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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCHC 1979-05-22 PH HAWAII COUNTY CHARTER COMMISSION MINUTES 19th Session and Public Hearing . Kealakekua=Kona, Hawaii May 22 , 1979 The nineteenth session and public hearing of the Hawaii County Charter Commission was called to order at 7: 13 p.m. in. the Konawaena High School Cafeteria, Kealakekua-Kona, Hawaii , by Mr. Kimiaki Sakata, Chairman . The roll recorded the following: Present: Mr. Harlan Cadinha Mr`s Richard Ishida Mts. Amy Iwamoto Mrs. Gloria Kobayashi Mr. Akira Omonaka . Mr. Kimiaki Sakata _ . . Mr. Herman Sensano Mr. Joseph Trulson Mr. Basilio Yagong Mr. Matsuo Yanaga Absent. Mr. Spencer Kalani Schutte and Excused : Mr. Webster Nolan,, West Hawaii Today Present : Mr. William W. Moss, West Hawaii Committee Mr. A. Stewart Murray, West Hawaii Committee Mr. Jay- Maixner, Kainaliu _ the Rev. Dr __H. K Boshard,_Mokuaikaua .Church Mr. Steven Kornberg, Captain Cook Mr. J. William Raiser, Keauhou Mr. William Knutson; Keauhou Mr. J. Curtis Tyler; West Hawaii Committee Mrsr.Virginia Isbell, Hawaii Women for Bette'r Government Mr: Confessor Piveira, Farmers ' Lokahi Alliance ;Mr. °" rank. rosby, West Hawaii Committee Ms. Shirley- Mesher, Honaunau Mr. James Ousey, Kailua-Kona Mr. Gordon Bartsch, Kona Coast Chamber of Commerce Mr. Rick Taylor, Holualoa Mr. Masayuki Kawasaki , Captain Cook Mr. Gordon Leslie, Napoopoo Mr. Leon K. Sterling, Keauhou Mauka ' Councilman 'Muneo Sameshima, Kamuela Mr. Peter A. Robinson , Captain Cook Mr. Stuart Oda, Attorney Mrs. Joan Carnett, Secretary 1 CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Before we start this public hearing this evening, .. I want to thank you very much for your attendance this evening. We have 'a good turnout and I hope we can get a lot of input from you people before we start __, deliberating on the revision of the charter.., !_ = We have a total of 19. people that are going to testify this evening. Before we have any testimony from each ,of you, we would like to ask our legal counsel , Attorney Mr. Stuart Oda, to give to you the Rules and Procedures for the Public Hearings. Perhaps tonight we will have to limit :you 'people to a time schedule because we have so many of you testifying. Mr. Oda. MR. ODA: These rules will apply to the making of public statements before the commission this evening. All persons desiring to speak before the Commission are to register with the Secretary or with the Chairman prior to the convening of the meeting, and shall provide the Commission with their name, address , and organization they represent, if applicable. No person who fails to register shall be heard. The Chairman will call the name of the person desiring to speak and all persons shall speak before the microphone and be informed that their statements will be recorded,, for the purpose of typing at a later time. All statements before the Commission shall be in reference to phe provisions in the Charter of the County of Hawaii or those that may be proposed as amendments or additions thereto. Statements not relevant, at the discretion of the Chairman, shall not be heard or considered. Whenever requested or appropriate, the speaker shall specify the charter provision re- erred_ to-sn;,'that Commission members may be familiar with its provisions ' All statements are to be made to the Commission in general, not to any specific member,' unless in response to a ,question by that specific member. At any time, the Chairman or any Commission member may interrupt any person making a statement for a clarification or an' answer. Written proposals regarding any amendments or additions to the Charter may be submitted at the time of this hearing; tonight, or any time after the hearing, but no !Eater than May 29, which is next week. ' Written statements on issues before the Commission may be deferred until such time as the subject matter referred to in the statement appears on the Commission ' s agenda. This will not be applicable tonight.' Oral statements before the Commission will be heard at scheduled public hearings to be held by the Commission. -2- • Now, for those of you who are going to be making statements; will you please approach the microphone located in the center, over here, and after you have finished making your statements will you please remain standing before the microphone so that commission members who have any questions may ask for clarifications or any other comments from you based on any concerns or questions they might have. Please introduce yourself at the time that you begin your statements. As the Chairman has stated , we request that you keep your statements to no longer than ten minutes in length to accommodate all persons who wish to speak . If, for any reason you have to exceed ten minutes we will certainly be flexible about it but we would like you somehow to be guided by the ten minute rule. We won ' t cut you off in the middle of a sentence, or anything like that, but please try to be timely on that point. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Oda. Before we start , are there any of you in the audience who would like to sign up to testify? Anyone? If not , we will go into the public hearing and the first person to testify will be Mr. Webster Nolan. Mr. Nolan. MR. NOLAN : My name is Web Nolan. I am the editor of West Hawaii Today. I have only a couple points I would like to raise here for your consideration and they deal with the election of the county council. The position of our paper is that we feel that the so-called at-large election of county council members is somewhat injurious to the political strength of West Hawaii residents. By West Hawaii , I mean Ka' u, the two Kona districts and the two Kohala districts. The three elections that we have had in Hawaii County under the county council system have seen 9 council members , or 8 out of the 9 council members , elected at-large were from Hilo and the 9th is from Hakalau, which as you know is only twelve or thirteen miles from Hilo. The one thing I want to stress is that we are not , the newspaper is not complaining about the treatment that we have had in the council . The issue here, as I see it, the only issue is balanced representation for West Hawaii and for East Hawaii too. So we are opposed to the at-large and we favor a one member, one district election of council members. In connection with that, since the population has not been accurately counted for at least ten years , and some people in West Hawaii feel that it has not been accurately counted at all , it seems impractical to suggest that the commission could set up a reapportionment system for the coming election in 1980. Our paper is suggesting, and I think other groups in West Hawaii are suggesting that the commission consider establishing some kind of a mechanism to go into effect after the federal census is completed in 1980. -3- In the City and County of Honolulu, as I under- stand it , the council appoints a reapportionment commission and that commission has rather strong powers. They consider re- districting, they consider of course the census and when they file their reapportionment plan that has the effect of law, as I understand it. I personally, and now I 'm not speaking for the paper, I personally feel that that is not a very democratic way to do it. But some such mechanism that would allow a reappor- tionment committee to take into account the results of the census of the federal census every ten years might be an appropriate answer to this rather thorny problem. The only other issue that our paper has taken a stand on if that is the appropriate way to put it, is that we feel that a two-year term for council members would be more effective as far as keeping them in touch with the constitutents goes. I do want to stress that we are not criticizing the existing council or any past councils. We feel that the East Hawaii districts are over-represented and the West Hawaii districts are under-represented. We hope that you folks will take some steps to readjust this. That is about all I have to say. MR. OMONAKA: Mr. Nolan, with regard to your proposal , does it mean that the county council would be elected for another four-year term prior to any kind of a districting plan? Is that what you are talking about? MR. NOLAN : We would hope, the newspaper would hope that the elections in 1980 would be for a two-year term so that the results of the census in 1980 could be taken into consideration sometime towards the end of 1980 or ' 81 in order to start an election in 1982. I don ' t really know if that is practical or not. I don ' t know how soon the census results will be available. MR. OMONAKA: If you are proposing a two---year termfor council , do you have any feelings with regard to staggered terms? MR. NOLAN : No. MR. OMONAKA: They should all be up for election at the same time? MR. NOLAN: If it ' s a two-year term it would be kind of hard to stagger it. , MR. TRULSON : If you defer this until the 1980 census , which will probably be out in 1981 , and then thereafter would you continue with the two-year term? MR. NOLAN: Yes. -4- MR. ISHIDA: Mr. Nolan, is it your paper ' s position that there be no at-large representation? Is that right? MR. NOLAN: Yes. MR. ISHIDA: Are you suggesting that there be nine different districts, or are you advocating that the number of council positions be reduced? MR. NOLAN: We are not taking a position on that because, again , the results of the census I think would better dictate how many members would be appropriate. Let me elaborate on that a minute. Since we have different economic interests on the island, our thinking was that North Kohala, it might be more appropriate to keep that a West Hawaii district, as it is now. So that would seem to dictate nine districts. I really think the • technicalities of that would be better approached by some experts on constitutional law, for one thing. . . The one-man, one,-,vote concept. MR. ISHIDA: The problem we are facing is we are supposed to come up with something_ and we have to have some input from the public to give us :d_bas:is_ v.pon which we can look at. • MR. NOLAN: As far as the economic interests go, I think that the nine districts would be better than reducing it to seven, or to five, or whatever. MR. ISHIDA: On the general basis , I take it then that your paperjust wants to see some form of district represen- tation? MR. NOLAN : Yes , sir. MR. ISHIDA: It need not matter whether it be nine, seven , or six? MR. NOLAN : I think it should be an odd number but other than that, no. MR. ISHIDA: Thank you. MRS. IWAMOTO: Mr. Nolan , that term of office is only for the council? Or is it .also for_: the -niayor? MR. NOLAN : Nod - just for the council . MRS. KOBAYASHI : Mr. Nolan, I just finished reading your editorial on the front page and based on what I read, your newspaper says that you wanted seven seats. MR. NOLAN: That ' s a suggestion for a temporary council , until 1982 when the results of the census would be known. MRS. KOBAYASHI : So this is just an interim suggestion for the setup? -5- MR. NOLAN: Yes. MRS . KOBAYASHI : You did not come up with anything specific? MR. NOLAN: For the long duration, no. That is just a suggested mechanism. MR. ISHIDA: Mr. Nolan, just for the record would you like to submit a copy of your editorial as part of your testimony tonight so that we can make it part of the record? MR. NOLAN: Yes. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Nolan. Next, we would like to call on Mr. William W. Moss . Mr. Moss. MR. MOSS : Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. I ' ll try to be as brief as possible tonight. I am representing the West Hawaii Committee, as I believe you already know. Since we talked to you some weeks ago and sub- mitt'ed in writing our proposals , we have had many discussions with others, among ourselves, and we have paid considerable attention to the testimony that has been given before you by reading your minutes. As a result, we have modified some of our views. I don ' t want to go into too much detail about them tonight because we will be submitting a letter to you within the next week before your deadline, outlining them in detail . So if you have any detail questions tonight, I ' ll be glad to field some of them but we have two members of the committee who are better prepared to talk on certain aspects of it than I am tonight and I hope I can defer any questions along to those gentlemen. Our overall objective in all of our proposals is a county government that is more representative of the people. That is more responsive to their priority needs and is more efficient. In those three prino,iPles, this is what we are trying to get at with the modifications to the present charter. To accomplish this, we propose direct election of the council members. We believe there;;should be nine and that it is the only really proper and fa-ir way for one-man , one= vote. We think there should be fiscal restraints on the budget, the debt, and property taxes . The numbers here that you have put in for a limit are very touchy. There have been many proposals made to you already and if you read the language of them you will find, in some cases, for instance, that one of the proposals would limit the debt to four times what it is today. Whereas, if you change two words in the proposal you would find that it would limit the debt to 25% above what it is today. So you have to be careful when you start talking numbers. None of our limitations, incidentally, are crippling -6- but they will limit the accelerated growth of our county government. We believe that the approval of all heads of departments, all commission members should be a province of the county council , rather than just the two members that are required under the present charter. We think there should be a realignment of departments within the government which would reduce the number of department heads from ten to six, causing more efficiency through more clearly defined responsibility and controls. Five, we think we should eliminate all present commissions called for under the charter except the planning commission and the police commission. This would greatly strengthen the council ' s hand as to setting policy. It would make it very clear that generally speaking policy is ,set by the county council . The council members have often commented to us that when they try to correct something in a department as far as policy is concerned , they quite often find their hands are tied by commission actions not subject to their review. We feel the county council should be the clear center of policy in the county. The mayor should be the clear administrator of that policy. Six, a vacancy in office--some provision should be made for replacement of a incapacitated council member. Seven, we very much favor a Sunset Law to try to eliminate some of the archaic expenditures that are going on just because they have been past practice. None of these proposals are revolutionary. They are not retaliatory and they are not repressive. They are building on the present government, the present charter for a better county future. Now there are two additional items I would like just to mention to you tonight because I have seen no discussion on them up until this time. I think they need clarification very shortly. . .and that is , where do we go from here? I understand you will be drafting your charter revisions, if you feel they are necessary. We feel that that draft should be made public and available for comment and possible clarifications by the public. The second item is the special election--the form. We feel that it should not be a yes or no on a total charter but that it should be an item by item proposition. That gentlemen , concludes what I have to say tonight. