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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018 MR. ALAMEDA: Alright. Thank you. Chair Adams and fellow Commissioners, my name is Kimo Alameda, I ani the Executive of the Hawai`i County Office of Aging and you know when I first got started actually J was our Corp Counsel and I said "J, how come we're not in the Charter?" you know so, he goes "What? You're not in the Charter?" so we look, we look, and so I did some history and it is interesting. So we, our office started in 1966 and was actually under Parks and Recreation and then we wanted to apply for grants and so, cause our office is heavily grant funded. We only get about $700,000 from the County. Probably the least from all the departments and we've, but we get about Four Million from Federal and State. And so, but in order to accept federal funds, we had to separate ourselves because we contract a lot of our services to the Parks and Recreation. So our Meals on Wheels program we contract, so we have a lot of County to County contracts and the Feds and the State was telling us "that's a conflict of interest if you give the contract to yourself' so we had to put it, so we became a depai ['tent by ourselves. And at that point, I guess the Mayor back then said "hey, why don't you join the cabinet?" So, we are the only County Office of Aging that is at the cabinet level, but yet I am a civil service employee. I am not appointed by the Mayor and so, you know the idea that—and of course my staff asks me "hey you know you gotta go talk story about the Charter, what? What kine advice, you know what is the deal on that? We going be part of the Charter? What is the positives and negatives of being part of the Charter?" You know and I don't know actually so, but for me, I think the idea of not being appointed, because Aging permeates every other department. Housing is aging. Transportation is aging. We work with the Fire Department for safety is Aging. I think it is very important that we are not politicized, that there is stability you know and that because funding is about relationships and the relationships that Alan Parker has built with our funders over the years, that Bill Takaba had built over the years with our funders, you know that is important and those are my two predecessors, and the office has been around for almost 50 years. So the fact that we are not in the Charter I think is good. The fact that I am a civil service employee I think is good. You know there are some positives to that. The negatives is that while all my fellow counterparts get raise, I no get raise because I am civil service, so but I get stability. So there is the pros and the cons. But you know we have a great office. Like I said, we contract over 20 contracts. About eight of them is County to County. The money flow through us, we develop a contract as we would with any other vendor, so Hawai`i Adult Day Care is our vendor- Marcie, and so we, and we have three day cares, we have a bunch of vendors in the community that goes and provide home based care to our seniors who, mostly the caregivers who need help bathing, cleaning, doing laundry, light meal prep, these are like awesome services that alleviate the burden of much of our caregivers and our day cares are probably the best place that helps alleviate the burden of caregivers because they can go work, they don't have to worry about losing their jobs, you know, so we partner with over thirty non-profit Page 19