which to choose. CA -25, Community Development Plans; it's been over a year in a couple of cases for the Action Committees to be selected. It's unconscionable. I understand the need of having the Community Development Plan in the Charter. One of the reasons to have it in there is that right now they are passed by ordinance. There are some good things about that. It means that if we have got a mistake, a real honest to goodness mistake, the Council can correct it. But, what you don't want to have happen, is for thousands of people to spend even more thousands of hours creating a Community Development Plan, and just imagine if you had a truly nasty evil Council who said, `You know what, we don't like them at all, and we're just 31 going to negate the entire Community Development Plan and toss it in the garbage and go back to whatever we've got." That would be such a disservice to the people and again, a mandate from the people would be overturned and ignored. By putting this into the Charter, saying you will have these plans, at least they cannot be totally destroyed by a Council that might have some adverse political agenda. I'm not saying that this is written exactly the way it needs to be written. You might have to make some changes to it, but please consider passing this one. CA -26, we definitely need conservation of natural and cultural resources. We have not done a good job as a County; we have done a really dismal job as a State. You know the State is in deep financial trouble. We have been having terrible problems on the West side of the island for decades trying to protect our cultural and natural resources. It's getting worse because the State can't do more; they are doing less and less all the time. The County needs to step up to protect our own cultural and natural resources. Who better to understand and protect those resources than the people of this County, and therefore, the government that represents the people? So, I do encourage you to vote yes on that. I support Vacancies in Office. This would be a very efficient way to deal with a vacancy of less than six months. Please remember that no matter who is in the majority in the Council, the way it is right now is if we have a vacancy for any reason, in the first 30 days the Council has to come to an agreement as to who to select to replace the missing person. Obviously, the Council majority is going to prevail, whoever that majority is. And if may not be a person that the community wants, but it might be the majority's desire. On the 31st day, if we can't come to an agreement, the Council Chair makes the selection. The Council Chair is one person. If we have problems with the Mayor or a single Council member making a selection of a board member or a commissioner, how much worse to allow the Council Chairperson to make the selection of a Council member. That is just going to increase the strength of the Council majority and that means less diversity of opinion. It's good to have diversity of opinion, because we all bring good ideas to the table. I oppose CA -28, Department of Civil Defense. The way Civil Defense is set up in the State is that the State Director of Civil Defense is General Lee. The State Deputy Directors are the respective Mayor's of the Counties. Traditionally, it has been the Mayors, it could actually be somebody else if the County Council made a change in that, but currently, traditionally, it is the State Deputy Directors are the Mayors. And there are some good reasons for that. Right now, the Civil Defense Administrator is a civil service position, not subject to political manipulation. If we create this department, and we make this a director position, the Mayor is now going to appoint the Director of Civil Defense. How would you like it if I was made the Director of Civil Defense? I have no skills in that area at all, but I could be appointed as a political appointee to that department. This would be a disastrous situation. This is a department like many of our other departments where we need a professional; somebody trained in all of the different types of emergency things, who knows the incident command system very well. There is a reason we should have a professional in that position, and that professional should not be subject to political whim. Civil Defense affects every single person on this island, so I don't support this one. 32 CA -29, the Prosecuting Attorney Powers; I do support this. I can tell you from working with the Prosecutor's Office, with one of the Deputy Prosecutor's, that it's really important to add these additional powers to the office. The Deputy Prosecutor that I worked with has been infinitely helpful, in working with my community groups and trying to not just prosecute crime, but to prevent it from happening in the first place with Community Solutions groups, with Crime Prevention. But we need to make that ability to do those things. We need to put that in the Charter. We need to grant that ability to the Prosecutor's office. They can do much more than just prosecute criminals; they can help us stop crime. They work with us as the Council members, and they work with us, including me, with the Police Department. They also work with other agencies that deal with the victims of crime. So, I think it's really important that we pass this one. CA -30, Board and Commission Websites; I'll just say I support that. CA -31, Department of Agriculture and Energy, I do support this. The State, as usual, is not able to do this job, and it's time for the County to step up. We are now in the 21st Century, and we don't need the "plantation mentality" dictating to us from the Sate how we are going to do things and what we need to do. I do believe we need to start putting more emphasis on these two areas of our island. After all, this island is an energy mecca. We've got wind, waves, geothermal; we've got bio -fuel that we could develop. We've go all these things, we should be energy neutral. We should be able to produce plenty of energy for the island and lower our energy costs. But we are not getting enough emphasis on this issue. We certainly did not in the past administration. We got some, not enough. Mayor Kenoi is doing well; he is getting some of this stuff moved forward. But I really believe that this should be a departmental position, so I do support that. Special Counsel, I absolutely do support CA -32. CA -33, Posting Notices Electronically; again, we are supposed to be serving the public's needs, not our needs. Just posting something physically down on the bulletin board on one place on the entire island is not good enough to serve the public. We have the technology to do this; there is no reason not to do it. CA -34, Budgetary Independence of the Legislative Auditor; I absolutely support this. I heard Ms. Wille's comments, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for her, but I will tell you that we passed a Charter Amendment to make the Legislative Auditor a six -year term. We, the Council, then went through the process of interviews and hiring a person. We hired the Auditor that we had, and I want to tell you if she's not the best auditor in the State, I would be very, very surprised; she is fabulous. But, within two or three months of hiring her for a six -year term, her budget was attacked. $125,000 was going to be taken out of her budget, and that would have cramped her ability to do her job. Her job is to represent the tax payers. Is the money that we are getting from the taxpayers being prudently and reasonably expended? And if not, why not; and if why not, then we better find out what we need to do. And that is exactly what she is doing. When I did the research on this, the City of Toronto and the City of San Francisco both used this process; this is a National movement among local government auditors; to have them funded as a percentage of the budget. You might 33 not like my percentage, it looks like it is more than San Francisco, but San Francisco is dealing with a multi - billion dollar budget. That's a huge city. Toronto is much bigger. Does this give the auditor more money than she had this year in the budget? Yes, it does, and there is a reason for that. There are things our auditor needs to do to help this County become more prudent in the spending and management of our dollars. And in order to do that, the auditor's office needs to have an un- tampered with budget. The only way to do that is to take it out of the hands of the Mayor and out of the hands of the Council, and make it a percentage of the budget. I do urge you to pass that. CA -35, Recall; please pass this one. Again, this makes the petitioning process standardized among all the different things that we're doing. We need to do this especially if you choose to go to four -year terms. We need to have these vacancies, recall, impeachment, they all need to be standardized, and they need to be made as transparent to the public as possible as to what we need to do. I hope you don't go to the four -year terms, but if you do, these changes and the petitioning mechanisms need to be standardized. The last one, of course, is CA -12, Initiation of Charter Amendments or Revisions; dropping it from 20% of the registered voters to 20% of the votes cast in the last General Election, it's only prudent. We are the worst one in the State. We have the highest number in the State. We are doing everything possible to make it as hard as possible for the public to get involved and have a say in what is going on with their government; and shame on all of us. Not you, but shame on all of the rest of us who have put this aside for years, and not taken care of it on the Council. I would encourage you to drop it below 20 %. But if you don't, at least get this one on the ballot. Thank you for your time, and good luck to all of you. Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you, Ms. Ford. MR. UNGER: Brenda, could I ask you a question regarding standing committees? There is an ordinance in place right now that stipulates that every council member be a part of every standing committee, right? MS. FORD: Well, no, there is a Council rule. And rules are passed by resolution, and they do not have the force of law, which is one of the reasons that a lot of our rules are ignored. MR. UNGER: So in practicality, that is how it is working out. How is that working? How is it working out that each council member is on every standing committee? MS. FORD: I think it is working out extremely well. I personally value listening to the opinions of the other council members, even if they are in the majority, and I'm in the minority side. I think it's important that they represent their district with the ideas that they are presenting to us. I would hate to see any council member removed from any of the standing committees. I think that disenfranchises the constituents of that council member, and I don't think that is right. 34 MR. LINGER: Okay, let me ask you this; if you are opposing a bill in a standing committee, and it moves forward, what do you do when it goes before the whole council? Are you silent at that point? MS. FORD: Once it comes up to the whole Council, we would have the right to speak, but then we've got to hash it out again at the Council level, where the minority position could now be hurt. So you have to do the committee work all over again at the Council level, and every body who testified at the committee level might not be able to testify at the council level. MR. UNGER: Why is that? MS. FORD: Because they might not be able to show up. They might not have the day off or have the time. So, we've missed out hearing from the public at the committee level and now we have to, as a disenfranchised council member, we have to start asking the questions. And remember, at the Council level there is a five minute rule. If I want to start asking questions, I can be timed out after five minutes. And that five minutes includes anybody I ask questions of. So the rules can be used very abusively. At the committee level those rules don't take place. We can talk as many times as we want. Within reason we can have the latitude to speak and ask questions. The rules at Council are stricter, and they can be used abusively to silence the minority. MR. UNGER: What about introducing bills? Can you introduce a bill if you are outside of a standing committee? Can you still introduce a bill into that committee or outside of the committee and directly to the Council? MS. FORD: You cannot bring a bill, an ordinance, directly to the Council; it is supposed to go through committee. You can ask for it to be waived to Council, but it always starts out at the committee level. Yes, I could introduce a bill at the committee level, and then I could not speak on it, if I was not part of that particular committee, I couldn't even speak to my own bill at the committee level. There is a worse problem, and Margaret Wille talked about it. When you have power- brokering going on, or power- mongering going on, the way you do it is you start consolidating committees, although you only have a few chair persons. Then the next step is to give that chair person the right to determine what legislation will be allowed to go through their committee. Once you do that, the minority could lose the right to even initiate legislation, because it will be killed at the committee level. The State does this. MR. UNGER: So, could you introduce it straight to the County Council at that point? MS. FORD: No, no you cannot. Ordinances have to go through a committee and either be discussed and passed forward with a positive or a negative recommendation, or they are waived forward. So, there are really some very extreme and negative consequences to not having all council members on all committees. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you, Ms. Ford. Next we have Ms. Bobby Jean Leithead -Todd from the Planning Department. Good afternoon. 35 BOBBY JEAN LEITBEAD -TODD (At this time Bobby Jean Leithead -Todd, Planning Director, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. LEITBEAD -TODD: Good afternoon. On proposed amendments CA -21 and CA -25, I'll speak in my capacity as the Planning Director, but on the others I'm speaking more for myself and based on my experience. Most of you know me; and I kind of have a unique perspective on stuff because I've probably worn more hats in this County that just about any body else. I've been a Deputy Corporation Counsel, advising various departments; I have been the Legislative Auditor for the County, responsible for audits as well as for research and drafting for the County Council; I've been a Council member and was elected to four terms; I've also been Director of the Department of Environmental Management; and I've been Director of the Planning Department for the past eight months now. So, when I look at various amendments, it's kind of based on those experiences, and also because of my firm belief in separation of powers, which I think is embodied in the Charter. As I looked at many of these proposed amendments, I was concerned that it basically was trying to change the structure, and would basically get rid of some of those checks and balances that I see currently in the Charter. On the proposed Charter Amendment CA -14, I am pretty much opposed to that just basically on the idea that I believe you should have one attorney speaking on behalf of the County. If there is a need for independent or special counsel, then you go to the County Council and ask for permission to hire somebody; rather than giving them an independent counsel. What it seems to be doing, the move here among the Charter, is actually creating three sections of government. You are creating an executive branch, you are creating a County Council, and now a Legislative Auditor is kind of like a third branch. As I understand it, the creation of the Legislative Auditor was basically a mechanism by which the County Council could direct audits of Executive programs so they would have information from which they could decide whether a program should be funded or discontinued. That was the impetus for creating an Legislative Auditor. The 2% Land Fund, my basic objection to that is that I think the other counties limit it to either 1/2% or 1 %. I'm concerned about the amount of the budget that takes. CA -18, Four -Year Terms; I'm concerned about some of the language that you have on it, because it says effective upon approval. It doesn't speak to what occurs to those people who currently would be running for their last two years of an eight -year term limit. Also, it doesn't give notice to the voters that that would mean in 2010, when you go to the poles and you think you are voting for a two -year term, you are in fact possibly voting for a four -year term. So, I think that needs to be made clear; that if you are going to have it you should say it is effective 2010, rather than effective upon approval. I'm opposed to CA -19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31 and 34. As for CA -21, which goes to the Planning Commission and Board of Appeals - -- 36 CHR. HAITSUKA: You have three minutes for each topic. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: Oh, I thought I had three minutes total, I'm sorry. I think we dealt with CA -14, which my concern was that there should just be one attorney that speaks for the County and then if you need special counsel, you go to the Council. On CA -15, I actually drafted a Charter Amendment for 2% Fund when I was on the County Council. But after speaking to the Finance Director and the Mayor at that time, I did not move forward on that. That was because of concerns in times of economic crunch, like we are going through right now. This year we had a budget shortfall of more than $30 million dollars. Next year we are facing more than $40 million and possibly $60 million dollars in shortfall if the State Legislature votes to take our TAT (Transient Accommodations Tax) away. It is why many Councils and many Mayors have fought against specific funding put in the Charter, so they would have flexibility in the event of something that was unforeseen. We have lived long enough to see that sometimes happens. What we are currently going through is unprecedented. Nobody remembers a budget session like this. We are talking furloughs, we are talking D.O.E. (Department of Education) on the State level, and that's getting down to us. So that's my basic concern about setting something up in the Charter that really ends up hampering you in the event of emergencies. On CA -18, again on the Four -Year Terms; I think you need to specify if you intend it to be effective in 2010, as opposed to effective upon approval. You also need to deal with the issue of what happens - - -For example, Council Member Ikeda and Council Member Ford have been elected three times. I believe the next election is their fourth time running, which would mean that they would then be serving the last two years of an eight year term limit. If this is effective in 2010, then I think you need to make clear that those people would be serving the full four years, and not have to resign in the middle of that. You could take care of that in description, or intent, but I think it needs to be made clear to the voters what they are voting on so nobody is surprised the day after to discover that you went to the ballot thinking you were voting for Ikeda for two years, and then you ended up voting for him for four. That's my basic concern. On CA -19; same thing on the Council having their own attorney. They can vote by 2 /3rds to hire special counsel if they feel they need to, so I just don't see the point of this. I really think you need to have just one attorney that speaks for the County. On CA -24, Standing Committees and Membership; I really feel that that is an internal matter that the County Council should decide. In practice, the County Council, for as long as I can remember, has had all of the members sit on all of the committees. The reason for that has been the Sunshine Law. It's because the recognition that if you had a five member committee, the other four would have difficulty attending that meeting and speaking up. So in practice, it's been all nine, and I see no reason to change it and take that authority away from the Council. It ain't broke, so I don't see a need to fix it. On CA -21, the Board of Appeals and the Planning Commission; basically states that, "Notwithstanding any other provision in this charter, no person shall, by reason of 37 occupation alone, be barred from serving as a member of any board or commission provided that no one may serve on the planning commission or board of appeals who: (1) receives or has during the previous two years received, a significant