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Moss. Mr. Cadinha? MR. CADINHA: Mr; Moss , with regard to this streamlining of department heads , cutting from ten to six, specifically, what six would remain? -7- MR. MOSS: This is one of those questions that i .waited to defer to one of my colleagues , Mr. Frank Zuzak. I would like him to answer that. MR. CADINHA: Is it the same chart that he presented to us in Hilo? If so, I see no reason to go into it. MR. MOSS: Yes , we have not changed our views on that at all . MR. TRULSON : Mr. Moss , regarding the nine districts based upon the ' 81 census or on residency in the districts.. . Every ten years there is a census , or say that there would be a census in ' 91 , you would then feel that the districts may be again realigned, based upon the census? MR. MOSS: Yes , I do, very much so. Incidentally, the districts come out based on present population and present voters , you get districts along the traditional lines of division of the island. For instance, North Kona makes up just about one good district. South Kona and Ka' u make up the second one. Puna just about makes up the third. Hilo, the City of Hilo itself, divides quite nicely into four districts. Harnakua and North Hilo make one district and North and South Kohala make one district. They are fairly close in population. I don ' t know what will come out of the 1980 census , by any means , but it isn ' t going to mean a major realignment, it isn ' t going to upset the traditional district thinking of the island, as far as I can see at this time. MR. TRULSON : What is your opinion regarding the district makeup as to registered voters or as to residency? MR. MOSS : I believe, in general , that election districts are done on the basis__of_ the _census population. I 'm sure that is the way it ' s done in Honolulu. I think that is the way it is done generally speaking in the other states. MR. TRULSON : The reason I asked is that we have had that proposal before us and wondered whether you had thought about it. MR. MOSS : Since there was a lot of argument about, a lot of uncertainly about how fast various portions of the island have grown, '.i looked at the registered voters as one way of dividing up districts. It follows pretty much the general population anyway. MR. CADINHA: With respect to your Sunset Law suggestion, how would you structure such a law, how do you see that written? MR. MOSS: Frankly,' at the moment, I am not pre- pared to really talk on that , Mr. Cadinha. MR. JONAH ROSENTHAL: ( audience) What does it mean , the Sunset Law? -8- MR. MOSS: Sunset Law calls for a mandatory review of all programs of the county government at, say, three year intervals so that the ones that are non-productive or archaic can be discarded and you strewn' ine and concentrate on the things that you want to do now rather than what somebody else thought should be done four, five,, six, seven, ten years ago. MR. ROSENTHAL: It ' s a /review by the council itself? MR. MOSS: Yes, that is correct. MR. ISHIDA: Mr. Moss , in your statement you stated that the mayor should be concerned more about administrative affairs and the council for the policy. Has your committee;_by'r ._, '_defi-filtion?, determined what is considered policy and what is considered; administration? MR. MOSS: That ' s areal problem. MR. ISHIDA: As it is now, as the charter is written now, do 'you see any problem that there are certain areas where the mayor has 'po1 cy _author:ity and the legislature does not? MR. MOSS: No, I don ' t. I think the present charter is pretty clear. It doesn ' t really say the council sets policy but it does charge the mayor with administering the departments and I would think that general overall policy is a pretty clear matt-el' as opposed to just the administration of the departments,. MR. ISHIDA: What Iam getting at is if that is your committee' s objective then as far as your specific recommen- dation as far as streamlining department heads—Or -maybe what my question should be where in the charter do you recommend changes to effect this policy-administration division?' MR. MOSS : I think you redefine the county departments and consolidate them along the lines of the chart' 'that we gave you previously and place them under the managing director and the deputy managing director to administer with the mayor on top of the pyramid. Again, I think this is something Mr. Zuzak is' much better prepared to talk about than I am. MR. ISHIDA: Since your committee will be sub- , mitting a written report maybe that can be covered at that time. MR. MOSS : Yes, sir, we will. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. M6ss . Next we would like to call Mr. Stewart Murray. Mr. Murray:' MR. MURRAY: Members of the commission. My name is Stewart Murray. I 'm a member of the West Hawaii Committee but I am not here to necessarily talk exactly as a member of that committee. I'm here to express certain views that I have come to have as a result of the work that was done incommittee and -9- presented by the Chamber of Commerce and our West Hawaii Com mittee; as a result of observing the council at work in Hilo; studying the budget hearings and the figures themselves ; and also reviewing the concerns;--of the citizens that have appeared to testify with you starting in N aalehu and completing last week in Waimea. If we are to have good county government, we have to have good men in it and basically the impact of those men are most important in the two classifications that we have, the mayor' s office and the membet's of the council . Whether we have a good mayor or not is the direct • responsibility of the voters. There is nothing much that can be done to help them on that regard. As regards to the council , we could have refine- ments of the Charter Commission , but frankly, there is no way you can legislate good government. So, the question is how do • we get men of integrity and good capability in the offices of the council? These are the two facets that I am interested in addressing because I think perhaps this is the most important thing that can come out of these Charter Commission hearings. As has been said earlier this evening, I 'm in favor of nine district elected councilmen. The advantages are very clear and so I ' ll take them up in the course of defending the number of nine and also as to how we get them. Presently, the council is organized as nine members and the mechanics of the day to day council are grouped about those nine members so that we don ' t necessarily want to confuse change for progress. By leaving them nine we do salvage a great deal of good work , day to day mechanics of input. The question is more or less than nine? If we had fewer than nine we would have the problem that there are a number of major committees. If you have fewer people you have to double up in some cases. By leaving it at nine your major committees are assigned to one individual and he has the time to do his home- work and do his study and consultation without being overburdened. Furthermore, as we have seen with Mr. Xawahara' s unfortunate absence, when a member is absent for some time the functions of the council are handicapped. So, that if we have nine we get along reasonably well , but if we were down to five or less , we'd be having a marked change in the functioning of the council . So, here again the number nine seems quite reasonable. Also, we have had reference to the historic number of nine districts and there would be no need to upset that. Actually, the districts themselves are subdivided into election precincts. When we come to the question which was raised recently about what happens with the changing of the census you wouldn ' t have any major shifts in districts , names or other- wise, but you would perhaps have a movement of a precinct from one onto the other to keep a , reasonable balance of one-man , one- vote. This is going to happen in every census and therefore the mechanics would exist. The same would happen if we were a larger state and had more representatives . Since we only have -10- two in Hawaii , we don ' t have to face that. Other states like California, New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio they have this movement and it is quite practical. One point was made in Waimea by Mr. Sameshima that it was desirable to have a certain number of councilmen as a minimum because it would be difficult for influence peddling. I don ' t believe that is the only reason.'We can avoid that situation because the way in which we select them, I think, has a greater bearing than making it difficult to influence by lobbying and so forth in a small number. The question of the selection of the council whether it should be at-large or not. I think one reference was made in Waimea also `:and.. it makes quite a case and a very practical case against election at-large . '.it was pointed out that Molokai has their representive in council elected normally in Maui because they have the votes and they choose people that seem to suit their preference. That might be a unique situation but nevertheless former Councilman Robert Yamada made the point in Hilo that we have to expect the councilmen to be individuals and that they wi_11 tend to favor the districts from which they come regardless of whether they were elected at-large. Now there is nothing wrong with a councilman being interested in his community. He is informed, he knows what the appropriations will do and so forth. There is no reason why he should -:apologize for being partisan to that district. The problem is to_ make sure that each andevery one of the other districts is equallyell._represented so that they get their day in court and have a choice. And; -actually, it desirable that the men have views and strong views and well founded views. That is the way -w,wa_ll : have . good appropriations and good selection. If the nine districts were equally represented the proper compromise would be made. West Hawaii has seen the weakness of that because there is no question but over a period of time the CIP funds have not been, equitably _ distributed in the County of Hawaii . It has worked to the detriment, not only of Hilo..who has had the benefit of it , but to Kona as well because actually money wisely spent is good for the whole county and not just for the local area. That is the point we could make in detail. I 'm trying to think of the things that have been covered to avoid repetition and I think to some extent that we have had some of the other views that I was going to mention already brought to your attention. If there are any questions I would like to have a chance to address them and clarify any of the points that were brought up previously. MR. CADINHA: Mr. Murray, you seemed to have an opinion when I asked Mr. Moss about the Sunset provision and how it should be structured. You seemed: to have an opinion about that. Would you elaborate? MR. MURRAY: I would, speaking from my own experience rather than as a member of the West Hawaii Committee. -11- Basically you gather that I subscribe very wholeheartedly to that which we have advocated as a study group. The Sunset Laws I think dare very desirable. They would result in the termination of all ordinances and laws on a periodic basis that would be set so that unless they were re-enacted they would die automatically. That is the only way you can purge the record of it. Historically, we have seen cases where old ordinances have been :dragged up and revived after they were dead for seventy or eighty years and made applicable--nowhere approaching the original intent, but nevertheless they were a useful technical dodge. This is one of the major advantages of cleaning the slate and starting over--quite aside from the real economy of every operation whether it is a business or government has a certain amount of momentum to it and expenses keep going unless they are terminated and this is one way of making sure that they are terminated and only reinstigated when they will be useful and justifiable. MR. CADINHA: Do you have any specific duration or length of time in mind? MR. MURRAY: I would say that if we had it on an every eight or twelve year basis , assuming a four-year term because they don ' t accumulate that fast but that should be enough to make sure that the original intent :is well known and it can be referred to and decided whether it needs to be reinstigated or not because sometimes things do get lost with turnover personnel. It shouldn ' t be too long, but it shouldn 't be too frequently. I think that eight or twelve years--perhaps even twelve years would be desirable because that would only be two-thirds as often. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Murray. Next we will call on Mr. Jay Maixner. MR. MAIXNER: My name is Jay Maixner and I live in Kainaliu. Please excuse me for reading my statement to you because for clarity and to cover everything I have written it down. The first issue that I would like to discuss is the election of the council . The exact number of councilpersons is not so important to me as is the method of their election. I support one councilperson per district with none being elected at-large. This will better enable each councilperson to represent the needs of their districts. But , rather than to wait for and depend upon the accuracy of the 1980 census to determine the districts according to population , as others have suggested, I submit the following proposal. Go to the property tax ledgers and divide the county up into districts of equal tax contribu- tion. This method would not only be accurate but would also allow the people a say in what is done with their tax money in direct proportion to their contribution. The tax payers are supporting the county agencies and the taxpayers should have the say as to what services should be provided. -12- That is somewhat of a radical concept. Everybody seems to be discussing the one-man, one-vote concept and that seems to be what is done everywhere but just to give an example of hew this might affect an • area, I" 11 take South Kohala as an example. There is very sparse population in that area at this time and there are quite a number of projected upcoming projects that are going to produce quite a large increase in their tax contribution. Yet, most of those projects in that • area will probably be in the area of vacation, resort rentals , hotels and so on , so the actual population of those areas will not increase at the same rate as the tax contributions of the county will. But there will 's C�ill be a great number of people in those areas that are not counted as actual population or residents in those areas. Because of those added people they will need more services than would be expected if you were just to look at the actual residents living there. They will need more police and fire protection and so on. "_ The second point, I support restrictive controls on the following: ( a) Number of county employees. In the past ten years the number of county employees has increased at more than twice the rate of the civilian population. I say that no one new be hired unless someone else 'is fired or retired. If we find that we do legitimately need • new people in one area then move them from other less productive, less needed areas. The second area that I believe should have restrictive controls on it is the county budget and county debt. We are all painfully aware of what spending more than we take in can do to an economy as so aptly demonstrated by our printing press happy inflation causing federal government. So let ' s balance the budget and keep it :t'i'At way and help to hold inflation of property taxes down. The third area, residential and agricultural property taxes. A limit should be set to prevent taxes from becoming a burden to homeowners, farmers and ranchers. The growth of assessed value should also be controlled not being allowed to exceed 2% per ',year except when property is sold. When