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

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Hawai`i County Charter Commission -3 September 14, 2018 Environmental Management). And then economy, how do we ensure a thriving economy for our County? So, when we look at these initiatives of our particular Mayor now, each of these initiatives basically can be covered by an agency, existing agency. Affordable housing and homelessness- Housing, Connectedness- DPW (Department of Public Works), Mass Transit, Wellness -Parks and Recreation, Office of Aging, safety and resilience- Police, Fire, Civil Defense, Prosecuting Office. Responsible governance -Planning, the various Boards and Commissions, Corporation Counsel, Department of Information Technology. Respect for environment and culture -that's our Department of Environmental Management, Park and Recreation for culture. Thriving economy that's Research and Development. But there are a few gaps that we could identify. In terms of efficiency, we haven't really explored this in any depth, so just throwing these ideas out- possibly, we have various types of enforcements scattered across different departments, we have like complaints regarding animals that the police have to respond to, we have so-called park areas which actually are quite broad, are not confined to just our County parks, where the homeless congregate after hours, and so how do we deal with that? We have vacation rentals corning up on the books, how do we enforce that? All the different complaints received by the Planning Department, Public Works, and Public Works also enforces where we charge for parking. So is it possible to consolidate all of these kind of enforcement functions under one agency to take away some of these distracting responsibilities and time consuming responsibilities that the other agencies have to do. Particularly like the police. You know we could use their time better than chasing down animal complaints. So that is one thing that we are looking into. The feasibility of that and whether or not creating a new agency, whether it be a new department or an agency like Civil Defense, Office of Aging, that doesn't appear on the Charter. But, what is the cost effectiveness of that. Is there a cost savings to consolidate, first standing up a new agency. Second idea is, there's a gap in, no one is assigned to maintain County owned trails, or public open space acquired through the open space fund, even landscaping within the right-of-way, so maybe we need either an explicit assignment through the Charter to an existing agency, or possibly to create a new agency that can handle all these types of landscaping. Then the third idea, I know we understand that you folks are considering an ad hoc committee to look at the PONC (Public Access Open Space Natural Resources Commission) funds, one idea we had, you know our parks which is part of the open space system, encounters continuous deferred maintenance. We always can do a better job in the maintenance, so if there's a way to set aside a portion of the existing PONC funds and authorize it for general park maintenance, it would really go a long way in raising the standard of maintenance of our County facilities. So that's it, open for any questions. Page 33