portion of the person's income directly or indirectly from permit holders or applicants for approvals from the planning commission: or (2) has a fiduciary duty to an entity which has business before the planning commission or board of appeals." The law or unintended consequences: The Board of Appeals does not hear appeals from the Planning Commission. They hear appeals from decisions of either the Planning Director, or decisions of the Chief Engineer of the Department of Public Works. It is usually on things like whether I've denied a variance; whether I've approved a variance; that kind of stuff. It doesn't have anything to do with stuff that goes before the Planning Commission. So, I don't see the connection between someone who had an approval or permit before the Planning Commission, or worked for some body who had that being disqualified from Board of Appeals. Board of Appeals, because they are supposed to review things like whether you are going to get a variance form the Building Code, we try to get people who have experience in construction. We try to get people who have experience in land use, because the kinds of decisions that they are making, they need that kind of experience. Unintended consequences: Who has permits with the County within the prior two years? AT &T has to come before the County to get a cell phone tower; Special Use Permit. That means, under this language, every employee of AT &T, every employee of Verizon, every employee of any telecommunications provider, every employee of HELCo would be disqualified from serving on the Planning Commission or Board of Appeals. Because in the prior two years, if HELCo has come for some approval that they needed in order to put in a utility facility, if the Hawaiian Tel needed something, then all of their employees, not just their executives but all employees because the language says anyone who receives a significant portion of their income directly or indirectly - - -I think the intent was to try and get the head - honchos and lobbyists, but the language here really wipes out a whole sector. Every hotel on this island has a Special Management Area (SMA) permit. That means that every employee at every hotel cannot serve on either the Planning Commission or Board of Appeals, because their employer has a Special Management Area permit. So, I'm just saying that I know what the intent was, but the actual language is disqualifying huge segments of the population that have nothing to do with processing an approval or processing getting a permit. So I think that the current checks and balances, which is, the Mayor sends in a nomination and the County Council then decides whether they want to vote to approve that person is sufficient. Otherwise, you are going to take a whole chunk of people who work - -you have no idea how many people this disqualifies- -from serving on these boards and commissions. So, that was my objection to CA -21. CA -22, which says that you have to post notices by 4:30 p.m.; I happened to be the Legislative Auditor during the great HGEA strike, and had to take over the machine room and print notices, get stuff mailed, get it down to the Post Office. You don't know what is going to happen. And let me tell you, when you don't have your employees there - -and these things can happen - -you have a difficult time meeting the 4:30 p.m. deadline. You also have issues where things change, and part of the problem is that it is very difficult to get stuff W printed, proofed, and ready by a particular time. I think you want to leave that flexibility in case something happens and you cannot meet the 4:30 p.m. deadline, you don't end up having to cancel the entire meeting because you didn't get it in by 4:30 p.m. There has already been a Supreme Court decision that interprets the meaning of calendar days. It basically says that you can file all the way up until midnight on that calendar day. I think that that is fine. CA -24, which is the Council input on Boards and Commissions. In many ways, it basically, lets the Council members select the members of the boards and commissions. The boards and commissions serve under the executive branch. The Mayor nominates, and the County Council reviews that nomination and has an opportunity to reject; and on occasion has rejected nominations to boards and commissions. I see no reason to do this; to basically take away the authority of the Mayor to appoint, and give that authority to the County Council for boards and commissions that are part of the executive branch, and are not part of the legislative branch. On CA -25, Community Development Plans; Community Development Plans are currently under the Hawaii County Code, enacted by ordinance. They are already required by the General Plan, which is also enacted by ordinance. My biggest problem with this is that I would like to leave the flexibility to the County Council to go over and decide whether you want to have them, when you initiate them, and have that flexibility if you want to change the timeline. I have a general objection to all Charter Amendments that don't have a financial impact analysis attached to them. The CDP's (Community Development Plans) that we have worked on so far, have a running total, of just contracts or contracts that we have signed or are about to sign over the last three years of close to $3 million dollars. That is not counting what it costs to print our notices, print up the forms, print all of the other things, the postage that goes into this. If you add all of that in and if you take a look at what it costs in terms of my overtime for staff, then we are well over $3 million dollars. I would just like to have some flexibility. One is that I actually want to go to the County Council and talk about this timing. They passed an amendment that says the GP (General Plan) - - -In the past, you had to initiate a General Plan review on the anniversary of when 10 years had passed. If you adopted it in 2005, then you initiated a review in 2015. There was an amendment recently that says that I have to have the GP, not initiated, but I have to have the draft to the Council no more than 10 years. That means in 2015 I have to have a new proposed General Plan to the Council. Ideally, I would like to put the money in next year's budget, but because of the budget crunch, I can't. So, I'm looking at 2012 to put it in the budget to hire a consultant. I am conservatively estimating that to do the GP -- because the next GP will need to incorporate the recommendations coming out of the CDP's, that I would probably have to have at least $1 million dollars that I'm going to have to look at. That's because just the Kona CDP alone, the contracts on those ran to $688,000, just for that one CDP. The other thing is the language that is in this amendment. It says we shall set these up by judicial district. We don't currently set them up by judicial district; the one we are working on for Hamakua has Hamakua, North Hilo, and rural South Hilo included in that CDP. This would mandate that I break up Kona into a North Kona CDP and a South Kona CDP. It would mandate that the current one we are working on be broken up into a Hamakua CDP, a 39 CDP for North Hilo, which is a very small tract of land, and then another CDP that would go all the way from Laupahoehoe, all the way into Hilo. The other thing is that is says that all applications have to go to the CDP's. I think you don't know how many applications we process. Applications for subdivision variances, that one, if we don't process timely there is automatic approval. Applications for zoning variances, applications for addition of farm dwellings, applications for `ohana dwelling permits, applications for PUD's, applications for cluster plan development permits, applications for project district, review and approval of site plans, agricultural project district, building permits, certificate of occupancy, plan approvals, applications before the Kailua Village Design Commission - -which they review, and this would take everything and have it go to the Action Committee before it went to them- - special use permits, use permits, SMA minor, SMA major, SMA emergency, SMA assessment applications, recognition of preexisting lots, consolidation, consolidation and re- subdivision, nullification applications, subdivisions, preliminary plats, final plats, resort subdivision applications, farm subdivision maps for CPR's, final maps for CPR's, change of zone including PUD, APD and soon TOD and TND, GP amendments, CDP amendments, non - significant zoning changes, other matters, requests for applications for non - conforming use status for structures. That's not the whole list. If I have to take all applications that come through my department to an Action Committee, as opposed to just taking to them proposed amendments to the CDP, you are going to have to double the size of my staff. I am going to have to take people away from other work, or I am going to have to have people working lots of overtime in order to process that. I don't think people understand just how much paper and what kinds of paper process and they are all called applications. So this language really adds tremendously to the burden on my department, and cost. On CA -27, my only concern about that is please look at what the cost of running special elections is, and the effort that it takes to set up all your precincts and your voting places. Any time you have a special election to fill a vacancy, especially if you are going to go to a four -year term, the election would be at the next regularly held election under State law. If you are just going to do this, is tremendously expensive, so you need to really be taking a good hard look at that one. CA -28, Department of Civil Defense; the only concern I have over that is whether you are running afoul of civil service law. I would want you to take a good, hard look at that, whether you run up against that. There is a State hierarchy on that. CA -31, Department of Agriculture and Energy; we only have the jurisdiction to do whatever the State Legislature delegates us the authority to do. In the area of agriculture, we have some zoning authority, which is handled by the Planning Department and we have some money that sometimes we appropriate to hand out for agriculture. But, we don't have authority to do anything beyond that in agriculture. Same thing with energy; I really question creating an entire department. Let me tell you, every time we have created a department in this County, we have not anticipated what the cost is. You are talking about the salary of a director, you are talking about the salary of a secretary, you are talking about the salary of the staff, you are talking about the equipment, office space, filing cabinets; you know, all of that. Some of that you can try to get it from other departments, but some of it can't be done. When we created the Department of Environmental Management, we ended up having to go .R down the road where we had a business manager, a contracts clerk, and two people running personnel. I'm just saying that before you walk down that road, please take a good, hard look at what it is going to cost to implement; particularly if we don't have any statutory authority over those areas. The P.U.C. is pretty much in the area of energy, and agriculture is the State Department of Agriculture. So, take a look at the cost to the budget. CA -34, which is a percentage of the money of the budget to the Legislative Auditor; my general objection to that is my objection to any other percentage where there is a set - aside. That's because I've lived through times with the County where we have not seen what was going to happen; the Gulf war, Desert Storm. All of a sudden the tourists stopped coming; 911, boom. If you are going to impose any of these things, I would ask that you have a date that it becomes effective in the following fiscal year, rather that effective upon approval. That is because if it's voted on in November, during the election, you already have a budget that has been approved for that year and balanced for that year. So, on any initiative, if you send it forward, whether it's the 2% for the Land Fund, or 1% for the Legislative Auditor, try and make it effective for the next fiscal year. Otherwise, what is going to happen in the middle of that year, money that was already for other uses, they are going to have to try and figure out where you carve that money out in order to come up with that 2% or that 1 %. I just really believe that when you craft these things, you need specific times when it's effective. And when it's money, that it should not take effect in the middle of a fiscal year, it should take effect in the next fiscal round so you have an opportunity to plan for it. Other than that, I think that I've probably covered enough material. The other caution is, don't just go with this attitude of let's put everything on the ballot, even if it's flawed, and let the voters vote on it, because the problem with a lot of things is that unless you have the time and the money to get out decent information to the public on proposals. The descriptions of the proposals never tell the public what the fiscal impact is. It doesn't tell the public how many employees have to be hired. It doesn't tell them what the implementations of these things are. So people vote, and it sounds like a good idea, but if you told them that for instance this proposal will cost them an extra million dollars a year, or this proposal is going to cost an extra so much per year, or it's going to create additional positions. I think the vote would be different. There has never been a fiscal analysis on any Charter Amendment. I think that a lot of times people vote because they assume that you are doing your job, which is to put good proposals on the Charter; proposals that you believe in, as opposed to throwing stuff up on the wall and seeing whether it sticks. Believe me, I've talked to people who have sat on other commissions who did that and lived to regret what got approved the day after. They just assumed that people would know that it was a bad proposal, or a flawed proposal. So, just nail down all the timelines on it. If you are going to move things forward, make it real clear when it is effective, and when it takes place. Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. MR. NAHALE -A: First of all, thanks. I appreciate that you do have a wealth of experience, and your feedback was very specific. I took a lot of notes on areas where we can improve the amendments. I appreciate that, and I agree with most of what you said, so I won't go over those questions. In terms of the proposal for a new department of agriculture and energy, and 41 this notion of having the fiscal information; I totally agree. When I put this forward, that is always the nagging thing on my mind, is the cost; which is really tough to estimate. My perspective is that we would probably not ever have a new department if we did it that way. We would always say it's too expensive. Just from your experience and history, the intention, right, is for the County to assert a role. I agree there is already an existing role. The intention is for us to assert a role. I haven't finished the research, but I am certain that there is Federal monies for both agriculture and energy that would go straight to the counties. I am more familiar with housing and things like that, so I compare it to housing. We have a housing department and we also have a State housing entity, but there are some differences. So that's my question, your perspectives on that. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: Yes, but the Housing Department actually administers Section 8, and affordable housing programs. They actually have a defined job, and there are actually things that are delegated to the County. The problem that I have with the Department of Agriculture and Energy is that without a clear definition of what their authority is, as opposed to saying we are going to create a department and then the County Council is going to determine what their role is and what authority they have. Without making sure that you are not operating in an area where the State has basically kept the authority to itself, I don't understand the creation of a separate department; also the funding. So I just have some concerns about that. I think the best people to ask about that would be your agricultural people at research and development. I say Dayday Hopkins here earlier, who does most of the agricultural work. I think she's like three credits short of her P.H.D. in Agricultural Economics; or actually went and got her P.H.D. She has a long history of work in the area and works with the farmers. I have just found that every time we have created something, it has cost more than we thought it was going to and it has added to the County budget. So, I tread cautiously when you talk about creating another department; particularly when you are taking on responsibilities in an area that the County has never exercised, or had authority to move. So that's my biggest caution about that. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Fuertes. MR. FUERTES: Thank you Director, for coming in and sharing. I think you shared a lot of wisdom and your experiences are very unlimited, working in County government, and I appreciate your coming in to share. The CDP, CA -25; your comments on that, I know they were on cost. I was on the CDP for Kohala, so I hold it dear to me. I know there is a cost item on that. Do you feel that there are things in place right now that can really support community -based planning? You know, we have the Planning Commission and all of that, but a lot of times, how do we get out to the community even more, to get the communities to really feel they were part of it. We can come and give testimony on all the Planning Commission items, but give me some of your mana`o on that. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: My concern over making it a part of the Charter, is that it removes flexibility. I envision that in the future, we will have multiple CDP's that are mini CDP's within larger CDP's. If you took South Hilo, and you were trying to do a CDP for Hilo, you would probably want a separate CDP for the downtown area. Ultimately, in Kona, you may want something separate for the Kailua village area, because they already have a design 42 village. Some of that you can take in one of these big CDP's, and some of that really requires something that is more targeted towards a smaller community. The idea that if I was going to go down that road, I was going to have to have an action committee for every single one of the CDP's that -- -Right now, I have two Planning Commissions, I have a Board of Appeals, we have an Arborist Committee that we haven't been able to get people on it so it's not running right now, one Steering Committee, on that is going to be appointed fairly soon, four Action Committees that I am going to have to provide staff for. If you do another CDP down the road, that is more staff. I am concerned about the 10 year period, because I really think that once we adopt CDP's, that if we are moving on towards the General Plan, then during the period that we are working on the General Plan we shouldn't be concurrently working on CDP's. That's just because of staff resources, time, and money; also because the CDP's are supposed to be working under the framework of the General Plan. The particular proposal before you has so many things in it that -- -Like the one that says, "all applications," I don't have enough staff to take all of those applications that we process - - -If it just said, "amendments to the CDP," I could live with that. I prefer that it be left in the County Code as opposed to the Charter, because you already have the General Plan in the Charter. I think that the Charter should be more broad - stroke as opposed to going into the subsets and maybe in the future they could come up with some other model under the General Plan. I would like to have that flexibility. But, my biggest concern is the current language. One, is that it sets it up by judicial district; and that's not how we've been setting these up. The other is that it has that language that says, "all applications," because there are so many things like - - -If all applications includes applications for building permits - - -In 2005 we processed 3,500 building permits. As we started going through the CDP's, we were going through an economic downturn, so we dropped from 3,500 to 2,400 to 2,200. This year we are only doing - -we are projected to do- -about 736 for this year. So there is a significant drop which means that I've had the ability to have staff do other things. We have had staff that can service the CDP's. Up until now on the CDP's, we have had money in the budget to hire what we call community liaison aides, and to hire recorders to service the Action Committees. Next year, I'm not going to have that money. All the work is going to have to be done in house, because I have to cut the budget. In the Planning Department I don't have any thing other than salaries and wages, and operating costs; like what it costs to run my zerox machine and some travel. I have to pay mileage to my Planning Commissioners; there is a little bit of training. But the big chunk of money in my budget was $200,000 to support the operation of the Action Committees. Next year that's not going to be in the budget because I have to cut somewhere. I've told my staff that it means we have to take all the work in house. I've also told them that to the extent possible, I want stuff scheduled during the daytime. I have no idea what is going to happen if we have two furlough days next year every month. That is two days less to process other stuff. I have specific timelines. If I have to take everything to an Action Committee, and I have to wait for their recommendation, what is going to happen is there is a bunch of stuff in my office that will fall under State law that says automatic approval if you don't process it within so many days. On an Action Committee, I've got to put the agenda together, I've got to print the notice, and then wait for that recommendation. 