sold, property assessment should be allowed to go to market value and be taxed accordingly. This measure will help to prevent the current speculative real estate climate from ruining those who do not wish to participate in the boom. The third area that I would like to comment on is that I strongly urge the County Charter be amended to . include the following two items : Initiative and Referendum. This will return power of control of expenditures to the people where it belongs and not leave it with a self perpetuating government. The second issue is the Sunset Law. This will prevent the waste_,of_;continuing unneeded and outdated programs through periodic rev-i_ew. That is the end of my statement but I would like to at this time, thank the five local groups who paid for the two page ad in West Hawaii Today that made the public zaiware of -13- some of the issues at hand at this time and I think it was probably directly related to the turnout here tonight because the earlier meetings that were held had such poor turnouts .. I think a lot of the reason might have been because the public was not really aware of what issues were at hand to get up and make statements about them. Thank you. MR. TRULSON : Mr. Maixner, with reference to your comment on Initiative and Referendum, are you proposing changes to the original Initiative and Referendum that is in the charter now? MR. MAIXNER: Well , I will be honest with you. I really don ' t know what restrictions are in there but I am basing my statement on what I read in the West Hawaii Today about removal of restrictions that are now existing there which would put control back in the hands of the people. MR. TRULSON : One other question regarding your proposal of a freeze on new hiring in government. How would you propose you judge as to when or when not an employee could be hired? How would you judge that, what kind of a scale? So many men per unit or how would you go about this? Have you given any thought to that? MR. MAIXNER: I 'm not sure. exactly what you ' re asking. MR. TRULSON : You say we should only rehire when somebody retires, or is fired, or leaves for whatever reason. MR. MAIXNER: Yes. MR. TRULSON : Okay, unless it is absolutely necessary. But who is to judge that? MR. MAIXNER : What is necessary? I didn ' t even say"unless it is necessary. " I said if it is necessary to hire people in one area then take, them from another area that is not performing, or not producing. There would have to be a limit on how long you would hold it at the existing level. You are going to have to hire new people as the population grows, that ' s obvious. I was pointing out that it is growing at more than 200% of the population growth. If we could hold it until the population growth catches up a little and then have them run a little more simultaneous to each other rather than having it growing in proportion to the population the way it is. MR. ISHIDA: ' Mr. Maixner, on your representation based upon - ax- contributions , and you also stated that you would like to see restrictions on tax assessments of residential and agricultural lands. I take it on that theory that the result or the effect of it is such that the areas that do have residential and agricultural land would be limited in their representation, that they do not deserve as much representation ,aa;;,those areas which have high tax assessments . Am I interpreting you correctly? -14- MR. MAIXNER: Actually, what I am saying is that to hold down taxes on residential and agricultural so that the people in Hawaii that want things to remain as they are and don ' t want their property values to escalate and would just as soon their house is worth $50, 000 as $250, 000 that thosepeople--their services should not be increasing, they shouldn ' t need more representation because they--unless they don ' t have enough at this point--but what I am saying is that if a person wants to keep things as they are, wants their taxes to stay down , wants the property values to stay down, wants less government, they are not going to be contributing to government. People that are, let ' s say, like a new area that develops is going to put a lot more taxes in , those tax dollars should go to new services for those new areas that are putting that money out. MR. ISHIDA: That those areas should have heavier representation as far as the council is concerned, that ' s your theory, I 'm trying to understand whether_ that is what you are trying to say. MR. MAIXNER: What I am trying to say is__that the people that contribute the money should have a say as toIwhere the money goes. MR. TSHIDA: And this would directly affect the number of representation in the council? MR. MAIXNER: Yes , this would affect what areas that say you divided it up into nine areas and you had nine representa- tives , this would determine where the boundaries were on those nine areas. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, -,Mr. Maixner. Next we would like to call on Henry K. Boshard. REV. BOSHARD: My name is Henry K. Boshard. I am pastor of Mokuaik`aua Church, but representing myself this evening. I just want to say that from my own observation over the past several years , there has been not only a drastic change in West Hawaii , but also a dire need in West Hawaii for two things. And one is representation and secondly, services. as re representation is concerned , Insofar p many months ago, I suppose, I forget exactly when I wrote in proposing a realignment or redistricting of the nine council members , emphasizing no at-large members on the council. Mainly, because I feel it is unfair for the remainder of the island, other than the South Hilo district. If you look to the record you will find all the at-large members that have been elected thus far to the council have come from South Hilo or thereabouts. Insofar as the number is concerned. . .whether it be seven or nine,"_perhaps nine as has been recommended by West Hawaii ,Committee ' s representative Stu Murray, that perhaps that is the most viable number to have council members. -15- Insofar as service is concerned, if you look around Kona, you will find that there are lots of homes going up; much development ; certainly a lot more tax now being assessed against thisside of the island and perhaps as 1973 ' s records show that we expended in North Kona twenty-nine and a quarter of the total tax budget over 'against South Hilo at twenty-nine and three quarters . Certainly," six years later it must be more than South Hilo. I 'm guessing at this , I don ' t know the figures, but I would take it that is the way it has gone because the trend has been more building on this side than the other side. In fact, back in 1970 when we first organized the West Hawaii Committee, its long-range goal was to cut this island into two parts and have a West Hawaii County and an East Hawaii County. Some of the people in the administration thought, at that time, that we could not afford it until we showed the facts and figures. But, meanwhile, our present administration has not been as progressive as the previous administration under Mayor Shunichi Kimura, in that there were more services being provided for West Hawaii. It isn ' t as if we want some people to come over two days for planning per month. It ' s that we need people who are actually living here and experiencing the whole situation of our growth or our inability to properly plan and grow. For example, I called the water department and wanted to know about certain areas of growth, subdivision , etc. , and I was given a very dismal picture insofar as development in West Hawaii because of the lack of water distribution. I don ' t know what the situation is on the other side of the island-," but certainly this side we are being restricted to develop and it is no wonder that Kona Heavens is now calling. for $85 to $95 thousand dollars per acre of property. Certainly it is because of the law of supply and demand. We just don ' t have enough subdivision lots. But people would rather move on this side. I don ' t know about the census that was last taken , whether it was anhonest to goodness census , some of us have our suspicions , Even though by 1970 there was loss of growth in the previous 5 years from ' 65 to ' 70 ; we had something like 223 increase in Kona. We couldn ' t believe it. Well , from 1970 to 1980 cer_-- =t_ainly_the increase will multiply to some phenomenal figure'.? : If you look around at all the buildings , the new homes. Tourists come and buy after ten years, they can ' t believe what has happened. The state has responded to the needs of services in Kona. It has now established a district court, a prosecuting attorney, a defender' s office, etc. I don ' t know why the county can ' t furnish--not only streamlining its departments for efficiency, but to furnish perhaps even a satellite office out here with the second in command with authority. To demand for people in West Hawaii to travel all the way to Hilo for services is really asking too much. Particularly, with the energy situation that we are now facing. I would propose, therefore, I don ' t know whether this is in the purview of the Charter Commission, to establish a satellite administration here where both the council and the administration can represent people. And those who are in the administration actually living here in West Hawaii. The easiest way to travel back and forth is to -16- pick up the telephone or use a television intercom where you can transact business across the island within seconds , rather than have to drive across in two hours and two hours to go back again to Kona:. So, to summarize, the people who have come here this evening, and I suppose there have been more people here tonight than has been in any other public hearing of the Charter Commission, is because we drastically need both representation and services and we are here to represent the people of West Hawaii and to express to you, the Commissioners, these two areas of real need. Thank you. If there are any questions , I will be glad to answer. MR. CADINHA: You -cited a specific instance _ with regard to water, you said you made a call, that specific topic has been talked about quite a bit that the water department is a semi-autonomou's functioning body and is not directly under the supervision or control of the administration. Do you think a change in that structure is warranted? REV. BOSHARD : I think all departments that have to do with public works should be under public works including water. Even though I 've got some good friends there. It would not only streamline, but'' it would make for unified transaction and easy coordination 'of all public activities and work. e _ CHAIRMAN SAKATA: You have answered my question. I was going to ask you a question pertaining to departments and since you brought up this problem that you have with water and so on, I thought probably you would go with some of the other members-of the West Hawaii Committee about merging or consolidating the departments. REV. BOSHARD: Yes, I think their recommendation is an outstanding one. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: So that the planning department and the research and development and the water department would be all under one, when they plan anything for development and so forth?_ REV. BOSHARD : But I would like to have at least half of that staff over here. MR. ISHIDA: Dr. Boshard, your proposal as far as the satellite office is concerned, do you wish this provision to be placed in the charter and if so in what format? REV.. BOSHARD : - I just don ' t know what format , Richard. I would need to depend upon the commissioners to figure this out. I only express a need; I don ' t know whether, as I mentioned earlier, whether it is under your purview, but somebody has to take action somewhere to provide the necessary -17- services to cover all of the Big Island and this island is too big just to be travelling back and forth to provide service and too big for the people, .:Or the constituency, to drive all the way to the other side to find services. Somehow or other we have to find ways like the state has found ways to provide services right here. MR. ISHIDA: The difficulty that I have is we can make the provision in the charter saying that there show:Id be a satellite office within the city of West Hawaii . 4;- The problem is implementation. REV. BOSHARD: From the administrative stand- point? MR. ISHIDA: That ' s .right. REV. BOSHARD: I don ' t see any problem from the administrative standpoint simply because there would be a division of staff. MR. ISHIDA:, What do we say as far as the charter is concerned? Do e just say that a satellite office shall be provided? =REV. BOSHARD : Well , perhaps in a general sense,-;;that administrative services, public works and the like should be furnished equally to all ateas , even to the point of furnishing satellite offices. So that you can just serve the people where they are, rather than from across the mountains . MR. ISHIDA: I sympathize with that position. MR. CADINHA: Have you looked into the cost, Reverend, of doing this? REV. BOSHARD: I would really not see that kind of cost factor. Years ago we talked to Bruce McCall, about this. Of course, he was most suspect until we showed him facts and figures that we were paying quite a bit as over against--I think in 1973 ., 1 mentioned the figures twenty-nine and a quarter to twenty-nine and three quarters , and we were getting in capital improvements something like 12% and South Hilo 57%. Which already showed us an inequity of funding or to provide servicesfor people. This is a growing area and I 'm not saying that Hilo isn ' t growing. I ' m just saying that this is where the county should be spending most of its time if not being present here, experiencing the need and knowing that there are many more things operating here. If this is to be a part of the county, then it should be a living part rather than kind of a stepchild. MR. CADINHA: From a functional standpoint then you are_ saying that an annex, if you .will , should be functionally inclusive of everything that . is done in Hilo? We should have a planning departriient here and a water department here and all the other services? - - • -18- REV. BOSHARD: That is the reason why I went along with the recommendation of streamlining because most of these people will be working under one department and you need not have various departments here. ' You have one department and you have all these various staff members who can do planning,'erigineering, plans , water, etc. , etc. , all under one department. