MIN CHARTER 2018-09-14 (2018-2020)

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Hawaii County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018 MS. POINDEXTER: When you're talking about, you're talking about the two- thirds vote or what are you... CHR. ADAMS: I'm not sure, no, I am actually not sure actually what I just said is about the level of conversation that we've had. It's been a concern that are we able to, does our structure allow us to react to these emergencies and they can be of any kind but primarily they have been natural disasters of course recently. Does our structure allow us to react to those, respond to those as quickly as perhaps we need to? MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah, and I don't think it does at this point. I think we could make it quicker but there needs to be some changes and I don't know if Jon and J would agree with me on that. CHR. ADAMS: That may not be a Charter thing. That may be more of an ordinance thing. MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah. CHR. ADAMS: In other words... MS. POINDEXTER: Yeah but when we're coming before them for emergency ordinances, you know and short, you know, when time is of the essence, you know, does that allow us to act quickly enough is... CHR. ADAMS: Okay. I appreciate that. We will continue to work that. Commissioner Todd... MS. TODD: Some of the questions kind of jogged my recollection of some things that I had some concerns about. When I was on the Council, we didn't have the set up that we have now where you can participate via the internet even though you're not physically present. And I, one of the things that I liked was when we went back and forth between Kona and Hilo, you had to physically be present as a Council Member. Once we started getting a little more electronic, I don't know what the Council Rules were in terms of what permission or what your rationale was, but I noticed that there were some Council Members that routinely participated via t.v. (television) as opposed to physically showing up, and this went both ways. And, I thought that the importance of holding the meetings on both sides of the island was not so much that the testimony got given and people didn't have to drive, but that it made the elected officials from the entire island accessible. It's the being able to grab somebody maybe off the record, the ability to talk to them and get to know them. And I was concerned about the fact that it seemed like there were some people who never went or very seldom showed up, and I remember there was this resentment in the community about the fact that certain Council Members routinely did not bother to come to Page 16