43 I'm just saying that the amount of time it takes to process that, all that's going to happen is there is a lot of stuff that will be automatically approved because of the State law. That's what I'm talking about, unintended consequences when you craft language that is very, very broad. When you craft a Charter Amendment, I think you need to do more like laser surgery, and be real clear about what the purpose is, be real clear about what you are going to process. But, when you have language like that, that says, "all applications," you need to know what that means; and that means lots and lots of paper. Then, if the economy picks up, if I have to take 3,500 building permits and I don't think you intended that I would take building permits to the Action Committee, but it is an application. I didn't think you intended that I take a Special Management Area Assessment to determine whether people have to apply to get a permit or not, that that would have to go to the Action Committee. But, it's an application. I don't think that you intended that what goes to the Kailua Village Design Commission, which is a separate entity in the County Code, that whatever goes to them has to first go to the Action Committee before going to them and what's in their authority. I just think that you need to be real careful about what the language is and be real clear what you mean, because otherwise, it's going to be a huge burden on my staff. A lot of stuff is going to come to a roaring halt because there is no way that I can take all applications. I can't take every variance, every additional farm dwelling application to an Action Committee. That's not the kind of stuff that should go to them. MR. FUERTES: Okay, thank you for sharing that. Also, I wanted to thank you for sharing about CA -21. The restrictiveness, that you shared, gave me another insight about it. Thank you very much. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: Maybe on that one, if you want to go down that road, why don't you just say that if somebody has appeared before the Planning Commission on behalf on their employer or on behalf of a client. So they have actually been involved in working with the Planning Commission. But, to just say that anyone who is an employee - -but every employee of a hotel; I don't think that's what you intended - -for every employee of a telecommunication company. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair, I have a question. Just quick, I want to go back to Mr. Fuertes' question, the first question about the CDEP. The question was, are there adequate provisions in place for community involvement for these applications? I think what you hit on was the tension between community involvement and the practical implications of asking that every application go before the Action Committees. I think what Mr. Fuertes was really asking was is there adequate amount of community input in the development process in reviewing applications; which I don't think you answered, so I wanted to find that answer out. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: I don't think that the community should necessarily be involved in a determination whether their neighbor gets to build a house or not. I don't think that's what the intent of CDP Action Committees was. I think CDP Action Committees were meant to create a Community Development Plan; to try to implement it by suggesting things like what should be on the CIP (Capital Improvement Projects) list for the County. Take Puna, they .. have a Puna makai alternate route; they should be coming forward and saying, "We think the County should put that on the CIP list, we think you should fund it by $1.5 million." That's the kind of recommendation that should be coming out of them. On subdivision approvals, if you already have your zoning, what is the Action Committee going to tell me; deny a subdivision? If you have zoning, and you comply with the subdivision code, you have a right to subdivide your property. So why would you take that to the Action Committee to review the plan? Then I have to do a dog and pony show, because I have to bring my staff, and I have to talk about what the road standard is, what the entrance is, the size of the lots, setbacks; I have to bring in the comments from the other departments perhaps. That type of input is not meant by the Action Committee. On subdivisions, we have to post, every month, a list of the subdivision applications. For a lot of these things, you have to notify -- -There is public notice on these, and people have an opportunity, and people do come forward and they protest applications and stuff. But, I'm just saying don't use the Action Committee as a mechanism to go through everything that goes thorough my department. That is not their purpose. If I have an application for recognition of pre- existing lots -- which, by the way, can take an awful long time because we have to look at how many land commission awards are there; whether there was a patent grant; we have to look at whether it was previously subdivided; whether there were leases for that property. Why in the world would the Action Committee make a recommendation on whether I recognize a lot or not? It `s a legal determination, it's not something an Action Committee decides. And, it they said, "Don't recognize it...." If it's not compliant with what the law is, I'm going to ignore what their advice is anyways. I have to do what the law says when we recognize these pre- existing lots. I'm just saying that don't have "all applications," that's not what the Action Committee is for. Frankly, if I had to take everything I do to an Action Committee, then you are going to have to pay them. There is no way they are going to be able to do this one day a month. If I have to take everything one day a month, then by the time it gets to them, and I put it on an agenda, I am already in trouble on some of my timelines. MR. LINGER: Can I just ask one quick question? Okay, what currently is the role of the Action Committees? MS. LEITBEAD -TODD: They are supposed to be proposing General Plan Amendments. MR. LINGER: But they are specific to a Community Development Plan. MS. LEITBEAD -TODD: Yes, let's say they came up with a Community Development Plan. It there is an inconsistency between the General Plan and the Community Development Plan, the General Plan rules. So, what the CDP Action Committee should be doing is proposing an amendment to the General Plan which we would then initiate and take through the process to amend the General Plan to reflect what the community wants in their CDP. If there is a proposal to amend the CDP - -and I know that in Puna in particular, because there had been a number of proposed amendments that were not approved a year ago, even though there were a lot of people saying there were actually a lot of good amendments - -and there were people 45 who were on the steering committee saying that some of the stuff that got passed was a little bit flawed and we would like to tweak it. So, I think they are going to be fairly busy reviewing possible amendments to the CDP, rather than making their recommendations. Somebody asked me for a timeline on what it would take. Using similar timelines on stuff that is processed through the Planning Commission, I figured out that something that went to the Puna Action Committee, got through them, went to my office, went to the Planning Commission, and went to the County Council, if everything went quickly, it would take probably a year to get an amendment processed through that process. MR. UNGER: An amendment to the General Plan. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: No, to the CDP. Because they have so many days, and that's assuming they do one hearing on it. And I don't think that's going to happen. I think there is going to be discussion and more than one hearing. So, it's a process; it goes to them, it goes to the Planning Commission, it goes to the County Council. It is a long process. I'm saying there is a lot of other stuff that shouldn't go to them. If it's something that is supposed to go to the Planning Commission, there is an opportunity on anything before the Planning Commission, for the public. Then most of that stuff goes to the County Council, so there is another opportunity to participate. I think they should concentrate on the CDP. MR. FUERTES: How do you give the CDP a little more teeth; a little more bite? When I was on the CDP - -- MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: Well, they are adopted by ordinance, that's mandated. MR. FUERTES: Okay, but I guess I'm trying to look at the process, let's say for the Planning Commission. If you had a good Planning Commissioner in your district, that person would be directly involved with the Action Committee or the CDP. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: Actually there is a Sunshine Law violation issue there. In many cases, they were advised that if you were going to vote on the CDP as a Planning Commissioner, then you needed to be real careful about participating in charrettes and public meetings, particularly if more than one Planning Commission member showed up. We are having the same problem with our Action Committees. We are running charrettes and there is an issue that no more than two members of a Steering Committee can show up at a charrette because of the Sunshine Law. MR. FUERTES: Okay, but what I am saying is that I hope things are in place where the Planning Commission is listening to the communities. That's my whole intent. If you have an active community - -it doesn't have to be the Action Committee, it can be any committee in the community that is active - -I'm sure they would going to the Planning Commission and sharing their mana` o. MS. LEITHEAD -TODD: Under the structure now, if you approve something, it has to be consistent with the CDP; just as it has to be consistent with the General Plan. The only issue ER is where there is an existing zoning or an existing General Plan designation that is inconsistent with the CDP. What we've done with everything that has come through right now, we take a look, and if there is an existing CDP - -even in Hilo, frankly, we use the 1975 Hilo Community Development Plan, which was adopted by resolution and not by law - -we reference it and look at what it says this are is supposed to be. Then we report to the Planning Commission, what the CDP says. The only real instance that occurred so far, I was at odds in my recommendation. There were two actually. I recommended denial of a Special Use Permit because I thought it was inconsistent with the CDP. I had members of the Puna Steering Committee show up and say that I was wrong, and testify in front of the Planning Commission that I was wrong; that it was consistent. I had another one where I recommended denial based on the CDP, and that was in Hawaiian Paradise Park. What happened is the homeowners association in Hawaiian Paradise Park came forward and they said that they were supporting that Special Use Permit. They wanted that within Hawaiian Paradise Park because they felt that what was in the CDP wouldn't get implemented for so many years, that they wanted to see something that was right there. The Planning Commission, in that case, they listened to the homeowners association of Hawaiian Paradise Park, rather than to my recommendation on the CDP. MR. HOOKANO: Mr. Chair, at this point it seems like we're getting into deliberation on this matter; and it's still actually the public testimony portion of the meeting. MR. FUERTES: Okay, thank you. I just needed to ask those questions. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, thank you. We have one more public testimony to be heard. We have Charlene Iboshi and Mitch Roth. CHARLENE IBOSHI AND MITCH ROTH (At this time Charlene Iboshi, First Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, and Mitch Roth, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. IBOSHI: For those of you who don't know me, I'm Charlene Iboshi. I'm the First Deputy for the Prosecutor's office. Mr. Kimura is unable to come today, so I am here. I asked to be taken out of order so that any of you, if you haven't had a chance to look at our proposal, or if you have any questions, I can answer them for you. Mr. Roth can also answer them for you. Basically, we are just clarifying what we are doing already; adding something in the Charter that allows us to work holistically with the community so we can have a complete strategy for the prevention of crime, as well as prosecuting crime. Part of that is to allow us to do research, prevention, as well as education with the public; working with the public. I heard some questions about public involvement. The whole goal is that the prosecutor should be involved with the community to know what the problems are, the unique problems of each community, and assist the community to find strategies that will work for them. So, we were just asking that in the Charter there is no question that we can do these things that we are doing now, which includes no cost to the County. We normally go out and try to get money for the County to allow us to put on educational programs and things that will help everyone prevent crime, to feel safe in the community, and know what they can do. So, that is what we are asking. The proposal that we have has been submitted 47 in writing to you and we appreciate your consideration of it. I am here to answer questions and Mr. Roth who is our community oriented prosecutor, and for those of you who don't know, he goes all over the island working with the communities to help set up partnerships and figuring out how we can solve the crime problem. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman. MS. JARMAN: In theory, I think that's a great idea; there is only one concern that I have and that is, do you believe that this Charter Amendment would permit the Prosecutor's office to say go out and lobby the public through advertisements or through giving speeches etcetera on Charter Amendments or on Constitutional Provisions or other legislation that they would like to see passed? MS. IBOSHI: I think that the Prosecutor has an obligation, if asked, what the position would be, what the impact would be. But, I think it's clear that we would not use any resources of the County to promote that, including brochures or using airtime or things like that. The idea is that it would not come out of the County coffers to try to do lobbying. What we are just trying to clarify is that we can do the things that we are doing in terms of prevention; not lobbying, or testifying for those kinds of Charter Amendments that you are talking about. MS. JARMAN: I'm happy to hear that, because that is what Carlisle wanted to do on Oahu and that's what he engaged in. He was using County funds to promote a Constitutional Amendment that they were in favor of Whether or not it's a good Constitutional Amendment is irrelevant, but I was hoping that is not what you were talking about. If that's not what you are talking about, then I am in favor of this amendment. MS. IBOSHI: We want to make sure that we have the Charter authority to work with the community. It is understood, actually. Until this case came out, it was thought that it was the Prosecutor's obligation to work with the community; do crime prevention, do research, go out and seek funding that would help the public to be educated about the crime issues and how to prevent them. This just put a little cloud on it, so we just want to make sure it is clarified; not to do any lobbying or anything like that. It's really just more in terms of what we see is appropriate. We can have a position statement, but not use County money to lobby for Charter Amendments and things like that. MS. JARMAN: Perfect, thank you very much. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Nahale -a. MR. NAHALE -A: Thanks for coming. I raised this when it came up earlier; the notion of it not costing the County anything. My understanding is most of this is now paid for with grants. MS. IBOSHI: That is correct. MR. NAHALE -A: If we didn't get the grants, wouldn't we now be obligated to continue the services? By putting it in the Charter, I feel like it kind of institutionalizes it a little bit. MS. IBOSHI: What this would allow us to do is hopefully, someone is taking it on. The Prosecutor's office should take it on. Crime prevention should be part of the Prosecutor's office along with the Police Department's obligations. I think it is something we are obliged to do. If funding got cut, it would not require us to continue programs that we cannot afford. It doesn't require us to do it; it is really just allowing and clarifying that we can do it. As you know, we have worked with the community, and continue to go out and get funding. If another Prosecutor takes a different tack, doesn't want to do that, I don't think there is any legal obligation to continue. It just allows for it. I hope that answers your question. MR. NAHALE -A: It does, thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you very much. That concludes Statements from the Public on our agenda. Let's move on to approval of the minutes. APPROVAL OF MINUTES CHR. HAITSUKA: We are looking at the approval of the minutes for the October 9, 2009 meeting. I understand that there may be some minor typographical errors in this draft of the minutes. So what I'm going to ask for is a motion to approve the minutes subject to the correction of some minor typographical errors. Do I have a motion? Ms. Jarman moved to approve the minutes of the October 9, 2009 meeting of the Hawaii County Charter Commission. Seconded by Mr. Unger and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Honma, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kealoha and Shumway. COMMUNICATIONS COMM. 79 Memo from Chairman Ed Haitsuka, dated October 28, 2009, regarding additional Public Hearings and Special Meetings of the Charter Commission. CHR. HAITSUKA: The first communication is from me, Communication 79. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair, in terms of discussion on the communication, I would say I am in support of the communication. MR. HOOKANO: Mr. Chair, you need a motion first. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion to file this communication? Mr. Fuertes moved to file Communication 79. Seconded by Ms. Kawauchi. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? Go ahead, Ms. Kawauchi. MS. KAWAUCHI: I apologize for jumping ahead. I am in support of what you are stating in your communication. I think we have had a number of amendments added that have not been taken out to the public, and it may be difficult for them to travel all this way. We do have the ability to have videoconferencing in Kona and Waimea, but not in the other districts. I think it's a big commitment to ask of all the commissioners and of the staff. I'm not sure if we have the budget to do it; that is a concern. If the commissioners are available, and we have a budget for it, I think we should do it. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. Are there any other comments? Ms. Jarman. MS. JARMAN: My question would be, when would we do it? I think we would have to do it before second reading, because once we pass something at second reading, then it's going to go on. So, time wise, when would we be able to do that and still make all of our deadlines? CHR. HAITSUKA: Right now, we have a deadline of March 31, 2010. Is that right, Mr. Hookano? MR. HOOKANO: March 13, 2010. CHR. HAITSUKA: March 13, 2010 for the submission of our report to the County Council. So, we have to have our second reading prior to that, which would be either at the January or February meeting. If we are going to go out again to the districts, we would probably have to go out sometime between December and January. I know it's a difficult time because of the holidays. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair, I have a question. If we were to go out to the districts under your suggestion in your communication, since we do have videoconferencing in two of the districts, would it be okay to restrict to the areas that we don't have videoconferencing in, which would be Honoka`a , Puna and Ka`u. Or would that not do justice to what you are suggesting? Would that not fulfill the intent of your communication? CHR. HAITSUKA: We have already fulfilled the minimum requirement. We don't have to go out to all of the districts. I don't know how the commissioners who represent certain districts feel. I'm just bringing this up for discussion. My thought was that we went out with only the first nine of them, and now we have an additional twenty something, and we're going to have thirty something by time we're finished. There are twenty something more proposed 50 amendments that haven't been discussed out in the public. I wanted to get input from the commission members as to how they feel about - -given the short time frame we have - -going back out again. So, I'm open for whatever suggestions we have. MR. NAHALE -A: The only comment I would add is that for me it really depends on how many of these proposals looks like they have some momentum behind them. If none of them are supported, then there's not really a need to go out. But, if a vast majority of them are supported, I would agree with your intention. We have got to give the public an opportunity to give input. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. Anybody else have comments? MS. KAWAUCHI: One additional comment I would have is that in the event that the Commission decides to extend the amendment deadline, in the event that some of the amendments that were proposed may, pursuant to testimony that was provided, be open to change. Would we then have to go out again? I guess I'm just trying to think of that event too, if we decided to open up to further amendments. CHR. HAITSUKA: I don't think we have to go out again, but we can consider whether or not we want to go out again. We have already fulfilled the minimum requirement, so from here on out it is doing more than what's minimally required. I don't think we have to do it. I think we have to discuss it and determine if we should go out again. MS. KAWAUCHI: Okay. MR. FUERTES: Mr. Chair, in the essence of time, and if we meet the requirement -- -When we went out to many of the communities, we didn't get that many people that testified. I'm sure that because of the videoconferencing, I feel we met our requirement, and we did okay so far. That's the way I feel, and I'm going to vote against this. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any other discussion? Do we want to take a vote? We have a motion to file. MR. HOOKANO: The motion is to file, so that's going to happen anyways. This is just kind of a procedural matter, just to file it. Every body usually votes "yes" on that. If somebody wanted to make a motion to go out to more public hearings, then that would be one where you would vote "yes" or "no" whether to go out to more public hearings. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, so the motion is to file the communication, not to schedule more public hearings. MR. FUERTES: Thanks for the clarification CHR. HAITSUKA: If somebody wants to make a motion at some other time, we can have that made. I just wanted to bring this up. The other part of the memo was dealing with special meetings. I don't know if we are going to be running short of time, given our deadline of 51 March 13, 2010. We may need to have more than one meeting in January, February, or December. I just wanted to bring that up for discussion so everybody is aware of our deadlines, and possibly the need to have additional meetings and perhaps look at their calendars to see if that's something they can do. We are going to need a minimum majority to hold these meetings. MR. HOOKANO: Right, you would need at least six people to vote in favor of having special meetings. CHR. HAITSUKA: But as far as attendance at the meetings - -- MR. HOOKANO: You would need at least six people to attend. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is that the same with the public hearings, if we decide to have additional? MR. HOOKANO: Yes, six members is a quorum of the board. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. Let's have a vote on the motion to file Communication 79. The motion to file Communication 79 was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Honma, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kealoha and Shumway. COMM. 80 From Debbie Hecht, dated October 23, 2009, transmitting proposed amendment to Article XII, Chapter 1 RECALL to replace existing language. Ms. Jarman moved to file Communication 80. Seconded by Mr. Unger and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Honma, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kealoha and Shumway. COMM. 81 From Deputy Corporation Counsel William Brilhante, dated October 30, 2009 transmitting proposed amendments to (1) Art. VI, Sec. 6 -8.1 through 6 -8.3 to change the name of department of research and development to department of economic 52 development, and (2) Section 13 -4(g) deleting language that conflicts with the voluntary status of board and commission members. Mr. Fuertes moved to file Communication 81. Seconded by Ms. Jarman. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? MR. HOOKANO: Mr. Chair, just to clarify amendments, it would require a 2 /3rds vote. formatted, it would require a 2 /3rds vote. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright. . If this Commission wants to consider his If you were to make a motion to refer it to be MR. UNGER: I think it is already. Isn't it an amendment somewhere? MR. HOOKANO: He's asking to propose two brand new amendments. Since it has been received after the Commission's deadline, it would require a 2 /3rds vote to be considered a Commission's amendment. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion on Mr. Brilhante's memorandum, as far as creating a new Charter amendment in accordance with what he is requesting? MR. HOOKANO: Mr. Chair, for further clarification, a 2 /3rds vote is eight members, and you only have seven present. CHR. HAITSUKA: And you tell me this now? Would we have to move to defer? MS. JARMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Chair. I think we can move to file. It's only if somebody makes a motion to adopt the proposed amendments that we would have to have eight. So we can vote on filing. We don't have that other motion in front of us. CHR. HAITSUKA: Right. We have a pending motion to file, which has been seconded. Is there any further discussion before we vote? MR. NAHALE -A: I think the proposal deserves some consideration. I would be interested in deferring it, or moving it, so that we could continue to discuss it. CHR. HAITSUKA: Why don't we vote on the present motion, and then we can discuss - -- MR. NAHALE -A: Because of that, I'm going to vote against filing, because I think it ends the issue. MR. HOOKANO: An appropriate motion would be to postpone this communication until the next meeting. 53 MR. NAHALE -A: Or until we get eight? When Susie comes back we would have 2 /3rds right? For me, there's been some push back from the administration on the department of agriculture and energy, and I believe they feel like it's covered in this department. I think those two conversations are linked, so I would move to table this conservation until later in the agenda to see what we do with that proposal. MR. HOOKANO: So what you are saying, if I'm correct, is that you want to postpone this matter to the end of the meeting until after the CA -31, which is related has been discussed. MR. NAHALE -A: We might have eight by then too. MR. HOOKANO: You can make a motion to postpone until the end of the agenda. MR. NAHALE -A: I would like to postpone Communication 81 until after CA -31 is discussed. CHR. HAITSUKA: What do we do with the motion that is pending? MR. HOOKANO: It continues to be pending. MR. NAHALE -A: When we take it up, there will still be a motion to file. MR. HOOKANO: Yes, there would already be a motion pending forward. It will automatically come up right after CA -31. Mr. Nahale -a moved to table Communication 81 until after CA -31 is discussed. Seconded by Ms. Jarman and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Honma, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Kealoha, Osborne and Shumway. RECESS: At 5:25 p.m., the Chair called for a 5- minute recess. RECONVENE: The meeting was reconvened at 5:39 p.m. CHR. HAITSUKA: Let's get started again. MR. HOOKANO: Mr. Chair, as I recall, you wanted to take up something out of order. You moved to postpone Communication 81 until after CA -31 was taken up. So, CA -31 has to come up before Communication 81 comes to the floor again. 54 NEW BUSINESS CHR. HAITSUKA: Let's move on to New Business which is the First Reading of new Charter Amendments. There has been a request to take CA -31 out of order. Are there any objections? CA -31: DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND ENERGY Adds a new chapter to Article VI. The proposed charter amendment would create a new department to encompass certain services currently provided at a modest level by the department of research and development, but not delineated in the county charter. Mr. Nahale -a moved to approve CA -31 at first reading. Seconded by Ms. Jarman CHR. HAITSUKA: I have a motion and a second, is there any discussion? MR. NAHALE -A: I don't pretend to be an agriculture expert, but we had testimony several times and I've just been hearing a lot about the role of agriculture especially in these tough economic times. I put this forward so we can talk about it as a possible way to demonstrate the County's commitment to being an agricultural community. That's kind of how I view the Charter, as setting the outlines for our island; what we are going to be and look like and how we are going to govern ourselves. I would like us to have that deliberation. MR. FUERTES: If it's okay with the Commissioners, I would like to see if the department of research and development has any comments on this because it is closely related when we talk about research and development. I think it encompasses agriculture and if you could share some of your thoughts - -- CHR. HAITSUKA: We'll call up the director of research and development. MR. NAHALE -A: And also, if we could at the same time, call Dayday up. I was really happy to see her here. I did want to apologize to both Randy and Dayday for not talking to them ahead of time. Because of our deadline, I kind of cranked this out at the last minute to make sure we could talk about it. RANDY KUROHARA (At this time Randy Kurohara, Department of Research and Development Director, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MR. KUROHARA: Aloha, my name is Randy Kurohara, Director of Research and Development for the County of Hawaii. This is a little bit of a surprise, but at the same time I wanted to read a statement I prepared for this proposed Charter Amendment CA -31. 55 Thank you for the opportunity to comment on proposed Charter Amendment CA -31 which would create a department of agriculture and energy. While we appreciate the intent of the proposal to underscore the importance of energy and agriculture in the County of Hawaii, we oppose the amendment itself. The Charter Amendment would be an inefficient and inappropriate use of the county's limited resources and income when it comes to money right now. We believe the existing agriculture and energy programs within the department of research and development have been beneficial to both sectors, and those programs are poised to make even greater contributions. We disagree that a new department of agriculture and energy is necessary. Having a separate department of agriculture and energy with a cabinet level administrator and assistant plus two staff will be an unwise use of county funds at this time. Any additional administrative funds that become available would be better used to assist the agriculture and energy sectors. The agriculture industry and it's supporting institutions are numerous and diverse. Both physically and the organizational infrastructure is already in place in the commodity groups, extension services, the University of Hawaii and Federal research organizations. We do not need to reinvent the wheel to enhance agriculture. The County has been collaborating with others on energy issues by promoting conservation and efficiency, and has tasked the County Energy Commission to help chart a course to greater energy sustainability. Research and Development's agriculture and energy programs are very efficient and effective in their current home, and would also fit very comfortably into the mandate of the department of economic development that has also been put forth. In a nutshell, what we are basically saying is that we understand how important agriculture and energy are right now. I think we agree on that, and I think it's really all about how we go about this. I think that developing a new department is not the right way to do it, but by putting more resources to existing staff to the department that we already have, is the answer. In addition, I also believe that what Bobby -Jean has shared earlier about what our role is, and how do we affect change in these areas needs to be discussed as well. In terms of, if you look at the broader picture, health care might be a bigger issue right now, so why don't we have a department of health care. Education is probably a hotter issue right now, and that could be an argument. So, really creating another department is not the solution. Clearly, I think that we all agree that energy and food security are top priorities right now. From the administration's standpoint it's come down very clearly that these are very important things to them as well. As a department of research and development, hopefully you can see it as department of economic development that we will move forward and aggressively go after -- especially what comes out of the agriculture plan that I know Guy's working very hard on, as well as Dayday - -what recommendations come forward is how we will move forward in those areas. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any questions of Mr. Kurohara? Mr. Unger. MR. UNGER: Randy, how big is your department right now? MR. KUROHARA: We have a staff of about fifteen. 56 MR. LINGER: Fifty? 5 -0? MR. KUROHARA: No, 1 -5. MR. LINGER: How many people are dedicated to agriculture, and do they have specific job titles? Do you have people who are dedicated? MR. KUROHARA: Yes, we have one program specialist right here for agriculture. MR. LINGER: So, one program specialist for agriculture, how about for energy? MR. KUROHARA: Energy, we have one. MR. LINGER: One, also. MR. KUROHARA: Yes, but let me make this clear. Part of what we are doing right now is reallocating. So, we have staff there, but they are not necessarily functioning under energy or agriculture. Tourism as well, we only have one. Those are our three major sectors, so we are already working on moving bodies around within the department to put more emphasis in those areas. MR. LINGER: Like maybe coming out with a sub - department? MR. KUROHARA: There are programs that are already there. It is just enhancing those programs. So it is a matter of funding and staffing, which really can be done without having to create a brand new department. MR. LINGER: We've had several testifiers come in and say that by developing an independent department, like food and energy, that would open up the county to going out and being able to get matching funds and grants; by having a stand alone department. What do you think of that, are you guys actively going after grants right now? MR. KUROHARA: I think that is something we've been working on. As far as an energy grant, we have just received that one that we had worked on earlier in the year. Some other people might be able to make some better comments on this, but how I look at it when it came in front of the private sector is, adding more government staff just to go out and get grants may not necessarily be the answer. There are partnerships - -if you talk to Dayday - -that have been built where the County can be the lead or be part of the group that brings in the money, but not necessarily be the one that has to manage the grant or has to carry out the grant. These are ways that the County can really help, not necessarily have to get bogged down in trying to manage one grant; you have two or three people trying to carry out the work of one grant. Not saying that we won't ever do that, but at the same time, with the resources that we have, effectively, we can channel it through other organizations; the Farm Bureau, HAEDB is a good example. On Maui, in their Maui version of HAEDB is like, they 57 have 30 people in their organization, and they manage a lot of grants. So, you can look at different ways of bringing in funding without necessarily having to grow government. MARGARITA (DAYDAY) HOPKINS (At this time Dayday Hopkins, Economic Development Specialist, Agriculture Program, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. HOPKINS: My name is Dayday Hopkins, I'm in charge of the Agricultural Program of the Department of Research and Development for 20 years. I felt that the way it's being set up, having the agricultural program under the department of research and development is working successfully in trying to expand our agriculture industry. The challenge that the County has, as in the past, is that we just don't have the resources to be able to provide more assistance to the agricultural community. To circumvent that I have to work collaboratively and in partnership with other agricultural related agencies both Federal and State, and the private sector, the agricultural industry itself, as well as the private industries that support agriculture. That's how I was able to make agriculture expand on our island, considering that the resources that I have were very, very limited. When you have this new department of agriculture -- economic talk on agriculture is my job in the County - -I don't know if it's going to be as efficient, or more efficient than what it is already right now. That particular department, if you are going to organize another one, has to also work in partnership and in collaboration with all of those agencies. So I don't see something that is more than what it can offer now. The clamor within the agricultural industry for more support from the County is that they see that it is an important economic stimulus for our County; however, there is not really much support in relationship to resource funding as well as staff. So, if we can expand on that, I still believe we can do more as to what the agricultural community is really asking for at the current time. MR. KAULUKUKUI: In terms of expanding on that, what are the current plans to expand the resources within the department of research and development that would go specifically toward enhancing agriculture from an economic development standpoint on our island? MR. KUROHARA: I can speak to that. As I covered earlier, a lot of it is allocation of the staff that we currently have. As you know, every department is challenged right now to cut back, and clearly it is effecting every department right now. So what we are looking at is just shifting some of the staff that we have. I see that as a very effective way of getting more resources put into agriculture specifically, and also for energy as well. We do have staff, they are at the level that can work along side, or in guidance with what comes forth out of the agriculture plan. We can definitely put some of those things in place. MR. KAULUKUKUI: As a follow up to that, do you think that's better and more efficient than creating a new department, to just reallocate current resources out of the 15 people that you have right now? MR. KUROHARA: I would say, yes, definitely. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman. W MS. JARMAN: As I read the current description in the Charter for the department of research and development, you have absolutely no obligation to do anything with energy or agriculture. It is written so broadly that tomorrow things could change, and you could decide you are not going to devote any resources to that, correct? Not that you will, but it is written so broadly that there is no obligation for you to do that. Is that correct? MR. KUROHARA: That is correct. MS. JARMAN: So, my thought is, if we don't want to develop a new department because of the obvious costs etcetera, maybe what we could do is take the language that Alapaki has written and insert it into the department of research and development and make that be part of your mandate. That way you are then required to put resources to what I believe, and agree with Alapaki, are two incredibly important and critically important initiatives for our island. So, if you have already started doing that and want to continue doing that, I'd say let's give you that, instead of creating a new department. I would not be in favor of calling you just a department of economic development. I'm not in favor of that, but I would be in favor of putting these duties into your department. CHR. HAITSUKA: Are there any other questions or discussion? Mr. Fuertes. MR. FUERTES: I have a comment. I have a small ranch up in Kohala. I use cowboy boots, not because I like to look good. When I go on an airplane I hope that they don't test me for some of the urea that I carry around. I am an agriculturalist. I've been teaching agriculture for 30 years. It has always been my interest as a child to be into agriculture. I have a passion for this and when I say this proposal to create a department of agriculture and energy, I said, yea, wow, unreal! Maybe it's going to happen. Then I think about why, why we stay the way we are today. It's not ethical to say and point fingers, but truthfully some of the other departments on a higher level; they didn't do what they were supposed to do for us. That's why I think this came up from Guy and Alapaki. I think our island is craving from agriculture and energy and that's exactly what the Mayor's focus was in his campaign. He was talking about agriculture and energy working together and I thought, wow, this is so cohesive. But then when I look at the reality about what it is going to cost to create a new department, it's going to cost some really big bucks. Then the fact about statutes and its authority to create something on a County level that would supersede the State. I think about what the practical side is, and where is the win -win about all of this. How can it be a gain so that your department - -- Unfortunately other administrations were trying very hard to initiate agriculture, and maybe not successfully. When we talk about grants, I just want to share with you what happened. On Tuesday, I came before the Council, and because I had a grant that was a Federal grant, it was an agriculture processing facility, and it got stuck in the department of economic development and I thought I was going to lose some of that money. I quickly asked research and development, would you guys be able to run the money through your department so that we can, in our county, use those monies, which is planning money for a processing facility. Without hesitation, the research and development department said, "yes, let's do it; anything 59 we can do to promote agriculture." I've got to compliment that part, because, number one, you guys never took any money from me, you are just passing it through; just so you can promote it. So, I think there are grants out there that can help us though promoting agriculture, and not just promoting, but actually doing what we talk about, sustainable. Enough talk already, we've got to do it. I think the department is trying their best, with your administration, to promote agriculture. To see a new department come out - - -I was a commissioner for eight years on the board of agriculture, and it has been only a regulatory agency. Actually, when you are farmer, you look at that and you go, you know, those guys are working against us. All the stuff they are promoting what I got to do is, you cannot do this, you cannot do this, and then I think they have become so regulatory, that they forget what agriculture is about. That's what we don't want to see at the County level. I think what you want to see is your department promoting it and implementing it through other sources so that we can see a sustainable county. How do we do that? I think it's the how part. We know what it is already, but if you guys can recommend to us how we can do that, let's work together on that. CHR. HAITSUKA: Susie. MS. OSBORNE: I also think it's really, really important. I was fortunate just to get a Federal grant for my students at Kua o Ka La to learn about agriculture and culinary initiatives. In doing the research for that grant I was really astounded to find that we only have seven days of food if the barge stops. I think food security is really important at this time and for our next generation to learn and understand about it. I really want to thank Bobby -Jean. I'm sorry I had to run out, but your testimony was really enlightening. Thank you for all your wisdom that you shared with us. I also concur, and see the challenges with creating a new department. Casey, I think that you have great input. If we can somehow imbed the language and somehow not lose the importance and priority of what needs to be done moving forward for our island. I really support that. Thank you all for that. Mahalo. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any further discussion? Mr. Fuertes. MR. FUERTES: I'm just trying to think what the next step is. If we can work with you guys to come up with some kind of language that would be all gain for us. When I say all gain, I mean for this community and for the island. MR. KUROHARA: I would be glad to work with Alapaki on finding the right language that both can be happy with. MR. NAHALE -A: Would you guys be opposed to additional language, in whatever you will be calling your department that specifies agriculture and energy as a priority? Often times it is hard because we recognize whatever the administration is already doing, and certainly what Dayday has been doing for 20 years, but we're not talking about this for this administration, we're talking about this for hopefully the next 100 years; that nobody has the option of short- funding these arenas. Would you guys have any problem with it being more specific? .E MR. KUROHARA: Like I said, I'm willing to work on that. I really don't know exactly what that wording is, but clearly, if it's just an expression of the fact that agriculture and energy are important sectors of our economy and our way of life - -- MR. NAHALE -A: Mr. Chair, I think that's the key for me. I do want to find a win -win. Like Commissioner Fuertes said, we all agree on this item, I think. But I think the last thing you said is more critical to me; that right now we are at the crossroads on whether or not this island is where agriculture is going to be a way of life, or if we are going to become basically what every other municipality becomes; urban sprawl and commercialization. I think that if we don't set forth language in our governing document, the Charter, that this island is an agricultural community, then we put ourselves at risk to administrations in the future. A lot of folks have testified to us about trying to manage the County. I have no interest in managing the County. Tome the Charter's job is to set the vision and the context within which the elected get to manage. Right now, when I look at the Charter and the department of research and development, there is no agriculture or energy in there. That's my problem. It can't be just some kind of vague language that agriculture and energy are sectors. I has to be a stronger statement. What I'm proposing and what I've heard in testimony and just the general public, particularly in youth education movements, is that if we don't act we are going to lose something. We are fortunate to have Dayday. Do you have a budget just for your program? MS. HOPKINS: How much is my budget? MR. NAHALE -A: Do you have a budget that is just for you? How much is that? MS. HOPKINS: Yes, I do. For my program, not including my salary and other little things, it is $145,000. MR. NAHALE -A: Okay, so to me agriculture always gets the short end of the stick. I'm not opposed to compromising; I just wanted to make those points. MS. OSBORNE: I just want to offer one more perspective. I was watching Mayor Kenoi on television this morning on Channel 2, and it's really difficult when we are in such difficult economic times, to look past that. His comment about being with the challenges, but have those challenges also be a bed of opportunities. I think, with agriculture and especially with energy, we are so well positioned to really be a leader in the nation and in the world, and we are fools if we don't. In fact, it is a way out of all this depressing economic situations that we face. I think if we can take a deep breath and try and be a little more foresighted about this, it will in fact be a tremendous income generator in a more sustainable and appropriate manner for our community, rather than just depending on tourism. I think it would behoove us to really look past this moment in time. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Kaulukukui. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Thank you, Mr. Chair. What I wanted to add to the discussion is that from my standpoint right now, I would like to put the cost of this initiative aside, and say that 61 if that was an issue, there are a lot of things we wouldn't act on. I would like to focus more on the importance and the efficacy of it. I think this is the first thing that I've heard everybody talk about on the Commission, so I think it's something that everybody considers is important at a certain point. I also want to recognize the ongoing effort of the County's research and development department. Over the last six months I've had the unique opportunity to come to a greater understanding about what you guys are doing, and the way you are leverage the current resources I think is absolutely commendable; it's amazing. That being said, I think we have a strong proposal on the table. I think we have some room that it might be altered or amended through discussion as we move forward, but I'm going to be voting in support of the amendment so that it moves forward, and we have some room to continue our discussion as we go through the future readings. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Kawauchi. MS. KAWAUCHI: I want to underscore the importance of making sure that these issues are researched when public policy is implemented. What I would like to see more strongly in any proposal related to agriculture and energy is the importance of research. I worked for a research and public policy think tank in Boston for two and half years. With that I saw a lot of planning and very well researched planning and I want to underscore what Casey has said about the importance of research being a part of your department. So, anything to do with agriculture and energy, sometimes I almost feel like we're several years back in terms of what the County can offer, and what we see globally in terms of what we can do in terms of agriculture and energy. In addition to research and public policy being an important part of agriculture and energy is public participation. I understand that there are committees and organizations that are in the private sector that are out there that are very helpful, but the benefit of having something done through government very strongly is the ability for the public to have more input. I think that public participation- -like this discussion among the Commission and with you - -is very, very enlightening to me because it says that public participation is very important. Getting the insight of people from the public is really important because they are the ones on the ground doing everything. What the research can add is education for the next generation, which I think is very important. We continue to progress, the genealogy of the department gets put forward that way, through the research. So, we're not just doing and implementing, we are actually putting forth some studies and taking input from the community to be able to figure out where we will go 20 years from now when our kids are in our position. What are they going to look back on to be able to make better decisions? I think that's very important. MR. KUROHARA: I really agree with what you are saying. How we have done a lot of this kind of thing in the past is we contract it out. For instance, with Dayday, she has funds to contract to have say the University of Hawaii to do specific kinds of research. In terms of getting feedback from the community, instead of making that a role or function of county government, we would contract out with say, the Kohala Center, to do that service for us as well. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to do it all ourselves. It's just a matter of the County saying it's important. We believe it's important, and we do our best, so we tend 62 to bring others to the table. That's what we have found is working best; it's the collaboration. We can't do it all, and like you said, a lot of it falls under the State. I just think that what we've got right now is working, we just need to put more at it, and that's what we're working on right now. MS. KAWAUCHI: I would agree with that. That is in line with what I'm talking about, as long as what's on the table right now does talk about research. I think it's important to stress that. Contracting outside is great. It's a great partnership with the community and is very helpful. MR. NAHALE -A: Mr. Chair, I have two points. The first point I would like to make is that we have a lot of energy around this 2% Open Space Fund, and certainly people want conservation land and they also want park access. But, really underneath that, they don't want to see things developed, and agriculture is a way to maintain the essence of that open space feel, but still have some economic generation; and still have some jobs. I think it's a way to hit both arenas. I wanted to make that tie. The second thing is, I don't actually agree with this notion that it's enough for the County to just partner. I think that's exactly what I'm against. Instead, we step forward, and we lead; and we set expectations. I think that the benefit of that is that we can start to look for things - -- Because then you have the staff and the resources that are sitting and talking to planning and public works and asking the question about how can we improve and further support agriculture. For example, maybe there are infrastructure needs, so we have to re- pri oritize our Capital Improvement Projects (CIP). Maybe it's land use issues, which I don't really understand. I just feel like that those conversations aren't going to occur from an agricultural perspective if you don't have an agricultural leader at that level. I'm not criticizing what's going on, like Guy said, it's fabulous. But, if we're going to go to the next level, we have got to make an investment. If the problem is money, we are being short- sighted. Let's make a 2012 date. If we can't do it now, if it's too much of a burden, let's put it a couple of years out. Is this a good idea or not? I want to talk about that. Is this a good idea or not? If it is a good idea, then let's figure out how to implement. If it's a bad idea, then, okay, I can pull back. MS. JARMAN: Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman. MS. JARMAN: May I address Alapaki? CHR. HAITSUKA: Yes, go ahead. MS. JARMAN: Alapaki, what do you think of the idea of instead of establishing a department, amending the research and development to make this a major part of what they do? Or, do you still want the department? MR. NAHALE -A: I really -- -It's easy to give the philosophy, hard to implement. I'll admit that's where the rule meets the road. In my mind, I'm thinking you could have a research and economic development with an agriculture division, an energy division, and a research 63 division. But then, how many divisions are we going to have? As long as agriculture and energy are in there, it probably meets my needs. I think that's certainly an improvement to what we have now, so I would be supportive if that's the will of the commission. MS. JARMAN: But your preference is still to have the department, if you had to choose between the two, your preference would be for the department? MR. NAHALE -A: Right now, the answer is yes, because I think we haven't had enough conversation. What I've heard from administration is that it could be costly, and I agree. There are concerns about that there are other folks that already have this role; State Department of Agriculture, and other professionals. I don't know enough about that arena. l certainly don't think it's leading; I don't think it's telling the constituents of this island that we are committing to an agricultural way of life, or a sustainable energy way of life. I'm not trying to cop out, I just feel like I don't know enough to know if those issues have been vetted. MS. JARMAN: I don't think just because we have a department of agriculture at the State level, that we shouldn't have a department of agriculture at the County level. MR. NAHALE -A: I agree with you. MS. JARMAN: I think the two departments could work very closely together. We have a department of agriculture at the Federal level, and we have one at the State level; there's no reason that we can't have one at the County level. To me, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a duplicative service by having a department here. MR. NAHALE -A: To be more specific, my family, we all got together, I mean everybody got together to get a small piece of agriculture land in Pepeekeo. I think the Department of Agriculture is not interested in me. We have tons of 3 -acre agriculture lands, tons of 1 -acre agriculture land; I would believe we have the vast majority of agriculture land in the state of Hawaii in this county. So I think there are so many different kids of agriculture that could be addressed on this island; backyard agriculture, I mean why can't you have agriculture if you have a 10,000 -sq. foot parcel? I know some of our schools are doing those things. Those kinds of conversations, I don't see being done on a division level. I think on a division level, you provide supports. MS. JARMAN: I think another advantage you mentioned, is the land use. If there is the department of agriculture and energy, when the Land Use Commission or the Planning Department have before them decisions to change land from agriculture to something else, which is usually urban, like on Oahu, there is just an incredible amount of very rich agriculture land that is now subdivisions. There is just incredible agriculture land that has been lost on Oahu. If there were a department here of agriculture and energy, I think that issue, when it came before the Planning bodies, both the Land Use Commission and the Planning Commission or the Planning Director, it would have a higher level of visibility and input into those particular decision making bodies. So, it would help with the land use issues you were mentioning. MS. KAWAUCHI: One real quick comment to follow up on my comment regarding research which is, I think, in terms of the partnering, could be very important. It could be very important and valuable to partner outside of the county instead of hiring directly within the county for research purposes. You could hire a botanist more easily, an economist, or other type of agriculture specialists or land specialists outside to produce reports and research that could be helpful without having to fully staff or employ within the county. That was just my comment about partnerships on research. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Fuertes. MR. FUERTES: When we say research, agriculture is research also. Every time we plant something we are doing research and development. If I am going to inseminate this cow, I'm doing research and development; pigs, the same way. You cannot separate agriculture from research. I would like to - -I've got to make a motion on this later on - -work together, form a committee of commissioners who are interested, if the administration is interested, and let's work on some wording together. I don't know the proper way of doing this. MR. UNGER: I have one other comment. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Unger. MR. UNGER: I'm a little torn. I don't know if a completely different department is the way we should go. At a bare minimum, if we do include it in this research and development department, we do need to highlight it somehow. Right now, it's no offense to you, but I don't sense the energy. Pardon the pun, but I don't sense the excitement of jumping into what I think all of us feel is very important. Randy, as far as your comment that we don't have a department of health, but the State does; we don't have a department of education, but the State does; well, our schools are State schools, 99% of our hospitals are State hospitals, so the County would never dip into something like that. So I don't think we can compare those two. MR. KUROHARA: I think the point I made there was that health care affects everybody on this island, education affects every body on this island and agriculture and food security affects every body on this island; energy, home use, I'm just saying it affects every body, those issues. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Kaulukukui. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Relative to what you just said - -and I definitely agree - -but where I think State issues regarding agriculture and County issues regarding agriculture, where I think they diverge is that at the State level, gross State product that comes from agriculture development is between one and three percent of the State GDP. It's three percent if you include sugar and pineapple. If you take that out, which we are not really eating anyway, it's 65 really only one percent. So, when we go through an economic decline like we have right now, it's real easy - -and we would probably all do the same thing- -for the administration to start to cut in the areas in which it hurts them the least. The problem is, it hurts us more than it hurts any one else in the State. We have more than half the farms here, we have more than half the agriculture land; we have about half the agriculture labor. So, it's one of the reasons why I think we have to have more control and more direction over this very important sector, even though there is State oversight. CHR. HAITSUKA: I'm not a rancher or an agriculturalist; I wear cowboy boots to make me taller, not because I ride horses. Although I like agriculture like every body else, I consume my fair share of agricultural products, as you can see. I don't particularly support this amendment, only because I don't have enough information. Before I vote, I want to have the information. I see what it says, I don't really understand what it does, so for me, that's why I don't support it at this point; I don't have the information to say that this is something that is going to be good for the County. I like Ms. Jarman's suggestion that we can probably re -do the Charter amendment relating to research and development section. I hear two things; what I hear from her is that it needs to an obligation in that section that you are going to focus on ag and energy. What I hear from the others is that you need to make ag a priority. Maybe there is language we can insert in that particular section that can address those goals. As far as what Mr. Fuertes says about forming a committee, I think we can probably do some kind of a motion to do an ad -hoc committee and maybe a proposed amendment on the section on the department of research and development; as opposed to adopting this particular Charter amendment. So that's my thoughts on this. Are we ready to vote? MR. UNGER: We are going to vote on what? CHR. HAITSUKA: Right now we have a motion pending by Mr. Nahale -a, seconded by Ms. Jarman, to approve Charter Amendment proposal 31 on first reading. This is the first reading, and the motion is also to refer it to second reading. The motion should be to approve and refer to second reading. MR. NAHALE -A: I would just say - - -I mean to me there is a lot of energy. I would like us to approve it at first reading and then do all the work we are talking about. I would rather not defer or - - -I mean I don't mind working further with the administration and a committee so that we can clean it up. Because of the timelines, I would hate to delay it. CHR. HAITSUKA: Okay, are we ready to vote? We're going to have a roll -call vote. The motion to approve CA -31 at first reading was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Osborne, and Unger Noes: Chair Haitsuka. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. .. MR. FUERTES: Mr. Chairman, is it appropriate for me to make that motion now for Commissioners to form an ad -hoc committee working with the administration to find some wording? CHR. HAITSUKA: I think, because it is not on the agenda, we might have to defer it to the next meeting. MR. GOODENOW: That is maybe a gray area for the Council. We don't allow the formation of an ad -hoc committee unless it is agendized, in an abundance of caution. I spoke to Mr. Hookano just now on the phone and he would recommend that you do not unless it is on the agenda. He did tell me that he felt there was enough time for you to form an ad -hoc committee at the next meeting and still meet any required deadlines. MR. NAHALE -A: We can meet with two people, right? MR. GOODENOW: Right, at the meeting you can set the number, who the members were - -- MR. NAHALE -A: No, I mean like between now and - -- MR. GOODENOW: Oh, two, right, of course a permitted interaction. MR. NAHALE -A: So, I would be happy to work with one other Commissioner and the administration. MR. FUERTES: I would be happy to do that, sir. MR. NAHALE -A: That way we can move it along. MR. GOODENOW: That would be a good solution. MR. FUERTES: Then we can come back to the table. MS. JARMAN: Just remember you can't ask each other to vote a certain way on it or commit to vote a certain way once it gets done. Just remember that so you won't be in a Sunshine Law violation. Return to Communication 81 CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, so we are going to take the motion that was made earlier that was made in respect to Communication 81 which we said we would defer until Charter Amendment 31 was heard. So, we're looking at Communication 81, and there was a motion to file, and then a motion to postpone by Mr. Nahale -a, which was approved. MS. JARMAN: I believe we are back to the motion to file now. MR. GOODENOW: There was a pending motion to file. 67 MS. JARMAN: Right, so now we are back to the motion to file. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion on this Communication? MS. JARMAN: I'm more than happy to file it. CHR. HAITSUKA: Mr. Kurohara, do you have any comments on this Communication 81? MR. KUROHARA: I guess what was already expressed was the fact that the department of economic development clearly can function as an umbrella that encompasses energy, agriculture, tourism, small business development. These are all the drivers of our economy and sustainability is the goal as well. So, like changing the name puts an emphasis on economic development, but at the same time it does still fit that role of encompassing all of these other sectors. MR. GOODENOW: Mr. Chair, a point of information. Previously it was said you would need a two thirds vote because it came late. Just to clarify that this did come in on time. I checked with the Secretary, it came in on October 30, 2009, so it's a regular vote that would be required. CHR. HAITSUKA: Instead of a two thirds vote? MS. JARMAN: No, I don't think -- MR. GOODENOW: Because it came in after the deadline; that was an error. Because we further clarified it was time stamped on October 30, 2009 so it met the deadline. It was received on the 30th in a timely manner. MS. KAWAUCHI: The question I would have is, it was received in a timely manner for Communications, but it has not been put into the form of a Charter Amendment which we have, by our rules, specified what the amendment is supposed to look like. So, my belief would be that if we were to vote on it to have this become a Charter Amendment, that would require a two thirds vote in order to fulfill our deadline of October 30, 2009 for Charter Amendments. MR. GOODENOW: I would agree with that, and Mr. Hookano isn't here, but I guess you would refer it. MS. KAWAUCHI: So, to be clear, it would be voting on to file, but not to make this into a Charter Amendment because it is not in the proper form. If we wanted to do that, that would require a two thirds vote. MS. JARMAN: It would require all eight of us, because it is a two thirds vote of the entire Commission. So it would have to be unanimous tonight. .: MR. NAHALE -A: I really want to speak in favor of referral, because I think that's the work we want to do with the administration; to see if this notion of ag and energy can be folded into this department. This is the vehicle I think we can use to do Commissioner Jarman's proposal of inserting the language into research and development. So, if we refer this proposal, then we have a vehicle to insert ad and energy language into. MS. JARMAN: Or, you could change the one that you have now and have it modified to amending research and development. MR. NAHALE -A: So, I think if we do both, then if we are going to change the scope of research and development, I think this is the better vehicle, because that is the title. Mine is a new department, so we would - - -I think it would just be semantics, but if we move both, then we have options. We might come back with my proposal being a department, but there might be a proposal from the administration to insert it into the research and development language. So, then the Commissioners would have a choice. If we don't refer this one, we are going to be limited to what I proposed. Does that make sense? MS. OSBORNE: What I read in this Communication 81, it looks like it is a name change; taking research out of the title. MR. NAHALE -A: Right, and then it says the economic viability and well -being of the community. If we were going to further articulate ag and energy into research and development's responsibilities, we would add it to this section. We would do a new section where we would elaborate on Section 6 -8.3. MS. KAWAUCHI: I think the trouble is that because this has come in the form of a Communication, and not in the form that we have approved, we are struggling to find out whether or not we can -- -We're almost trying to make it fit at this point. The intent of it, there is confusion, it is vague. One of the Commissioners has expressed her interpretation of the Communication as a name change, whereas you are interpreting it as an opportunity to do more. So, I think we have to decide if we are going to do a two thirds vote for this communication to be turned into an amendment. I think that's the first thing that there would be a motion for, and then we would decide if we are going to file it; because if we file it, it's done. It's just filed as a communication and there is no vote at this meeting. It could come up for a vote later. MR. NAHALE -A: I would agree. If this gets referred, it's going to come back to us as a change in the department of research and development to a department of economic development. I think you are correct; if we refer it, it has to come back as a proposal limited to this communication. MS. KAWAUCHI: And this to me, is not clear. MR. NAHALE -A: Right, but then that gets agendized and everyone knows that we are talking about the research and development department and to some degree the scope .• because they can look on line and they can see the change. So then when we take it up at the next meeting, we can amend, we can kill it, we can do whatever we want. MS. KAWAUCHI: My second concern about it is I kind of made a big point about research and that's the whole point of it being taken out. MR. NAHALE -A: We could add it in at the next meeting. We could always amend the proposal to say research and economic development. MS. KAWAUCHI: But, I guess what we could also do is we could do a two thirds vote to adopt a new amendment; that's another option too. I'm just thinking of the danger of this is just taking research out. Although that is just in the title, it's not actually in the body of what is in the communication. Mr. Chair, if we file this can it come back up again? CHR. HAITSUKA: I guess we would have to ask our Parliamentarian. I was wondering what to do in this situation. We have a motion pending right now to file. Mr. Nahale -a wants to possibly move to refer. MS. JARMAN: You can always ask the person who made the motion to file to withdraw their motion. MR. NAHALE -A: Could I submit a Charter Amendment to be on the agenda, and that would just require a two - thirds vote to be accepted? Is that how it would work now? MS. JARMAN: Yes. MR. NAHALE-A: I would prefer not to; I would prefer just to have a vehicle open, but - -- MS. JARMAN: Right now, I'm looking at Robert's Rules of Order to find out whether or not you can amend something to such a degree that it becomes a totally different vehicle than it was intended to be. MR. NAHALE -A: You are looking at mine, to change it from adding a department to - -- MS. JARMAN: No, but his would be the same thing, because all they are doing is changing the title and so I'm just making sure that you can amend something that drastically and so if you would give me just a few minutes, we are looking at that. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair, while we wait on the answer to this research question, can we table this and take up a matter related to food? Can we take a break? RECESS: At 6:38 p.m., the Chair called for a recess. RECONVENE: The meeting was reconvened at 6:54 p.m. 70 CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, let's get started. I believe our Parliamentarian has an opinion for us. Ms. Jarman. MS. JARMAN: After looking at Robert's Rules and consulting with the County Clerk, who is also a parliamentarian, the best thing, the cleanest thing to do is that when you all are talking and developing your department, to sort of parallel, put together language that could amend the research and development; add whatever language you think would be appropriate to that. Then put that in a communication as a proposed amendment, and we could do the two thirds vote on that and it would be brought up. Then, if any body wants to, we can file this communication, and if any one wants to bring forward a Charter amendment to re -name it department of economic development, some body can do that separately; although I sense there are not eight votes for that, so I doubt it would go anywhere. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, is there any further discussion? Maybe just one more point from me on Communication 81. There is actually a two part proposal; there is also a proposal for Article XIII, Section 134(g) relating to boards and commissions which would eliminate the requirement or ability for commissioners or board members to get paid. So that was all part of the proposal from Mr. Brilhante. Is there any discussion on that? That's a different section. It's on the last page of Mr. Brilhante's communication. The motion to file Communication 81 was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CA -14: LEGISLATIVE AUDITOR Amends Sections 3 -18, 10 -13, and 13 -13. Amendment to 3 -18 would give the legislative auditor the authority to retain independent legal counsel. Amendment to 10 -13 would change the title of the section from "Post- Audit" to "Audit of Accounts and Financial Transactions," define performance criteria, set the scope of the audit and distribution requirements, and provides that the finance director "may" rather than "shall" cause an audit of respective accounts when an administrative officer leaves office. Amendment to 13 -13 would require all county contracts to have a "right to audit" clause. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion? Ms. Jarman moved to approve CA -14 at first reading. Seconded by Mr. Kaulukukui. 71 MS. JARMAN: Mr. Chair, the Legislative Auditor could not be here today, and so I would like to make a motion that we postpone this until our next meeting, so she can attend and we can ask her any questions on this very important proposal? Ms. Jarman moved to postpone CA -14 until the next meeting. Seconded by Ms. Osborne and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Kawauchi, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CA -15: 2% LAND FUND Adds a new section to Article X, Financial Procedures. This amendment is to set aside 2% of real property tax revenues to acquire lands for public access, open space, and the preservation of natural resources. It closely mirrors Chapter 2, Article 42, of the Hawaii County Code. This amendment also establishes the "Public Access, Open Space, and Natural Resources Preservation Commission" and its duties and responsibilities as well as the method of prioritizing lands for preservation. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion? Ms. Jarman moved to approve CA -15 at first reading. Seconded by Mr. Unger. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? MR. NAHALE -A: I have a question Mr. Chair. I don't know if we have to wait for Levi or not, so I'll let you decide that. I'd like to know about having it in the County Code and the County Charter language and what the impacts may or may not be about having it in two places and what if we use different language in the Charter. Let's say that we change it to be .5%. MR. GOODENOW: Maybe Mr. Ashida is the best to ask, but the Charter controls. If there is a conflict, then the Charter controls in my opinion. MR. NAHALE -A: So, I guess if we feel comfortable that we can take that as the Charter Commission's opinion - -- MS. JARMAN: It does control. The Charter controls over the Code. MR. NAHALE -A: So, if we don't do anything, then the 2% requirement becomes active again. In two years, or a year and a half now, for them to not fund it would have to take another act of the Council. Is that correct? 72 MR. GOODENOW: That's correct, I believe there is a sunset clause on restricting the money, and so the ordinance would still be in effect. MR. NAHALE -A: I'm always the trouble- maker. I think there is merit to the concerns about the amount. I think 2% is high for the Charter. I think it is fine for the Code. Like for example if we said, minimum of .5 %, then would the Code be relevant, but they couldn't cut it below .5 %? MR. GOODENOW: Right. The Code would still be in effect, the Council could amend the ordinance to what ever they wanted. They could increase it, decrease it. MR. NAHALE -A: Just for argument sake, I'll make a motion to amend CA -15 to reduce all references to 2% to .5 %. CHR. HAITSUKA: There is already a motion. MS. JARMAN: He can amend the motion. He just needs a second. Mr. Nahale -a moved to amend CA -15 by changingall references of 2% to .5 %. Seconded by Ms. Osborne. MR. NAHALE -A: Again, to re- emphasize; I think what happens then is 2% applies automatically. If people want to not honor the 2% they have to go through the whole process of going to the Council and having public hearings, and people have to put their whole political careers on the line to cut it below 2 %; but they could never cut it below. 5%. And, numbers wise, that means in this case, it would have been 4 million, and we could have proposed to cut it down as low as 1 million. So there still would have been a 1 million dollar contribution to the fund under this kind of amendment. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, I don't think I understand. What is the motion? MR. NAHALE-A: The motion is to take it from 2% to .5% in the Charter, and I was just emphasizing that the Code still reads 2 %, and that would still be enacted every single budget session. So, it's not like we are saying it's only .5 %, we're saying it's - -- MS. OSBORNE: But in these tough economic times, they would be able to take it to .5 %, so there would at least be a minimum contribution of .5% to the fund. It would be mandated. CHR. HAITSUKA: We need to clarify your motion. Your motion is to change the reference to 2% to .5 %. MR. NAHALE -A: Correct. I think we have to deliberate on the amendment first; if there is enough votes to change it from 2% to .5 %. I jumped to a discussion period already. 