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Rev. Boshard. Next we would like to call on Steven Kornberg. MR. KORNBERG: My name is Steve Kornberg. I am a resident of Captain Cook. I would like to propose that the charter be amended to prohibit any further expenditure for the investigation and prosecution of marijuana cases. I feel that the cost to our county is way beyond what most people have any concept about and that the social benefit that comes to our county as a result of this expenditure is almost nil . There are two large costs that I would like to address to the commission. The first one has to do with just the expenditure of money. Last year, in the fiscal year of ' 77 and ' 78 almost 35% of all the cases filed in circuit court in this county were for the prosecution of drug related offences. Most of those are marijuana cases. The police budget that is .recommended to be adopted is close to $6 million dollars. If we look at the arrests in case files as what we get from our police department, almost $2 million one could argue as being allocated to investigate and prosecute marijuana cases. I think that is ridiculous. Further, I think that there is another cost to our county that is even more significant in the expenditure of money. We rely on our court system, "I think , to deter ;criminals _ and protect us in the criminal area and provide a forum for -concept resolution in the civil area. ' The court system succeeds in these endeavors primarily when there is adequate access. The deterrent to criminals and the protection we receive from our criminal justice system is enhanced when there are rapid prosecutions of priority type crimes. The calendar in the circuit court--the civil calendar--is getting tremendously= jammed. I understand that in the last year the arrests have doubled. It has been estimated to me that '30% of this increase are marijuana cases. As a result, one cannot get a tri'all set in a civil case in Judge Kubota' s courtroom even if they,.were,iset tomorrow until next March. That means that the functions that `lawyersain--our system play'.' in trying to resolve disputes has -an inherrent lag in it because having the availability of the court system is a major part of resolving the disputes and moving on. I feel that the court system is overcrowded. We are starting to face problems that didn ' t exist a few years ago. There has been lots of discussion about priorities . . .Paring down the expenditure of the county in terms of getting the most kick out of our tax dollar and as a taxpayer, my7thi.nking is it is absolutely ridiculous that that kind of money and those costs are incurred with very little social benefit. Any particular -19- • acts which are harmful to our society, including being intoxicated in public or driving while intoxicated can be adequately controlled through necessary laws that are designed to prohibit specific conduct and that there is just not enough good to justify the cost. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Mr. Kornberg, the commission here has nothing to do with criminal law. We are not going to draft any law pertaining to marijuana whether it can be legalized or not. We have not been empowered with any of that authority at all. What you are talking about are things pertaining to criminal law, court cases and we have no jurisdiction whats�oeve:r 'i..n changing any of these things in the charter. MR. KORNBERG: I appreciate your concern. However, I do believe that the commission could recommend a charter revision, an amendment to the charter which would simply prohibit the expenditure of county money for this purpose. It has been adopted in some cities on the mainland and it is certainly, I believe, within the purview of the charter to control how our tax money is spent. If you choose not to take that responsibility, that ' s fine. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: The commission isn ' t empowered to do that. Probably we can. be discussing things • like this but I don ' t think we have any legal right, whatsoever, to be talking about criminal law and use of tax dollars in this type of busin'sss. Let , me ask our legal counsel. Mr. Oda, do you have anything to refer on this? MR. ODA: So far as what Mr. Sakata has said regarding the jurisdiction of this commission , that is entirely correct. The commission has no jurisdiction, whatsoever, regarding prosecution, nonprosecution , or whatever, for marijuana or anything else. That is preempted by state law. Now, with regard to the question of whether the Charter Commission can have a provision in its charter as to how public moneys are -to be spent, that ' s a discretionary matter with the commission;.as to whether they want to put anything in the charter itself. MR. KORNBERG: I appreciate your comments. I think I would state, though, that there has not been a definitive statement by the Supreme Court of the United States about the apparent conflict of authority in this area of controlling expenditures and I think the direction of the supreme court, in the last five years , has been leaning toward permitting local governments to do things that maybe historically wouldn ' t have been permitted because of the inherent growing need to make government responsive and control spending. So I don ' t think it is a definite statement of law to say that it is flatly you couldn ' t do it. I believe it can be done and I think an amendment could be drafted that would stand a constitutional attack. I think that during the period of that =,attack , we would save an awful lot of money. • -20- MR. ODA: No, I 'm not saying that the commission has no authority to draft anything with regard to expenditure of funds. Certainly, that is within the jurisdiction of the commission. MR. KORNBERG: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much. Next, J. William Raiser? Please correct me if I pronounce your name wrong. MR. RAISER: William Raiser. I am a resident of Keauhou. I ' d like to say in brevity that I 'm in full agreement with what has been brought before you this evening about the one-man , one person rule, that is the nine districts and nine commissioners, and to be elected from their own districts , not at-large. I would also like to bring a point that Dr. Boshard brought up about representation of the people of West Hawaii in-our offices in Hilo. I think that it wouldn ' t be difficult here this evening to approach a few people in the area and ask them in their residence building or their commercial buildings if they have run into any problems' In getting questions toward construction permits and having to go to Hilo to get these questions answered properly. By using the representation that Dr. Boshard mentioned in West Hawaii , even a satellite office, I would say that ten people who have the same question could get to one office locally and impress a person there a lot easier than trying to have ten of them driving to Hilo at any one specific time and trying to find a person in the office to whom they could talk and give them an answer. One man could take ten representative questions to Hilo and bring the answers back a lot easier than ten people can do going from here to Hilo. And I make this point as some of the members of the commission brought up for us as the reason behind the satellite office. I think this would save a lot of money. Taxpayers private money in transportation and a lot of problems that we have over here. Otherwise I will leave my remarks to brevity and they have been covered Very well by the West Hawaii Committee and others who have spoken here this evening. I ' ll leave it to the questions to me from the commission. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much. Next we will have William Knutson. MR. KNUTSON : Mr. Chairman and members of the commission. I think all of you tonight have heard a lot of good talks about the changes that were recommended in the paper and I am for all of them. I believe there is one that a lot of us in West Hawaii are concerned about. It has to do with the commissions. One of the proposals is that the planning commission is to have a chairman and a vice-chairman and will be composed of two commission bodies. One commission is to consist'-of residents from and represent East Hawaii . The second • -21- to consist of residents from and representing West Hawaii. I think all of us have been concerned about the growth on the West Hawaii side and over the weekend, the economist for the First Hawaiian Bank stated that the Island of Maui will have three times the growth rate of Oahu in the next ten years and the Islands of Hawaii and Kauai twice the growth rate of the Island of Oahu. With this in mind, several months ago there was an article in the paper where the county paid for a research project by the Stanford Research Institute that stated that there is a possibility of 9 , 000 more hotel rooms, which would be a combination hotel and condominium, that could be built between now and 1989 with 75% of those being on the West side of Hawaii . I think it is essential that this split of the planning commission be made. I think that we have to look at the fact that we are going to have to have the services on this side of the island to plan for this controlled growth. And if we don ' t have a good general plan and we know that the planning director is concerned about West Hawaii , even so that he is at least giving us two days a month which is more than we have had in the past, I do believe that we have got to have a commission that is familiar with each side of the island. I think it is unfair for the commission members from West Hawaii to have to be familiar with the problems from East Hawaii. And again with energy crunch, you 've got a lot of transportation--and., you commission members are seeing ..what it ' s like to have td travel to the various parts of the island to hold these meetings. Your planning commission is having to do this once and twice a month and I think it is totally unfair to them as members and to us as residents of each side of the island to have to rely on people from the other side to help us plan our side of the- growth. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much , Mr. Knutson. Next -will hear from Mr. Curtis Tyler. MR. TYLER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am Curt Tyler. I 'm a member of the West Hawaii Committee. I have been on the periphery of many of their meetings. I 've contributed perhaps a few ideas and suggestions. I 'm not here to speak on specifics. I think that has been ably handled by Bill and Stu and supported by many Kona citizens. My concern tonight is really about not West Hawaii but the Big Island. Why is it that you can get a turnout like this in Kona and ,you get one or two in Ka ' u and one or two in Hilo, one in Hamak'ua, and twenty-four in Waimea who basically came out because our committee went up there and stirred them up. Why change? What 's wrong? Why is it the people aren 't really concerned about this marvellous opportunity which faces us? I 've done a little thinking about it since 'laSt Thursday wheh Bill said well , we hope everybody will have a little something to say, and it seems to me that the truism that only business creates capital and only government consumes it is well cited. I think we have a classic example .her6,.:oft:;'this -2'2;- island as New York City, Cleveland, California and a number of ;other places have where the unchecked government rate of growth outruns business ' s ability to generate capital to support that tax base is a very classic reason why everybody on this island , regardless of union membership, political persuasion , or social status , ought to be concerned. I think that there is a kind of a simple rule of thumb that I have applied to my own thinking about this--I 've been in Hawaii since the middle ' 30 ' s , and Kona since ' 46. . .I grew up in this area of Kona when everybody felt helpless and hopeless about doing anything about government unless you had enough money to run for office and hopefully do something on the old council--and I think that attitude, with the exception of Kona and beginning to show up in Waimea and other places , is still prevalent. . .what ' s the use, look what happened to ConCon, what ' s the use, let ' s not show up. This kind of output and outturn shows you that responsible people can make a difference. The rule of thumb that I was going to state goes something like this . . . it seems to me that the six basic principles of democratic government are nothing more than representation , responsiveness , responsibility, review, redress and removal , in that order. A lot of these have been touched on already and I ' d like to just try to relate them to what I see as the issues before you gentlemen and relate them to the suggestions made, not only here this evening but from reading the minutes of your meetings . I think representation on this island is totally out of whack. And now I 'm not talking about just West Hawaii. I think the recommendation of nine councilmen is a must. I think an interim solution to the districting situation is a must. However, I think two-years is a mistake. We have watched some of your new councilmen over there very closely in our committee. We have invited them, had them come to our meetings and tried to help them with their budgeting. We've tried to help them understand the process of government as we who are private citizens see it , not servants of the government. Frankly, it: takes them two-years to learn what the score is. And they will admit it. So I suggest that four-years be an absolute minimum. And possibly an overlap to provide the continuity. In the area of responsiveness , you know, if responsiveness was built into the jobs that we. elect people to. . the water problem, the court problem, the planning board problem, and just recently discussed by the last three speakers , will be addressed to and something will be done about it.a .o'r, through the six r' s , somebody will windup going out the door. So I believe that with the right organization , with the definition of responsibility of department heads and the mission of departments and objectives that you can write in, not the commission but the department heads , you must be responsive to the needs of the island. It' s no good just saying you 've got to be responsive--you can ' t hold somebody responsible. Have you ever tried to find out who' s responsible for what, in Hilo? Or in Kona? The other day, I asked a fellow down in Kahaluu Park why he didn ' t rake up all the -23- garbage on the beach, on Monday, after a heavy Sunday. That ' s a very heavily used beach. He says well , I don ' t know who' s responsible for getting me a rake. I said well , if I got you a rake, would you do it?' He said I don ' t know who' s responsible for providing me with a wheelbarrow. And on it goes. And he is a dedicated guy who would love to do it but somebody upstairs doesn ' t give a damn. So, I think you have got to define responsibility. The next thing you have got to do is have a review process . In- the years I have lived on this island, I have never heard an adequate citizens ' review of what happened last year. What have we accomplished? Where have we failed? What departments met their budget? Anybody over? Anybody under? How can you run a business like that? I submit that there has got to be review system and that, I think , can be built into your charter provisions. And redress. Well , I 've been in business some 40 years and one of the principles that I learned many years ago, in running a business , and I 'm sure it ' s no different than running a county government, is that you plan, then you act, then you re-evaluate or review as we just did, and then you replan. Nobody is going to learn to run this county perfectly in a year, or two, or ten. So if you don ' t provide a built-in system for re-evaluating and going back and saying this was wrong , that was wrong, let ' s change it, and motivate the people to do a better job, they are not going to do a better job. So they are going to ask for automatic wage increases and cola allowances instead of going out and doing a whale of a job where everybody is happy to give them a reward for a job well done. Somebody said, tonight, have you counted the cost? What was it, asatellite office in Kona, or something. Well , I ' ll bet you there are a lot of gentlemen in this room and some ladies, too, who have been responsible for running businesses that had -a:need crop up somewhere else. So what do you do? You' ve got so much sales , or so much income to pay the expenses . . .you figure out how to do it. In this county, nobody is trying to figure out how to do a better job with fewer people, or the same people. They just want to know how many more can we hire and how soon can we raise it? And I submit that is irresponsible government. Very irresponsible. And finally in the area of removal , certainly the ,gpestion of Initiative and Referendum speaks to correcting it. I think that definitely is a power that belongs to the people. The Sunset Law has been mentioned. Of course, the ballot box is the ultimate. But the ballot box won ' t work if . you