73 MS. JARMAN: We are discussing the reduction. It's fine to discuss the reduction. MR. NAHALE -A: So, we are only on the amendment then. MS. JARMAN: Yes, right now we are just discussing the amendment, which is reduction. I am going to speak against the amendment. Part of the reason I'm speaking against the amendment is because I'm not altogether sure they could make it 2% when it's .5% in here. But even if I assume they could, I think if it gets amended in the Charter to something less there would be a lot of pressure on the Council to then amend what is now known as the 2% to what the Charter is. I would hate to see that happen, so I'm going to stick with the 2 %. I understand what you are trying to do, but I think I'm going to stick with the 2 %. Thank you. MR. LINGER: I'm going to be a trouble -maker as well here. I'm in agreement with -- -Well, first off, I think we need to move forward with some sort of Public Access Open Space amendment; primarily because it's what the majority voted on. So, I am for that. I think 2% is too high, the rest of the counties are at 1% or less, right? Honolulu is at .5% and I think the others are at 1 %. A comment Debbie made - - -One thing I think needs to be understood by everybody is that this is not the only avenue for going out and getting funds and securing open space. I can speak from experience. My brother manages a ranch in south Kona, and through the Federal government, they have capitalized on two or three different programs where essentially the bulk of the land is now in conservation. So, there are other avenues, and I think Debbie was saying we need 2% because it's the Big Island and we have that much more land to go after. Well, there are other sources we can tap to meet our requirements. Can we talk about other issues, or are we just talking about the 2% right now? If that's the case, I'm actually in favor of doing a 1 %; reducing it to 1 %. I have some other issues that I would like to talk about but, do we have to specifically address the .5 %? MS. JARMAN: You can say you would rather it be 1 %, just like I said I would rather it be 2 %, you can say you would rather it be 1 %. But you cannot talk about the other parts of the amendment. MR. LINGER: Okay, that's fine, I think 1 %. I'm in favor of 1 %. MR. FUERTES: Can you repeat the amendment please. MR. NAHALE-A: The amendment is to reduce the references to 2% to read .5 %. I fear that everyone isn't aware that there are two processes. Every budget session, automatically the budget will read 2% contribution to the land fund. The only way that gets reduced is if the Council votes to reduce it, and they will have to pay the political consequences. If the people think that's a terrible thing, then they should reflect that in their votes. So, this is not a cut to the 2 %. The 2% would still be law. This is setting a floor below that, that the Council could not go below during tough times. MS. JARMAN: Mr. Chair. Then, I would like the language to more accurately reflect that. I think that the way you said it, to put .5% wherever it says 2 %. But, where does it say 2 %, other than in the title? I see, b (5), where it says, "Two percent of Hawaii County real 74 property tax revenues collected annually..." shall consist of monies of 2 %; can you change that to shall consist of monies of no less than .5 %? MR. NAHALE -A: Can I consider it a friendly amendment? That's what I intended to say. MS. JARMAN: So, I would move that wherever it's relevant, it should say no less that .5 %. MS. KAWAUCHI: To be clear then, the motion on the table is what? MS. JARMAN: I'm moving to amend his amendment to - -- MR. GOODENOW: Secondary amendments are allowed. MS. KAWAUCHI: Okay, I see. Thank you. Ms. Jarman moved to amend Mr. Nahale -a's amendment to CA -15 by changing all references of 2% to say "not less than .5 %." Seconded by Ms. Osborne. MS. CRAWFORD: Not to weigh in on what you all are deliberating on right now, but just because there was a statement about what the other counties, what the rates are, I just wanted to clarify that Maui is 1 %, and that Kauai and City and County of Honolulu are .5 %. MR. NAHALE -A: Is that in their Code or in their Charter? So, I think that we have the most aggressive law at 2% in our County Code, and we are just putting our Charter in line with the State -wide language. We are still the most aggressive open space county. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, is there any further discussion on Ms. Jarman's motion to amend Mr. Nahale -a's motion. The motion to amend Mr. Nahale -a's amendment was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: Commissioner Kawauchi. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. MS. JARMAN: Now we have to vote on the .5 %. Now the amendment on the floor is to change the language where it says 2% to up to .5 %. CHR. HAITSUKA: So, now we are voting on Mr. Nahale -a's motion, as amended by yours? MS. JARMAN: Correct. 75 CHR. HAITSUKA: Does everybody understand that? We are voting on Mr. Nahale -a's motion as amended. We voted on Ms. Jarman's motion which was to amend Mr. Nahale -a's proposed amendment. MR. FUERTES: So we are voting on the amendment to the motion right now. MR. GOODENOW: I'm sorry, but on the amendment, the first time you said, "not less than .5 %" and the second time you said, "up to .5 %." Just to be clear, what the amendment is now; it should be "not less than," and not, "up to." So you are changing b(5) to not less than 2 %, and everywhere else you are changing 2% to .5 %. So, "not less than," thank you. MS. JARMAN: 2 %, we're saying not less than .5 %. MR. GOODENOW: So, it would be called the, "Not less than ' /z % Land Fund." MS. JARMAN: Well, I was going to move after this to change that to "The Land Fund." I was going to make a separate motion to do that. MR. GOODENOW: I just thought that was part of his motion, to change the 2% to' /z % and the only thing you did was to change number b (5). If you could just clarify that, then I'll have it written. MS. JARMAN: When I was reading it, it seemed the only place where it established the 2% as the percentage was in b (5). I think that's the only place, so that's why I was amending it there. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, is there any discussion on Mr. Nahale -a's motion as amended by Ms. Jarman's motion? MS. KAWAUCHI: I was going to offer a brief discussion. What I found very compelling was the testimony offered concerning the 2% Land Fund from the people who had gone out and lobbied and worked very hard to have it established. I just go back to the idea that --I had asked this question previously at a previous meeting of one of the testifiers - -why should we set aside 2% for a land fund, when we have other pressing and emergency resources of the county that are at stake? And, the answer was, because even in tough fiscal times, we should be looking to the future and reserving open space for the public. What I go back to in tough economic times, when I was a kid, and we were not a family of means, but we went down to the parks and to the beaches and we gathered and we fished; and that's how we put food on the table. On a policeman's salary- -and I think my dad made $3.25 when he first started - -to feed a family of four, that's basically how we ate. I want to make sure that we understand that. Open space doesn't just mean a trade -off between health and safety and the welfare of our people. It means preserving a lifestyle and making sure there are places for people to actually get the resources that they need to put the food on the table for their families. So, I'm very concerned about cutting down and taking away from this land fund. The groups of people who came out to testify and actually get this law passed are very diverse. I'm 76 talking about a time myself, when we were of very limited means, but I'm also -- -I've got a great law career and I make enough money to put food on the table for my family, but I still find it compelling to keep spaces open. And when I look at the lands that are put forward before the committee that decides which lands are selected to be purchased by the County, they are beautiful resources, they are beautiful places. There are beaches in Kapoho, there's Pohoiki, or Ka`u, Honoapu, there's abundant resources that are out there that are available for County purchase, that when you don't have enough money to go to the movies, and when you cannot go to an amusement park and fly to California to take your family for a vacation or whatever, you have the wonderful resources of our island that are available to you. I think, even though times are hard right now, we have to look at this fund, put our feet in the sand and just say, this is important to us, the 2% is important to us, and we can take care of the people with this money and with this land. If it's part of the public, it will never get taken away from the public. I really think that we should think very hard, even if times are tough, to keep the land fund open, keep the 2% open and just set it aside. I think that could happen. I'm trying to not be too idealistic, I know we need to provide for all those services, and I don't want to see the County in trouble, I love the County government, I don't want to have the County government jeopardized. I don't want emergency resources to betaken away, but I just feel like we should try to find that money someplace else. I found the testimony compelling; both Ms. Crawford's testimony and the testimony was offered about fixed costs. If 75% of the resources are fixed costs, I'm very concerned about that too. But, this money has been selected by the electorate to be set aside, and what I'm talking about is very important. I think that we should not cut down the 2% to .5 %. I think it's not enough. I think we really should think about the future. That's my thought on that subject. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman. MS. JARMAN: Actually, I agree with Ms. Kawauchi. Even with the 2 %, that's not enough money to buy the lands that are recommended by the Open Space Commission. It's really not a lot of money; 2 %. The County hasn't been able to buy everything and could never buy everything that's on that list with the 2 %. I do believe that the 2% is the better way to go, but I like up to' /z % rather than just ' /z %, because I think it gives more flexibility. But, given my druthers, I would rather have it stay at 2 %. MR. NAHALE -A: Mr. Chairman, I fully agree with everything that was said. I don't think we should have cut a112% out at this last budget cycle. I know it was hard times, but I think that was what folks wanted. But, that deliberation is not ours to have. That belongs in the County Code. We are not elected, we were not elected to this seat; and to me, I think we are kind of crossing the lines of the role of the Charter document versus the role of the County Code. To some degree, I feel a little bit like it's not fair for people to come and ask us to basically police their elected officials. I know folks spoke out against cutting the 2 %, and they lost; their elected officials chose to cut it. To some degree, you have got to honor - - -I wasn't in that seat, I didn't have to say cut police department, or cut pools, or cut fire department services. For me, that's crossing the line of policy - making. The 2% still exists. It's in law. They have to follow that, or they have to take the steps to publicly change it, or cut it back. We are not cutting back the 2 %. Only the County Council can cut back the 2 %. 77 And if they do, they have to say why. So, to me, what we are deciding is, should we govern from this level, or manage from this level. That's different I think, it's a different task. MS. KAWAUCHI: The question then, isn't one of moving to amend from 2% to .5 %, it's a question of passing it at 2 %, or not. I still disagree with the amendment to change the proposed CA -15 from 2% to .5 %. With that discussion, then I would say it's one or the other. You either pass it at 2 %, or you don't pass it; and not move it to .5 %. I think symbolically, that's not really what people are intending to do. I think there are probably other places where - -- There's another proposal on the table for the Legislative Auditor's position to be funded for 25 %. So that's the same kind of question, same discussion. Are we going to say that money should be set aside? It looks like there are other jurisdictions that set aside money for that purpose, which that amendment was modeled after. I still think it's okay to say within the Charter that there is a minimum amount, it's 2 %, it's per the ordinance, per the law that was passed, and that it's okay. I feel very strongly about maintaining open space in our County. As things get developed, the access points are gone, there are no longer places to go gather. You cannot go on those roads any more, there are gates and inability to pass. I still think we should maintain the open space, look forward to the future and find the money for the other resources, but not this 2% that the voters wanted to be set aside for the Land Fund. MS. JARMAN: Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman. MS. JARMAN: In response to Alapaki, to your feeling about the Council should be making those decisions; one of the reasons we have the 2 %, is because the Council would not pass the 2 %, and so therefore, it had to go through the people, through the initiative and referendum process. And people spoke; they wanted the 2 %. What happened was the Council failed to do what the people really wanted to do and so there was an initiative and then it passed. That's why I think it's really important to honor what the people did, because the Council wasn't honoring what the people wanted; and that's why it had to go to initiative. Thank you. CHR. HAITSUKA: I think my comment on this is when people voted for the initiative, they voted for initiative based on circumstances that existed at that time. I think that if the initiative had been worded another way, like would you like your real property taxes raised so that they can use that money to buy land; I wouldn't have voted for it. So, I think, now we are looking at a totally different situation at this point where the County is having to cut services, lay off people, so I think we are looking at it from a different perspective at this point. So, I don't think it's fair to keep saying that the people voted for it, because they did vote for it, but they voted for it the way that it was couched at that time. I think that's why it is going to be important that if we pass this, and take it out to the people, that they know, if it is included in the Charter that it's not going to be able to be changed. That might have some adverse consequences to them. IN MS. KAWAUCHI: I might add to that discussion. I thought of that as well. That maybe when they passed it they weren't considering us being in these times. Just to echo what you said, if we put it on the Charter, the people will decide. They are going to make the decision and that's very, very important to me. I think they should have that opportunity to decide. People worked hard to get this passed. I believe they thought, great, we now have 2% set aside in the budget. They get a second chance to say, yes, we want it; or we don't, in light of our economic situation. I think we should be thinking of this also in perpetuity. Because good times or bad, we have got to ask ourselves, is this something we want for our County, or not. Is it as important to us as other types of needs of our County? The public welfare is important; it's all important. I think I would agree, give it another chance for the electorate to make that decision. MR. KAULUKUKUI: I would just like to reiterate that, from what I'm hearing, the proposed amendment doesn't undo what the people got done; what the people did through referendum. The 2% still lives. It lives in the Code. They have come to us, really, to try and provide a safety net. Initially, that safety net was set at an equal 2 %. Now, our amendment is to lower that net down to '/z percentage point. It doesn't undo what has been done. The 2% is still there. The administration can set aside 2% at any point in time, and in fact, as we speak right now, they are supposed to do that in two years down the road. CHR. HAITSUKA: Any further discussion? I want to get clarification on Mr. Nahale -a's motion; just so every body knows what they are voting for. Ms. Jarman's motion was to change Section b (5) in CA -15, by changing the reference to 2% to not less than ' /z %. And that motion passed. Mr. Nahale -a's motion was to change 2% to .5% in all instances in which it is mentioned in CA -15. Is that correct? Okay, so now we are going to be voting on Mr. Nahale -a's motion as modified by Ms. Jarman's motion. If everybody is clear, let's take a roll call vote. The motion to amend CA -15 to change all references of 2% to .5% and further amended by changing all references of 2% to "not less than .5 %" was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: Commissioners, Jarman, and Kawauchi. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: We still have one more motion, right? MS. JARMAN: We have to move that we delete 2% from the title 2% Land Fund and just call it The Land Fund, whenever it's mentioned, for the purpose of the Charter. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is it going to be a motion to approve CA -15 as modified by both of your motions? 79 MS. JARMAN: No, I'm making another motion to amend. It's already been amended with Alapaki's, now I'm making a new motion to amend. CHR. HAITSUKA: Okay, what is your motion? MS. JARMAN: To delete the word 2% in front of Land Fund and just have it be Land Fund. MR. GOODENOW: Right now, it is .5 %, so you would be deleting the .5 %. MS. JARMAN: Okay, wherever it said a percentage before Land Fund, it would be just Land Fund. Ms. Jarman moved to amend all references to the 2% (as amended to .5 %) Land Fund in CA -15, by replacing it with "Land Fund." Seconded by Mr. Nahale -a. MS. CRAWFORD: There is another place in here also, where there is a Commission created, that I believe has that 2% in it as well. MS. JARMAN: But I said wherever it says 2% Land Fund. MS. CRAWFORD: So it would include in the title of the Commission or whatever then. MS. JARMAN: Yes, correct, everywhere. CHR. HAITSUKA: So, we have Ms. Jarman's motion to modify CA -15, or amend CA -15 by removing .5% from the titles. MS. JARMAN: Anywhere where it is right before Land Fund in describing the Land Fund in CA -15. MR. NAHALE -A: Would you consider calling it the Open Space Land Fund? MS. JARMAN: I would consider that a friendly amendment, sure. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? MR. GOODENOW: So just to be clear, the very first underlined title would be Public access, open space, and natural resources preservation fund, or the Open Space Land Fund. MS. JARMAN: Correct. MR. GOODENOW: And then at the bottom of the page, the other underlined section, it would read, The purpose of the Open Space Land Fund. And everywhere else, which I see on Section 10 (n) -- W Withdraw motion to amend: MS. JARMAN: So, I'll withdraw my other motion, and make that motion. So, I need a second to that. Ms. Jarman moved to amend all references to the 2% (as amended to .5 %) Land Fund in CA -15, by replacing it with the "Open Space Land Fund." Seconded by Ms. Osborne and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman, one final motion and we are going to have to move to approve as amended and forward to a second reading. MR. GOODENOW: Actually, there was a pending motion on the floor before it was amended. You had the motion to approve by Ms. Jarman, seconded by Mr. Unger, so we are back to that main motion; the main motion as amended. So you don't need another motion, you just take a vote on the main motion as amended. MR. UNGER: Can we discuss more? MS. JARMAN: Yes, now we can discuss whatever we want to. MR. UNGER: I want to make a motion, it's a very simple one to eliminate letter (g) that clause under Section 10 ... Public access, open space, and natural resources preservation commission, (g). I think it's pretty obvious, but if you want me to explain I will. Note: Section 10(g) states that not more than a bare majority of the members shall belong to the same political party. Mr. Unger moved to amend CA -15 by striking (g) in Section 10. Seconded by Ms. Osborne. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? MS. JARMAN: Excuse me, you are saying that is unnecessary because - -- MR. UNGER: Well, why don't we ask what race they are, what religion they are. I just don't think is appropriate. m MS. JARMAN: Okay. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any other discussion? Let's take a vote. The motion to amend CA -15 by striking (g) in Section 10 was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: Now we have a vote on the main motion. Any further discussion before we vote? Ms. Unger. MR. UNGER: I'm just going to bring up one other issue. One of my concerns with an initiative like this is the mechanism in which we execute this thing. So, we come up with the money to fund it, but now, we're putting everything in the hands of the department of finance. I don't have specific language in mind, but basically the department of finance is in charge of negotiating. Once this list comes to them, they are in charge of negotiating the purchase price. I'm just wondering if they are the ones to be doing that. At that point, the commission is removed from the whole process, and I'm just thinking that somehow we alleviate the department of finance's function, and maybe put it back in the hands of the commission, where they can, if they want to retain a professional to negotiate this thing. I just don't know if that's a task that they are equipped to do, or whether they have time to do. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Crawford, do you have an opinion on that? MS. CRAWFORD: One comment I would make is that they are an advisory commission as created. They really don't hold power to even make decisions or designate. They file a report annually to the Mayor which subsequently goes to the Council with their recommendations. But basically that's the extent of their powers. AMY SELF (At this time Amy Self, Deputy Corporation Counsel, came forward to address members of the Charter Commission.) MS. SELF: I'm Amy Self, Deputy Corporation Counsel. This particular commission is advisory to the Mayor. Once they give the list to the Mayor, the Mayor forwards it to the Council with his recommendations and then it's up to the Council to determine which of the properties to purchase from the prioritized list. That's their function. MR. UNGER: How do you guys feel about negotiating land sales? 99 MS. SELF: The problem that I think of right off -hand is if they are going to handle a professional, where is the money going to come from. Because the money in the fund, if you look in the Code right now, it only has specific uses. It can't even be used for management. MR. LINGER: Right, for management or maintenance, or anything. MS. CRAWFORD: We do have a property management division. We created the property management division in the department of finance after the committee was originally created. Before there was a 2 %, we had the open space and natural resource preservation fund, and we created a division to support that commission. They handled various land matters, but one of the significant ones they do is working on negotiating the purchase of lands and working with other organizations to go after grant monies. MS. SELF: That's an important aspect; they go after grant monies to match our funds. That's why they've been able to buy as much as they've bought with the land fund. They have been applying rigorously for grants; both State and Federal grants. MR. UNGER: Okay. MS. OSBORNE: Mr. Chair. What about the maintenance of those lands once they have been acquired. Is there any funding? What happens there? That is part of my concern. When I hear Kapoho, I'm very familiar with the area, it's all ancient sites and there is a lot of inappropriate activity that happens there too. So, while a lot of good can come of this open space, there is a lot of degradation that can also occur. So, is there any support for maintenance once the lands have been acquired? MS. SELF: It says that management or development of property shall not be an expense of this fund. So, we can't even use the money that is in the land fund for the management of the property. MS. CRAWFORD: So the limited resources that would go, most likely would be, possibly under our property management, but it's far more apt to be parks and recreation that ends up with some level of responsibility over this open space. Although the property we already acquired at Kawa, we have sort of continued to- - -It's not that we are doing much maintenance there, but it's within our department right now, the responsibility. MS. JARMAN: Mr. Chair. There had been quite a bit of discussion on whether or not to use this money for maintenance. The thought was no, if you use the money for maintenance, you are never going to buy any other property. So the real purpose of this is to buy property, otherwise the maintenance will eat up the money you have to buy the property. I know that was deliberately put in that way, and that was part of the original discussion on the land fund and on some modifications to that. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. Is there further discussion? m MR. NAHALE -A: Yes, could you comment on Mr. Rees's concern about the prioritized list. I'm not sure if you heard it or not. MS. CRAWFORD: If I recall, his concern was that based on the language in here that it really locked in and could limit how we currently go about purchasing land. One of the points that I might make, and I apologize that in my original testimony I didn't do a very good job. I was pretty flustered and I didn't do a very good job, but in the later part of my letter I said that if we were going forward with this amendment, one of the things I was recommending was that, this is very detailed language. Most of it is taken from or is very close the County Code. I think it is very appropriate in the County Code, I'm not sure that this level of detail needs to be here. The advantage of the County Code is that then if you do have an issue of confusion about prioritization or what it means, or if you discover that something isn't working quite right, the way we've started down a path - - -We were originally buying basically one property at a time, we had the first property on the list, that's what we worked on. We had limited funds too, and we weren't sure if that went through, whether there would be enough for something else. But, we have been encouraged by the County Council to please take a look at all of the top priorities. So currently we are actively working on three different property acquisitions in various phases of getting appraisals or working with the owners and different things. That is some of the freedom that we get from the fact that is not locked down here in the Charter to that degree. I only mentioned in my letter that, and I don't know if suggesting something a little less detailed, if I should in fact propose some language as an option, rather than just telling you that I think it is too detailed. I think that is what Mr. Rees was speaking to, and it would be a concern of mine. MS. JARMAN: Mr. Chair, maybe Ms. Hecht could respond to that. MS. HECHT: I would like to. There are several points that have been made. First off, 2% is only $4 million a year. Compared to other counties we have a much smaller budget, because we have less of a property tax base. We also have more land that is available, part of which includes agricultural lands. I'm not sure if you have read the lands that are specifically to be protected by this fund; outdoor recreation, education, access to beaches and mountains, preservation of historic or culturally important land areas and sites, protection of natural resources, significant habitat or ecosystems including buffer zones, preserving forest, beaches, coastal areas, natural beauty, agricultural lands, and watersheds to preserve water quality. The money, that's true, and this $4 million goes to get matching funds. The County has asked the Trust for Public Lands to go out and look for matching funds with them. So, although it is more than other counties, I think it is important to note that we don't have the tax base like other counties. As I understand it, this money can be stopped by the Mayor declaring an emergency. I'm begging you, I suppose, to be a little bit more far - sighted and look to see what lands should be saved. Ag lands absolutely should be saved, cultural sites should be saved, and no, this should not be used for maintenance because Ms. Jarman is RE right it will get eaten up for just maintenance. So, I think 2% is very important, and I know you have just voted, I believe, to put it down to .5 %, which after almost 10,000 people signed an initiative petition - -- MR. NAHALE -A: Mr. Chair, we are not on this topic anymore. MS. JARMAN: Excuse me, Debbie. The question is having to do with requiring the department of finance to follow the exact order of prioritization that the Council has given it. MS. HECHT: I think they are doing it. There is $11 million in the fund, but I don't believe they have spent any of it. MS. JARMAN: But, the question is, that in the proposed amendment it requires them to go down the list from the top priority, then they can't go- - -They have to finish trying to negotiate for the top priority and then they would have to negotiate for the second priority, and third priority. MR. NAHALE -A: Mr. Chair, point of information. I don't think it says that. I think it just says -- -What section is it? MS. JARMAN: The last one, (c) it says, the council shall select the land or lands to be preserved and require the Director of Finance to enter in the order of the prioritized list developed by the commission. I thought that was what we were talking about, but if I'm mistaken, I apologize. MR. NAHALE -A: I had the wrong sub - section. Thank you. MS. HECHT: I believe that is what they are doing now. I hope that is what they are doing now. Also, one other thing that I didn't get a chance to comment on, on the proposal that I submitted it says if approved by voters, the placement of this amendment in the Hawaii County Charter - -- MS. JARMAN: Debbie, we are not there yet. We are not talking about that. We are just talking about this prioritization list at the moment. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. MS. OSBORNE: Mr. Chair, I concur that we probably don't need this much detail. It is not appropriate to have it within the Charter. So, how would we go about asking to have some language proposed to us, so that this is still embedded, but - -- CHR. HAITSUKA: I think the Finance Department can submit testimony when we bring this up again. It's going to come up for another reading if it passes today, and we can amend it on the floor based on some proposed language we may have. RR MS. JARMAN: We can do it the same way we did with that Department of Agriculture and Energy; pass it today, and then have them come up with some language that would be more workable for them. MS. CRAWFORD: We would certainly be open to that. I actually have samples from Maui, Kauai, and Honolulu as to how their Charter sections read. They are shorter and broader, and we can either work with this or just provide it to you; either way you prefer. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. Is there any further discussion? Are we ready to vote? The motion to approve CA -15 as amended at first reading was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: Let's move on to CA -16. CA -16: INITIATION OF CHARTER AMENDMENTS AND REVISIONS Amends Section 15 -1. The purpose of this amendment is to make the requirements for an elector initiated charter amendment to follow the same process and requirements as for initiative and referendum. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion to approve CA -16 and forward it for a second reading? Ms. Jarman moved to approve CA -16 at first reading. Seconded by Mr. Unger. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? MS. JARMAN: We discussed it when we brought it out of committee, so I don't feel the need to say anything more. CHR. HAITSUKA: Alright, let's vote. The motion was carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. :. CHR. HAITSUKA: Let's move on to CA -17. CA -17: REAPPORTIONMENT TO REDISTRICTING Amends Section 3 -17. This amendment is to change the name of the Reapportionment Commission to "Redistricting Commission" to make the name consistent with the practice of redrawing district lines. Additionally, provisions are being added so that the commission shall adhere to the four redistricting criteria instead of being "guided" by them. Public hearing requirements are being added as well as a required report to the mayor and council about the commission's activities and progress. Last, the commission is to be appointed and confirmed by July 1 prior to the census year to give the commission more time to complete their work. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion to approve CA -17 and forward it to a second reading? Ms. Kawauchi moved to approve CA -17 at first reading. Seconded by Ms. Jarman and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: Commissioner Fuertes. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: Moving onto CA -18. CA -18: FOUR -YEAR COUNCIL TERMS Amends Section 3 -2. The purpose of this amendment is to extend the term of a member of the county council from two years to four years. This amendment would limit the term of councilmembers to two consecutive four -year terms. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion to approve CA -18 and to forward it for a second reading? Mr. Nahale -a moved to approve CA -18 at first reading. Seconded by Mr. Unger. CHR. HAITSUKA: Is there any discussion? MS. OSBORNE: I would like to consider Bobby- Jean's mana`o on this that some of the language has changed to say that it is effective 2010, rather than upon approval. M MR. NAHALE -A: I agree, and if it's okay with the Commission, I don't mind working on language to submit upon second reading. If you want to deliberate it today, that's fine with me too, but I think that the points are pretty straight forward and accurate. CHR. HAITSUKA: Ms. Jarman, should we make a motion to postpone? MS. JARMAN: I believe he's saying he'll bring the amendments at second reading, is that correct? MR. NAHALE-A: Yes, just simply to make the effective date 2010. Also, I'll work with Levi to figure out language that allows Council Members to serve the full four -year term, even if that would give them ten years in office. I think that is the issue that was raised. MS. JARMAN: In terms of this four -year council terms, I can't tell you how many times I've gone back and forth in my mind between two- four - two - four - two - four - two - four -two- four, and in the end -- because initially I thought four was going to be great, and I was all in favor of four - -then I realized that the four was tied up to recall. There were a lot of people who felt it should be tied up to recall. Then, realizing that it wasn't that long ago that we actually went from four to two, I started thinking that maybe we need to give the two -year term a longer chance. So, I think I'm going to vote against the four -year council terms. MR. NAHALE -A: So, I actually support the idea of tying this to making recalls easier. So, when we approve - - -If we have that intention, do we have to do that up front, or do that later? Can someone help me with the process? MS. JARMAN: We probably have to ask Levi to look into that because what you are doing is you are making one amendment contingent upon another, and that's kind of complicated. think we would have to ask Levi to look into that for us. MR. GOODENOW: In my opinion, just looking at previous Charter questions, there's nothing wrong with making a composite question. It is really up to the - - -You guys have the power to phrase the questions how you like. I think that would be done later in the part of the process when you come out with the actual questions. MS. JARMAN: The reason I worry about it and want him to look at it is that what if we pass the four -year term and recall together and then it doesn't pass the electorate. Then all of a sudden, we don't have a recall provision in the Charter, potentially. That's why I thought Levi could look at that for us and see if there is a way to link it so that wouldn't happen. MR. KAULUKUKUI: Mr. Chair. CHR. HAITSUKA: Yes, Mr. Kaulukukui. MR. KAULUKUKUI: I just wanted to add that I am in general support of the intention of ultimately linking the two. But the amendment we have in front of us is for a four -year term; and I'll be in opposition to that on the grounds that I think there already is a mechanism to :: make the adjustment that a lot of people are concerned with. That is to vote somebody out of office. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. MR. FUERTES: Excuse me, Mr. Chair. I think four years is too long. If you have a council person that is not working, and you are stuck with that council person for four years, man, you know you just go backwards. So, I'm just going to vote nay on this. CHR. HAITSUKA: Anyone else? Ms. Kawauchi. MS. KAWAUCHI: Mr. Chair, I'm voting no as well. The research that has been provided shows that since the passage of the initial Charter which stated four -year terms, to the amendment that went to two -year terms, there have been several attempts to try to get it back to four and it hasn't passed. I just think that I'm not in favor of going from two to four, so I'm voting no. CHR. HAITSUKA: Thank you. Is there any further discussion? Let's take a vote. The motion to approve CA -18 at first reading failed due to the following tie vote: Ayes: Commissioners Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: We talked about going to 8:00 p.m. and it's now 8:00 p.m. and I think Mr. Kaulukukui has to leave. Mr. Unger moved to defer the remaining items on the agenda under New Business until the next meeting. Seconded by Ms. Jarman, and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: We still have to finish up with the rest of our agenda, right? MS. KAWAUCHI: We have to announce our next meeting date and time. :• CHR. HAITSUKA: We still have a few more things on our agenda to get thought tonight. REPORTS CHR. HAITSUKA: We don't have any Reports. REFERRALS FOR EXECUTIVE SESSION CHR. HAITSUKA: Next on our agenda is Referrals for Executive Session, and we don't have any referrals. ANNOUNCEMENTS CHR. HAITSUKA: Let's move on to announcements. Our next meeting is supposed to be scheduled for Friday, December 11, 2009 at 1:30 p.m. here at the County Council Room at the Ben Franklin Building. But, the County Council is going to be moving by the beginning of December. I was told they are going to be back in their old Chambers at 25 Aupuni Street. We have a conflict in our rules, which Mr. Hookano told me is not a big problem. Our rules say, in 1(b), that our regular meetings are to be held here in the Ben Franklin Building. He suggested to just give notice that we are going to be holding the meeting at the County Council Chambers at 25 Aupuni Street. As far as scheduling, I cannot be here on Friday, December 11, 2009. I think Mr. Hookano said he is not available on that date too. I don't know if anyone else has a scheduling conflict. Mr. Kaulukukui has a scheduling conflict. Mr. Fuertes is suggesting December 18, 2009. MS. JARMAN: That is better for me. CHR. HAITSUKA: So, Friday, December 18, 2009. Does anyone have any conflicts with that date? MR. GOODENOW: Just a point of information, Mr. Chair. We do have the lease on this room until January 31, 2009, although the chairs and the conference table will not be here. CHR. HAITSUKA: So we need to stand up? MR. GOODENOW: I don't know if there is a procedure for suspending your rules so you could have the meeting in our Council Chamber. I'm trying to see your rules, here. MS. JARMAN: It says, "Unless otherwise specified..." so Levi said as long as we specify that we are going to do it, it's okay. W MR. GOODENOW: You could call it a special meeting as well. But, it does say unless otherwise specified, so you would have to have it in our Council Chamber in the Council Building, we really won't have the facilities here. CHR. HAITSUKA: I think it's going to be a special meeting anyways, because our regular meetings are on the second Friday of each month. So, we are going to have a Special Meeting on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 1:30 p.m. I think we have to make a motion for that Special Meeting. Is that correct, Ms. Jarman? MS. JARMAN: Yes. CHR. HAITSUKA: Do I have a motion? Ms. Osborne moved to hold a special meeting on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 1:30 p.m. at the County Council Chambers, 25 Aupuni Street. Seconded by Ms. Jarman and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. ADJOURNMENT CHR. HAITSUKA: Last on the agenda is adjournment. There being no further business, at 8:04 p.m., Mr. Kaulukukui moved to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Ms. Osborne and carried by the following vote: Ayes: Commissioners Fuertes, Jarman, Kawauchi, Kaulukukui, Nahale -a, Osborne, Unger, and Chair Haitsuka. Noes: None. Absent: Commissioners Honma, Kealoha and Shumway. CHR. HAITSUKA: The meeting is adjourned. Thank you. 91 Respectfully Submitted, Karen Eoff, Secretary Approved: Mr. Ed Haitsuka, Chair Hawaii County Charter Commission 92