haven ' t set standards and judged a man and found him wanting and gave him a chance to improve, still found him wanting , and you vote him out. If you hadn ' t done any of those things , the next fellow comes in and say well , it ' s my four-`years , let ' s see how we can milk this cow. -24- I think everything that has been said here tonight by these very dedicated people has been important. I think the questions that have been asked have been good ones. I for one salute you ladies and gentlemen , for the time you have given. I know it has been a tough one and I hope you are as excited as I am about the opportunity as an individual and as a group to participate in this process of improving this government of ours for those who are going to follow on some day. Thank you very much. MR. ISHIDA: Mr. Tyler, this review process that you mentioned. How would you recommend or suggest that the process be implemented in the government? MR. TYLER: I would be happy to give you my thoughts on that based on experience of many years. I think there are others here--I know there are others here--who think this way. The question was asked earlier, what do you mean by the council being the policy-making body? And I think a pretty good answer was given to that. But it seems to me that the policies that should be annually set, or perhaps biannually set;; is what is the limit of spending that we can afford in the next two years based on the economic projections of the island and the tax base and the present rate of tax collected on assessed value, or 60% thereof. You know, that is the way a business is run. .The board of directors meets and they set up a budget or a goal for the next year that is profit oriented. But it only comes from sales . And I submit that the review process starts with clearly enunciating policy in all areas. But, let ' s talk about money for a moment because I think that was the point I made in my comment about review. What Mappens here is that the departments are asked to submit a budget. we know, "_because we -havebeen ;- through this with the county councilmen trying to follow these budgets. This thing comes up at the last minute and it ' s pretty much a retread of last year plus. Plus people, plus this , plus that. The councilmen are given a very brief time to review it and rubberstamp it, or argue about it , or holler to groups like ours for help. One way or another it gets_ passed .;and that is it. Nobody, nobody at the grass roots, :or department .level., is" told next year your budget is $500 ,000 or whatever it is. . .you know what your programs are, you know what your mission is , here are the new ones . . .you have got to figure out how to do it within your organization and that is the budget _you are going to present to us. Now, once that budget is approved, it is handed back to them and that is your standard for performance at the end of the year. And when that is reported on it should be done in the council in detail and later it should be in capsule form and presented to the public so that we know where they are performing and where they are not. The question was asked sometime earlier tonight , where are you going to get the people? Well , you know, some- times you have to relate personal experiences to illustrate a point. I took over a chicken company about six or seven years ago. The largest hybrid chicken company in the world , in Connecticut. We were having magnificent margins and one fellow -25- walked in from Chicago and =he s-aid, I 'm an industrial engineer, I won ' t tell you the name of"the firm, and he said, we ' d like to get in here and analyze your operation and ' you pay us 25% of any savings. I thought , well this is easy, we ' re going to get an organization review for about $5 , 000 bucks. Do you know, we paid those people $22.5 , 000 the first year. What was wrong? Myopic vision , You run your own operation , you say, we can ' t do it any better than this. But when you get somebody in from the outside who is a pro at this, believe me, I would bet you our personnel budget, our operating budgets here could be shaved by 10%, 15%, maybe 25%. So, that is what I mean by review. You introduce these schemes as you go along and you give them objectives , all right, you are going to have to trim down , you are going to have to be more productive in your- department in the next year and I want to see what it is at the end of the year. MR. ISHIDA: How do we take care of it in the charter, though? MR. TYLER: I 'm not sure what the wording of the charter is vis=a-vis the obligation--the fiscal responsible obligation--I don ' t know to what detail the charter goes. But I am convinced of this , that if you make your charter one that will undergird our government with those six r ' s, and you have people like this who are willing to go to a meeting once a year and pound on the table and say, damn it, we want an office in Kona and we don ' t want any more money spent, they will find a way to do it. I don ' t think you have to address those specifics in the charter. I don ' t recommend you do. I think you have to depend on citizen participation. The councilmen being responsive to their citizenry and talking in the council about these things. That, I think, is the way it has to be done. MR. ISHIDA: How can we cover it in the charter so that the government is required to do this? MR. TYLER: Can ' t you make a statement that an annual review of all department budgets is required? MR. ISHIDA: It can be said, but, then as long as people understand that once that general provision is inserted then it becomes upon them to see that it is implemented. MR. TYLER: Right. We discussed this point with Mayor Matayoshi and I guess with almost everyone of the council- men , this last year. We suggested, and I think the one who picked it up and seemed most responsive was Joe Garcia, that what they ought to have is a standing citizens ' review committee. Once a year, sit i'n. on it and look at what happened. Sort of a local Hoover commission. Herb said he thought it was a _great -26- idea and Joe said he thought it was a great idea. And every- bodv • else said they think it is a great idea. When we asked them, when are you going to do it? Oh, hoomanawanui , you know. MR. ISHIDA: But the council was not responsive . MR. T`1.LER o No. Indeed • CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, rr. Ty_ler. So far we have had nothing but men talk to us and' now we are going to have a woman. So you women are represented. Mrs. Virginia Isbell . MRS. ISBELL: My name is Virginia Isbell and I 'm representing the Women of Hawaii for Better Government. We are one of the five groups on this little piece of paper and I would like to remind you all it cost $800 to put it out. If you would like to donate, please feel free to. We all did it for you and you. We would also like to state to Mr. Murray who stressed "men" of integrity in government, over half the population is women and I would like to suggest that we have "women" of integrity in government ! I would also like to state that if anybody here is looking at the green book like this' (charter) it is out of date. We found that out when I appeared before you in April . That the little black book which is the law book of Hawaii , Hawaii ' s Revised Statutes , whicht has the four charters of the four different counties in the state, is out of date. It has been five years and the county hasn ' t yet sent ._the-:new .Revised County Charter to the State of Hawaii , so they really don ' t know what is going on here. It is not in the book. I would like to suggest that it be part of your duty, at the end of this charter review that when the new charter comes out there be a recommendation that within two months , at least, a new one be sent to the sta-be so that they have it in the law books, please. • We have circulated, not petitions but signatures of support papers around. We have over 200 signatures. We could have gotten many more but that is not the important thing. We do have a lot of people who support the Women of Hawaii for Better Government which states mostly what has been said here tonight. Basically, nine members. None at-large. One-man , one-vote by district representation. We also believe that it should be reviewed-- the County Charter in Honolulu has an 8 year review, and this way you don ' t wait for the census to be done which may not be as accurate as a county census which is done by the people who live here in their own districts. • ' The second thing is that we have four-year, staggered terms. And the third thing, interim appointments for -27- those who are unable to fulfill their duties on the county council. I presented those to you before and I 'm sure you have them on record as well as other ways to reapportion until the census is done in 1980. I would like to state that Rev. Boshard brought out a very good point about the fact that the West Hawaii Committee originally had a goal of two separate counties . I would like to say to you that that goal is in the minds of many people here tonight. I have suggested it, in fact; to those in Hilo, that the people in West Hawaii want a separatecounty. - They said we can ' t afford it and I .am saying they areCor.rect. Hilo cannot afford it, but Kona canl It is my contention that without the taxes from Kona, Hilo would die on the vine. They would not be able to tear up their perfectly good roads right on Waianuenue Avenue or Kamehameha Avenue, whichever that one is that fronts the water, tear it up to put in a median strip when we still have such a terrible traffic problem in Kona. I feel that is terrible injustice. • I would also like to state that. . .by the way, this new charter book , in case you don 't know, goes to the lieutenant 'governar ' s office. Maybe they just didn ' t know who to send it to. . .I do feel , as a final point especially on the satellite offices which is a good start for a separate county, that it is an insult to the people of Kona to be sending over a mayor' s representative twice a month. Or to be sending over a planning director twice a month. Several years ago, we had a full time representative of the mayor here, Hugo Coutandi,n , who worked day and nig-ht, twenty hours a day", every day. Seven days a week. And it wasn ' t enough. I do not believe that it is right to send over someone twice a month. Therefore, a satellite office or something of that nature is in perfect order. That is all the comment Ihave. - If:you have any questions , I;:-would be happy to answer them. - I will also give you the signatures of these people and I hope that you look at them. They are all bona fide residents. They even have a telephone number if you would like to call them and ask any questions. Thank you very much. • CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much, Mrs. Isbell . RECESS: At 8: 55 p.m. the Chair called for a short recess. RECONVENE : At 9 : 10 p.m. the meeting was reconvened. -28- CHAIRMAN SAKATA: When you do testify before us , please restrict your Comments or your testimonies to the structural aspect of the charter that you want to be improvised in the charter. Please do not talk on personalities. We are not interested in personalities. We are interested in what the changes you people are interested in pertaining to the charter. Not on personalities. We would like to call on Mr. Confessor Riveira as our next speaker. • MR. RIVEIRA: Good evening, my name is Confessor Riveira. I represent the Farmers ' Lokahi Alliance. I have a few concerns that I would like to bring out tonight. One of the concerns is dealing with the job opportunities of minorities. An independent Affirmative Action Office should be set up from the one we have now to deal with the problems of under-represented minorities. That • i_s very important because as it stands now, a lot of people are not given a chance in life. That means job opportunities. We talk about the pursuit of happiness , the job is one of the things that every citizen should have a right to pursue. Because with jobs comes housing and so on. • Besides that, I know that throughout, not only in Kona but the Island of Hawaii , and in fact throughout the state, we have a great number of people on the welfare. We need programs to really uplift those people and get them back on their feet to become taxpaying citizens again. If we can get things going in that area, I am sure that you will uplift people ' s lives to make them better citizens and better human beings. So, that is very important that we have this office set up independently of the present system that we have now. Since I am a farmer and as you know, a few years ago we had a lot of problems because of the drought in Kona, one of the problems is water ' resources . We need more water • to deal with the ag problems , for agricultural use presently. Two or three years ago we lost. . .for three years we lost entire crops of avacado, bananas, all kinds:- of crops. We suffered in Kona and small farmers are suffering and still are. • We would like to have programs dealing with shipping and receiving. We are marketing. Programs that can really uplift in the fishing industry. We have acquaculture as one. As you all know, we are suffering from the energy crisis. Now, if we can get these things now, I 'm sure that - everybody here, expressing here tonight, everyone of us eat. Let me tell you folks something, it takes the farmers to ` `-', produce the food. So more emphasis should be made for the small farmers , particularly, throughout the State of Hawaii. So we would like to see more help in that area. • -29- MR. CADINHA: Mr. Riveira, how do you propose that this office help the people on welfare to become more responsible citizens? MR. RIVEIRA: I would like to see a program they have, federal programs , made available to upgrade and training programs put - olit for the needy. We, in the community, the farmers need to become better farmers . A training program to uplift and retrain farmers to become better citizens , better farmers and to earn more money. The money stays in the community and who benefits? The taxpayers. We who are continuing to pay our taxes, as you know, have no:skind of help as far as our costs of operating the farm. Not2only land taxes but our fertilizer and our supplies are a tremendous amount of money. We have to buy everything. We don ' t have anything free so what I am proposing is that from the county level and state agencies to really reach out with pragrams using federal funds to uplift lots of people. They have a tremendous amount .0.1. minorities , disadvantaged minorities throughout, not only in Kona, but this big island of ours or throughout the state. I know it is a problem, because I work in the community. I have seen many, many people who are really, really poor. A lot of programs, federal programs, that should be helping directing- to this area of the needy are not given priorities ;for those people. They_ are the lost people and then they call them bums. You know, we.,'have a tremendous amount of people who live in cars and on the beaches right here in Kona .because they cannot afford the housing. That is one of the problems that we have to face in our community. I was raised upin Kona. Igrew upin Kona. I have lived here from the ' 30 ' s . In 1926 I was here. I remember the ' 30 ' s. I remember the depression and we are heading _that way again unless some- thing is done. Unless more help is given to the small farmer because we can continue and become self-sufficient. Everybody in the state benefits because :` verybody eats. So we need more help. .immediate help in that area. MR. CADINHA: And you think this should be done through an Affirmative Action program? MR. RIVEIRA: That' s right. A lot of programs can be made available through that. I know that right now the county is receiving community grant money and we applied for our reservoir pro, ect and we are still waiting. So you can see that money is available and it should be made available to the small farmers. • CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much, Mr. Riveira. Next we will hear from •Shirley Mesher. MS. MESHER: My to e is Shirley Mesher and I am representing myself but speaking- out of many years of concern and work with various community groups. I will be speaking to some of the things that have already been raised and I will try to be as direct and brief as possible. -30- I 'm speaking in favor of direct representation. That is, an election from apportioned districts for the county council . Not county wide or at-large. However, reflecting on Kona, it may be that given the population concentration that there may be some consideration given to possibly a Kailua-Kohala division for district representation and then something that reflects more in the Mauka towards Ka' u side so that it may not be given the population concentration and it ' s diverseness to be able to follow the traditional districts. Also, there should be a provision for temporary disability in the event of a temporary disability of a council- man or for that matter, of any; elected official including the mayor. To limit, not only the council, in the number of years they can serve but also to limit the ' mayor. They both should be limited to two four-year terms. Or, if the terms are less , to a total of eight consecutive years. And definitely to stagger the terms Of the council so that there is always a carry over ability to go on. I am also in favor on independent legal counsel for the county council and not supervision from the corporation counsel, nor the corporation counsel having the final word over the legal opinion of the counsel provided for the county council . That would defeat the whole purpose. There has been , for long and for many years, been a conflict of interests there with the corporation counsel representing both the administration and the council at the same time. ObViously, that is an untenable and impossible position. Particularly, when they take different versions and views. Obviously, any attorney is supposed to represent those for whom he works and if you have two different sets of views and you have two different positions that becomes an impossible position. So that if an indepenel.enf _counsel ,` as I have heard suggested is to be put in the charter for the county council it would be totally defeating if you were - to then say, ah, but the final word comes from corp counsel . As far as fiscal responsibility, I think the area that there is 'a great deal of concern and was shown in the last budget, was on the issuance of bonds. These are very sizable debts and expenditures that go on and encumber the citizens for many years. _I think it is in this 'area 'of large capital expenditures raised by bond revenue that the citizens 'should have a direct vote on all bond issues. As to the planning process and all of those who are involved in it, the policies, I think that we do have to recognize that we need a balance 'in , planning. That we need a balance to provide for the future. ' That despite the feeling of immediate goals-that resources are finite. That life is finite. Particularly in the islands, land is very limited. That there must be some preservation of agriculture, of fishing', 'of open Space. -31- People have talked about why people ' come here. They come here because it isn ' t Waikiki. Therefore, and I see there is no policy statement reflected in the charter and feel that it is 'appropriate to direct those who are responsible, 'including the council , the administration , the planning depart- ment and 'commission to reflect a policy of controlled growth. To reflect that and state it so that there is some underpinning to the direction of planning. And that it be in mind of preservation of the necessary agriculture, of the fishing, of the open space and the respect for the various lifestyles of the people who live here and who come here. • Along with that since the county, presumably, is going to accept the full responsibility for taxation , property taxation , if that remains to be the case within the next ten years that the charter, at this time, also adopt the policy that there is a varying tax rate which the county does have control over, at this point , on land use. In other words , that land is taxed at varying rates according to its use rather than on a flat rate depending only on whether there is dedication or the chance of evaluation. I think that a great deal more and;_,I 'm sorry that I was not able to go into it, I think that very little has been thought of it and preparation made for when and if the county actually takes over the taxation responsibilities. That is going to be very important that some of those concepts be incorporated into the charter. „; I don ' t believe, from what I 've seen , that there has been much consideration towards that eventuality. I 'd also--following =on__what Rlveira commented about the need of the farmers and the fishermen , and' the general lack of attendance to these problems and also ignoring the economic potentials and the development that is there. We see at the federal level--and perhaps that is the way to implement ' it in the charter--we see at the federal level and state level , separate departments. For agriculture. For fishing. We have no such departments in this county. We have no one with any special knowledge or expertise within the county to take on these functions or to pay any particular attention to them. It has been an enormous drawback . Therefore, I would like to suggest that there ,be added into the charter the creation bf a separate department of agriculture, acquaculture and fishibg. And I think I would just put a second also to Mr. Riveira' s comments on the need for an independent Affirmative Action Office to also begin to redress the imbalance Within the employees of the county government. I think that might be a place to start. I think that is all the points I have to make. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Ms. Mesher. Mr. James Ousey is next to speak. • -32- MR. OUSEY: My name is James Ousey. I am employed by the county as a fire fighter in the Captain Cook Fire Station. - I have been for four years. I am speaking for myself tonight. I also catch fish and I :lived in Hilo for six years before moving here so I have a grass roots--I feel I have a grass roots--look at some of the county services that I have seen provided for the West Hawaii residents. I feel that if the county council were to eliminate the at-large system of voting it would make it more equitable for the West Hawaii residents. . .and it use the one- man , one-vote system. I don ' t know exactly how you are going to decide to count. the people. I don ' t have any real good idea. I don ' t like idea of counting tax dollars, in any way. Or any tax rolls as far as reapportionment. I would like to see counting noses. There must be some reason why you don ' t use last year"'Js tax rolls. The people that voted are the people who care. I think that four years is much better than two as far as the council length of term. Two years is just too short between campaigns and the new person wouldn ' t have enough time to learn his job. I don ' t support any budget restraints on the county budget. The island is growing. The East side is also growing and the West side is growing. I think everybody will agree with that. I can ' t see putting any monetary limits on our county budget. I think the police commission should take its representatives from the nine different districts. That is all I have. Do you have any questions? I just wanted to express my opinions. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much, Mr. Ousey. Mr. Gordon Bartsch is next. MR. BARTSCH : My name is Gordon Bartsch. I 'm representing the Kona Coast Chamber of Commerce. I 'm the immediate past president and I am standing in for Garry Garrison, the president , who is on the mainland at the present time. We made our presentation to the commission some weeks ago and we have not chanced our position on the items that we made at that time. I 'm here tonight to more or less reaffirm what we said at that time. I would like to make the comment that when I -took over as president of. the Chamber, 18 months ago, one of the most common things that we heard from Hilo, from the administration , is that "you people in Kona can never get your act together. " I haven' t heard that in the last few months from anyone in Hilo and I don ' t think they can say that anymore. Particularly after tonight ' s turnout here. -33- The points we made were ten points. I won ' t go into them. I think that they have been dealt with quite . completely. I ' ll read them. . .that is that the county council consist of nine members. That one member be elected from each of the nine districts. . .there be no councilman elected at-large. . .That the terms be four years and staggered. The nine districts be reapportioned following the 1980 census. That there be interim appointments when the councilman is unable to carry out his duties as a representative of the council . . . .That there be a balanced budget. . . .The property tax on any piece of residential property not to exceed 1% of its assessed value. . .with the assessed value not to increase more than 2% per year except When the - property is sold. . .That there be a provision of a Sunset Law. . . . and that all agencies and department heads appointments and removals be ratified by the county council. We feel that the council does not have enough strength. That there is too much strength in the position of the 'mayor. We would like to see this balance shift back somewhere towards center. I would like now to turn the mike over to iPalani and he can do the summation. MR. CROSBY: Ladies and gentlemen, I 'm the first vice-president of the Kona Coast Chamber of Commerce and Gordon expressed the position of the Chamber that that we have discussed at our deliberations. Our president is out of town at the present time. As a property owner in two districts and a business person here 'and a person who has served as you are on a charter revision commission, when I lived on the mainland, I can appreciate your dilemma in resolving all of the matters brought before you and trying to come up with recommendations that will stand the test of time in the future. I think that you will probably, in your deliberations , determine 'the more common forms of county government in 'use throughout the country have been the super- visorial system 'that we at one time had for a period after statehood© . .The type of county government that we have had for the past period. . .and the question now is what kind of county government will we have for the period in the ten years ahead. The one that has stood the test of -time best around the country is the one we have not yet tried. That is the one that is being advocated by the group tonight. It mostly follows what will over the future for this county be the best for all concerned from the experience of other areas-_'of the country. I 'm sure that if you will go into it fully, you will find that to be the case. In the concern that the community has here I 'm sure this point has been made and it could be made more -34- • appropriately, but as an individual I see in the ten years that we have lived here--or the ten years that we have been here and the five years that we have lived here and been property owners here for ten years---that the growth of this side of the county could well .:r'esult in the population here exceeding that of the presently more populated area. If the present charter form is maintained as the other side of the island seems to prefer they could well be the persons who, would suffer, as we have, in the future. To avoid that kind of lashback , or two wrongs not making a right, I would . definitely ask that you find it timely in your considerations to make a determination and a recommendation that will stand the test of time for the future and be a '.credit to every person here. And not wait for another ten "Years to rectify what you have an opportunity to make the recommendation toward tonight. Thank you very much. MR. ISHIDA° Mr. .Crosby, the form of government that you made reference to--that has had the test of time. Which form of government are you referring to? MR. CROSBY: As is outlined in the presenta- tions that have been made both by the Chamber and the West Hawaii Committee and the other groups that, now for at least _ the first time in my experience; in Kona seem., to, begin_-accord, so that Hilo or the other side Of the island can ' t say we don ' t have our act together, is the--follows very closely the outline that has been presented to you. Having councilmen elected as they recommend and having the administration -as they recommended. It is certainly a change from the two procedures in the past. It is the format that is more commonly followed and it may be that the past forms that have been adopted at their point in time in our development may have been the more appropriate. But I think as our development proceeds this is the one that will be more responsive to the citizens of the entire island and not just be a means of getting the job done until we can come up with the right system. • MR. ISHIDA: I just want to make sure I under- stand you correctly. As I understand the general proposal that has been presented here tonight, is that basically the present charter, the form of the government as represented or exists in the present charter, is satisfactory except for the proposed changes that have been made. Is that what you are saying? MR. CROSBY: I would say that the existing charter has many good features. They have been ` winnowing down , by experience, from what we started with and there was further refinement with the last review and revision. Now, this is the third opportunity to refine it so that it will be more representative and more responsive to the whole citizenry of this island. MR. ISHIDA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: . Thank much, Mr. Crosby. youvery Next we would like to call on Mr. Rick Taylor. -35- MR. TAYLOR: - My name is Rick Taylor. I work M1 for the YMCA in Kona although I am here just to speak my personal feelings. Working with young kids has given me some real food for thought over the years. They ask a lot of real pointed questions. They are not afraid to put, you 'on the spot. Some of the thingsthey have been asking in a program we have called "Youth Legislature" which is a program that helps kids to understand how. county governments and state governments work. . .some of the questions they ask me are, why don ' t people vote?. .why don ' t they get involved in their government?. . .why doni';t they come to meetings like this?. . . isn ' t a democracy supposed to be government by the people for themselves, for the people?. .how do we get all these profes- sional politicians that we read about in Washington that seem to find ways to, like somebody said to milk the - county whatever from whatever their means?. .how are governments made so inefficient?. .especially if this whole country was built on a free enterprise system that created a society based on individual productivity and incentives as rewards?. .it seems like if the water department or the planning department were being operated on a profit basis, they wouldn ' t be nearly so reluctant to install water systems and process building permits in burgeoning areas like West Hawaii? So they ask me these questions and I get real troubled and sometimes don ' t find the answers. But it does make me think about them. What I have kind of found for myself is that some of the things that might return people to the government and the government to the people would be more direct involvement of people, like in direct election of representatives. No more electing at-large representatives that aren ' t really answerable to anybody in particular. Along that same line, I 'd like to see there be something in the charter about recall . If we find that there is a representative that isn,' t_truly representing the expressed wishes of the people, cwerwould'r like to have a way to remove him from office. We would like to have a way to initiate law ideas of our own. If it wasn 't for Initiat:ive and Referendum, Proposition 13 would never have been passed in Cal-ifornia. We' d like to encourage citizen legislators like I think that the framers of the Constitution wanted. They didn ' t want professional politicians. They wanted people from all walks 'of, life., all kinds of experience, to come together like you)p ople are doing/on this charter review board and help with government �79-ive, their input. . .give the experience of businessmen in increasing efficiency in county government. So we would like to see more citizen legislators -by .limiting terms to8 years whether they are served concurrentlyor not. whether they serve in two years at a time, overlapping four year terms, or whatever isn ' t a major concern except that people feel like they have an opportunity to speak their minds about the direction the -36- • • government is going ',6E frequent intervals and feel like their vote and their opinion is having some impact. We think also it would be' worthwhile to recognize the contribution of citizens to government. We pay all these taxes and nobody ever says , thank you. Maybe you could just once in awhile ask our opinion on whether you should overspend the county budget or not. A real easy way to do that would be through voter approval of bond issues. That would be a minimum thing, I would think. I just want to leave you with one thought. The work you guys are doing right now, like they all say, has got to stand the test of time. There are a lot of people here with a lot more wisdom. than I have. They have had a lot longer experience. I especially liked some of the things Mr. Tyler said about efficiency and review and setting goals and reviewing whether or not you have reached those goals. . .p How much did it cost you to investigate that crime five years ago versus how much does it cost you to investigate. that same • crime now? But, more important, the work. that you guys are doing is not just going.;�.oorbe rthe next two years, . or four years , or even ten years. But you are setting up a govern- mental system that is going to . have a big impact on the youth of Kona, CoOfL�Kohala for a long ' time to come. And if you decide to get them more involved as they become of voting age the whole county is going to benefit from it. If you decide to remain in the position where they feel alienated, then the whole county is going to lose from it. Thanks. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you° very much, Mr. Taylor. Next we would like to call on MasayAki Kawasaki . • MR. KAWASAKI : Mr. Chairman and members of the . Charter Commission. My name is Masayuki Kawasaki. I am' a resident of Captain Cook , Kona and I speak for myself as a . voter with the power of one vote in the election of' the county council. I' $„M here to defend and enhancethe power of my single vote and ' the votes of thousands of other Kona voters , whose only claim to power over the county legislative process . is the power of their votes-. Previously, Hawaii County was divided into two areas. During the pre-charter days of the board of supervisors , there were three supervisors for East Hawaii and three for West Hawaii with the county chairman, who was elected at-large, ;! , • holding the ultimate power balance between the East and the West. And it is the reality of history that even though the population of East Hawaii was far greater than's-the population of West Hawaii , West Hawaii had an effective voice in the county legislative process because the at-large office could be won or lost by the few thousand West Hawaii votes. Old- timers will recall that about 30 years ago, one election was won and lost by one vote. The at-large 'elected official balanced the fulfilling of the needs of the East and the West -37- • most objectively because he neededthe votes in both areas in order to win. The voters of West Hawaii voted for 4 members. of the board and were the constituents of the majority. The concept of fairly meeting the needs of the East and the West through the" at=large elebtion , was continued in the 2nd County Charter under which we now operate. I now vote for 9 councilmen. My vote is effective. However, the effectiveness of the power of my vote is only oneof my goals for the selection of the makeup of the county council . The other goals are fairness and an acceptable differentiation of candidates. . By fairness , I mean both one-man ,one-vote and an equal opportunity for political participation. The one- man, one-vote principle is required by the Constitution. Equal opportunity for political participation is an aspect of fairness that could mean different things to different groups of people. To me, this aspect of fairness is especially relevant to areas with rapidly growing population. The large influx of people upsets the traditional balancesr_of political power. Changes must be made in order to accommodate —the increase in population is some districts , otherwise, the areas of little growth will offer political opportunities at the expense of the newly populated areas. By differentiation of candidates , I mean that the number of councilmen coming up for election at one time be limited in number so that I am able to distinguish the attitude, behavior, and skills of each candidate. To illustrate what I mean by two extreme examples--when voting for one office, I need deC'z-de only between two candidates. I can identify and evaluate each candidate. However, if I were required to vote for a hundred offices, I will be faced with an avalanche of 200 candidates. For example, the election of most of the offices becomes meaningless because I cannot properly identify and evaluate the candidates. Summarizing my criteria for the selection of the system for the election of the county council are. . .first; the effectiveness of my councilmen in the legislativecess. Second. . .firness. Third. . .differentiation of o,andidates. I have already pointed out that now because I am a constituent of all the councilmen, I hadpower over the county legislative process . However, under the present system, a district with a popultion of only a fraction of the population of Kona has one councilman running at-large from his district, whiCle Kona with a much larger population also runs one councilman. I feel this is unfa ir. Also, under the present system, I vote for 9 councilmen. Assuming two candidates to each office, I must keep track of 18 candidates. This isA number much too large for me to differentiate between candidates. I cannot identify -38- and evaluate all 18 candidates. So I feel that the present system of 9 at-large elected councilmen does not meet my criterion of differentiation of differentiation. A proposal for the election of the councilmen by districts has been made by some Kona organizations. I shall now assess this proposal on the basis of my criteria. The proposal calls for the assignment of the number of councilmen for each district on the basis of the population of the district so that each councilman ' will represent and be chosen from an equal number of people. This aspect of the proposal is fair. The election by district proposal calls for the election of up to three councilmen in any one district. This number allows good differentiation of candidates. I shall now discuss the effectiveness of the power of my vote over the County legislative process under this proposal. Issues may be settled by elected officials on the basis of goodwill or charity. But the final nitty- gritty of decision-making in a showdown of conflicting interests is the power of the majority vote. For as you are aware, in our democratic political system, the decision is made by a majority vote. In a council of 9 members, 5 votes passes the motion. The population of East Hawaii centered in Hilo is far larger than the population of West Hawaii centered in Kona. Thus , on the basis of population, the larger number of Councilmen would come from the Hilo area and vicinity. These councilmen would have the common interest of a common area and form a lasting coalition . In a council of 9 members , all it takes is, a coalition of 5 members to exercise control. The other 4 members have no power. Because of the division of the county into two areas of activities through geography and by tradition , and the far larger population is in East Hawaii , under the plan to elect the councilmen by districts , I would; as a Kona voter, be voting for the powerless minority of two. My real power over the county legislative process is reduced to zero for I am not a constituent of a majority of the councilmen. And where does the power go? Initially, the power goes to the councilman who is now free of the constraints of the Kona voters. He can decide an issue internal to Kona on the basis of the best interest, of himself and the voters of his own district who are his constituents. - He does not have to come to me or to the Kona 'people ' for votes. He is free to look after his own self-interest. He can act with total unconcern for the power of the Kona voters and can respond to the visible and invisible influencesthat are brought to bear on him by people and organizations 'with the wealth to lobby effectively. -39- Thus, the rational analysis of the flow of power shows that the election-by-district plan emasculates the Kona voters and opens the way to the control by wealth of the county leg'islat'ive, process as it concern's issues internal to Kona. However, on the basis of my analysis, I feel that the proposal has some merits. It is fair. It provides good candidate differentiation. I feel that because of these merits , we should accept the proposal to a ' limited extent and combine it with some, features of the present election at-large system to provide the Kona voters with a system that meets the criteria of effectiveness of our votes, fairness , and differentiation of ;,eanclidates. A plan that would provide for 4 districts of equal population, each voting one councilman , would require 3 councilmen elected 'at-large to provide each votertt�he power that comes from being the constituent of the majority of the councilmen. A plan that would provide for 5 districts of equal population , each voting one councilman , would require 4 councilmen elected at-large to provide each voter the power that comes with being the constituent of a majority of councilmen. A number of districts above five, I feel ; runs into the problem of not meeting the criterion of economy. Elected as they are from d'_stricts, the term of office of the 'district councilmen could be limited to two:(years, thereby giving the ,Voters the opportunity to exercise the power^; of their ballot more often. The 'terms' of the councilmen running at-large could be left at four years as a trade-off to "the cost of running at-large with half of the at-large councilmen elected every two years. Thus, at any one election, a voter need vote for only three councilmen at most. A good differentiation of candidates is possible. The most important criterion?'E'or a county charter proposal is the criterion of acceptability. As representatives of the various districts thro'ug'hout the County of Hawaii , I feel that the judgrnen `t on this criterion is made by you as members of the County Charter Commission. , 'I ask that you exercise that judgment on the basis of the, important other criteria of 'effectiveness of the power of the votes of the people throughdut the county, fairness , and candidate differentiation. Thank you. MR. CADINHA: Mr. Kawasaki. I think I heard 5 district representatives, 3 at-large, is that correct? MR. KAWASAKI: Criterion acceptability is your decision to make 'so what, i have proposed, in\;:case you decide that this should be 5 id- streets, then I would ask for -40- four at-large. The four at-large running for four years as a trade-off to a representation of a larger area but elected two in one year so that in any one year we will have three councilmen that each of the people in each district will vote. With three' councilmen , there will be six candidates and the differentiation of candidates is good. MR. CADINHA: That is very interesting. Thank you. • CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Kawasaki . Mr. Gordon Leslie will be next. • MR. LESLIE : Good evening, Mr. Chairman. My name is Gordon Leslie. I 'm the chairman of the Napoopoo Keel. Honaunau Community Association but for the records, I must say that I am representing myself, tonight. My committee has not had a chance to finish our research on the revision of the charter review and as yet we have not called our community association meeting. However, we shall have our provisions on the charter review in by May 29. I would like to give my testimony on the committee ' s feelings , at the present time, based on the extent of our research. I feel that the change in the county council voting system from the at-large to the district has a lot of errors to it. There is a lot of misrepresentation. From past experience, working with the county council--last month to be exact--we were working on several of the amendments to - the revision of the general plan. Our councilman was absent from the committee and I found that we have gained the utmost in support from the remaining eight councilmen. Now, a-lot of us fail to realize that we vote - for all of these councilmen. We don ' t have one representative, I feel , from Kona. . .As it is in the council committee , we have nine. And, by going on the district vote, it takes five votes in the county council to pass whatever issue is raised. Should we have one councilman from this area'.'. ..6r should we have two councilmen from this area. . .we only have that many votes that we can guarantee from the county council . Whereas , on the at-large position that we have now, we have all nine councilmen that we can seek advice and seek help from. What I am saying in laymans ' terms is should we have two councilmen representing the Kona district when we need five to win? It was stated in .: s.we_ral of the West Hawaii newspaper articles in the last couple of weeks that there are some buying, some exchange in votes in the county council . Well , now, I feel that should I present an issue to the county council , I can go to each councilman that I have voted for and ask him that during him campaign he has promised to help me from Kona. But, if we change it in a way that we only have 'two votes, I only have two' men that I can rely on that I can go to, if we are looking at an overall picture. The other seven councilmen can say, hey, you didn ' t vote for me -41- I don ' t need to help you. Not, that they will do that but when we get down to the nitty-gritty fight for what we are fighting for, that could happen. We have not established our position, as yet, and listening to other committees proposals, there are some useful hints in changing the system into a district voting system. At this time, I have no position to present. But we are weighing the idea of the district voting system and, at present, the position of the issue that I am going to present to my association at our next meeting will be based on this system that I have here. Now, we are not prepared to say what the districts are going to be or how many districts , etc. We are not prepared to say how many councilmen we think should be on the committee. ' But, basing on the nine county councilman structure that we have now, I feel that if we use the five district system, we have one representative, one councilman from each district and four at-large. For the basic reason that we will , almost, at one time have five going in the direction that we feel would be valid. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much, Mr. Leslie. We would like to call on Mr. Leon Sterling. MR. STERLING: Mr. Chairman , members ' of the commission. I am Leon Sterling. A resident of Kona. Former. member and chairman of the Hawaii County Planning Commission. Also, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1978. I 'm present tonight, because I don ' t think the language in the charter addresses itself, neither is it responsive to the needs of today. This is a philosophical approach, what I am . about to say„, We either can stay with very general provisions, as there seem to be in the present charter. Or we can be more specific. However, I am of the considered opinion that by staying with very general language, "we can maximize political indifferenceindifference or polit3:'cal pressures. I would like to address myself, particularly, to becomng more specific and stressing cooperation between the different governmental agencies.. For example, the charter states that the chief of police of the County of Hawaii is responsible to maintain the public peace. We also have the public 'prosecutor ' s office within the present charter. I cannot reconcile myself as to how we' canmaintain the public peace in our county if we do not call forcooperation , not only between the prosecutor and the police department, but also "the coopera- tion of the judiciary. This was brought out .very clearly last week in the resignation of the chief agent for the F.B.I. who is seeking early retirement in 'Hawaii because of the lack of proper sentencing of criminals. -42- • A great percentage of our tax dollar goes to the enforcement agencies , so-called enforcement agencies. But the lack of cooperation between the' 5udiciary, the Prosecutor and the police department is a tremendous cost. Not only to the county but, to me, it lends itself to the increase in crime. We recently had a case publicized in Kona where one young man is guilty of 161 burglaries . I don ' t know if he will get another slap on the wrist. But these things are very pertinent today. They are our problems, the crime problems. And I think it is mandatory that we look towards cooperation between the different agencies. • In our research and development , I believe that because of the general language contained in the charter our present research and development department has concerned itself more with sugar than with the Kohala Task Force. I 'm still waiting to see statistics , and this has been brought to their attention . Upon the level of pure resources that we - maintain in our county, at one time, to the best of my know- ledge were on a 30-day basis. Should we increase our debt bonds? ' Should we go to ultimate sources of energy that are controlled by the county. For example, Hilo, Hilo Electric at one time used turbine power. The water is still there. By going' to these sources of energy, I know that approximately 48% of the heating power for the Hilo Electric Company in generating power is now taken froth begasse. Could we increase this by pelletizing the begasse. To me, this falls within the jurisdiction of the county. This is why we have a research and development department. To look into these matters. These are problems confronting each one of us today. Now, in the research and development department alone, I would like to see as a former member of the planning commission, the rules tightened up on enforcement of building codes , _subdivision codes. Let me Point out an example. There was supposed to have been a road joining Alii Drive and Kuakini Highway through the Alii::Kai subdivision. Unenforceable. I would like to see you gentlemen and ladies , tighten up the language. We have so many abuses of the building code. People like you. . .and we serve. . .Henry Boshard served on the planning commission. . .we • spent hours and hours going through the different processing, yet many people completely disregard _these zoning ordinances. This costs us money and we can ill,=afford it. Many of the speakers tonight talked about ;growth. I*am for controlled growth. Many people talk about the tax 1base`of Kona. We now have some condominiums in Keahou that are about to be finished. 1 T ..ear 'aga the tax revenues from that land was $1 ,500. when those condominiums are finished it will be $1 , 550 , 000. It goes up a hundred times. This is one of the problems that you are going to have to project your minds into. The increased revenues , as the land of Kona within the growth areas , are put to use, it is going to make more of an -43- imbalance between what Kona contributes and what Hilo contributes. Or West Hawaii vs East Hawaii. This is a • problem. And I can assure you from what you are seeing here this evening, the people aren ' t going to take this very well unless there is some positive action taken to alleviate- - these kinds of problems. Still on the building code. . .we initiated moves in the planning commission with the HUD people. This can be done and I don ' t know 'whyit._was not followed up. I had to leave before it was. The HUD people said that they were willing to change the federal ruling regarding housing that was not applicable because of our geogaphy and climate. This would be a tremendous savings to our people who need housing. I would like to wind this up. Because I don ' t think we are getting what we have paid for and perhaps the recommendations that I am about to make may strengthen some of the weakne$ses that are very apparent. • I would like to see an amendment in Article I , Sectionl-2, to allow for further political subdivisions within the county. Perhaps even incorporated townships. This is within the purview of the Constitution of the State of Hawaii . I would like to see Article III , Section 3-2 amended. We must have election of county council members by district. With the total number---you 've heard a lot of input on that---but I would like to see the 5 members to the county council elected by district. Perhaps 2 at-large. I think if we go to any larger numbers it will be quite unwieldy. Thank you very much. I hope I can answer any questions , if you have any. MR. ISHIDA: Mr. Sterling, are you stating that you wish the charter to provide the county the power to create additional political subdivisions within the county? MR. STERLING: On the Article I? I think I referred to Article I , Section 1-2, calling for one county. I think that we could amend that to have the charter to allow further political subdivisions. I think that is the state language that is in the constitution. MR. ISHIDA; What would the purpose be? MR. STERLING: Perhaps , if we can ' t get a separate West Hawaii County, we could go . for an incorporated township. This question keeps coming up, Dick , in the - Constitutional Convention of the political subdivisions. For example, Kaneohe brought :this up. They wanted to explore the possibility of possibly h-aving ",, their own incorporated township vs belonging to part bf Honolulu. I hope I have answered your question. I think this would be allowable under the constitution. -44- MR. ISHIDA: What I am concerned about is what purpose would it serve? This is the thing that I am trying to justify in my mind. MR; STERLING: Because I don ' t think that we are getting responsive government towards the needs of Kona. Each area has its own particular needs. Particularly Kona with its! growth pattern and with the geography. The fact that we areJspread ' out a lot more than Hilo. If we get into a fuel shortage, more bussing, more water. I think we can be self-sufficient along these lines: Of course, we will want to do our share toward the county. But I am offering these . two suggestions on the pplitical subdivisions and the councilmen elected by the votes of their own district in an effort to have the people in county government more responsive to the needs of that particular district. I hope I have answered your question. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much , Mr. Sterling. Next we will have Councilman Sameshima. • MR. SAMESHIMA: Thank you again , Charter Commissioners. Mr. Chairman. I was flabbergasted when I walked in this evening that the Kona people had so many attending this . hearing. Regarding the property taxes . . .there must be a line drawn. . . five years from today people here on the Big Island who have purchased their land to live will be unable to pay their property taxes if it continues at the present system. So, :-would say that place a 2% increase, then if that property is sold for a very high price--say, if it was purchased for $50, 000 andif another buyer came in to buy it for $100; 000, then that person who purchased that property for $100, 000 should be paying taxes based on the $100, 000. Not to penalize the neighbor who still owns the property that he has purchased for $50, 000. This would benefit the person who purchased the house for $100 , 000 five years from today. Five years from today, somebody will come in and buy that same property for $300 , 000. I believe that this is something that the commissioners should- consider and let the people decide whether we should have a provision such as this in our County Charter. This affects almost everybody who lives here in Hawaii. Whether you lease a land. Whether you rent an apartment or whether you own a home. Because if property taxes go up you are going -to pay higher rental . With this provision in our charter, I believe that the residents who come here to Live will have a chance to pay fair taxes. Exactly; 'I feel that Hawaii has the most unfair, unequitable taxation. We have our legislatures who control who pays the highest--what district pays' high taxes , who Can appraise their own properties, you know, to their ' ability ' to pay. And this Tappen's here in the State of Hawaii . I don ' t think any state in our nation does the same. -45- I feel that property taxes actually are obsolete but if we have to live with property taxes we should have some kind of control. And this is something that I feel that the State of Hawaii must have some kind of a provi`S'ion. But we can start with the County of Hawaii and if we have that provision in 1981 the ' counties 'are going to start assessing and setting the rates. A lot of the laws in taxation is going to- be -done by the counties. And I feel that if we don ' t put some sort of a provision in to protect property owners, in our charter, we will have to wait eleven years. The charter will h&ve to be reviewed. in the next ten years. Our county will have full control of assessing and appraising our properties here in thee;{State of Hawaii. So before 1981 , I feel that we should have some kind of provision in our charter. Our founding 'fat'hersespecially, Thomas Jefferson mentioned small property owners- are the chosen people of God. But today the small property 'owners , the majority of the small property owners are the target of our government. They are being penalized by paying most of the taxes to run our government. I think that is very unfair. So please consider our property taxes and that the people of Hawaii can live within their means. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you, Mr. Sameshima. Mr. Peter Robinson is our next speaker. MR. ROBINSON : Good evening, Charter Commission members. My name is Peter Robinson. I live in the Keei area and I am a vegetable and orchard farmer. First of all , I think my main point is that we need fair representation for West Hawaii. I think that each council district should elect `one "or more councilmen and not have the at-large councilmen. I like the idea of the four year, staggered term. Orme-man , one-vote. I 'd like to emphasize this idea-- I feel that for the Kona councilman, he should be elected from the Kona district. For the Puna councilman , from the Puna district. For Hilo, Hilo district and so forth. This thing about your man has to reside in _your district and you elect him from the whole island doesn ' t seem to make a lot of sense. On restrictions of growth to the county budget, I like the idea of restrictions on the county budget, the county debt including bonds , real property taxes and real property assessments. ' I have to balance my budget, why shouldn ' t they. I would like to see something similar to what the Chamber- ofcommerce is recommending for residential property eXcept'- this same idea should go to include agricultural lands and other lands with the 'exception of resort. Another point, I think that all''appointments of managing directors and department heads and 'the`corperation counsel be made by the mayor and approved by the council: -46- Any removals , after due process , be approved and disapproved by the county council. I would like to emphasize that I do not like the semi-autonomous water supply board position. I think it should be brought in line so it is under the administration ' s control . On Initiative and Referendum, I would like to see that it isAlotblimited. Does not limit the power to include over operating capital budgets so that the public can vote on that area through Initiative and Referendum. In Section 5 , under the planning commission, it says , "Review the general plan and other plans and modifi- cations thereof developed by the director" and here I would recommend that you include something like, "or county council or other group or person" so this problem about who can submit changes is cleared up. . . .I also would like to include in this Section--this would be Section 5-4. 3 . (b) under reviewing the general plan to say, "involving public hearings and other public involvement in the planning and recommendation process. " And these same two additions2,- would recommend for both (b) and (c) . . . . (c) is reviewing subdivision and zoning ordinances. So that would be two insertions between the word "director" and where it says , "and transmit such ordinances with recommen- dations thereon" and so on and then leave it the same to the end. I think this would "ensure the public ' s involve- ment in deciding what is going to happen in the general plan and subdivision and zoning codes that are going to affect their part of the island or the island as a whole. Right now, it is not required to have public involvement included in the planning :process and the recommendation of what happens. I think that is important. On Sections. d.-4.011 '(d) = I would also .recommend the statement added such like this being, "involving public hearings and other public involvement in the planning and _ __ recommendation process. " And of course, I would include __(e) land use boundaries. I believe all these functions need to get closer to the people in the district so they can be involved. Not just knowing about it after the fact or watching it happen, but the whole process . That ' s all . If there are any questions? CHAIRMAN SAKATA: Thank you very much, Mr. Robinson. The commission does want to thank all of you people for ;being present tonight and giving us input, testimony. I think we can see the problem that exists here in West Hawaii. -47- We commend you people for being concerned and responsive and for giving us some means, by your input , whereby we can really look at the charter as we go into our deliberations. We do thank you people for your time and effort this evening. Thank you very much. APPROVAL The motion was made, seconded and carried OF MINUTES: that the approval of minutes and communications be postponed until the next meeting date. COMMUNI- CATIONS : OMMUNI- C`7- TIONS : ANNOUNCEMENTS: Next meeting date - Tuesday, May 29 , 1979 , 4: 00 p.m. , Hawaii County Councilroom. ADJOURNMENT: The meeting was adjourned at 10: 30 p.m. '1 ' 'oan Carnett, RECORDING SECRETARY -48-